The Midnight and TimeCop1983 are two of the most influential and beloved Synthwave artists of the last decade.

I listened to 100 of their tracks and discovered that 91% use 2 simple bass patterns over and over again in their productions. Today I’ll show you what they are so you can use them in your Synthwave tracks.

Bass Pattern #1 – 8th notes

Bass Pattern #1 consists of continuous 8th notes. 54% of the songs analyzed have this pattern. I’d venture to say this is the quintessential Synthwave bass pattern.

1. To create it, open the piano roll or midi editor in your DAW of choice and set the grid to 8th notes.
2. Enter a note on every line of the grid and duplicate to fill the chord progression
3. Adjust the note pitches to play the root note of the current chord in the progression

This pattern works very well across all tempos. For slower tempos, you might want to adjust the decay of your bass to make the notes longer and fill the space between the beats

When you get well acquainted with this pattern, you can also experiment with using notes other than the root to support the chord progression. You can try 3ds, 5ths, 7ths and octaves in multiple ways to introduce variation and ear candy.

Bass Pattern #2 – 16th notes

Bass Pattern #2 consists of continuous 16th notes. 37% of the songs analyzed use it. This pattern gives the music an energetic and driving feeling.

1. To create it, open the piano roll or midi editor in your DAW of choice and set the grid to 16th notes.
2. Enter a note on every line of the grid and duplicate to fill the chord progression
3. Adjust the note pitches to play the root note of the current chord in the progression

This pattern works great from slow to mid tempos around 120bpm. Be careful that close to and beyond 120bpm it can sound overpowering and take up too much space in your track.

To overcome this, you can make the notes a little shorter by playing with the decay of your synth or using EQ to cut unwanted frequencies.

Just as with Bass Pattern #1, you can also experiment with using notes other than the root to support the chord progression. 3rds, 5ths, 7ths and octaves are great choices to introduce variation.

Synthwave doesn’t have to be complicated. The simple, yet powerful bass patterns we covered in this video are proof of that.

If these tried and true patterns work for The Midnight and TimeCop1983, you bet they’ll also work for you. So go ahead and use them with confidence in your tracks.

As always, thanks for reading.