Acid is an umbrella term for styles of
electronic music
Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...
—such as
acid house
Acid house (also simply known as just " acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synt ...
,
acid trance
Acid trance is a genre of trance music that emerged in the late 1980s, focusing on using the acid sound. The trademark sound of "acid" is produced with a Roland TB-303 by playing a sequenced melody while altering the instrument's filter cutoff f ...
,
acid techno
Acid techno, sometimes known generally as "acid", is a genre of techno that was derived from acid house and developed in Europe in the late 1980s to early 1990s. It saw younger artists apply the "squelching" synthesizer sound of Chicago acid hou ...
, and
acid breaks
Breakbeat is a broad type of electronic music that uses drum breaks, often sampled from early recordings of funk, jazz, and R&B. Breakbeats have been used in styles such as Florida breaks, hip-hop, jungle, drum and bass, big beat, breakbeat har ...
—which employ the "squelching" sounds of the
Roland TB-303
The Roland TB-303 Bass Line (also known as the 303) is a bass synthesizer released by Roland Corporation in 1981. Designed to simulate bass guitars, it was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1984. However, cheap second-hand units we ...
synthesizer. The acid sound became popular in the mid-1980s in connection with the
Chicago house
Chicago house refers to house music produced during the mid to late 1980s within Chicago. The term is generally used to refer to the original house music of DJs and producers from the area, such as Ron Hardy and Phuture
History and origins D ...
scene, including artists such as
Phuture
Phuture is an American house music group from Chicago, founded in 1985 by Earl "Spanky" Smith Jr., Nathaniel Pierre Jones aka DJ Pierre, and Herbert "Herb J" Jackson. The group is renowned for inventing and defining the sound of acid house, a ...
and labels like
Trax Records.
The term ''acid'' specifically refers to the harsh squelching sound of the Roland 303.
[Nash, Rob (2009)]
Techno: Encyclopedia of Modern Music
, ''The Sunday Times Culture's Encyclopedia of Modern Music'', 1 February 2009, retrieved 22 November 2009 The acid sound is achieved by turning up the filter
resonance
Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency (or resonance frequency) of the system, defined as a frequency that generates a maximu ...
and turning down the
cutoff frequency
In physics and electrical engineering, a cutoff frequency, corner frequency, or break frequency is a boundary in a system's frequency response at which energy flowing through the system begins to be reduced ( attenuated or reflected) rather than ...
parameters of the synthesizer, along with programming the 303's accent, slide, and octave parameters.
The term acid has also been suggested to refer to the
psychedelic
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips") and a perceived "expansion of consciousness". Also referred to as classic halluci ...
qualities of the music, which may resemble elements of 1960s
acid rock
Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage rock, garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelia, psychedelic subculture. While the term has sometimes been used interchangeably with "psyc ...
.
[Hillegonda C Rietveld (1998) ''This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies'' Aldershot: Ashgate. ]
References
{{electronic-music-stub
Electronic music genres