Synthwave is a genre that mixes nostalgia of the fantasy and action movie soundtracks from the ’80s with modern production methods and precision. Simple patterns, gated reverb, saturation, and samples from drum machines popular in the 1980s, such as the LinnDrum, are all essential elements of this genre. Massive cymbals and tom fills were also popular at the time. In the next tutorial, we will show you how to make retro-sounding tom fill, appropriate for a Synthwave track.
As usual, we’ll begin by listening to a short sequence created in our SoundBridge: DAW. It contains the majority of a full mix’s elements.
To begin, we’ll make a new MIDI channel and load RitMix on it. The same tom sample will then be loaded onto five different RitMix pads as you can see in the picture below.
To change the pitch of the pad, we will open the edit window. Under the “Envelopes/Humanizer” menu, select the “Pitch” tab and change the semitone parameter to the right. This must be done for each pad.
After that, we can return to the Sequencer and write a pattern in the MIDI editor. Let’s listen to how it sounds.
Since our tom fill sounds pretty dry, we will color it with some effects. In this case, we will use a touch of reverb and a Bit Crusher. Let’s take a listen to that.
Finally, let’s hear this in the context of the full mix.
If you liked this article on drum processing, here are some more on the same subject:
