9 Kilometers to Acid

This is the three hundred and third post.

Summer 1997. I’d been at Hultsfred, saw Fatboy Slim DJing, The Prodigy on stage, Daft Punk’s 1997 gig. That sound was inside me now. The 303 squelch. The acid bass. I needed to make it myself.

Around 2-3 in the morning, I remember seeing Minimalisterna playing some sort of app on a big computer. This interface I couldn’t quite make out. Didn’t think much of it then.

Then during summer, I’m flipping through Studio, a Swedish music magazine, and I turn a page. There it is. Rebirth.

A Roland TB-303 clone. But in the computer.

It looked amazing. Pure interface. Two TB-303 bass synths. The 808 and 909 drum machines. You had access to all four.

The price was slightly below 1,500 Swedish kronor. Around $150. I looked at it and thought this can’t be real.

I called the music shop downtown. They had it in store but they were closing in half an hour.

I grabbed my bike and pedaled almost 9 kilometers as fast as I could. Made it. Bought it. Took it home.

I installed it and just stared at the interface, then started turning knobs.

Two bass engines. Two drum machines. Pattern sequencers that let you build these elaborate loops. I hardly knew what I was doing but I could make acid. That sound from Hultsfred. That sound from “Everybody Needs a 303.” Simple. Pure. Fun.

The real hardware would have cost tens of thousands of kronor, but this was everything, synced up perfectly, running together in one program.

No manual needed. No synthesis theory. Just twist the cutoff and resonance and hear that squelch come alive.

Propellerhead made software feel like playing an instrument. Not like operating a tool.

That bike ride home with the diskette in my bag, that anticipation, that certainty something was about to change. That’s what good software should feel like.