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Tyler, the Creator recently released a new album, titled IGOR, entirely written, produced and arranged by himself. I’ve previously covered Tyler’s retro-styled 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 hook.

Tyler has several synthesizers, including a Roland Juno-6, a Roland JX-8P, and a Yamaha DX7. Throughout the article I’ll use the software synths TAL U-NO-LX and Arturia DX7 V to recreate Tyler’s sounds.

 

















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Four, Skate

First thing’s first, I THINK is built a drum beat sampled from artist Nkono Teles’ Get Down. Tyler’s sample of the beat simply cuts four beats of the sample and speeds it up from the original tempo of approximately 115bpm to I THINK’s tempo of approximately 121 bpm. Here’s the original track:

  

The first musical elements in the verse are a thin, bright electric piano part and a descending synth line. Tyler either has own electric piano, or he has access to a studio with one. For those of us who don’t have an electric piano handy, there are plenty of plugin options for virtual electric pianos. I personally like the Arturia keys (Stage-73 V and Wurli V) and AAS Lounge Lizard, and Ableton also has a serviceable EP instrument called Electric. For the keys sound on I THINK, you can get great results by running your EP plugin through an amp emulator. For the audio below, I used Arturia Stage-73 V run through Ableton’s Amp effect on the clean setting with a mix level of 30%.

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The descending synth line sounds like it came from Tyler’s Roland Juno-6 or his Roland JX-8P. I’ll assume the Juno throughout the article, but many of the sounds could have just as likely come from the JX-8P, as they are similar synths. For this lead patch, use just a square wave (no sub osc) with the PW fader set to halfway. Raise the HPF fader to halfway, removing bass frequencies from the sound, and then move the VCF frequency fader all the way down to 0 with a resonance of 6. Now we need to control the filter with the envelope, so set the ENV fader to 7, and set the envelope with an attack of 4, a decay of 8 and no sustain.

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Juno Layers

Next, some chorused chords play the full progression, and this is the main synth sound of the song. The wide-chorus sounds distinctly like the Roland Juno, and the patch is similar to the Strings factory presets. Creating the sound from scratch is easy, start by turn off the sub oscillator and then raising the HFP filter fader to 4. In the VCF section, lower the frequency fader to 6, set resonance to 4 and envelope to 2. The resonance adds some buzziness to the high end, which helps to make the patch brighter. Lastly, set the envelope’s attack and release to 4 and 3, respectively, and turn on the Chorus II effect. This patch is also very dry, with only light reverb being used for effects.

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The bass sound throughout the song is also chorused, and if you listen closely you can tell it isn’t an entirely mono bass track. The track probably came from the Roland Juno again, so fire up TAL U-NO-LX and cook up a bass pluck patch by setting filter cutoff frequency to 0 and envelope to 9, with a decay of 6, release of 7 and no sustain. Add some low-end by raising the sub oscillators’s volume to 2, and also set the filter’s resonance to 2. Turn on the Chorus I effect, which is the more subtle sound, suitable for bass patches.

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Lead Sounds

When the chorus is introduced, with the main hook sung by Solange, there is an electric piano-like synth melody line. The sound definitely comes from a digital synth, and popular 90s synths like the DX7 or Roland D-50 would be the most obvious choices to create such a sound. Tyler has previously mentioned in interviews having a DX7, and the DX7 factory preset 11 E. Piano 1 sounds very similar to the lead on I THINK. For softsynth options, Arturia’s DX7 V has a patch called RoadsForYou which is a great version of the E. Piano sound with effects, and the free synth DEXED is also great at emulating DX7 sounds.

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