Oscar Peterson – techno producer?
The picture below is a scan from an old Roland ad from 1982. It depicts Oscar Peterson on the Roland PianoPlus!, with a Roland TR-606 and TB-303.
It’s pretty ironic how Roland saw the 303 and 606 fitting into music at the time – as a replacement for a bass player and drummer. Of course, these little techno boxes they couldn’t really be further from that, in factthey were a massive contribution the the success of Acid in techno from 1988 onwards.
The pre-acid 303 was used as the bass sound on 80s smooth-soul merchants Imagination’s hits “Body Talk” & “Just An Illusion” from 1982. You can hear them make good use of the glide, doing an imitation of the then-in-vogue fretless bass slide, but alas no filter-tweaking.
I think that Oscar probably realized what these were all about (even if Roland didn’t), as he’s pretty hip to synths. Taken from his website:
“Since the early 1980′s, Oscar has embraced electronic music wholeheartedly in that the tools help him to compose, and especially orchestrate, more quickly and effectively than traditional methods. Oscar has, in his home, a state of the art recording studio and music room that accommodates his keyboards, synthesizers, sequencers and computers, all for the purpose of creating more music.”
If anyone else has any good examples of pre-acid use of the tb303, post them in the comments!
Thanks.. I’d always assumed it was a fretless…
A couple that spring to mind:
Heaven 17 ‘Let Me Go’
most of the Thompson Twins “side kicks” album
Oscar Peterson released very little synth based music, though he was known to have a kickass collection of analog synths and various drum machines. The descriptions I read (mostly stuff quoted on the analogue heaven mailing lists) made it sound like synths were something he used to unwind from his day job playing the piano.
Jam on it by Newcleus!
where id you get the info about the imagination songs using the 303 ? , its ironic because i always though it sounded like either a minimoog or most likely the prophet 5, as like JSD says above, Thomson twins.. they used the pro one ( the monophonic prophet 5 ) from sequential circuits for the bass on there hits.. & it they sound very similar.. just sayin
MM