Favorite synths, drum and bass for darkwave and synthwave music production

The Lounge Other Gear
22

Yeah so we make synthwave/dark disco/indie disco aswell, actually call it post disco italo rave and bringing out our first track on Moustache records soon, and I’ve been asking which hardware is best for doing this live for some time.

I’ve owned many synths troughout the years and all have their upsides and downsides. Especially if you want to do it live/dawless.

So in my view, the genre consists of a few elements.

  1. Drums -> best to go samples for this, or the ACB roland stuff, or a sampler (e.g. octatrack, rytm, digitakt). This is actually the easy part.

  2. Bass -> very important, often arpeggio based. The real synthwave is pretty slow and makes use of a lot of saw waves. however more modern crossgenres between disco, italo, synthwave, dark indie disco whatever you want to call it are less cheesy nostalgic and require something with more punch. This is the real hard part, or at least the part where you can search forever. What is the best synth for that ‘duga duga’ arp bass at 110-120 bpm? Juno can do it, but a bit light sometimes. Moog minitaur is fat, but not the typical sound. The original classic music was often made on things like korg polysix, but its vintage and sounds dated nowadays. Most current music in this genre is made with vsts with a lot of mixing/processing. So I don’t have a definitive answer for you here unfortunately and will be watching this thread for recommendations on this part.

  3. chords/leads: can’t go wrong with the classics or emulations of them. Roland Juno, Oberheim, e.g. the prophets or OB-6, the boutiques from roland, etc. Also realtively easy.

In conclusion, finding the best / optimal rolling arp bass pluck sound (whatever you want to call it) is like a neverending search for me, in combination with portability and user friendlyness, reliable midi.
Damn.

3 Likes
23

Agree and find that my Virus TI2 and Elektrons plus a few software plugins do the job. Oberheim OB X8 is great for brass/organs/leads too. Moog Sub 37 does not get the bass for that genre as you mentioned.

1 Like
24

The Behringer Kobol Expander is getting some great reviews and the demos on Amazona are quite something.

25

how do I make music like this example below

26

Well the first song of the mix sounds like two arpeggios following the root or bass note, playing one octave up then two octaves up.

First is a brighter plucky tone, and the other is a growl like lower tone with some drive.

I hear white noise and a vocal sample drenched in reverb. Maybe reversed every so often.

Then it’s basic kick snare on the down beats and a ride on the 8ths. Some ghost kicks on every 4 bars with a crash.

Snares sound gated.

Then it changes the motif of the lead synth but stays on the same root structure of the bass.

Stick to the minor scales. Play the filters to get some variation to the tones.

2 Likes
27

For the arpeggios, play a triad and use different arp patterns. Like down up or order. Play the same three notes in the different inversions to get your lead line, always making the tonic the same as the bass.

Stick to 4 and 8 bar patterns, and use Tom fills and snare rolls for the transitions.

Anybody else can jump in if I’m off the mark and need corrected.

2 Likes
28

lots of skill programming in other words and amazing how many hundreds of hours these cats can code out these darkwave cyberpunk albums! do you think they use all software plugins in a DAW?

29

My current setup includes the core trio of a DT/DN/ST.

This is currently augmented with a Circuit Mono Station and a MicroMonsta 2.

Between those devices, I can get pretty much anywhere I want in Synthwave/Darkwave territory.

If I had to pick just two for a Synthwave track, it would likely be the Syntakt in combo with the MicroMonsta 2. I can get very retro AND dirty with the ST and the MM2 sounds amazing with its voice layering, polyphony and surprisingly rich VA sounds and effects. Instant Vangelis with that one, among other things.

But then, the DN FM sounds are easily crafted into retro mono/poly sounds too, and the Circuit Mono does bleep bloops, dirty bass and analog percussion like nobody’s business. And of course the DT can do amazing things with whatever you feed it, so …

Agh, it’s a tough call, but if I’m starting a retro track, the ST is my most likely starting point.

1 Like
30

I have a Virus, Rytm, OT, A4 and Oberheim plus modulars. Trying to keep it simple.

31

You have more than everything you need to make that track. Use the rtym and the oberheim. Mix in some vocal samples with the OT. Better yet, record in your own and pitch them around.

You literally have everything you need.

With the synths you own, it’s actually overkill. I don’t think you could find a synth that’s better than what you own. Even vintage ones.

4 Likes
32

thank you will try the combo. Another similar theme music I want to make:

So uses that reverb on snares, kick, hi hats for percussion, the weird bass, organ/cathedral sounding leads.

Seems like the darkwave/cyberpunk music is what I need to produce for my movie soundtracks for the movie screenplay novel project that I have in the works!!!