Articles | Reverb Machine

Grimes, aka Claire Boucher, recently released her fifth studio album Miss Anthropocene, exploring a darker sound than on previous releases, and her first album since 2015’s acclaimed Art Angels. For this synth sounds article I’ll go back to 2012’s Visions, particularly the tracks Genesis and Oblivion, as well as the hardware synth that shaped that album, the Roland Juno-G, a digital workstation synth released in 2006. The Juno-G boasts powerful features, digital oscillator sounds, multi-fx and layering, and very little in common with the vintage Juno-60/106 sounds that I usually cover. As well as uncovering which Juno-G patches were used in the original recordings, I also fully recreated the two songs using Arturia Mini V, TAL U-NO-LX and XV-5080 from the Roland Cloud collection.

Lo-fi retrowave is a subgenre of synthwave music that includes artists such as HOME, Voyage, Forhill, Hotel Pools,  憂鬱, Unfound, A.L.I.S.O.N and Emil Rottmayer. Lo-fi retrowave combines elements of synthwave, ambient, downtempo and chill wave, but most importantly, they all capture a nostalgic mood. A great place to check out these artists is the Electronic Gems Youtube channel, which curates new tracks, and also features some great retro artwork. The following is a guest article written by Forhill, a multi-instrumentalist producer based out of Boston, MA. He generously created a short demo for this article, as well as a deep look into how he creates his sounds, from putting together responsive synth patches, shaping them with EQ and using layers of delay to create interesting, wide sounds. All of the synth tracks in the demo are created with u-he Diva, a powerful analog-style hybrid synth that allows you to mix-and-match modules from different classic synthesizers. Another key plugin used is Soundtoys Echoboy, a versatile delay effect that specialises in emulating vintage analog delay effects with a dark, saturated sound. Check out the demo below, followed by Forhill’s writeup on all the individual layers that make up the track.

Mac DeMarco is a Canadian musician known for his brand of old-school-influenced indie music, using a chorused guitar sound, simple arrangements and a varispeed tape sound. After utilising synths for Salad Days’ Chamber of Reflection, synths took on a much bigger role in for 2017 album This Old Dog, with several synth-only tracks. Mac's main synth to use on recordings is his Roland Juno-60, with a Yamaha DX7 also showing up on several songs and the music video to Another One. In this article, I’ll break down the synths on my five favourite Mac DeMarco songs, and show you how to recreate the sounds in software synthesizers. The main synth I’ll use is TAL U-NO-LX, and all the patches are available as a free download at the end of the article.

Chromatics are a synthpop band from Portland; their signature sound combines nostalgic songwriting with their own take on Italian disco. The band’s producer, Johnny Jewel, uses mostly analog synthesizers and equipment, and is also a member of the projects Glass Candy, Symmetry and Desire, whose track Under Your Spell I covered in the Drive Synth Sounds article. In this article I’ll look at the synth patches and mixing style that makes up Chromatics signature sound, with recreated versions of Shadow, the new single Toy, and Faded Now, which is a reworked version of Closer to Grey. The synth patches have been recreated in Arturia Mini V and Xfer Serum, and it’s also worth picking up iZotope’s free Ozone Imager 2, as Chromatics tend to use wide stereo sounds in their mixes.

Tame Impala are due to release their new album The Slow Rush this week, a much-anticipated follow-up to 2016’s Currents. For this article, I’ll revisit a few of my favourite tracks from Currents and deconstruct their synth sounds, as well as the production techniques responsible for the wide sound that defines Currents. The main synths that Kevin Parker used on Currents are the Roland Juno-106 and the Roland JV-1080, two very different synths from different eras. The Juno-106 is a typical 80s synths, with a lush, chorused sound. The JV-1080 is more a of a 90s digital synth, capable of producing a variety of realistic patches.

Frank Ocean has recently returned with new music, dropping singles DHL and In My Room, his first new music since 2017. Both tracks are synth-heavy, and see Frank hinting at a bigger club-influence for his upcoming album. For this article, I’ll focus on the synth sounds in Skyline To from Blonde , Sideways from the video album Endless, and Frank’s latest single, In My Room. I’ll recreate all the sounds from these tracks using Xfer Serum and the Arturia soft synths Prophet V and Mini V. All the patches from the recreations are available as a free download at the end of the article.

Drive came out in 2011, mixing stylish violence with a nostalgic soundtrack, and has become a modern classic. The film is influenced by European cinema and 80’s retro nostalgia, and it opened up the doors to similar 80’s retro-inspired works like The Guest, Stranger Things and It Follows. The original soundtrack features ambient works by Cliff Martinez, and also makes memorable use of several synthwave songs by artists such as Kavinsky, College and Electric Youth. To recreate the movie’s most memorable sounds I’ll use Arturia Mini V, a software emulation of the legendary Minimoog synthesizer, Arturia Prophet V, and TAL U-NO-LX, an emulation of the classic 80’s Roland Juno synths. This article is a newly updated in January 2020, with a new section on the synths in Desire’s Under Your Spell.

Christmas time is soon coming, and with it all the holiday music. For this article, I’ll look at three classic Christmas songs that use synths as their main instrumental, and explore the patches behind these festive tracks. I’ll look at Wham!’s Last Christmas, Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime, and Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas, and the synth patches for all these songs can be freely downloaded at the end of the article.

Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon was released in 1985 as an audio accompaniment to his video installation of the same name. The album consists of a single 61-minute ambient track, which manages to be both discreet and stark, but also stimulating and hypnotic at the same time. The piece is another step in his exploration of generative music - the creation of music derived from a system, usually incommensurable loops that reconfigure upon repeats.

Last year, Travis Scott released his third album, Astroworld, a continuation of his hip-hop sound pursued on earlier releases, but with a heavy trap and psychedelic influence. The album was hugely successful and cemented Travis Scott as one of the top hip-hop artists of the current era. Astroworld was recorded in Hawaii with a diverse set of collaborators, including Mike Dean, whose analog synth sounds feature prominently, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, who produced Skeletons, John Mayer, who played guitar on the album, James Blake, and even Stevie Wonder, who added his signature harmonica to Stop Trying to Be God.

Neon Indian is the project of Alan Palomo, an important artist in early chillwave music. Palomo has released three albums under the moniker, each growing with maturity and intricacy, and a fourth album is in the works. In this article, I’ll concentrate on earlier Neon Indian tracks, in particular, two of my favourite tracks from Era Extraña, which Palomo recorded in Helsinki, Finland. In a follow-up to this article, I’ll continue by looking at tracks from 2015’s Vega Intl. Night School. Palomo is an avid synth enthusiast and has an eccentric collection of hardware synthesizers. Around the recording of Era Extraña Palomo was using a Korg MS-20, the Roland SH-101, and the Voyetra-8, a rack-mounted analog synthesizer with powerful digital controls. Synths are such a big part of the Neon Indian sound that a deluxe edition of an album came with a tiny, portable analog synthesizer. For this article, I’ll recreate the Neon Indian synth sound using the software synths u-he Repro, TAL U-NO-LX, and TAL Bassline-101, which is an emulation of the SH-101. You can download all the synth presets on this page at the end of the article.

Brian Eno released Discreet Music in 1975; the majority of the album is taken up by its 30-minute title track, which was one of Eno’s first experiments in the quiet, unobtrusive music that would go on to define his career, as well as ambient music. The songs concept was conceived by Eno when he “discovered” a new way of listening to music, where at low volumes the sounds is on the verge on vanishing, and merges with the sounds of its environment. In this article I’ll explore how Eno created Discreet Music using a simple but clever system that utilised early synthesizer sequencing and sound-on-sound tape looping. I’ll also recreate the sounds using Arturia Synthi V and Soundtoys Echoboy.

Continuing with my exploration of Tyler, the Creator's synth sounds, I’m looking at IGOR’s opening track, IGOR’S THEME. The track opens with 22 seconds of sustained synth-bass, features some classic samples, and ends with an extended synth solo. In this article, I’ll dissect each synth sound one-by-one, and show you how to recreate them all in the free softsynth PG-8X by ML-VST. This synth is a tribute to the Roland JP-8X, a synth that Tyler has in his studio that was likely used a lot on IGOR, along with his Roland Juno. The JX-8P has a few features that the Juno doesn’t, such as cross modulation, a second DCO, and an extra envelope. These extra features are important to the IGOR’S THEME sounds.

