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Instead of the retro dance grooves of the British band Propellerheads, Poon had come across a Swedish company called Propellerhead Software that has created an ingeniously crafted software emulation of three classic music machines -- two drum machines and a bass synthesizer -- that virtually define the techno sound.

The Roland 303, the bass synth, was first brought to market in the early '80s. Designed to provide a rudimentary bass backing for guitarists jamming alone at home with their drum machines, the 303 produced a not altogether convincing emulation of an electric bass -- and it didn't help that bass lines had to be laboriously programmed into the machine note by note, using a one-octave keyboard that couldn't even be played in real time. And so Roland pulled the machine off the market in two years, and it was more or less forgotten -- except by musicians too cash-strapped to load up on the newer (and presumably better) gear.

It wasn't until the late '80s that budget-conscious musicians in search of a cheap bass box discovered that the 303 could sound pretty good if you twiddled the knobs just right -- if, Spinal Tap style, you turned all the knobs up to the proverbial 11. In 1987, a Chicago artist known as Phuture released his first 303-based "Acid Track" -- a stripped-down dance groove with a trippy hypnotic sound that would soon come to define what was then known as acid house. Other musicians soon discovered that the sub-bass sounds of the kick drums in the Roland 808 and 909 drum machines could produce sonic booms powerful enough to literally shake the room. And in no time, aspiring acid house musicians began clamoring for the machines that produced those wonderful buzzing bleeps and booms. Electronica artists give shout-outs to their favorite gear: Fatboy Slim titled one of his compositions "Everybody Needs a 303"; Daft Punk has its "Revolution 909"; and then, of course, there's the band 808 State. And the price of the discontinued machines went through the roof -- and has remained there.

But a new generation is discovering the joys of the Roland machines -- this time as software. Propellerhead Software's aptly named ReBirth is an emulation of the 303 bass synth and the 808 and 909 drum machines, which has caught on with people around the planet. And a devoted community of musical hackers has created thousands of alternative sounds that can be played with software.

"I thought acid was dead," says Paul O'Reilly, a San Francisco plumber, who first ran across the software while hunting for software to produce some serious "chill-out" ambient music. "I was overwhelmed by the sounds that I was making with this software five minutes after downloading and have been hooked since."

Next page | You get the Roland 303 sound -- and feel