It’s March 3rd. Which means it’s 303 Day.

Time to celebrate the legendary Roland TB-303.

When it launched in 1981, it wasn’t trying to start a movement. Roland built it as a simple bass accompaniment for guitarists. It didn’t convince many of them. Sales were underwhelming. Production stopped. For a while, it was just another discontinued box.

Then something interesting happened.

A few years later, second-hand units started popping up for cheap. Producers in Chicago got their hands on them and pushed them far beyond their original purpose. Instead of imitating a bass guitar, the 303 started screaming, squelching, and bubbling through resonant filters. Tracks like Acid Tracks turned that sound into a movement.

Acid house was born. Techno, trance, and rave scenes across the world followed.

Not bad for a commercial flop, and a beautiful story of how just looking at something differently can open up an entirely new universe.

No Contest This Year

For the last two years, we’ve celebrated 303 Day with a community contest: design the coolest 303-inspired patch in Phase Plant.

And you delivered. Those patches were filthy in the best possible way.

This year, though, we’re putting all our energy into the upcoming v3 update to the Kilohearts Ecosystem. It’s a big milestone for us, and there’s still plenty to finish. We’d rather focus and get it done properly than split our attention.

We’ll miss the contest. But we think you’ll like what’s coming.

Phase Plant Does 303 Very Nicely

In the meantime, if you’ve ever tried building a 303-style patch in Phase Plant, you already know it works.

Tight envelopes. Punchy accents. Filter movement that goes from smooth to screaming in a few clicks. Add internal effects, modulation, a bit of distortion, and you’re well into acid territory.

Of course, with the Kilohearts Ecosystem, you can take that many steps further by adding your own custom modular effects and even building an internal random sequencer using the powerful modulation system inside Phase Plant. You can grab a finished version of the preset below from the downloads section of this blog post.

To give you even more ideas this 303 Day, we’ve bundled all the previous contest entries into a single zip file. You can download them, dig into the routing, see how people approached it, and use them as starting points for your own experiments. Check out the winners below for a taste of how they can sound.

Grab those presets now. Reverse-engineer. Tweak. Improve. Make them yours. And share them on our Discord or post them and tag us on our other channels. We can't wait to hear them.

Happy 303 Day!