How I Blend 80's Sounds With Modern Production

Neon Notes — Week [10]

In last weeks post, I talked about WHY I blend 80's sounds into my music. Now I'm going to tell you HOW I blend them together.

It's actually a very simple concept, and just by adding this one element to a song, I can instantly give it a retro feel. 

The gated reverb snare.

The gated reverb snare was discovered by accident, and is a staple of the retro sound. But this is not the only thing I add to my songs to give them a retro feel.

So let's dive into.

The vocal samples I use are definitely not retro, so there's the first step in making the song sound modern. The next steps are what I do to blend the modern vocals with retro sounds.

I don't use it in every song, but my go to snare is the LinnDrum snare from the iconic LinnDrum drum machine. I like the snap and punch of this snare, and also the retro sound.

In Ableton I use a return track to send the gated reverb signal to the main snare track.

The way I create my gated snare is to put a reverb onto the return track set to 100% wet, 5 - 6 seconds of decay with a low cut to get rid of mud. 

After the reverb I put a gate, set it to sidechain from the snare channel, and I have the floor set to -inf dB. I bring the threshold down until I start to hear the reverb in the snare and adjust it to taste, usually somewhere between -40dB to -50dB.

Depending on the tempo of the song, I set my release and hold so that the reverb tail fades out before the next snare hit.

Lately I've been using a retro sounding kick, and I really only have about 4 kicks that I use. They all have good punch to give the song a modern feel. I just go with whatever I think sounds good for the song.

Next, I like to use a lot of synths in my productions. In my older songs I used the stock Ableton Operator or some of the stock Ableton presets before getting Serum. Currently I use Serum 2 to create all my synth sounds.

Once I get the chord progression laid out, I like to sound design either a soft pad or an aggressive saw wave patch, depending on the mood of the song. Most of the time, the next step is to add a warble, or a slight wavering detune to the chords.

I will either use a plugin called Tape Cassette 2 or add lfo's to the oscillators in Serum 2.

If I use Tape Cassette 2, I will adjust the wow and flutter knobs to give it a warped tape effect.

If I use Serum, I'll add lfo's to the fine tune section in the oscillators, and I'll adjust how exaggerated the detune is based on taste. What this does is forces the oscillator to slightly detune up and down, which gives it the warble/warped effect.

Tape Cassette 2 is quick and easy, but using the lfo in Serum 2 gives much more control, although it's much more work if you're going for a very specific effect.

Depending on the song, I might add some tom drum fills. I like to add a little reverb to the toms to give it a retro sound, but this is on a song by song basis.

Next is my bass design. This is where I use a lot of modern ideas. A few of my songs have deliberate 80's sounding bass, but most of the time I use modern techniques like a Reese bass or a modern Deephouse bass. 

I want the bass to sound current with a lot of warmth and impact. The basslines themselves usually sound retro, but the actual design is based on current ideas.

My go to bass is a patch that I designed consisting of a saw wave and a squarewave with heavy unison on both oscillators. I like to put a utility on the bass track and set everything under 125-135 Hz to mono to avoid phasing.

Depending on the tempo and energy of the song, I like to adjust the filter cuttoff to give it a bounce. 

Another thing I like to do is add a clear break or bridge into my songs. Most new songs these days are shorter and they skip these, so i think that's another way that I can give the song a retro feel.

Now on to the actual mixing of the songs.

Most retro songs go for the true retro sound, keeping everything kind of washed out, like it was recorded on old equipment. I love songs like that, but I want a modern sound with my music.

I like my drums to hit, I want you to feel it when it's playing at a club or a roller rink on a Saturday night.

In the end, it all comes back to a balance between the two. In my last post, I talked about why I like the 80s sound, and this is my idea of how to bring that into what I make today. I’m not trying to exactly recreate the 80's, I just want to a mixture of the two ideas. Something that takes both ideas and gives it my spin.

Now Creating

• New song later today!
• Replacing old ai artwork with my own, real artwork
• New website ideas
• Remixing/remastering old songs

Thanks for reading.
If you have thoughts about any of this, I’d love to hear them.

This post is part of my weekly Neon Notes series. New posts go live every Wednesday.