Back to the future!
Marty McFly would have his true joy, if he would start his time machine again and travel with it to the year 2021 because the sound of the 80s is back! The charts are full of hits by The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus & Dua Lipa, David Guetta & Sia, Coldplay and other top-class musicians who adorn their songs with a vintage flair. It goes without saying that Beat provides a construction manual and matching sound sets.
Tools & tricks
We don‘t even need analog hardware from that time to capture the 80s feeling. The tools of every DAW and from our Beat Studio as well as some freeware tools are completely sufficient. Although synthesizers and drum machines were very popular back then, they didn‘t always sound fundamentally different from modern devices or plug-ins. The biggest difference is in the way they are used and programmed.
Hi-Hats
The only thing to note is that the snare and kick do not overlap, because the former is quite fat. Our beat also contains the LM-1 clap in every third of four bars and the (brutal) open hi-hat one bar before. Last but not least, we fill in the pattern with a shaker and tambourine. Both follow a 16th note pattern that only pauses during the snare and open hat play times.
LM-1
Above all, the sounds were not as fine-tuned as they are today, it was allowed to be a lot rougher. As a main tool, we therefore use a really „old-fashioned classic“: the Linn Electronics LM-1. Create a new song in your DAW, load Geist Lite onto a track and feed it with the LM-1 samples from the magazine download. The beats from back then were usually a bit more playful than today.
Kick
In contrast to the stiffer rhythms of the 80s, we give the sequence a bit of dynamics with different velocities. So far, so good, the beat is programmed and sounds quite authentic for the time. At this point we want to beam it into modern times. Open your mind, select the kick pad and switch to the PAD MIXER. There we load the channel compressor as an effect.
Pattern
In addition, we program a kind of breakbeat with kick, snare and hi-hats at 114 bpm. Place the kick on every other quarter and sprinkle another here and there in between. A short fill-in is allowed at the end of every second bar. Similarly, the snare lands on every odd quarter and also adds a few additional steps and fill-ins every few bars.
Stereomaker
Set ratio to 20, input to 18 dB and output to 2 dB. With this, the kick already rumbles better out of the speakers. Select the pad of the snare, load a delay and turn the mix to 9 o‘clock and feedback to zero. The Geist Delay is an absolute insider tip when it comes to stereo width! Just turn the swing control to 30% and the snare will be spread extremely wide in the panorama.
Reverb
So we do the same with the shaker and tambourine. So load the delay effect there with the same settings as for the snare. Then we add a big shot of reverb to the clap: Select the Tin Can Verb as an effect, turn up the size and decay to almost full and set the mix to 11 o‘clock. The beat now fills the panorama nicely and sounds much more spatial.
Record
To give the beat a more organic feel, we enhance it with real claps. They are also available in the form of samples and plug-ins, but we do them ourselves because we need a lot of them. So activate the microphone and record several rounds. Then cut the claps out of the tracks and delete unnecessary parts. This also removes any noise.
Oberheim
Typical for the eighties are short, crisp basses, which are played quite melodious and very snappy. In order to shape the sound accordingly, we turn on the saw teeth of both oscillators, as well as PULSE on the second. With DETUNE and XMOD at 10 a.m. we provide a thicker basic sound. At MIX, turn the two OSC controls fully up and at FILTER turn down CUTOFF and RESO to 11 o‘clock.
More power
What is still negative for a modern track is the rather weak kick. You can do more nowadays. We therefore want to give it more power with a synth. Copy the beat pattern to a new track, delete all notes except the kick, and load Waldorf Attack or another synthesizer whose pitch can be modulated. We choose C1 as the basic pitch for the kick.
Spreading
We recorded the claps without the metronome and playback, so of course they are not in time. If this is also the case for you, quantize the claps, but so that they don‘t all play at the same time, we then move them minimally forward or backward. We also pan two of our four recorded tracks hard left and right. This way the claps are nicely distributed in the panorama.
Pattern
For the crack we turn ENV to 1 o‘clock and FILTER ENVELOPE DECAY and RELEASE to 11 o‘clock. So much for the sound design. For the melody we have to reach a little deeper into the bag of tricks. Virtuosos have an easy game, non-keyboard players literally feel their way in. Play eighth notes with the bass and change the key after each bar. Once four tone changes are found, record them.
