Dark synthwave Karl Casey´s style of synthesizer sound

[hebex]

Been listening to music by Karl Casey of White Bat Audio lately.

I like his synthesizer sounds. Anybody know what synthesizers/VCFs he is using?

Some examples, I´m mainly pointing to the basses and leads.






They don´t sound like Moogs. Nothing wrong with those, but Casey´s synthesizers sound like they come from another synth-color. Korgs or Rolands? A more raw sound IMO.

[cryophonik]

I only listened to a few snippets of a few songs, but they all very much had a classic Oberheim vibe to me, along with a smattering of Roland Junos and Prophet 5 sounds. Standard chillwave/synthwave stuff.

[Cashman]

They don´t sound like Moogs. Nothing wrong with those, but Casey´s synthesizers sound like they come from another synth-color. Korgs or Rolands? A more raw sound IMO.

Sorry to necro this thread but I love a lot of this guys music. The cinematic synthwave tracks have a great ear for melody and effective arrangement. Many of his sounds are mid-late 80s style presets on a Wavetable synth. Have a look at the Korg Wavestation for this kind of thing. You want a synth with "era correct" presets. With Karls prolific output, the blocky basic song-mode nature of his arrangements and the simple production, I imagine he's banging these out on an MPC or similar. A lot of the presets sound like the bell sounds in the MPC Hype synth.

Many of the bass and lead sounds you refer to here are just Juno type sounds but there's also a lot of FM7 type stuff in his music generally too. Synthwave standards really. But to cover his style you also need the Wavestation/ PPG Wave synths of the era. Also check out the Emulator synth. I think those are the hard to define sounds that make up his sound in a whole. It’s not just junos and FM.

[hebex]

They don´t sound like Moogs. Nothing wrong with those, but Casey´s synthesizers sound like they come from another synth-color. Korgs or Rolands? A more raw sound IMO.

Sorry to necro this thread but I love a lot of this guys music. The cinematic synthwave tracks have a great ear for melody and effective arrangement. Many of his sounds are mid-late 80s style presets on a Wavetable synth. Have a look at the Korg Wavestation for this kind of thing. You want a synth with "era correct" presets. With Karls prolific output, the blocky basic song-mode nature of his arrangements and the simple production, I imagine he's banging these out on an MPC or similar. A lot of the presets sound like the bell sounds in the MPC Hype synth.
Many of the sounds are Juno type sounds there's also FM7 type stuff too but I think the Wavestation/ PPG Wave synths of the era. Also check out the Emulator synth. I think those are the hard to define sounds you are referring to.

No worries about the necromancy, better late than never.

Yeah, Casey has the last year earned a favorite place in the synth category of my listenings. Setting aside the vibe and melody, sound-design-wise I like the color, rawness, punch and bite of his synths. Would really like to know his gear. Some vintage style samplings are there, perhaps from a VST-sampler, but I would think that there are also a lot of analog synthesizers, otherwise he has got some real nice production skills.

I find it hard to get that kind of raw solid sound with VSTs, when pushing them they so often end up sounding weak, distant, sharp and digital in the mix. And when not pushing them, they sound too polite and weak as they are.

[Cashman]

Agreed, I love his stuff. He's pretty much the only Synthwave artist I listen to regularly. Apart from the heavy cyber stuff (darksynth?) which I find grating and samey. Those tracks are instant skips for me. I prefer the (style of/stuff in) Neon Paradise mix. I've bought all those tracks and have them in my library.

RE his synths: I own quite a few Analogs and I can say hand on heart that I think his stuff is digital. Personally I think his work is underproduced to a certain degree but it is well mixed. I don't think that's a bad thing as most electronic music I find to be well over cooked and lacking soul these days.
I think he uses templates as there is a lot of repetition in his stuff once the albums pile up. You can tell a lot of the new tracks are just remakes of older tracks using exactly the same groups of sounds. The closest you get to any kind of transition in his tunes is a backwards cymbal to cue a change. Keeping it basic I think is what allows him to knock this stuff out so fast.

If you try to emulate his stuff using the classic synthwave analog vst picks of Juno/Jupiter/Prophet you discover quite quickly that most of the sounds that give him his sound are 80s digital synths. There's tons of 80s bells, guitar plucky, DX style bass, choir, glassy pads etc in his tracks. Sounds way more like the Emulator 2 (uses samples) or Prophet VS Vector synth. At a guess Id say he's using some form of the Arturia collection.

All that being said he may be knocking it out of the park with an MPC and a Korg Minilogue. My Korg Prologue can get in the ballpark of those 80s digital tones because it's a hybrid synth. The Minilogue can probably do the same but Ive never used one.

In the last few days I'm trying to put together a few sampled synths that I can use for those kind of 80s digital tones on my MPC.
The synths I have found that best exemplify his sound are these. Try the demos and you will see exactly the kind of synths that make these sounds.
https://www.arturia.com/products/softwa ... v/overview
https://www.arturia.com/products/softwa ... v/overview
https://thepatchbay.io/product/tal-samp ... pen-kraft/

[Cashman]

This playlist on Spotify is very close to the Neon Paradise mix on Youtube (which is where I discovered him).
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5u3x5 ... 0d7f674b1f

[Ah_Dziz]

Not much there that couldn't be done with a DX style pm synth and then a nice standard subtractive VA style thing with PWM and hard sync.

[Cashman]

You can’t do vocal choir pads and the samples pseudo guitar plucks in an fm or subtractive synth. There’s a lot of that in his music (even if it may not be in these demos at the start).
There’s definitely something else like an 80s sampler synth in the mix of gear even if a lot of it seems obviously Juno/FM.
The OP also asked how the synths sound like they do. I think a lot of it is probably down sampler to give that more gritty sound that pushes the reverb lead sounds forward in the mix.

There’s a classic synths bank in TAL Sampler that also uses these kind of sounds.
https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler