Acid Trance

What it is

The same machine as acid house and acid techno, aimed somewhere else entirely. Around 1992 producers in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands started running a TB-303 under a trance arrangement rather than a Chicago one, which meant the acid line acquired a breakdown, a build and a release instead of eight flat minutes of repetition. Union Jack, Emmanuel Top, Yves Deruyter and the Platipus and Bonzai catalogues are where to look. The distinction from acid techno is not the bass machine, it is what happens at bar 65: the drums stop, the 303 is left alone with a reverb, and then everything returns at once. The British hard house DJs kept this alive long after the techno version had moved on from it.

What it sounds like

The 303 sits higher in the register than it does in acid house, often an octave up with the resonance screaming, and it is treated as a lead rather than as a bassline. Under it, a 909 with the open hat loud on every offbeat and a clap with a real tail on it. The closed hat covers the e and the a and leaves the beat itself to the kick. A crash marks the top of every phrase. Where acid techno keeps everything dry, this has reverb on the clap and a long delay on the 303, so the squelch smears across the bar instead of sitting neatly inside it.

Key elements

• A 303 in the lead registerWritten an octave or two above where an acid house line would sit, with a separate sine sub underneath doing the actual bass work.
• Open hats on every offbeatAll four, loud. Acid techno hands the offbeat to the open hat as well, but keeps a closed hat on the beat underneath it; here the beat belongs to the kick alone.
• The clap tailA 909 clap with a plate behind it long enough to reach the next offbeat. It is the wettest thing in the mix and it is most of what makes this trance rather than techno.
• A crash on the phraseOne crash at the top of the loop and a softer one halfway through. In a full arrangement it lands every eight or sixteen bars and nowhere else at all.
• The clap rollThree sixteenths climbing across the last beat, which is how the genre announces that a breakdown or a drop is one bar away.

How to get them

• 303Sawtooth, cutoff low, resonance near maximum, envelope modulation high. Transpose the pattern up twelve semitones from where it feels right and add a sine sub playing root notes underneath.
• Delay on the 303A quarter note delay at around 35 percent feedback into a high-pass at 800Hz. Automate the send upward during the breakdown so the line dissolves rather than stopping.
• Kick and open hat909 kick tuned around 55Hz, and the open hat within eight decibels of it. Put the open and closed hats in one choke group so the offbeat is cut off by the following sixteenth.
• Clap909 clap into a 2.2 second plate, high-passed at 350Hz, with the return ducked by the kick. Long enough that the tail is still audible when the next open hat arrives.
• The rollPlace three separate clap hits on the last three sixteenths of bar two at 62, 80 and 98, and pull the hats off those steps. A flam or a roll sample sounds like a preset.
• Filter the breakdownTake the drums out and sweep a resonant low-pass across the 303 over thirty two bars, ending fully open exactly one bar before the kick comes back.

Reference points

Union Jack, Emmanuel Top, Hardfloor, Yves Deruyter, Choci, and the Platipus, Bonzai and Stay Up Forever catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.