@@wonderwheel80s I think the comment is just a light-hearted joke about Synthwave. Many of those who make synthwave music probably weren't born until the '90s or '00s but think that artificial neon skylines and horizons were integral to the '80s style. (The 80s in reality had a multitude of styles.) This 'outrun' aesthetic supposedly gets its name from the arcade game Outrun. I played that back in the 80s and don't remember any magenta neon.
@@relicthominin9864 Yeah just a bit of fun, a throwaway comment. I actually applied nearly every principle Espen mentions when I recreated Axel F last year. No limiting, use of drum machines, getting that 'tape' sound, etc. ruclips.net/video/ocdS7AALaFQ/видео.html
@@relicthominin9864 I agree with you, (I was there too back then!), anyway the pioneers of synthwave (which was born at the end of the 00s) are actually xennials like me. We were children (not teens) during the 80s, and that aesthetic Is a romanticization of our childhood Memories of the 80s.
@relicthominin9864 The aesthetic I remember most vividly from the 80s was the Mephis Style. We had that on wall paper, on plates, sheets and comforters, bus seats, movie theaters... it was everywhere!
"Another thing people seem to forget is that in the 80s people ... wrote melodies and chord structures". Espen, you're my hero :-) You just made a lot of folks on /r/synthesizers have an anxiety attack.
I think one of these is a general rule: For the love of all that is good, don't use autotune! Nothing has sucked the soul out of vocals like the use of autotune.
And It's not even that cumbersome with todays DAW's to manually fix small problem areas with in case of Cubase using vari audio. pretty sure most DAW's and also the different vocal plugins offer a a manual mode so you can fix small problems while preserving the natural pitch drift and voice vibrato without smashing the whole track with an "auto" fix. It's totally ok to use auto tune or whatever plugin you prefere for special effects if it fits your idea of the music, but I hate to watch tv shows and stuff where the engineers run an "auto" setting to all contestants or whatever kind of show it is just to make the overall sound "pleasant" to listen to.
Before I was fortunate enough to be one of the very first few people in the UK to acquire an MPC60 in April 1988, my only way of sequencing was using the drum machine to program patterns of midi notes for my only two synths (Juno106 and DX100). The first drum machine was TR505, and then I added Kawai R100 and Yamaha RX5. Multitrack recording was on a Yamaha 4-track. I had a turntable to play records and sample music. My first samplers were two Casio Sk1’s. Trust me, there was a lot of manual syncing, punching in/out, bouncing, and music performance . The only,sequenced parts were drums (drum machines) and synth-bass (using the drum machines). I had no effects whatsoever. The limitations bred wonderful creative results with fat/gritty sounds and many huge grins on my face.
Good stuff. Older guy who was there. Don't forget about REAL drummers too. (Aside from overdubbing a few things on top of a machine). Yes, drum machines were big. But lots of bands/tunes had real drummers. Gary Numan, Devo, Talking Heads, B52s, Simple Minds, The Cure, Culture Club, Wang Chung, Oingo Bongo, Duran Duran, and many more had real drummers. Using a hybrid kit to incorporate some Simmons drums or triggering a few samples may also help. :)
It took me a while to associate the colour of your T-shirt to the Jupiter-8 casually placed in the background. In fact, it took me a while to notice the Jupiter-8.
About the analog vs digital synth thing, depends what year of the 80s you're going for. Popular music - and music technology - changed so much over that decade that a general statement like that isn't necessarily true. And as for reverbs, I noticed that using good emulations of the reverbs that were used back then - eg. the RMX or the 224 - goes a long way to getting that eighties vibe into a mix.
Outstanding tips. One more: dont forget that super atmospheric sounding bridge part with the bass drum going boom boom boom... [big white snare] baaaanng and loop -- and we're in for the ultimate voyage through the music!
Anything post 2000 is off my radar. the 60s and 70s were fantastic and I was a teen through the 80s. The 80s were fabulous. Just found this channel and it's very cool. 😀
I remember that the Atari version of Cubase had the "overquantize" function where you only quantized notes a certain percentage towards the note value kinda like a simplified logic edit. It was fast and a nice way of not getting everything totally sterile to the exact beat, where people today most often quantize everything to the exact 8'th or 16'th note
Great video, Espen! I think I would add to the list something about how they used the stereo field back then, and how different sounds on opposite sides interact. It's quite characteristic and quite different from the way it's done today, imo. There are countless examples, from the top of my head, the intros of Sounds Like a Melody, Big in Japan... (Btw, iconic melodic instrumental themes is a huge part of the 80s vibe).
I second all of Espen's comments (I was there too!). I will add to his 'no Autotune' rule that you could, where appropriate, double-track vocals - and occasionally instruments- the old-fashioned way by recording them twice. Also, thank you Espen for setting the record straight regarding gated reverb and long reverb tails.
14: Have a short melody for your right hand that goes together with many chords. Stick to that melody and do a lot of chord progressions, even scale changes, with your left hand.
the 80s was an attitude towards life and this was reflected in the music of that time ... how do you want to achieve this nowadays ? only with synth etc ? forget it
Thanks! 80s heavy snares. For me the 80s sound is cheap analog synths(junos) , digitals dx7, ppg etc..combined with sample sounds from an emu. Sometimes my softsynth collection is to big. Choise stress, so i give myselfs a limited numbers of synths to use. For example: uvi emu2( max 8 outputs), korg polysix and monopoly,arturia dx7, roland juno 60 and a spark drum kit. 2 reverbs from arturia, one delay and a compressor and eq. I have to do with that in one track incl.selfmade sound effects recorded as audio or sample. Ofcourse in cubase .
Frustrating how so much of the hardware like those original drum machines that were used in the 80s, which became popular then because they were cheap, are now almost impossible to get. Would be quite interested if you had any, sorta, alternative machines you'd recommend that retain some version of those individual "feels" you mention. Or would you say that even modern drum machines have their own sorta groove to them? When it comes to quantization I'm amazed how many people seem to just align their midi recording exactly to a grid when any good tool should allow you to set its sensitivity. In my opinion those dials should never be at maximum -- since I started recording notes rather than programming them I always thought the point of using quantization was to tighten up your performance just a little bit, not to snap it into some kinda rigid place.
