Making Acid Lines With Audiorealism Bassline

Audiorealism Bassline has to be used in pattern mode to get that authentic Roland TB-303 sound, and this plugin really does sound like the real thing!

Crank the unit's distortion and drive knobs right to the top. Then distort it a lot, preferably with an analogue modelled plugin or anything else you've got handy. Ramp the 'resonance' knob up to the top too to get that squelchy acid feel!

Flick the pattern mode button and jam a bar long note, say C3. into your sequencer's piano roll and loop round it. This will play your pattern from the synth's internal sequencer.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll flick the pattern length down to 8 steps instead of 16 to help us get an old skool sounding repetitive acid line.

Now for our patented random acid line generation method! Hit the pattern button on the top right. Now select 'randomise all'. You'll have to think ahead here since it's going to sound messy. Keep clicking this till you get something that you imagine will work for you.

Once you've found something you like it's time to get it into the same key as your track. Hit the 'auto advance' button on the sequencer and click the note of your track 8 times so that your pattern will now be in the correct key (if that's what you want!!!)...

Now play your pattern with your track or just a kick drum. You might notice it sounds like the patterns in the wrong place so 'nudge' it using the synths 'shift left' or 'shift right' buttons. This can make a huge difference. Of course it may sound like a load of rubbish, in which case get brutual with yourself and start again!

Once you do have something you like you can use the synths 'copy pattern' and 'paste pattern' function from the 'pattern' menu to copy and paste your pattern to a different note on your piano roll to create a variation of the pattern, you can build up complex acid lines using this method, as well as create patterns in different keys.

For more information on the real Roland TB-303 read the Wikipedia entry.

Mark is a passionate DJ who loves to mix and produce tracks with various reason refills and Vocal MIDI Files. Mark works for dancemidisamples.com in the UK who sell various DJ Sample packs and MIDI producer packs.