80's Synthwave Tutorial Part 2 - Melody

Watch part 1 here: • 80's Synthwave Tutoria...
School of Synthesis tutor and Native Instruments specialist Tristan Malloch provides a part two to his excellent 80's Synthwave Tutorial - Bass, Bass, Leads & pads. Here he teaches us how to make Synthwave melodies in this excellent 10 minute follow up video made with Ableton Live and Carbon Electra. He pays particular attention to designing the sounds from scratch using basic and easy to understand synthesis. This process can be applied to any DAW or synth.

Along with part 1, this is the best synthwave tutorial on youtube. Right to the point, no wasted time, easy to reproduce with any synth and DAW. Perfect!

[@SchoolofSynthesis]

Wow, thanks!

[@shan1392]

The quickest, most effective synthwave tutorial on KZbin. Nicely done man. Thank you for posting this.

[@TheMachinesWon]

Wish you would make more of these please! 🙏🏽🙏🏽

[@racrity]

Excelente tutorial! La paciencia y pasión por lo que haces se nota terriblemente, super didáctico. Gracias por compartirlo ♥️

[@PabloDeModeOfficial]

Awesome tutorial! The only thing I would do is playing the lead an octave higher to stand out from the rest and a bit of panning. Other than that, great approach.

[@mauromanno5412]

Beautiful! Great job! :-)

[@TerenceKearns]

Sounds ace! ;)

[@Jorge.O85]

Thanks !! 👍

[@user-mishasmp]

Wow that is awesome, how do you remember all of that options in the plug-in

[@cristianocaldas]

Nice job, ableton project for download please.... Gracias

[@littler1uk]

Hi, fabulous tutorial. One question: Is the modulation envelope basically the same as a filter envelope? I was thinking of following along using Retrologue 2 but it is slightly different to Carbon Electra.

[@SchoolofSynthesis]

Depends on the synth routing but yes, if there is a filter envelope it would usually be a modulation envelope hard wired to the filter cutoff.

[@littler1uk]

@@SchoolofSynthesis Does this envelope modulate or change the frequency spectra of the signal over time?

[@johnfromacounting9556]

Hey :) , Just curious whats the second chord in the pad, im horrid with chords and cant seem to get it

[@SchoolofSynthesis]

The pad is just playing a G#m to an F# major. This never changes. During the section with the lead melody when the bass goes down to an E, the G#m chord effectively becomes an E maj7, although it is still the notes of a G#m triad.

[@jjbing3]

🙌🏾

[@MrEltondelux]

As someone who is new to all this and looking for good and reliable training, there's nothing more aggravating than going from part 1 to part 2 and seeing you made a bunch of adjustments in-between without explaining what you did.

[@LittleRhubarb]

Totally agree, nothing worse than watching part 2 of anything that has already changed from how part 1 left it at the end.

[@grokestray669]

Awesome tutorial man! One question: is the snare from a sample pack or did you synthesize it yourself?

[@SchoolofSynthesis]

That snare is indeed a sample taken from the Synthwave Pack for Ableton Live by Mode Audio. Great collection of instant gratification drum sounds if you’re in a hurry. It’s worth pointing out that the Core Library is full of cool dry samples (e.g. 505, 707 etc) can that be easily tweaked inside of Simpler if you have a bit of time, however that was not the focus of this particular video.

[@grokestray669]

@@SchoolofSynthesis Awesome, thanks. Are you going to be making more vids on synthwave? Asking 'cause there are a lot of sounds in synthwave music and I'm curious how to make them

[@cabdallaissa5395]

colin cowherd

[@xisotopex]

would have been a good tutorial if it had been done in arrangement view.

[@viggohoejer5972]

good video and all but who that fuck makes music in the upright version of ableton. Like how can you do anything. It stresses me out totally

[@peen2804]

it’s pretty simple. a lot of people use clip view lol it’s literally half of ableton. you make clips, then you play those clips.

[@bitnbytes01]

Good tutorial but please use stock plugins so everyone is on the same playing field. Is it my imagination but can anyone use the stock plugins properly because everyone who does YT tutorial on anything Ableton insist in forcing people use their plugins making it awkward to follow. Given enough time and practise one can achieve the same sound and result as Serum or other elite class plugins.

[@peen2804]

no one is forcing anyone to do anything. people use their preferred tools and it doesn’t really go any deeper than that. take the fundamentals and methodology of what you’re being shown and apply them to stock plugins. You say one can achieve similar results with stock plugins so… do that then. At the end of the day yes you can make good mixes and productions with stock plugins, some are phenomenal, some are just ok. Some 3rd party plugins are better than stock plugins, some are not. Not only that but people have preferences regarding sound which may not even factor in quality. It doesn’t really matter what plugins someone is using. demonstrating a compressor for example, every compressor is going to work in a very similar way, that’s what makes them compressors. You don’t need the exact compressor they are showing you. Same with synth sounds. Again you say you can achieve the same results with stock so maybe try actually doing that. Carbon Electra is a subtractive synth, and Ableton has a subtractive synth, Analog.