80s flavours
The distinctive sound of the 1980s is back! This month, Dave Clews shares some techniques for recreating it in your tracks
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Music technology in the 1980s, went through a transformative period. The arrival of MIDI and digital synthesis on the scene superseded ‘old-fashioned’ analogue equipment such as the Minimoog, and sampling and sequencing were on the point of revolutionising the way that records would come to be made.
New Order and the Eurythmics were just two bands whose experimental forays into commercial electronic pop music, with tracks such as Blue Monday and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), spearheaded a radio-friendly revolution in how popular music was now meant to sound.
Fast-forward almost 40 years and you only have to listen to current releases by Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga or The Weeknd to realise the influence that 80s music is now exerting on current releases.
But how do you go about getting that distinctive 80s flavour into your own tracks? This month I’ll be looking at a couple of constructive ways in which you can do just that, with sequenced synth basses, blippy arpeggios and big polyphonic synth chords being the order of the day.