| I've been using the Roland MC-303 on and off since I | | | | 3 It only had two audio outputs so adding external FX |
| brought it in (1996). I have used it on some of the early | | | | such as reverb or delay meant you needed to record |
| Anjelicas Baby recordings such as "Crawling Back To | | | | the sounds on separate tracks of your audio recorder. |
| You" and "Blame It On You". I think it is a great little | | | | At the time mine was a Fostex DMT8 hard drive |
| machine second hand for its price about £100 - | | | | 8-track recorder. Hard drive recording with 16 tracks or |
| £200 depending on condition. However, I am | | | | more really came at a price back then. |
| going to be honest about my past experiences with it. | | | | 4 Most irritating of all was its almost non-existent midi |
| The MC-303 in its time was a revolution and the first | | | | implementation. When they meant retro they really |
| of many so-called groove boxes. It could do anything | | | | took it to heart here. They basically designed it to work |
| from techno to dance, jungle and drum & bass to | | | | as a stand-alone machine. So if you wanted to use |
| name but a few. It was rammed with sounds from | | | | any other gear then you had to get the MC-303 to be |
| classic synths such as the Roland Juno and Jupiter | | | | the master sequencer. Well at that time the sequencer |
| series and had the classic retro sounds of the Roland | | | | was no match for Logic or Cubase. Consequently, I |
| TR-808 and TR-909. Also, it had the Roland TB-303 | | | | had to record the patterns for the MC-303 from its |
| bass type synth sounds on board as well. To own | | | | own memory then do a bulk dump save to an Alesis |
| such instruments on their own would have set you | | | | datadisk of the song. I then had to set my Atari 1040 |
| back thousands upon thousands of dollars or British | | | | computer sequencer to trigger the MC-303 as a slave. |
| pounds. Then you needed the room to put your | | | | So, great sorted. Oh no, wait a minute, you had to |
| vintage gear in. | | | | trigger the MC-303 from the start of the song every |
| It looked very much like the old vintage TB-303's and | | | | time. As soon as I fast-forwarded the Atari sequencer |
| TR-808's. It was essentially a sequencer-arranger with | | | | the MC-303 lost the plot, and well who knows what |
| 8 tracks of recording. It even had built in FX such as | | | | part of the song it would move to. |
| chorus, flange, reverb and delay. Its real-time functions | | | | 5 Any sound you wanted to play into your own |
| made it great fun to play with. It had filter cut off, | | | | sequencer transmitted in on omni mode across all |
| resonance, stereo panning and arpeggio. The panning | | | | 16-midi channels. What a crazy idea for the late 1990's. |
| and delay FX would keep time with the tempo of your | | | | To make matters even worse, the real time controls |
| patterns or songs, which at the time was a really cool | | | | that made the machine so much fun were rendered |
| advance. It was 24-voice note polyphony, 16-part multi | | | | impotent when you tried to record for example |
| timbral, and on board there were 448 preset PCM | | | | real-time filtering of a bass sound into your sequencer. |
| ROM sounds, 300 preset patterns and 50 user | | | | Come-on Roland, you could record the control |
| patterns. Quite extraordinary back in (1996). No sooner | | | | movements of a Juno 106 into your sequencer as far |
| had it made a splash in the music magazines like | | | | back as 1985. |
| Future Music, Sound On Sound, and The Mix, it was | | | | Well as you can gather, I was less than pleased at the |
| quickly superseded by the Roland MC-505, JX-305 | | | | time with these limitations. Despite this, I had faith in the |
| and the Yamaha RM1x. I guess this was because it | | | | little beast. I saw the light and hoped that over a few |
| was almost too good to be true for the unbelievable | | | | years and more audio based recording products on |
| price of around £500. Yes you guessed it, there | | | | PC's and Mac's, a breath of hope would be breathed |
| were some major drawbacks to the machine that | | | | into this machine. So with the passing of time, here |
| made using it a maddening experience at times. | | | | come the positives. |
| 1 The first thing I noticed was it had a some what over | | | | 1 It works great as a stand-alone unit. You can midi all |
| compressed kind of sound and lacked any real punch. | | | | your other gear to it. Then you can make use of its |
| It could reproduce dance music very well using the | | | | real cool arpeggio to bring some life back into your old |
| TR-909 sounds. If you ever compare the sounds off | | | | boring synths. |
| the MC-303 to lets say a JV1080 which had a similar | | | | 2 It has loads and loads of PCM samples, which easily |
| set of sounds you will find that the JV has a lot more | | | | overcome some of the limitations of the real sounds |
| presence and punch to it. To make an analogy here, it | | | | on board. This is especially true if you have lots of |
| is like comparing a wave file to an mp3 file. I suspect | | | | other soft or hardware synths to use along side of it. |
| to get all those sounds into the MC-303's internal ROM, | | | | 3 With modern technology you can record a sound |
| sacrifices had to be made, and maybe the bit rates of | | | | into your sequencer, and then play with the MC-303 |
| the MC-303's sample library were reduced. Don't get | | | | controls in real-time and record straight onto an audio |
| me wrong, the sounds have full clarity and many are in | | | | track on your computer. This can really jazz it up with |
| stereo, but you definitely feel you want to almost grab | | | | modern plugins. |
| the sounds out of your speakers and give them a | | | | 4 It is very inexpensive second hand for a retro |
| good kick to uplift them. This is one issue I have | | | | hardware unit with so many functions on it. |
| noticed about Roland synths and especially drum | | | | 5 You can set it up as a standard synth module. |
| machines from this period. The sounds almost sound | | | | 6 It has a handy little bass boost knob on the back of |
| too nice and clean as if you could invite them back to | | | | the machine for adding more bottom end to the audio |
| your parent's house for Sunday dinner knowing they | | | | output. |
| would not offend their musical tastes. | | | | 7 If you don't overdo it, and use other equipment to |
| 2 The real sounds such as trumpets, guitars etc were | | | | add to your track you are recording, it really can sound |
| frankly horrid. Less would have been more in my | | | | very professional indeed. |
| opinion on this machine. Everything and the kitchen sink | | | | So that's the Roland MC-303 pros and cons in my |
| were stuffed in to it. As a result on the pre-installed | | | | subjective opinion. It's a great little edition to anyone's |
| patterns it had an amateurish kind of sound to it. | | | | set up if used carefully and sparingly. |