I'm not sure what your budget is, but check out Yamaha's RX line of drum machines. The RX5 is the most sought-after because it has individual outs and volume control for each channel. I have the RX7 and I love it. It doesn't have individual outs, but it's got a great tone and I think really hits that 80's sweet spot without breaking the bank.
I am of the same view. I find it so much easier to relate to the analog-era stuff, but then again I would like to expand my frame of reference more beyond that.
I love the early eighties synth pop played on Junos, and the late '80s house music played on Junos and samples of Junos, but the bit in the middle when the DX7 caused the charts to be full of power ballads with awful FM piano sounds was terrible.
@@EspenKraft "never" is not a true statement. In the 90s, many electronic dance music producers used the Amiga with their samplers. But such samplers began to be produced only in 1989. That is true, it is not the 80s. But this is the 90s!
Slightly off topic, but there is an unofficial expansion for the VPS Avenger VST with the most famous ST-xx samples. Not that gritty and sometimes dull sound, but fun as an "what if" scenario to try how well some Amiga mod's could have sounded with better hardware.
@@EspenKraftspeaking of limited resources and creative music composing/production. It would be nice if you could do a video someday about the tricks used back then in Protracker. There were some pretty amazing tracks made. But that goes for the C64 as well :)
I never used a tracker in my life. I never had an Amiga back in the day. I was fortunate to get into the pro audio world early on and the Atari ST reigned supreme in that world.
I remember I wanted that gated snare sound but had only Vesta Fire (I think) spring reverb and a MS-20, but sending the snare trough the spring to the MS-20 for gating - YESSSSS !
Very good Espen a great summary, we seem to just do these kind of these so innocently as there was often no alternative. I recently accessed some of my original 4 track portastudio cassettes. Drum machines programmed for whole songs and everything else played live, before using a midi sequencer, to the drum machine building up a track at a time bouncing to 8 to 10 tracks, somehow less faffing about then now with all the choices we have with the DAW.
A typical thing that was used in the 80s and before in addition to regular modulations is after the bridge to modulate 1 whole note up like in Sheriff - When I'm With You. This wasn't only a 80s thing, they did it in the 70s too, and likely long before that. It seems like they stopped doing it in the 90s most likely because it sounds a bit cliched. You actually need the ability to sing 1 note higher though.
The most important video on music production I've seen in quite a while. Its title should'nt be taken too literally though - IMHO, most of the tipps should indeed be useful for *any kind* of music: 1. Don't get your bassline's volume pumping up and down, triggered by kicks via side-chain 0:17 3. Write music, not beats - use chords and melodies 1:00 & 4. Use modulations 1:36 => _these two belong together_ 5. Don't over-compress/-limit your mix 2:14 7. Use limitations creatively 3:12 8. Don't quantise everything 3:45 & 11. Overdub your beats with percussion played live 6:12 => _these two belong together_ 9. Don't alienate vocals with Auto-Tune / Melodyne 4:20 13. Don't drown your music in an ocean of reverb! 7:50 Only 2. bass < 80 Hz 0:29, 6. tape 2:48, 10. drum-machines 5:07 and 12. synths from the era 6:54 are pure "eighies only" tipps in my humble opinion. Anyhow, yet another brilliant piece of work from one of my top-favourite RUclipsrs. Well done, Espen 🌟
This is great, because most people assume the sound of the 80s was mostly the likes of Madonna, Genesis, Kenny Loggins, and Hall and Oates, but they often forget bands like Huey Lewis and the News, Men at Work, and Talking Heads who often didn’t drench their music with synths. The concepts here equally apply to all these acts: avoid sidechaining the bass and drums, roll of the low end, avoid heavy compression, and write good music! The EQ curves alone are oftentimes enough to associate a given piece of music with a given era.
Great video, Espen! One thing I'll add is to double up the vocals and put them through an Aphex Aural Exciter (we used to just call them an "Aphex unit"). From memory the Aphex units could only be hired by the hour or day and you couldn't buy one -- a bit like Panavision lenses. Thankfully, DAW plug-in versions are now available.
It's just fun to see how fast those Aphex Effects got busted when the digital revolution started in the mid 80's. I can only remember seeing them for sale for somethinkg like5-10 grand a piece and only few years into the 90's compeeting brands were selling alterntive solutions that most semi pro's could afford without haveing to sell a kidney or 2
My only side-eye on this is regarding using analog synths during the eighties. Oberheims were quite ubiquitous. And while something of a hybrid-I used an Oberheim Matrix 6 in bands back then along with an Ensoniq Mirage and a Yamaha TX81Z as my basic gigging platform initially-and I could never have managed without that fat Oberheim. For just only horns if absolutely nothing else.
Mostly good suggestions. I would think you could come pretty close recording digitally today. What made the songs 80s for me was the sounds, styles and songwriting. Not the audio fidelity. One of my favorite 80s albums was Heart's "Bad Animals". It sounds as 80s as anything, but was recorded all digital. It's the instrument sounds and vocals that matter, not the medium of the recording. Things don't sound like the 80s today not because their done in a daw, but because some writing is drastically different today. On radio played songs, there are far fewer people that actually know how to sing really well or play instruments well. Today with the younger generation music is more about putting on a dance show with half naked people on stage. Musicianship counts for very little. But in the 80s, musicianship was 90% of it. You could look like Phil Collins, Billy Joel or Ann Wilson and still be at the very top. Madonna made it big because back then, she could sing well and put on the dance show. With few exceptions, that is not the case today. Looks and how good they can dance is usually much more important than if they can sing well or play an instrument. Just watch the Grammy Awards show. It's no wonder rap is one of the most popular musical formats today. In the early 80s, there were still a lot of analog synths being used like the OB-X series, Prophet 5, Jupiter 8, Juno, etc. In the later 80s, musicians were turning in their great sounding synths for sometimes lousy sounding digital ones. It wasn't the digital technology that was the limitation, it was the synths. Most digital synths weren't the best at making analog sounds at the time. Now, they can be so good it's really hard to tell the difference. Especially with modeling of analog synths. With all the modern digital re-makes today, it would be very easy to make an 80s sounding album without being rich or needing a studio. What's lacking today is mostly the talent. It's not the changes of the equipment. Talent is frowned upon in the music industry today. At least if you want to be heard on the radio.
