Aug31

Written by:Bruce Richardson
Tuesday, August 31, 1999 6:00 PM

You may wonder why ReBirth would be getting mention here. It's old news, after all, especially to anyone producing dance tracks.

What's important about this synth is that it quite possibly provided the push that started the revolution.

Before ReBirth, softsynths were strictly for the geek and tweak crowd. ReBirth changed all that, and got musicians all over the world to take notice. In its first edition, ReBirth popped onto your screen with the virtual graphic and sonic equivalent of two Roland 303s and an 808.

The 303s are digitally modeled analog synths, and run in real time. The 808 is a sample player with onscreen knobs and buttons that mimick the controls on the original Roland machine. A nice feat in itself. But what really made ReBirth more than the sum of its parts was the automation. Being able to save pattern after pattern, combine them to make songs, and being able to manipulate and save all fader movement in realtime made this a dance producer's power tool.

The Other Magic Bullet

The other magic bullet in ReBirth's gun is the concept of "Mods." By using a utility provided free by Propellereheads, registered ReBirth users can redesign both the sound and the overall look of ReBirth and publish this in a file called a Mod. The two 303s are off limits except for visuals, but every single sound in the 808 and 909 modules can be swapped for whatever sample a user might like. This has given rise to nothing short of a cult following for ReBirth. Some users go as far as to remove drum samples entirely, and use ReBirth for a Bass / Synth / Sample Triggering engine. Others have put their graphics expertise to work, and created painstakingly detailed "skins" for ReBirth as well..

ReBirth 2 burst on the scene with some nice enhancements to the routing and procesing, and got one other significant add - a 909. Now complete with the magic kick drum that is a staple of every four-on-the-floor club hit, ReBirth is a dance track producer's wet dream. How could it not be? Load it up on your laptop, and you can throw down lots of very mean grooves instead of reading magazines on your next airplane trip. Meet George Jetson.

Why ReBirth?

Do you really need ReBirth? That question is getting harder to answer. Most softsynths can knock off the exact same soundset.

So why buy ReBirth? I think it boils down to authenticity, as ironic as that may sound. After all, Propellerheads has made ReBirth fully automated - a major departure from the original Roland machines. What they have not done, however, is allowed you to make any sounds that the originals won't, provided of course you're not using a Mod (all bets are off at that point).

You can't do ruffs on the snare. You can't play chords on the 303s. You can do some rather sophisticated filtering, via selectable sequencing algorithms, that was not available in the originals. However, the sounds produced by this module are quite characteristic of what artists were doing with stomp boxes and pedals attached to the original machines, so this is not so much of a sonic compromise as it is a convenience to users.

That combined feature / limitation set, to me, is what makes ReBirth worth owning. You're not only using the sounds, you're committed to a way of working that forces the sounds to be performed more or less authentially. In this way, it's forcing artistic choice, just like a painter chooses to work in oils, pastels, or watercolor. Good stuff.

There's nothing cheezy about ReBirth. It forces you to create vintage sounds in a virtual vintage environment, while giving you the choice, through Mods, to apply the same sensibility to a new soundset. The reason ReBirth works, on the most basic level, is that Propellerheads made some bold design choices and stuck with them.

For more information go to http://www.propellerheads.se

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