Synthwave à la Timecop1983
Pertubator, The Midnight, Lazerhawk, Timecop1983 ... they and many others do the same thing: heavy synth sounds, languorous melodies from drama to heartbreak and stuff for dreamers, retro fans and superheroes. We will now show you how a comparable playback can be created in no time at all.
LinnDrums!
Let‘s start with the simplest element: the beat. Most synthwave songs only get by with kick and snare. Often these come from a Roland TR-707 or a LinnDrum. In the large sample package of this issue there is a suitable kit from Wave Alchemy, from which we load wa_free_ldrum_kick_02_t2 and wa_free_ldrum_ snare_02_t3.1
Arpeggio
With short notes, the filter closes faster again, which sounds great on the arpeggio. We double the eighth notes and move the duplicates a 1/16 note backwards. This creates a kind of rolling drive. We send the arpeggio to a bus with a sidechain compressor that reacts to the kick. Add a little more reverb and the base is ready.
Basic mood
The beat is dead straight, so kick on every quarter and snare on every second. To create a basic mood, an arpeggio is a very good choice. To make it sound authentic, a synth of the era is recommended, such as the JP or JV series from Roland or Yamaha‘s DX models. We use the Reaktor ensemble JP-80 with the preset „Sound 4“.
Bass synth
Of course, this requires a bass and we get that from the TAL Noisemaker. The BS Knarziger FN patch provides a good basis, which we can easily fine-tune by transposing OSC 1 one octave down, adding a minimal Sub, turning CUTOFF a little, and adding resonance. So only marginal changes. VELOCITY is also important.
Retro ensembles
In the workshop download data we have put a collection of retro synths for Reaktor for you. You don‘t have to be a virtuoso to play a cool arpeggio. Experiment with different combinations of eighth notes until you find a nice one-bar loop. With the selected preset, the note length has a great influence on the sound.
Transitions
The velocity should influence VOL (ume) and CUT (off), as shown in the picture. With the bassline we proceed in a similar way to the arpeggio: We start with a 16th note pattern on the basic key (here F) and change the pitch every one or two bars. Then we decorate the transitions with small variations and pitch modulations.