My tip is find one of the commonly used drum machines from that era. A lot of the sounds are instantly recognisable from that era. I also favour quite a lot of gated reverb and quite a heavy bass on the snare drum
If you do decide to use a bit of compression, don't think of it as a way to modify loudness. Think of compression as _shaping transients_. The rest of the dynamic magic happens when recording to real tape. And another thing typical of the 1980s: Recording was a constant battle against the noise floor. I'm not quite sure how to narrow that down to a single advice, but the fear of the noise floor made a significant impact on how decisions were made during the recording process.
Enjoying this music of yours I haven't heard before. Good tips! I like that it's a combination of both dos and don'ts. Here's a question for you: Do you think singing (recording your vocals) with vibrato was generally more common in our 80s music or not very common? Is one or the other way characteristically 80s? Cheers.
I do think a vocalist with a strong vibrato was maybe encouraged more to use that, in the 80s, than now. Good question. Back then you had to have a record deal to get your music out and with a strong and original vocal sound you stood out more. Now, everything is so highly polished that all originality is wiped out by a 10 man "producer" team. ;-)
@@EspenKraft Yeah, as I listen now specifically for vocal vibrato, it does seem like it's noticeable on lots of songs from then. It also seems to contrast with vocal styles that came with grunge in the 90s. No vibrato and lots of snarl and vocal fry instead. 😉
@@cortical1 Another thing is its popular to think Grunge got rid of the so called "Hair Metal" bands, but most of those were merely Pop music with distorted guitars and not at all Metal.
Fantastic video! I think my favorite of yours. I cherish 80s music and sounds - mostly for the masterful compositions and musicianship some other aspects you touch on here (before most synth playing ended up coming from quantized / arpeggiated / MIDI generated chords etc). I don't try to make my music sound like it was recorded in the 80s, so half of these techniques (which ofc are authentic to the 80s) don't apply to my music despite most people will notice my music has an obvious 80s vibe. I am trying to combine the best aspects of 80s production with modern techniques which I think sound better. Espen, I know you're the 80s, but I gotta argue just about your point that gated verb on the snares was rarely done? I love your point that maybe it wasn't as ubiquitous as the current popular perception suggests - but c'mon, it was a distinctive sound of many productions from that era and wasn't used later.
Here’s one to add. Let me know your thoughts.. record straight audio out of your synths. No midi - get the sound a land go for it. Plus, you get more practice trying to do a good “keeper” take. Not everything (like midi drums or tight bass) but give it a shot on a chord progression or lead! And yes, NO autotune.
Really enjoyed this. You hit a lot of nails on the heads there Epsen. Doesn't matter what I record it always ends up sounding from the 80's. At the age of 54 it's probably in my blood by now. Love your channel.
Another tip is to try a leveller or "broadcast limiter" on the master, if you want a hyped FM-radio sound. Stations would use gear to enhance or hype the sound between the turntable and transmitter. You can go down thevrabbit hole of 80s radio station enhancer gear, if you're into that sound. People used to wonder why the song sounded different on the radio vs on the tape/record, and that was one of the reasons why.
That's assuming you'd first treated your sounds as Espen recommended, in this video. If you put 80s broadcast sweeteners on a modern mix, it's not going to make that kind of mix sound like the 80s.
Nice episode liked the tip about manual drum fills and sampled synths just been listening to scritti politi there music was so well produced must of been s a sampler involved
Scritti's hit album 'Cupid and Psyche 85' had a few tracks produced by Arif Martin who did Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You" (which utilized a sampler) and the liner notes credit Simon Climie (of Climie Fisher) and J J Jeczalik (of The Art of Noise) with Fairlight programming. It was at the forefront of sampling and the latest production techniques at the time.
I think Sega Genesis/Megadrive was polarizing because it was often loud and bassy, it did follow a lot of these other rules though (probably because it started in the 80s and is all digital)!
You didn't talk much about guitars, I guess because you generally don't have them on your music. For all the synths there were in 80's pop, drummers/guitarists/singers and bassists still outnumbered the keyboardists by a good amount. Of course so many synth-using bands were staffed by converted guitarists (how very dare they! ;) Gary Numan, Human League, Depeche Mode, to name the more famous. Still, for pop type guitar stuff I'd say use chorus and compressor pedals, lay off the "blues" type playing, instead get nifty with the arpeggios. For bass guitar, chorus was also sometimes used, often with the desire to sound more like a synth bass and not rockist at all. Love your channel!
Espen, I so agree with your No. 1 pick. That side chain compression of bass and kick is such an overused cliché now. The sound, to my old ears, is terrible.
Thanks for uploading, this really brought me close ! ANY WAY YOU MIGHT HELP ? How can I emulate the sound of the dialogue or the general tonal/sound quality from 80s ANIME, like the first dragon ball episode in a daw today ? ✌️
What about Sampler/keyboards with internal sequencers for drums? Like an Emu or Ensoniq, for example. Also, what about "MIDI Groove Templates" made from classic drum machines?
Internal sequencers could be a lot of fun. Midi Groove templates had very little in common with the internal groove of the actual hardware drum machine.
I have followed all your advice since the eighties except #2 and #12 and I stopped following #6 and #10 in 1996 and, in a subtle way, #9 in 2013, so I guess I am doing pretty well.
CPUs back in the days were incredibly slow compared to today, and so the number of instructions involved in a particular code path could easily impact playback timing, no doubt leading to the groove/feel Espen talks about. This just reminded me of an experiment I keep meaning to try. Drum machines and sequencers would often be run from an audio sync signal previously recorded to a tape track. I imagine recovering timing from that signal is probably non-trivial and I wonder if replay-from-sync adds its own groove vs running directly from an internal clock.
I remember it was often said the with Cubase on the Atari ST that the higher up the track window a track was the tighter it was, so it was always drums and bass first, then everything else. I used to run a sequencer synced to tape (vis SMPTE), and I seem to recall you could see the BPM that it was getting from the sync, but I don't think there was any noticeable effect. I suspect there was a certain amount of "smoothing" going on somewhere.
