You know you've tapped a nerve when your best innovations come from enthusiastic fans hacking your product.
What began as a small project by the team of musician-engineers at Swedish company Propellerheads to faithfully resurrect two early '80s electronic instruments using software emulation has blossomed into creative subculture on the Web. Every new program feature on ReBirth 2.0, to be released in June, reflects on its users in such a way that it becomes hard to tell which came first: the software or the community.
"I've been working with synths since 1979," says Ernst Nathorst-Boos, one of ReBirth's five creators. Among the other engineers, he says, "Peter Jubel has been building his own hardware designs and Marcus Zetterquist has a nice little collection of his own. This is a program we all wanted and needed for ourselves."
ReBirth, when installed on a computer, emulates the robust Roland TR-808 drum machine running in tandem with two rubbery TB-303 bass machines. The new release throws another drum simulation, of the Roland TR-909, into the mix.
Introduced in 1981, the plastic Roland boxes that ReBirth software emulates were directly responsible for the wildfire growth of techno and rap music during the '80s. Because Roland wanted to make machines that sounded like conventional pop-music rhythm sections -- and were probably not very concerned with catering to musical undergrounds -- the less-than-realistic-sounding line of drum machines was killed off. Though the original machines retailed for a couple hundred dollars apiece, they now fetch more than $2000 per box from collectors.
Today, users are attracted by the "squidgy acid noise" of ReBirth, and use the low-cost software in conjunction with other cheap gear to produce high-quality dance tracks. (A careful ear will catch ReBirth's rattling on recent CDs by Daft Punk, Nine Inch Nails, and Motley Crue.)
Nathorst-Boos says ReBirth was designed with the Internet in mind, and points to countless Web and FTP sites, chats, and at least one mailing list. ReBirthers like Germany's DJ Mouse and England's Stuart C-Nation, say they got their start in the enthusiastic Web-based Amiga/PC tracker culture, and they now use ReBirth to swap 50K song files with a global pool of collaborators. Cherry Coke and Texas-based record label Bionic Teknologies have fueled the fire by sponsoring ReBirth song design contests.
Online users also seem inspired to hack ReBirth, by changing its sound resources and creating slick new visual interfaces.
Baltimore-based musician scaNNer primarily creates Jungle or Drum & Bass music, but didn't really like the 808 sounds ReBirth makes. So he added some familiar Jungle sounds as well as his own musical samples to the ReBirth engine, and released the project as "Wobble."
"I think the driving force behind Wobble was just the ability to do it," scaNNer says.
Propellerheads, for its part, is co-opting hackers like scaNNer by making ReBirth easy to alter, and including several of the most impressive "Mods," or modifications, on its Web site and the ReBirth 2.0 CD-ROM. Besides Wobble, the impressive amateur overhauls now distributed on the official Web site include Pitch Black Edition, the Metallicon, and Alien Birth.
"This great subculture lives its life regardless of what we do here in the office," says Nathorst-Boos.
Even before ReBirth uttered its first squawk, there were other software synthesizers inspired by early machines like the 303, such as Rubber Duck, created by a group of university students called D-Lusion, and seq-303, by Techno Toys. Boris Diebold, R&D manager for D-Lusion, insists its work hasn't been affected by ReBirth: "Where they tried, and succeeded, in emulating the real 303 sound to the best, we focused on new, innovative sounds."
Now, not only synth fans are writing 303 shareware, but Roland itself is simulating 808/303 sounds with its retro-friendly hardware Groove Box. The knob has turned full circle, and the Propellerheads couldn't be happier.
"It turned out we did something that first of all many people thought was impossible," says Nathorst-Boos, "and secondly attracted a huge range of people, from pros to those with only a casual interest in music."
