Versatile 80s Synth Keys

Today’s patch is remarkable not for complexity – it’s very simple – but for ridiculous versatility. Let’s call it ‘80s Synth’. From Axel F to Human League, to A-Ha, nail this, and you'll never need another 80s sample pack again.

“A patch can’t be versatile!” you cry. “It just sounds like what it is!”

Wrong. Because this patch sounds great, no matter what notes you play. You’ve danced to it as a b-line, made love to it as chords, and played air synth to it as a tinkly lead. 

This is very unusual. Most patches sound great low… or high… but rubbish at the other end.

Not only that, but 80s Synth is harmonically simple and percussive, so you can make an entire track using no other musical parts, which is almost unheard of in synthland. As proof, below is a groove using the same 80s Synth in three ways. 

So yes, disclaimer, the basic patch is very simple indeed. But this walkthrough is as much about why it works and how to adapt it as it is how to make it. It even offers up some broader tips, including how to handle busy mixdowns.

Not only that, but you still hear loads of electronic tracks with subtle variants of this patch today.

And if you take away nothing else: always preview patches low, middle, and high, in case you miss their best register!

Download all the MIDI files here to follow along.

Any subtractive synth can do 80s Synth but we’re gonna use u-he’s virtual Prophet 5, Repro 5. The Prophet 5’s tailor made for 80s Synth and was used on loads of the tracks you recognise it from. You can get it on a free trial to follow along with here.

Load Repro-5 (or similar) now and load an ‘init’ (initialised) patch.

It’s easier to program a synth with a riff playing, so grab the MIDI file below. Any passing resemblance to Take On Me is entirely coincidental, but A-ha’s hit does use a very similar sound, albeit made on a Juno 60 (more on that later). 

Repro 5’s INIT settings actually default quite close to 80s Synth, but if you’re using another synth, you want both Oscillator A and B set to a saw wave, with B an octave below the A (see image).

Level-wise, set A up to the max, and B to around 75%. 

This patch is quite percussive, defined in large part by the filter envelope acting on the Prophet’s low-pass filter, so next set Cutoff to 25% and Envelope Amount to 60%, setting us up for a harmonic frequency spike at the start. 

The temptation now will be to generate all of the patch’s percussiveness using the filter. For example, if you set Filter Attack to 0, Decay to 38, and Sustain to 20, you get this…

But that punchiness comes at the expense of tonality. This patch is already very simple, harmonically, so making the filter envelope too extreme loses the versatility we’re after.

Instead, set Attack to 0%, Decay to 60%, Sustain to 50% and Release to 55%.

Now add the bassline and chords we heard earlier as they’ll highlight the next couple of tweaks better. You'll find the MIDI files in the same file downloaded earlier.

Play all three together and it sounds like this. 

If you work for Great Stuff, ignore the similarity of the bassline riff to Tocadisco’s remix of Walking Away by The Egg. If not, notice the similarity in vibe of the bass sound already.

And make sure you’re listening on good monitors or headphones from this point, as the next few steps are subtle but important. 

Amplitude envelope next (called Amplifier on the Prophet), and we mirror the start of our filter envelope settings. Attack (0%), Decay (60%). The difference is Sustain… set that to 0%... and Release to 20%. 

If you like, try adjusting the Filter Sustain now too, to get a feel for why we chose the settings we did. Just be sure to put it back where you found it.

Let’s add some of the warm analogue flavour we’re missing, using Voice Detune set to 41%. This simulates how the early analogue oscillators weren’t perfectly in tune with each other (or even with themselves) over time! It no longer sounds so digital and clinical.

Also, dial up the Noise oscillator to 40 now to give it some more edge.

Contrast Step 6’s audio with the new version below.

Notice how the three different parts suddenly have more separation, even without us adjusting their mix levels yet? (You can also use this technique to help you get other synth patches in your tracks to cut through a mix more… or reduce noise and detuning to help push them into the background). 

Time for a bit of processing now. We don’t need anything excessive, but Repro-5’s Velvet tape emulator on all three parts adds tonality and fullness. 

A little delay from Repro 5’s Lyrebird works nicely on the lead. 

Finally, reverb from Drench brings the chords alive.

We’ve designed and played our patch very percussively, but you could raise the amp sustain for longer, held notes, ideal for chords. Some punch is coming from the filter envelope, so you’ll still get percussive vibes. 

NOTE: You might want to reduce the Voice Detune for sustained notes as the de-tune-induced wobble’s more apparent on sustained notes. 

You can create variations of 80s Synth really easily, simply by switching waveforms. For example, try using square waves instead.

Suddenly, they each sound a bit more harmonically rich, which is great if that’s what you’re after. That Take On Me heritage really stands out, as that iconic riff used square waves. And the bass sound is even more like the Tocadisco remix (that it’s definitely not playing very similar notes to).

You can get a lot of extra mileage out of 80s Synth (and many other patches) in this way. But it does involve a compromise. Let’s listen to all three together.

The frequencies are overlapping all over the place, so you can’t get away with playing them all at the same time anymore. 

And that’s another useful lesson for your own tracks. Rather than struggling to EQ synths to get them working together in a busy mix, you can sometimes keep the general vibe of a patch but save yourself more frequency space in the mix by switching square waves to saw on certain parts.

Let’s listen to the finished groove again (the more sharp-eared of you will notice that we’ve thrown Unison onto the lead to thicken it… ).

And that’s it… one of the simplest patches you’ll ever create, but as adaptable as they come. And almost certainly what non-musical people raised in the 80s think of when you say ‘synth’. 

Perhaps what made 80s Synth stand out is that many classic synth patches explicitly tried to emulate real instruments (piano, brass, bass guitar, strings etc.) but this was just unashamedly ‘synth’. From Human League’s Love Action to Harold Faltermyer’s Axel F, this kind of patch was suddenly everywhere in pop.

But why was it so popular? The simple answer is ‘because it sounded good’, but there’s another fun theory…

In the early days of affordable(ish) synths, most bands could still only afford one, and they often couldn’t even save presets. Within that context, having one sound that could be recycled for basslines, chords, and leads made a lot of sense, especially to a financially-struggling, perma-stoned keyboard player. 

If you have a better explanation, let us know in the comments below!

Get Repro 5 on a free trial here.