FSK I/FSK II tape sync is super tight, not much different than running from an internal clock. And mostly everybody tried to make their gear as tight as possible. There really is no magical groove that would result from specific parts in assembler code being executed differently, on gear. On the Atari ST when things get too busy it starts to jitter, but Steinberg somehow found a way how to make the output still nice. This is the only example I know of groove/feel that is made by the machine, but this did not happen randomly, it's all the magic of the Steinberg coders.
I can't verify it, but I heard that the TR-808 and TR-909 have timing delays when 4 or more sounds play at once, especially if the parts have different accents and there is a global swing. The processors in early drum machines simply weren't fast enough to calculate all the instructions right on the beat, so snares and claps would be slightly off grid depending on what else was playing, to the extent that a long techno-style drum fill would cause one bar to be slightly longer/slower than one that was more minimal. Computers like the Atari had much faster processors and the software could also account for latency issues, but those early drum machines would basically slow down if you gave them too much to handle at once.
@@EspenKraft Ha ha, I agree. However, in my memory a lot of '80's songs were all too simple 4 on the floor songs so the girls could dance to it. Except for shoe-gazing and synth music. Good luck w/ your channel.
Hi Espen, I hope you are feeling very well! What if I don't want to use Drum Machines or Drum Samples? I want to play manually the powerful Simmons SDSV electronic drum synthesizer live together with the Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride. 😊 What is your opinion of that?
Just go for it. Playing a live drum kit is definitely one way to do it and lots of acts did that in the 80s. If you're doing pop you should play to a click though. Solid timing (with a human feel) is key.
Sampling was new tech in the 80s. You got a sampler and you could sample synths, vocals, drums etc and create new sounds and textures. Layering synths and then sample that. Sampling sounds to make new textures was used a lot in the 80s. The sound coming from these samplers had a sound of its own and that sound defined the 80s and that's why we do the same thing today to capture that. You cannot create authentic sounding 80s synthpop without using samplers from that era.
For the love of all that is good - don't sound like a crying little brat when you sing anything. sing like you mean it. STOP WHINING in (auto) tune and calling it 'singing' Liked that ironic touch about having to show what a DODO is for the DODO's of this world lol - awesome video - thank you!
Tip 14: don't use a neon skyline in the video for your track
That's a synthwave aestethic. A good chunk of these tips don't apply to synthwave, as synthwave is not 80's music, it's just inspired by 80's music.
@@wonderwheel80s I think the comment is just a light-hearted joke about Synthwave. Many of those who make synthwave music probably weren't born until the '90s or '00s but think that artificial neon skylines and horizons were integral to the '80s style. (The 80s in reality had a multitude of styles.) This 'outrun' aesthetic supposedly gets its name from the arcade game Outrun. I played that back in the 80s and don't remember any magenta neon.
@@relicthominin9864 Yeah just a bit of fun, a throwaway comment. I actually applied nearly every principle Espen mentions when I recreated Axel F last year. No limiting, use of drum machines, getting that 'tape' sound, etc. ruclips.net/video/ocdS7AALaFQ/видео.html
@@relicthominin9864 I agree with you, (I was there too back then!), anyway the pioneers of synthwave (which was born at the end of the 00s) are actually xennials like me. We were children (not teens) during the 80s, and that aesthetic Is a romanticization of our childhood Memories of the 80s.
@relicthominin9864 The aesthetic I remember most vividly from the 80s was the Mephis Style. We had that on wall paper, on plates, sheets and comforters, bus seats, movie theaters... it was everywhere!
"Another thing people seem to forget is that in the 80s people ... wrote melodies and chord structures". Espen, you're my hero :-) You just made a lot of folks on /r/synthesizers have an anxiety attack.
I like at 1:00 "compose your music" . A long time ago, in a far away galaxy, it seemed obvious but today when I listen to the radio...
You can say it loud
I think one of these is a general rule: For the love of all that is good, don't use autotune! Nothing has sucked the soul out of vocals like the use of autotune.
Exactly.
And It's not even that cumbersome with todays DAW's to manually fix small problem areas with in case of Cubase using vari audio. pretty sure most DAW's and also the different vocal plugins offer a a manual mode so you can fix small problems while preserving the natural pitch drift and voice vibrato without smashing the whole track with an "auto" fix. It's totally ok to use auto tune or whatever plugin you prefere for special effects if it fits your idea of the music, but I hate to watch tv shows and stuff where the engineers run an "auto" setting to all contestants or whatever kind of show it is just to make the overall sound "pleasant" to listen to.
Such a bullshit amateur statement 😅
Love the Overlook hotel carpet shirt btw.
You noticed. ;-)
@@EspenKraft Somehow that shirt seems more 70'ies .. at least the colors 😄
The Shining was released in early 1980 so it was at least partly made during the 70s. ;-)
@@EspenKraft1978-1979
Before I was fortunate enough to be one of the very first few people in the UK to acquire an MPC60 in April 1988, my only way of sequencing was using the drum machine to program patterns of midi notes for my only two synths (Juno106 and DX100). The first drum machine was TR505, and then I added Kawai R100 and Yamaha RX5. Multitrack recording was on a Yamaha 4-track. I had a turntable to play records and sample music. My first samplers were two Casio Sk1’s. Trust me, there was a lot of manual syncing, punching in/out, bouncing, and music performance . The only,sequenced parts were drums (drum machines) and synth-bass (using the drum machines). I had no effects whatsoever. The limitations bred wonderful creative results with fat/gritty sounds and many huge grins on my face.
If you have any of that old stuff digitized, you should post it!
You forgot… adding a hint of Aquanet hairspray to the room will most likely help with that 80’s vibe also.
No autotune ever please. In my 60’s and I can still out sing 90% of the modern artists today, autotune not required. Great tips my friend!
Cheers!
No autotune, but a nice bit of vocoder sometimes😍
Yes. That was the Autotune of the seventies to eighties.
