Typically, these sounds are utilised in very simply patterns which emphasise beats 1 and 3 with the kick and snare and fill out the crotchets or quavers in between with closed hi hat hits - virtually no velocity deviation is used, resulting in a sound that is positioned somewhat between live drumming and electronic programming. Many modern DAWs come with samples of such equipment pre-packaged, but of course it never hurts to top up your collection with additional custom sampled drum libraries such as our Beat - Drum Machine Samples and Resonate - Analog Drum Samples packs. Synthwave overwhelmingly favours analog-style drum machine sounds, such as those of the Roland TR505 or LinnDrum, which make use of real, recorded acoustic drum sounds within the context of classic analog synth circuits. Now we’ve picked a tempo, let’s proceed to the bedrocks of our track - drums and rhythm. Your first decision to make is perhaps the most fundamental - which Bpm should you choose?Īs with all genres, you can make a Synthwave track at pretty much any tempo you care to try, but I’d say the vast majority of tracks fall into one of two distinct areas - you have the slower, more grooving range of around 80 - 118 Bpm and the more upbeat, driving range of 128 - 140 Bpm for tracks in the Outrun sub-genre. You’re about to embark on the next masterpiece of retro-tinged musical mayhem, so you fire up your DAW and create a blank project.
I’m going to stop my philosophical meanderings on the appeal of Synthwave there, because the simple fact is that lots of people love the sound of hazy synths and driving drum machines, and we at ModeAudio are no exception - join me as we dig into 5 production essentials of the genre below!
Nostalgia is a driving force behind lots of forms of creative practice, but it’s especially important in the world of Synthwave, based as it is around the sound of classic 80s film and video game soundtracks - even if it’s a nostalgia for a time that was never actually lived through by those involved! The ability to access media of all kinds from across the ages at the click of a mouse has brought about a re-evaluation of and obsession with the past, putting young musicians in touch with artistic trends that have long since fallen out of fashion. Today is the turn of Synthwave, which is one of those genres that surely never would have existed had the internet not evolved into the dizzying repository of human endeavour that it is today. Welcome back to my Production Essentials series, where I seek to uncover what makes popular genres tick.
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