Hello friends and fellows,
Today is a very nice day, and yesterday was even better. Recently, I have been remixing a friend's song, and I decided to write it in the style of the 80s. While I wouldn't necessarily call it Synthwave, almost all of the sounds used on the track will be reminiscent of the 80s. This includes many of the classic analog subtractive synthesizers and digital FM, not to mention some TR-909 type drum samples. One of which, I would like to talk about its development/adjustment by me.
First, there is something to be said quickly of the original development of the drum... It was a complete accident. While recording, Collins' drum set was unintentionally routed to the microphone system the engineers were using to talk to the band. This system had just the right kind of compressors and reverberation present that everyone really liked this unique sound. The result was the drum that redefined the sound of the 80s. Think, Collins' 1981 single, In the Air Tonight, or Duran Duran's A View to a Kill. Fast-forward to the present day, and the 80s "gated reverb" drum can still be found in many areas of music.
To make the drum is actually quite simple. You need a nice, punchy snare to begin with. I took a TR-909 sample snare and compressed it relatively aggressively... setting the threshold for a -8 to -10 db reduction, with fast attack and release times, and if you're familiar with ratio, I'd say it was "normal aggressive". After all that is done, I bussed the audio to a vintage style verb and cranked up the volume. Finally, the last step is to make sure the verb is unnaturally ambient (not like something usually found in nature). I made sure to stretch out the size and length of the reverb and mess with the filters until I got the core timbre of what I was looking for. Last but not least, I set the decay properly and applied a noise gate with the proper threshold and compared it to the length of 80s snares on some of my favorite tracks. This time on a Japanese 1991 track I know called Remain (きっと熱いくちびる〜リメイン〜) by Wink, who did a lot of cover songs of English music, including one of the best covers of Kylie Minogue's Turn It into Love I've ever heard. Remain is a song that just encapsulates almost everything the 80s and early 90s was about (in my opinion). In addition to the snare... Vocoded stabs, the right selection of synth sounds and chord choices... soft, airy harmonized (chorus effect) vocals with an emphasis on the high end, piano which (my best guess) is early synthesized sample based, and a bass line I could listen to everyday.
Since I used a synthesized snare and not an organic one, it lacks the "hollowness" of the sample tracks version, but that was my choice. I mainly compared and adjusted for the sake of the reverb and the length of the verb tail. The end result was a noise gate with the proper length. Please click on either of the pictures to hear this drum and see the music section of my website (sound design section).
That is all for today. Thank you for visiting!
SCOPS
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