Good stuff. Older guy who was there. Don't forget about REAL drummers too. (Aside from overdubbing a few things on top of a machine). Yes, drum machines were big. But lots of bands/tunes had real drummers. Gary Numan, Devo, Talking Heads, B52s, Simple Minds, The Cure, Culture Club, Wang Chung, Oingo Bongo, Duran Duran, and many more had real drummers. Using a hybrid kit to incorporate some Simmons drums or triggering a few samples may also help. :)
It took me a while to associate the colour of your T-shirt to the Jupiter-8 casually placed in the background. In fact, it took me a while to notice the Jupiter-8.
Very TR-808
It actually resembles the carpet from the movie The Shining
About the analog vs digital synth thing, depends what year of the 80s you're going for. Popular music - and music technology - changed so much over that decade that a general statement like that isn't necessarily true. And as for reverbs, I noticed that using good emulations of the reverbs that were used back then - eg. the RMX or the 224 - goes a long way to getting that eighties vibe into a mix.
14. use chorus and flanger
15. have crazy hair : )
Yeah I basically do all those things, apart from the tape recording (maybe when I move into my new studio). Good tips as always!
Cheers!
Outstanding tips. One more: dont forget that super atmospheric sounding bridge part with the bass drum going boom boom boom... [big white snare] baaaanng and loop -- and we're in for the ultimate voyage through the music!
Anything post 2000 is off my radar. the 60s and 70s were fantastic and I was a teen through the 80s. The 80s were fabulous. Just found this channel and it's very cool. 😀
Cheers!
I remember that the Atari version of Cubase had the "overquantize" function where you only quantized notes a certain percentage towards the note value kinda like a simplified logic edit. It was fast and a nice way of not getting everything totally sterile to the exact beat, where people today most often quantize everything to the exact 8'th or 16'th note
I think they call that that the strength function in Logic quantize...
Logic Pro has a percentage based quantize so it can still be slightly off in spots. Really cool
Your T-Shirt gives me immediate 80s vibes. My room hat a wallpaper in those colors 😅. May it is the reason why my tracks sound like 80s and 90s 😂
Great video, Espen! I think I would add to the list something about how they used the stereo field back then, and how different sounds on opposite sides interact. It's quite characteristic and quite different from the way it's done today, imo. There are countless examples, from the top of my head, the intros of Sounds Like a Melody, Big in Japan... (Btw, iconic melodic instrumental themes is a huge part of the 80s vibe).
Good tips! Cheers :)
You make the world a brighter place Espen, thanks for all you do! Todd (Ontario, Canada)
I second all of Espen's comments (I was there too!). I will add to his 'no Autotune' rule that you could, where appropriate, double-track vocals - and occasionally instruments- the old-fashioned way by recording them twice. Also, thank you Espen for setting the record straight regarding gated reverb and long reverb tails.
Cheers!
14: Have a short melody for your right hand that goes together with many chords. Stick to that melody and do a lot of chord progressions, even scale changes, with your left hand.
the 80s was an attitude towards life and this was reflected in the music of that time ... how do you want to achieve this nowadays ? only with synth etc ? forget it
Brilliant and useful video, thanks for sharing! I'll make sure to utilize these tips in some of my future tracks
Thanks!
Thanks! 80s heavy snares. For me the 80s sound is cheap analog synths(junos) , digitals dx7, ppg etc..combined with sample sounds from an emu. Sometimes my softsynth collection is to big. Choise stress, so i give myselfs a limited numbers of synths to use. For example: uvi emu2( max 8 outputs), korg polysix and monopoly,arturia dx7, roland juno 60 and a spark drum kit. 2 reverbs from arturia, one delay and a compressor and eq. I have to do with that in one track incl.selfmade sound effects recorded as audio or sample. Ofcourse in cubase .
Yeah, that Spark Drum is wonderful.
Frustrating how so much of the hardware like those original drum machines that were used in the 80s, which became popular then because they were cheap, are now almost impossible to get.
Would be quite interested if you had any, sorta, alternative machines you'd recommend that retain some version of those individual "feels" you mention. Or would you say that even modern drum machines have their own sorta groove to them?
When it comes to quantization I'm amazed how many people seem to just align their midi recording exactly to a grid when any good tool should allow you to set its sensitivity. In my opinion those dials should never be at maximum -- since I started recording notes rather than programming them I always thought the point of using quantization was to tighten up your performance just a little bit, not to snap it into some kinda rigid place.
I'm not sure what your budget is, but check out Yamaha's RX line of drum machines. The RX5 is the most sought-after because it has individual outs and volume control for each channel. I have the RX7 and I love it. It doesn't have individual outs, but it's got a great tone and I think really hits that 80's sweet spot without breaking the bank.
One with a very quirky (in a good way) internal groove is the Casio RZ-1. That's the one I'd pick first. It's not too expensive either.
The early 80s, pre '83, was the best bit. I want to sound like 1981 Yoshitaka Azuma.
I am of the same view. I find it so much easier to relate to the analog-era stuff, but then again I would like to expand my frame of reference more beyond that.
I love the early eighties synth pop played on Junos, and the late '80s house music played on Junos and samples of Junos, but the bit in the middle when the DX7 caused the charts to be full of power ballads with awful FM piano sounds was terrible.
8-bit samples, Amiga 500 with sampler and tracker, and some little natural noise was also part of 80's ;)
For a kid living with his parents yes. I'm talking about the pro music world. The Amiga was never part of that.
@@EspenKraft "never" is not a true statement. In the 90s, many electronic dance music producers used the Amiga with their samplers. But such samplers began to be produced only in 1989. That is true, it is not the 80s. But this is the 90s!
Slightly off topic, but there is an unofficial expansion for the VPS Avenger VST with the most famous ST-xx samples. Not that gritty and sometimes dull sound, but fun as an "what if" scenario to try how well some Amiga mod's could have sounded with better hardware.
@@EspenKraftspeaking of limited resources and creative music composing/production. It would be nice if you could do a video someday about the tricks used back then in Protracker. There were some pretty amazing tracks made. But that goes for the C64 as well :)
I never used a tracker in my life. I never had an Amiga back in the day. I was fortunate to get into the pro audio world early on and the Atari ST reigned supreme in that world.
I remember I wanted that gated snare sound but had only Vesta Fire (I think) spring reverb and a MS-20, but sending the snare trough the spring to the MS-20 for gating - YESSSSS !
