<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
















</figure>

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.

In this article, I’ll concentrate on the synthesizer sounds on the tracks R.I.P. Screw, Astrothunder and Sicko Mode, deconstruct the synth patches, and put them back together using software synths. Many of the sounds can be created in any suitable softsynth, and I’ll create all the sounds in this article using just u-he Repro and TAL U-NO-LX, as well as some sampled sounds that I’ll share as a free pack at the end of the article.

<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
















</figure>

R.I.P. Screw

Updated: added the original synths used in the track.

The first track I’ll look at is R.I.P. Screw, a tribute to the Houston hip-hop DJ, DJ Screw. The main melodic sounds on R.I.P. Screw come from producer Blair Taylor, and Mike Dean later added the Juno pad and synth riser just before the chorus. For the original beat of the track, Taylor used the following synths:

• Korg Mono/Poly Spelunking preset for the main pluck synth that starts out.

• Korg Polysix Fat Bass Line preset for the bass that comes in for the verse.

• A.N.A.1 for the main tremolo/glide synth.

• Output REV - for the reverse violins.

The song’s structure is simple, based on a 2-bar loop, but has multiple layers of different synths as the track progresses. The main pluck synth patch that opens the song and plays throughout is a single triangle waveform oscillator through a plucked filter and a big reverb effect. In Repro-1, set the filter with cutoff to 20, keyboard tracking to 0 and env amount to 40. For the filter envelope, set decay at halfway for a snappy pluck, and sustain just above 10. For the reverb sound, set the mix level to 23% and decay to a high 3.84 seconds. In the audio example below I used Valhalla VintageVerb. I also placed a compressor after the reverb, which helps adds sustain to the reverb tail.

 











 

















<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
















</figure>

My favourite synth sound in R.I.P. Screw is the tremolo keys at 0:12 , which also have a subtle glide effect, rising in pitch as the chord fades in. For the glide effect, pitch both oscillators 7 steps down, then modulate the oscillators with the amp envelope, with modulation amount set to raise the oscillators 7 steps (back to the original tuning). Using a tuner in your DAW can make setting the exact modulation amount easier. Set the amp envelope with a medium attack (56 in Repro-5) to create the rise in pitch.

<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
















</figure>

For the tremolo effect, I used Ableton’s Auto-Pan effect with mix set to 55% and speed at 11.1 Hz. Tremolo effects are rarely used with synths but can create another layer of interest to your sound.

 

















<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
"
>
















</figure>









 

The wide Juno keys at 0:38 are one of Mike Dean’s contributions to the song. The patch itself is simple and has been run through the onboard Juno chorus as well as a phaser. To create the patch in TAL U-NO-LX, which is a software emulation of the Juno, use a single sawtooth oscillator with the VCF filter set to