id: synthwave

rank: 29

name: SYNTHWAVE & OUTRUN

family: Electronic

years: 2005 → present

sub: A soundtrack for 1984 written thirty years later, by people who mostly weren't there

spec: 82,84,72,54,48,52,60,68,74,78,80,82,86,90,88,82,74,64,54,44

synthType: sawtooth

freqs: 55, 68.94, 660

ascii:

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what:

Synthwave began in the mid-2000s among French and American producers scoring imaginary films — the reference points were John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and 1980s arcade cabinets rather than any 1980s pop record. *Drive* (2011) took the sound mainstream, _Stranger Things_ confirmed it, and the scene has since split into a bright "outrun" wing and a harder, horror-scored one.

artists:

Kavinsky, College, *Mega Drive*, Dynatron, FM Attack, Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, Magic Sword, Dance With the Dead, Mareux; *S U R V I V E*, two of whose members scored _Stranger Things_, sit at the darker, more analogue end.

trivia:

The genre's defining instrument is arguably a misunderstanding: the *Roland Juno-106* and Jupiter-8 patches everyone reaches for were, in period, the sound of expensive studio pop, not of the low-budget horror scores synthwave actually imitates — Carpenter mostly worked on a Prophet-5 and an ARP. Mareux's cover of The Cure's "The Perfect Girl" was recorded in a bedroom and only became a hit years later when it was rediscovered by TikTok.

sonic:

Arpeggiated 16th-note bass sequences, gated-reverb snares, brass-stab pads and a lead line drenched in chorus and long hall reverb. Tempos cluster at 80–110 BPM but the arpeggios read as double time. Harmony is minor and diatonic, usually a four-chord loop, and the mix is deliberately bright — the high end is where the nostalgia lives.

gear:

Roland Juno-106, Jupiter-8 and TR-707/909; Sequential Prophet-5; Yamaha DX7 for bells and electric-piano stabs; LinnDrum. Almost all of it is now emulated in software (Diva, Repro, TAL-U-NO-LX) with tape and VHS saturation plugins layered on top to add the artefacts the originals did not have.

prod:

Production is period-imitation done deliberately: gated reverb keyed to the snare, chorus on everything, and a top end rolled off just enough to suggest cassette. Because the arrangements are loops, interest comes from filter and reverb automation across 8- and 16-bar spans. The genre lives on streaming playlists and game soundtracks rather than clubs, so masters are loud and mixed for headphones.

tracks:

- Time (Goes On) | Hypnogaja, ShyBoy

- They Don't Care | Hypnogaja, ShyBoy

- Hourglass | S U R V I V E

- Hello Juliet | Clarion

- Venom | Dance With the Dead

- Intergalactic Highway | Dynatron

- Plasma Storm | Beds and Beats

- In The Face Of Evil | Magic Sword

- Attack Vector | Covox

- The scarlett empress | College

- NARC | Mega Drive

- Héritage | College

- Omniverse | S U R V I V E

- Distant Lights | Sand Circles

- The Perfect Girl - The Motion Retrowave Remix | Mareux, The Motion

- Sleepless Nights | FM Attack

- Flashbacks - Tee & Hawk Remix | Warlocks

- East Of Oslo | Warlocks

- A.H.B. | S U R V I V E

- Gillette | 199X, DrDisrespect

- Nightcall | Kavinsky