That 'Round & Round' cover is just *chef kiss* such a fantastic song (and album).
Very good Espen a great summary, we seem to just do these kind of these so innocently as there was often no alternative. I recently accessed some of my original 4 track portastudio cassettes. Drum machines programmed for whole songs and everything else played live, before using a midi sequencer, to the drum machine building up a track at a time bouncing to 8 to 10 tracks, somehow less faffing about then now with all the choices we have with the DAW.
Really great tips! I think a lot of musicians would struggle to crank out a track under the deadlines and pressure of studios back then
A typical thing that was used in the 80s and before in addition to regular modulations is after the bridge to modulate 1 whole note up like in Sheriff - When I'm With You. This wasn't only a 80s thing, they did it in the 70s too, and likely long before that. It seems like they stopped doing it in the 90s most likely because it sounds a bit cliched. You actually need the ability to sing 1 note higher though.
The most important video on music production I've seen in quite a while. Its title should'nt be taken too literally though - IMHO, most of the tipps should indeed be useful for *any kind* of music:
1. Don't get your bassline's volume pumping up and down, triggered by kicks via side-chain 0:17
3. Write music, not beats - use chords and melodies 1:00 & 4. Use modulations 1:36 => _these two belong together_
5. Don't over-compress/-limit your mix 2:14
7. Use limitations creatively 3:12
8. Don't quantise everything 3:45 & 11. Overdub your beats with percussion played live 6:12 => _these two belong together_
9. Don't alienate vocals with Auto-Tune / Melodyne 4:20
13. Don't drown your music in an ocean of reverb! 7:50
Only 2. bass < 80 Hz 0:29, 6. tape 2:48, 10. drum-machines 5:07 and 12. synths from the era 6:54 are pure "eighies only" tipps in my humble opinion.
Anyhow, yet another brilliant piece of work from one of my top-favourite RUclipsrs. Well done, Espen 🌟
Cheers man!
This is great, because most people assume the sound of the 80s was mostly the likes of Madonna, Genesis, Kenny Loggins, and Hall and Oates, but they often forget bands like Huey Lewis and the News, Men at Work, and Talking Heads who often didn’t drench their music with synths. The concepts here equally apply to all these acts: avoid sidechaining the bass and drums, roll of the low end, avoid heavy compression, and write good music! The EQ curves alone are oftentimes enough to associate a given piece of music with a given era.
That shirt!
It seems as if I wore it, I would, like Christopher Reeve in “Somewhere in Time”, be transported back to 1976!
I want it! 😁
As a person born in the early '80s, and grew up with Italo disco, I grant the seal of approval.
Kudos E.K.!
That 1983 Sergio Mendes song "Never Gonna Let You Go" is the king of key changes. Crazy to play.
Great video, Espen! One thing I'll add is to double up the vocals and put them through an Aphex Aural Exciter (we used to just call them an "Aphex unit"). From memory the Aphex units could only be hired by the hour or day and you couldn't buy one -- a bit like Panavision lenses. Thankfully, DAW plug-in versions are now available.
Thanks! I remember the "hiring days" well. ;-)
It's just fun to see how fast those Aphex Effects got busted when the digital revolution started in the mid 80's. I can only remember seeing them for sale for somethinkg like5-10 grand a piece and only few years into the 90's compeeting brands were selling alterntive solutions that most semi pro's could afford without haveing to sell a kidney or 2
'Don't over-limit your mix' = photo of an Oasis! I'm dying 😂
Use 6th 7th and 9th chords. 🎹🎹🎹
My only side-eye on this is regarding using analog synths during the eighties. Oberheims were quite ubiquitous. And while something of a hybrid-I used an Oberheim Matrix 6 in bands back then along with an Ensoniq Mirage and a Yamaha TX81Z as my basic gigging platform initially-and I could never have managed without that fat Oberheim.
For just only horns if absolutely nothing else.
Some solid and great tips here, that I will keep in mind for future productions. Thanks!
Cheers!
Your t-shirt remember me the colors of breadbin Commodore 64..😀
Mostly good suggestions.
I would think you could come pretty close recording digitally today. What made the songs 80s for me was the sounds, styles and songwriting. Not the audio fidelity. One of my favorite 80s albums was Heart's "Bad Animals". It sounds as 80s as anything, but was recorded all digital. It's the instrument sounds and vocals that matter, not the medium of the recording. Things don't sound like the 80s today not because their done in a daw, but because some writing is drastically different today. On radio played songs, there are far fewer people that actually know how to sing really well or play instruments well. Today with the younger generation music is more about putting on a dance show with half naked people on stage. Musicianship counts for very little. But in the 80s, musicianship was 90% of it. You could look like Phil Collins, Billy Joel or Ann Wilson and still be at the very top. Madonna made it big because back then, she could sing well and put on the dance show. With few exceptions, that is not the case today. Looks and how good they can dance is usually much more important than if they can sing well or play an instrument. Just watch the Grammy Awards show. It's no wonder rap is one of the most popular musical formats today.
In the early 80s, there were still a lot of analog synths being used like the OB-X series, Prophet 5, Jupiter 8, Juno, etc. In the later 80s, musicians were turning in their great sounding synths for sometimes lousy sounding digital ones. It wasn't the digital technology that was the limitation, it was the synths. Most digital synths weren't the best at making analog sounds at the time. Now, they can be so good it's really hard to tell the difference. Especially with modeling of analog synths.
With all the modern digital re-makes today, it would be very easy to make an 80s sounding album without being rich or needing a studio. What's lacking today is mostly the talent. It's not the changes of the equipment. Talent is frowned upon in the music industry today. At least if you want to be heard on the radio.
Having a good understanding of artificial stereo imaging methods can add a lot of authenticity too.
❤ this is gold! As every vid of Espen is.
Thanks!
My tip is find one of the commonly used drum machines from that era. A lot of the sounds are instantly recognisable from that era. I also favour quite a lot of gated reverb and quite a heavy bass on the snare drum
Example: ruclips.net/video/5Fze2DyFq8s/видео.htmlsi=9b_2GqbBC2_FttX4
Love the chris lowe esque thumbnail
Thanks!