Envelopes
Turn the PITCH ENV control to 3 o‘clock and turn the ENVELOPE 1 controls ATTACK to 10 o‘clock and DECAY to 12 o‘clock. The kick drum click is nice, but it gets in the way of the LM-1 kick. So with ENVELOPE 2 we turn ATTACK back to 9 o‘clock, DECAY to 11 o‘clock and SHAPE to 2 o‘clock. SHAPE provides a more beautiful belly in this setting. But you can also proceed according to your taste.
Make bigger
We use a limiter to compensate for the volume fluctuations in our recordings. Bring all of the tracks to a bus track (or a group in Ableton Live) and load a limiter that hits hard. Gain reduction down to -12 dB or more is allowed. With the T-Racks Brickwall Limiter, this is done by the input with +9 dB. This is followed by an EQ that cuts off all frequencies below 300 Hz.
Key
For us, the changes from C2 to E2, then to D2 and A1 worked fine. The aim is now to convert the found basic notes into a melody and to create a groove. If necessary, reduce the length of the notes to 16th notes and thin out the sequence. We deleted notes at the beginning of the bar so that the bassline not only bobs around constantly, but also contains gaps here and there.
Finetuning
At the end of the bar, we transpose individual notes to create a musical progression. We strictly adhere to white keys, which simplifies the project immensely. A 16th note at the end of the pattern provides more zap. In addition, we moved the first note back a 16th note per measure. Overall, the bassline grooves a lot better.
JX-Revival
For the hookline, we are using another synth classic: the JX-8P, thanks to the PG8X, resurrected as a plug-in. Our sound is based on a sawtooth from DCO-1 with range 2‘ and a pulse waveform from DCO-2 with range 16‘, whereby the former is only mixed in at half volume. Set CUTOFF to 70%, ENV to 50% and ENVELOPE-1 SUSTAIN to 80%. ATTACK and DECAY to around 20%.
DUNE
We use the same chords again for a synth pad that we use from the Dune. The pad should carry the harmonies and provide more space. Load the plug-in with an init patch and select SEL waveform 32 for OSC 1 and sawtooth for OSC 2. For a broad sound, we turn VOICES and SPREAD to maximum, and DETUNE to 9 o‘clock. Set the FILTER to 12dB lowpass.
Alternative
An alternative approach is to work with 16th notes instead of eighth notes. Otherwise you can continue as described from step 14, i.e. search for keys, then thin out the notes and continue here. In the next step we make the bass fatter with another OBXD. Copy the existing track including the instrument. Only switch on both PULS oscillators there.
Chords
For the volume envelope ENV-2 we set DECAY and RELEASE to 50%, the other controls to zero. This gives us a long fading synth sound with which we record a typical major chord with the base note C1. The C1 is joined by an F1
(+5 semitones) and an A1 (again 4 higher). We transpose the chord 1 to 1 to the other chords (E1/ A1/C2, D1/G1/B1 and A1/D2/F#2).
Organic sound
CUTOFF we drive back to 1 o‘clock, this will be automated later slowly increasing. In the MOD MATRIX, link LFO 1 at -15 AMOUNT with Osc 1 Wave and LFO 2 at +11 AMOUNT with filter cutoff. Select the sine waveform for both LFOs and set the RATE to 8 o‘clock or 11 o‘clock for LFO 2. The modulations ensure an extremely lively pad and support the synth lead enormously.
Stereo
Pitch OSC 1 up an octave, set CUTOFF to 9 o‘clock, RESO to minimum, ENV to 3 o‘clock and FILTER DECAY to 10 o‘clock. This sound is intended to expand the stereo field of the bassline, which the OBXD is perfect for because each voice can be freely placed in the panorama. Reduce the VOICES to 2 and pan them hard to the left or right. The side changes with every note played.
Reverb
To increase this, we play the notes chronologically an octave higher afterwards. The sound is completed with a large reverb. Load the TB_Reverb (or another plug-in), set the reverberation time to 7 seconds, turn up the Size very high and mix the signal to around 55%. This is followed by a compressor that moderately glues the sounds with a ratio of 1: 3.5 and a threshold of -20 dB.
Arpeggio
Last but not least, we create an arpeggio with the OBXD for the intermediate parts of the song. The pattern played consists of a 16th note sequence with the notes C4, B3 and A3. The sound should be short and percussive, so we turn DECAY on the envelopes to 10 o‘clock, the rest to zero. A possible 80s playback is ready, which can also be used as a spice for current productions.