Acid house

What it tastes like

Acid house was an accident. In 1985 some Chicago kids — DJ Pierre, Spanky, Herb J — got their hands on a Roland TB-303, a discontinued bass synth nobody wanted, and discovered that turning the resonance knob past noon turned its already-strange tone into a thing: a squelchy, vocal-cord-like cry that nothing else had ever made. Phuture’s Acid Tracks put it on a 12” in 1987 and the entire UK rave scene was built on top of it three years later.

Two bars and you’ve got it: a TB-303 line bending and squealing under a four-on-the-floor kick, almost no chord movement (the song stays on one key for ten minutes), and percussion sparse enough that the 303 is the lead, the bass, AND the song. The DJ’s job is to ride the filter cutoff knob in real time. Acid house is the only genre where the filter is the melody.

The chord moves

There’s barely a chord move at all — that’s the discipline. Acid house typically vamps on one minor 7th chord for 16 or 32 bars, then briefly hints at the iv or VI before dropping back. The chord pad is background texture, not melody. All the harmonic interest comes from the 303 bassline weaving in and out of the chord tones as the cutoff opens and closes.

Try --progression i,i,iv,i --chord minor7 --voicing rootless and let the bass do the heavy lifting.

The groove

Steady 4-on-the-floor at 122–128 BPM, TR-909 or TR-707 kit. Open hat on the offbeat, closed hat on the 16ths, clap on 2 and 4. Nothing fancy. The drums are intentionally boring so the 303 can be the star.

The 303 line itself plays straight 16th notes with slides and accents marking specific notes. The cutoff and resonance are automated to open through builds and crash on the drop. Listen to Acperience 1 with one hand on a knob if you want to feel the pattern.

The sounds

• Bass: a TB-303 (Phoscyon, ABL3, or the real thing). Resonance at 75-95%. Cutoff modulated by hand or LFO. Saturate slightly for warmth.
• Chords: warm sustained pad, single chord, low in the mix. Often just a Juno-style PWM hum.
• Drums: TR-909 kit, dry, no reverb. Hi-hats can have a tiny touch of vinyl saturation.
• FX: white noise sweeps for builds. Reverb tail on the 303 only at peak moments. Occasional rave stab sample.

Production tells

Want it modern? Cleaner low end, sidechained pad, some stereo width on the hi-hats. A modern acid track might layer two 303 lines (one mid, one high). Master at -10 LUFS but not louder.

Want it 1988-vintage? Drier mix, pre-EQ everything for vinyl, slight tape saturation, narrow stereo. Use a real 303 sample pack or the original TB. The imperfection of the 303’s pitch tracking is part of the sound — don’t tune it perfectly.

python jamburgr.py --key "A minor" --style acid_house --progression i,i,iv,i --pattern pulse --output-mode pack --out ./jams/acid-house