Synthwave: Gunship Dark All Day Instrumental Cover

[robussc]

I've recently joined ReasonTalk but have yet to share any music, so here goes. My project for the last year has been to cover Gunship's album Dark All Day as I love the music and thought it would be a great way to explore Synthwave music (a style I grew up with - Are Friends Electric? hit me like a hammer when I heard it on the radio in 1978 or there abouts

Anyway, I'm in the mixing stage and thought I'd share a track that seems to have made it out of mixing in fairly good shape. It's the Dark All Day track off the album with the same name. Hope you enjoy and are gentle with me. This track has been mixed but not mastered. There's hope that I'll add vocals at some point!

[crimsonwarlock]

Not bad at all. My only direct critique is that the drums are too dry. Gunship's drums are pretty over-produced. They are clearly a quantized drum machine, but sound-wise produced more like a live drum kit, which is basically 'that eighties drum sound'. Find a reverb-preset that says something like 'drum room' and throw that on all drums except the kick.

Maybe you can tell which synthesizers you used for which parts, would be interesting to know.

[robussc]

Not bad at all. My only direct critique is that the drums are too dry. Gunship's drums are pretty over-produced. They are clearly a quantized drum machine, but sound-wise produced more like a live drum kit, which is basically 'that eighties drum sound'. Find a reverb-preset that says something like 'drum room' and throw that on all drums except the kick.

Thanks I'll take another listen to the source. I definitely think the Hi Hats are the weakest part. I do think it was common to play those parts by hand, so I think some randomization of timing and velocity would probably help to give it a more human feel.

Maybe you can tell which synthesizers you used for which parts, would be interesting to know.

It's quite a list. I do have the V-Collection 8 and the UVI Vintage Vault so some instruments came from that.

Bass: 2 x Europa, 3 x Monotone
Arpeggios: 3x Europa, UVI Emulator II
Pads: UVI String Machines 2, NN-XT loaded with some CS-80 sample, UVI Saturn-8
Sax: NN-XT with Baritone Sax patch (and a lot of performance control tweaking!)
FX & Ambience: Mimic & Grain