Music Theory: Synthwave

Synthwave (also called retrowave, or futuresynth[5]) is an electronic music microgenre that is based predominantly on the music associated with the soundtracks of action, science fiction, and horror films of the 1970s and 1980s.

5 Things You Need To Know About Making Retro Music

1. Back in the 80’s there wasn’t DAWs with an infinite number of tracks, focus on getting things that complement each other, creates an effective arrangement, and tracks as few elements as possible. Artificially limiting oursalves to make a more authentic and appropriate sounding song
   • talking maybe 8, 16, 32, or 48 channels of sound
2. John Carpenter was a defining sound of the Era, he used a few key components:
   • a simple and droning bass line or pulsating arpeggiated bass since arc features on synths were pretty new and exciting at the time.
   • simple and somewhat repetitive diatonic melodies and themes that don’t really stray outside the scale,
   • small textural effects and other hits that add a bit of flavor now and again
3. Polyphony was new at the time, with new keyboards supporting 5 or 6 voices, so chords were adjusted to use this feature.
   • Add extra notes from the Chord for your Right Hand
   • Add an extra root Ocave below on your Left Hand to use up those voices
   • Hook Theory has some cheatsheets for Chords

4. Using the synth, add little texture hits now and again and throughout to bridge between sections and the outro.

5. Keep mixing simple, You had a preamp, a filter, four-band eq, and if you were lucky a compressor, then maybe ran it all to a tape machine so with that in mind we can emulate these sort of mixing techniquesof the era by emulating a channel strip.
   • PSP InfiniStrip is an infinitely configurable channel strip plug-in that can emulate these sounds.