I sequence most of my hardware with either my Linn 9000 or MSQ-70 and a few Garfield interface boxes especially for non MIDI devices
Nice version of "Round & round" 😀
Thanks! First one to mention that it is that. ;-)
The 80s !! ❤ thank you for these tips
Cheers!
If you do decide to use a bit of compression, don't think of it as a way to modify loudness. Think of compression as _shaping transients_. The rest of the dynamic magic happens when recording to real tape. And another thing typical of the 1980s: Recording was a constant battle against the noise floor. I'm not quite sure how to narrow that down to a single advice, but the fear of the noise floor made a significant impact on how decisions were made during the recording process.
😃 Thanx for taking me back to my 80’s productions man. Your tips is soooo extremely spot on Espen 😃😃 as always - a great video from you 👍😎👍
Cheers man!
Love that shirt
Enjoying this music of yours I haven't heard before. Good tips! I like that it's a combination of both dos and don'ts. Here's a question for you: Do you think singing (recording your vocals) with vibrato was generally more common in our 80s music or not very common? Is one or the other way characteristically 80s? Cheers.
I do think a vocalist with a strong vibrato was maybe encouraged more to use that, in the 80s, than now. Good question. Back then you had to have a record deal to get your music out and with a strong and original vocal sound you stood out more.
Now, everything is so highly polished that all originality is wiped out by a 10 man "producer" team. ;-)
@@EspenKraft Yeah, as I listen now specifically for vocal vibrato, it does seem like it's noticeable on lots of songs from then. It also seems to contrast with vocal styles that came with grunge in the 90s. No vibrato and lots of snarl and vocal fry instead. 😉
Grunge is definitely not the genre I associate with vocal vibrato, but check out "Rooster" by Alice in Chains. ;-)
@@cortical1 Another thing is its popular to think Grunge got rid of the so called "Hair Metal" bands, but most of those were merely Pop music with distorted guitars and not at all Metal.
@@EspenKraft True, Layne Stanley was in a class by himself.
Fantastic video! I think my favorite of yours. I cherish 80s music and sounds - mostly for the masterful compositions and musicianship some other aspects you touch on here (before most synth playing ended up coming from quantized / arpeggiated / MIDI generated chords etc). I don't try to make my music sound like it was recorded in the 80s, so half of these techniques (which ofc are authentic to the 80s) don't apply to my music despite most people will notice my music has an obvious 80s vibe. I am trying to combine the best aspects of 80s production with modern techniques which I think sound better. Espen, I know you're the 80s, but I gotta argue just about your point that gated verb on the snares was rarely done? I love your point that maybe it wasn't as ubiquitous as the current popular perception suggests - but c'mon, it was a distinctive sound of many productions from that era and wasn't used later.
Espen, Great video and great advice! Lots of love to you brother! VG :-)
Thanks Vaughn! The same to you :)
HA! @1:00.... write some music!!! that was great. Typical 80s song structure: V C V C B C .... Love this video. Great tips and funny.
Fantastic tips. Can you do a vid showcasing them. Especially the "modulation" technique. Thanks.
Thanks! Sure, did that numerous times already. I link to one of my videos at the end of this showing this. "Why do 80s music sound so good?".
@@EspenKraft Thanks. I'm allowed one dumb question a month. 👍
Here’s one to add. Let me know your thoughts.. record straight audio out of your synths. No midi - get the sound a land go for it. Plus, you get more practice trying to do a good “keeper” take. Not everything (like midi drums or tight bass) but give it a shot on a chord progression or lead! And yes, NO autotune.
It's basically what I meant. Most of my tracks are still recorded by hand, straight out. (Unless I'm doing a MIDI demo, or working for clients.)
That was great, thankyou
Cheers!
Great advice 🖐❤️
apart from the record to tape bit
life is too short lol
Really enjoyed this. You hit a lot of nails on the heads there Epsen. Doesn't matter what I record it always ends up sounding from the 80's. At the age of 54 it's probably in my blood by now. Love your channel.
Cheers!
Another tip is to try a leveller or "broadcast limiter" on the master, if you want a hyped FM-radio sound. Stations would use gear to enhance or hype the sound between the turntable and transmitter. You can go down thevrabbit hole of 80s radio station enhancer gear, if you're into that sound. People used to wonder why the song sounded different on the radio vs on the tape/record, and that was one of the reasons why.
That's assuming you'd first treated your sounds as Espen recommended, in this video. If you put 80s broadcast sweeteners on a modern mix, it's not going to make that kind of mix sound like the 80s.
Also use instrumental parts and supporting catchy synth hooks in addition to the vocals. 😎
Great Video, Thanks for the greatly appreciated know-how.
Cheers!
Nice episode liked the tip about manual drum fills and sampled synths just been listening to scritti politi there music was so well produced must of been s a sampler involved
Scritti's hit album 'Cupid and Psyche 85' had a few tracks produced by Arif Martin who did Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You" (which utilized a sampler) and the liner notes credit Simon Climie (of Climie Fisher) and J J Jeczalik (of The Art of Noise) with Fairlight programming. It was at the forefront of sampling and the latest production techniques at the time.
Extra points for the lovely IBM Thinkpad in the background there; an early 2000s model?
Thanks! It's a IBM Thinkpad 600 from 1998.
I think Sega Genesis/Megadrive was polarizing because it was often loud and bassy, it did follow a lot of these other rules though (probably because it started in the 80s and is all digital)!
Please interview Andy Richards! synth on Relax and many other tunes. He has done some podcasts but I think he'd be great on here
Interesting man for sure.
Awesome videos as always Mr Kraft.
Melodies and chords….. this advice made me a bit sad. Key component of music somehow got forgotten or diminished
I like that creepy music videos from your attic, very atmospheric😹
I'm a creepy guy. ;-)
@@EspenKraft Love you humor
Also add a liberal dose of 808 hihat in there somewhere and add one or two "Hey!" samplse from Art of noise or "Ah yeah!" sample!
I want a t-shirt like that!
Amen to all what you said..
You didn't talk much about guitars, I guess because you generally don't have them on your music. For all the synths there were in 80's pop, drummers/guitarists/singers and bassists still outnumbered the keyboardists by a good amount. Of course so many synth-using bands were staffed by converted guitarists (how very dare they! ;) Gary Numan, Human League, Depeche Mode, to name the more famous. Still, for pop type guitar stuff I'd say use chorus and compressor pedals, lay off the "blues" type playing, instead get nifty with the arpeggios. For bass guitar, chorus was also sometimes used, often with the desire to sound more like a synth bass and not rockist at all. Love your channel!
True. If I did 15 tips I would include the guitar. I even dedicated one total episode of my series "A Song Is Born" to guitars in 80s pop.
@@EspenKraft ooh! nice, I will check that out!!
I can resume to: get a time machine and back to the eighties... unless you are a rich guy with a lot of vintage drum mashines... thanks!
Great video! 🙂
Cheers!
Espen, I so agree with your No. 1 pick. That side chain compression of bass and kick is such an overused cliché now. The sound, to my old ears, is terrible.
That top is so Atari.
thank you very much these are all very usefull tips.
Thanks for uploading, this really brought me close ! ANY WAY YOU MIGHT HELP ?
How can I emulate the sound of the dialogue or the general tonal/sound quality from 80s ANIME, like the first dragon ball episode in a daw today ? ✌️
I have no idea. Cheers
@@EspenKraft Thanks for the reply 👋
Please do the list how to sound 90s
You also forgot to make sure you have the best peacocking style haircut and attire and always have a serious look.😋
Excellent 👌
What about Sampler/keyboards with internal sequencers for drums? Like an Emu or Ensoniq, for example. Also, what about "MIDI Groove Templates" made from classic drum machines?
Internal sequencers could be a lot of fun. Midi Groove templates had very little in common with the internal groove of the actual hardware drum machine.
If you have to pick one track to not quantize, leave your bass alone! Play it!
I have followed all your advice since the eighties except #2 and #12 and I stopped following #6 and #10 in 1996 and, in a subtle way, #9 in 2013, so I guess I am doing pretty well.
CPUs back in the days were incredibly slow compared to today, and so the number of instructions involved in a particular code path could easily impact playback timing, no doubt leading to the groove/feel Espen talks about. This just reminded me of an experiment I keep meaning to try. Drum machines and sequencers would often be run from an audio sync signal previously recorded to a tape track. I imagine recovering timing from that signal is probably non-trivial and I wonder if replay-from-sync adds its own groove vs running directly from an internal clock.
I remember it was often said the with Cubase on the Atari ST that the higher up the track window a track was the tighter it was, so it was always drums and bass first, then everything else. I used to run a sequencer synced to tape (vis SMPTE), and I seem to recall you could see the BPM that it was getting from the sync, but I don't think there was any noticeable effect. I suspect there was a certain amount of "smoothing" going on somewhere.
FSK I/FSK II tape sync is super tight, not much different than running from an internal clock. And mostly everybody tried to make their gear as tight as possible. There really is no magical groove that would result from specific parts in assembler code being executed differently, on gear.
On the Atari ST when things get too busy it starts to jitter, but Steinberg somehow found a way how to make the output still nice. This is the only example I know of groove/feel that is made by the machine, but this did not happen randomly, it's all the magic of the Steinberg coders.
I can't verify it, but I heard that the TR-808 and TR-909 have timing delays when 4 or more sounds play at once, especially if the parts have different accents and there is a global swing. The processors in early drum machines simply weren't fast enough to calculate all the instructions right on the beat, so snares and claps would be slightly off grid depending on what else was playing, to the extent that a long techno-style drum fill would cause one bar to be slightly longer/slower than one that was more minimal. Computers like the Atari had much faster processors and the software could also account for latency issues, but those early drum machines would basically slow down if you gave them too much to handle at once.
What about: "Use 4 on the floor (Disco) for EVERY song."? 😁
Terrible advice. ;-)
@@EspenKraft Ha ha, I agree. However, in my memory a lot of '80's songs were all too simple 4 on the floor songs so the girls could dance to it. Except for shoe-gazing and synth music. Good luck w/ your channel.
Nope. That is not accurate.
Hi Espen, I hope you are feeling very well!
What if I don't want to use Drum Machines or Drum Samples?
I want to play manually the powerful Simmons SDSV electronic drum synthesizer live together with the Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride. 😊
What is your opinion of that?
Just go for it. Playing a live drum kit is definitely one way to do it and lots of acts did that in the 80s. If you're doing pop you should play to a click though. Solid timing (with a human feel) is key.
@@EspenKraft Thank you very much for everything, please never stop making Italo Disco!
Take care of yourself and best regards from Uruguay!
Many thanks! I don't often hear from Uruguay so this was nice. Take care! :)
Please post the link to your video on pitching vocals in the 80s
It's right there at the end of this video. In my series "A song is born" I have a whole video dedicated to vocals done old school.
Oh woops, I see it now. Thanks Espen!
Haha. A lot of this is what I do. I hate the sidechaining bass. It's so overdone.
whats the benefit of sampling analog synths and then recording from the sampler? What does it do to the sound to make it more 80s?
Sampling was new tech in the 80s. You got a sampler and you could sample synths, vocals, drums etc and create new sounds and textures. Layering synths and then sample that. Sampling sounds to make new textures was used a lot in the 80s. The sound coming from these samplers had a sound of its own and that sound defined the 80s and that's why we do the same thing today to capture that. You cannot create authentic sounding 80s synthpop without using samplers from that era.
@@EspenKraft Thanks! love your videos.
Thanks!
For the love of all that is good - don't sound like a crying little brat when you sing anything. sing like you mean it. STOP WHINING in (auto) tune and calling it 'singing'
Liked that ironic touch about having to show what a DODO is for the DODO's of this world lol - awesome video - thank you!
Cheers!
"Don't use too much reverb" unless you're Depeche Mode recording "Black Celebration"
#14. Listen while on cocaine.
I couldn't put that in the video itself. :P
@@EspenKraft Espen's into blow? Lol, I never would have suspected you were that kind of guy.
Hey Espen! What is the song that we hear at 4:32?
It's my cover of New Order's "Round and Round".