How To Make - Synthwave with The Midnight / 547

Fantastic course with a very skilled producer. Always liked their music, so it was a pleasure to watch.

Awesome course that gives some really interesting insights into the thought process of making this kind of music.

This was a huge help. Would love to see a video series on how Tim produces these tracks live with Ableton.

Great music and videos. Thank you

Absolutely great videos! Would love to see more of Tim making synthwave!

Beautiful track, wonderful course.

I am a big fan on The Midnight but through out this entire tutorial I hear " I don’t remember where I got this preset from " , not only for the synths but also for the effects , so then what are we actually learning ? some of the sounds presented are what makes a difference between a smash hit or boring garbage so obviously he wants us to remain at the stage of boring garbage if he doesn’t teach us any synthesis whatsoever or where to get those presets he shows . I thank him for showing us arrangement , eq-ing and automation but it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t want to show us his secret sauce…he doesn’t even teach us how to make those melodies , he just performs them and tells us " this is how it sounds on the album " , ya man but how do you get to those notes ? I want to be able to create something not copy this song or your settings for a certain preset … for example that bell , you could teach us how to make a bell from scratch and you could teach us how to get different styles of bells for different uses etc. but we get none of that , same for the dreamy synth and main synth , I was expecting to learn how to make a main synth but he doesn’t teach us anything about how and what makes a good main synth …therefore I rate this tutorial a 6 out of 10

Had to buy a subscription to get this!!! can’t wait to get started learning Synthwave by my favorite SW artist!

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@Vosto, it’s called messing with the instruments and effects. You don’t want to make a carbon copy of what he’s doing. If you have a modicum of talent and sense you can puzzle out what’s being done here, and apply it to your own sound. Great tutorial!

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The plugins for this track, are they all stock ones?

Hi @Inblut

Checking the main tutorial page and the plugins list on the right side and the answer is NO : many 3thrd party plugins are listed in there. But anyway, when I like a music style or a tutorial I watch it, even if it"s not in my DAW of choice or using plugins I don’t own because there’s always something to learn and DAW & Plugins can always be replaced by your own.

Excellent tutorial!

This tutorial is actual garbage.

The entire thing consists of Tim looking for presets or telling us that he’s forgotten which preset he used and putting EQ and other dynamic effects on things WITHOUT LISTENING TO THEM. Seriously. This is not an exaggeration.

Before the guy even plays the sounds he is consistently just adding or removing EQ, compression, width on individual tracks. It’s all well and good to know what your own song already sounds like and where to apply EQ, compression and width, but this is a bloody tutorial, is it not?

How can it even be called a tutorial when the guy barely does a pre/post showing of anything?

Absolute garbage.

Some artists have the teacher gene some just double up on the artist gene… I’m no genealogist but I’m guessing the midnight is more in the artist artist category.

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@hotredrodu

Haha, welcome to Sonic Academy. I’ve been there dude, and after watching this tutorial, I totally agree. Unfortunately, this is a common problem with A LOT of tutorials on this site. And I would know, I have done literally 80% of all the tutorials on Sonic Academy. I absolutely love this site, and support everything Phil, Chris, and Brian do. I own both iterations of Kick and ANA, and this website has taught me so much, but definitely if I had one major complaint is that many tutorials are more like track walkthroughs than actual tutorials.

There are a few tutors who stand out, and their tutorials are the best on the site. Christian Vance, Soundprank, Dancing Divaz, 7 Skies, Owsey and Echo Sound Works. Some of the older tutorials from the SA team, like Bry’s Deep House, Future Disco with Chris and the tutorials on sound design, reverb, mastering with Conner Dalton also stick out too.

It’s just the name of the game I guess shrugs

@Gray_Fox & @hotredrodu

Yeah, well… I guess like Phil already mentioned, it’s not given to everybody to have excellent teaching skills next to the musical creativity or techniques. It’s difficult to say who’s standing out from others though, and I also think that as learners we have some habits making us finding some courses more great than others. To me that’s also the beauty of this website & learning platform, bringing the real thing about music production to us instead of well prepared & cosmetic prompted courses that can be find on other learning platforms. So yes : "Welcome to Sonic Academy ! " :wink:

awesome

Rad course… adding some of these plugins to my mixes

What a lovely series! <3 Thanks Tim. I love The Midnight tracks.

This is amazing!