This year Com Truise released a new album, entitled Persuasion System. Dubbed a ‘mini-LP’, the new album marks a slight change for Seth Haley, as he started using a new DAW and built a new slate of sounds to use. In this article, I’ll look at some of the new synths sounds of Persuasion System. I’ve previously covered Seth’s sounds in the article Com Truise Synth Sounds, which concentrated mostly on sounds from his 2017 album, Iteration . In that article I wrote a little bit about which hardware synths Seth was using, however there isn’t much info about what he used on the new album. To recreate the patches for the article, I’ll use the software synths TAL U-NO-LX, u-he Repro-5 and SEM V & Mini V from the Arturia Collection.

Tyler, the Creator recently released a new album, titled IGOR, entirely written, produced and arranged by Tyler, and it became his first album to debut at number one. I’ve previously covered Tyler’s synth sounds in my Tyler, the Creator Synth Sounds article, where I concentrated on tracks from his previous album, Flower Boy. In this article, I’ll look at one of IGOR’s more ambitious tracks, I THINK . The track is heavily layered, features a lengthy instrumental bridge, and has drawn some comparison’s to Kanye West’s Stronger. The track was inspired by Nigerian music, and is based on an interpolation of the track Special Lady by Nigerian soul artist Bibi Mascel. Additionally, the drums in I THINK are sampled from another Nigerian artist, Nkono Teles. The track was inspired by a trip to Italy with Solange and Frank Ocean, the former appearing on the track singing the chorus.

Porches is the synth pop project of Aaron Maine, a New York musician with a clear penchant for retro synth sounds. He released 3 albums under the Porches name to date, the most recent being 2018’s The House. This album, along with 2016’s The Pool, was recorded in Maine’s apartment home studio. The two main synths he uses for most of his sounds are a Roland Juno-106 and a Yamaha DX7, two classic synths from the 80s era. Additionally, his home studio also has a DSI Prophet 08 and a Roland D-50, as well as a Roland R-8 and AIRA TR-8 for drum machines. For live shows, Porches leave the vintage synths at home, instead using a Novation Bass Station and Yamaha Reface DX for live synths.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the project of Ruban Nielson, a New Zealand born musician who records and produces from his Portland basement studio. The band have a unique character, mixing 70s influences such as Bowie and Prince with a distinctly vintage processed sound to create a soulful lo-fi vibe. Nielson played everything on UMO’s debut album, but on subsequent releases he has collaborated with his brother Kody Nielson and longtime bassist Jacob Portrait.

Tyler, the Creator, real name Tyler Gregory Okonma, is a rapper and producer with a unique, alternative take on hip-hop. Tyler produces all the music on his releases, and he has also co-produced on releases by Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt and Mac Miller. His style incorporates samples less than his peers, and he frequently uses synthesizers and electric pianos to accompany his unique, often aggressive vocal delivery. A photo of Tyler’s room posted on his Instagram page in 2015 shows a Roland Juno-6, JX-8P and Microkorg in his collection; he has also mentioned owning a Yamaha DX7 in a 2018 interview. He is a co-founder of the alternative hip-hop collective Odd Future, and he also creates album covers and merchandise designs.

The Yamaha CS-80 is one of the most iconic and revered synths of all time. It was one of the first polyphonic synthesizers on the market, and it boasted an incredible sound, expressive controls and an early example of patch memory. Despite its now legendary status, it was released in 1976 to a pretty lukewarm reception, regarded by some as being too heavy and expensive, and the patch bay system was seen as clumsy. The Sequential Prophet-5 was released soon after, and being much lighter and sleeker, it soon overshadowed the CS-80. Despite the Prophet-5’s greater popularity, the CS-80 was arguably a more expressive performance synth than the Pro-5; it had a velocity sensitive semi-weighted keyboard that had aftertouch, and a ribbon controller, which is still a rarity on modern synths. It was a favourite of Greek composer Vangelis, whose use of it in his score for the 1981 movie Blade Runner cemented its status as a classic synthesizer. It was used on 80s pop hits by artists such as Michael Jackson, Toto and Paul McCartney, and now its rarity and legendary status make it popular amongst modern artists such as Phoenix, Empire of the Sun, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.

Whether it’s in his music as Nine Inch Nails, his soundtrack work in collaboration with Atticus Ross, or with How to Destroy Ghosts, Trent Reznors sound is always uniquely identifiable. Although part of this is due to his sound design, involving digital distortion and noise processing a variety of sound sources, his use of harmony also has a major impact on his sound. Reznors sound has a distinctly anxious tone, that sets the scene for his often bleak output. In the film Sound City, Reznor explains that he has a music theory foundation, and this subconciously affects his writing.