You can take your 21st century and shove it up your oscillator. The 80s were best
Somehow we knew that the eerie Yamaha CS-80 synth theme to Blade Runner would do well in our ‘official’ Top 40 Greatest Synth Sounds (of all time) poll that we ran on MusicRadar a few months’ back, but little did we predict how well, nor how many fellow synth sounds from the decade from which it was initially tweaked, would sit alongside it. But pretty much the entire top 10 – actually top 20 – of the chart was dominated by 80s synth sounds, alongside just a smattering of 70s timbres, with 90s and 21st century tones only scraping in the lower reaches of the chart. So does this mean the 80s was truly the best synth decade? That the best synths were made back then? That analogue is king? Or simply that the people that voted are just old fogies? Well, you tell us, as you’ve only got yourselves to blame!
In truth, of course, it’s a combination of everything – bar the old fogies comment. 80s synth sounds, rather like that decade’s films, were not always complex and often a bit silly, but memorable they certainly were and still are. It was also the decade that first brought the sound of the circuit to the public and we all – present times especially – cherish a massive knob of nostalgia.
And, when push comes to tweak, maybe those synths from the 80s really were/are the best. The software world has spent the last two decades trying to emulate 80s synths (as has the hardware world, come to think of it), and we’ve now got more Roland, Moog, Korg, ARP and Yamaha clones, emulations, remakes and re-imaginings than ever before.
As for the rest of the top 40, well, it’s taken us a while – it really was a mammoth task getting all the videos together – but we’ve finally come up with the feature to match the chart in this issue, and you can see how to recreate all 40 sounds using the mighty Plugin Suite starting on p14.
Beyond the top 40, other highlights (or ‘lower’ lights) were: Josh Wink just missing out at number 41 (Higher State Of Consciousness); Boards Of Canada’s trademark lead wobble (as heard on Music is Math) at 46; Basement Jaxx’s big Numan riff came in at 66 (and, yes, we are starting to feel like Tony Blackburn); and Chemical Brothers hitting a lowly 70 with Three Little Birdies Down Beats. Meanwhile, as sorely tempted as we were to cheat and get the likes of Foxx, Voltaire, Plaid, LFO and Aphex to chart higher, they all placed respectably. When we recover, it’s Best Basslines next.