TimeCop1983' has played a significant role in shaping the contemporary synthwave scene. He has a very nostalgic and atmospheric sound characterized by dreamy melodies, lush pads, pulsing basslines and driving rhythms.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to write, arrange and mix music using his style as influence.

Let’s do this!

Here are the general aspects of the music we’ll make today, all reverse engineered from analyzing dozens of TimeCop tracks.

Drums

TimeCop’s drums are typically very simple beats and he favors 80’s drum machines such as the Roland 707 and Simmons drums.

For our track, we’ll go with a 4-on-the-floor beat, an offbeat hi hat and a clap. The kick is a 707 sample, the snare a Simmons tom sample and the clap an Oberheim DMX sample. All these samples are included in the "80s Drum Machines Samples" pack, available HERE.

Bass

The bass will play the root notes of the progression in 16th notes. TimeCop1983 helped popularize the Korg Polysix Fat Line Bass patch, so that’s precisely what we’ll use in our track.

The progression goes from C to Em and we'll play those same root notes in our pattern. In terms of processing, I used an EQ cutting off highs and some of the sub lows and some other frequencies to reduce woofiness.

Arp

For our arp, I’m using a Prophet 5 emulation and a patch with a bit of a brassy, trumpety sound. The pattern is a custom pattern I came up with using the tones from the chords in our progression as well as additional notes to give it more color. I started with a typical arpeggio pattern and then moved notes around for a less robotic sound, more human if you will.

The arp has been processed with some light compression to make the notes smoother, vintage verb at 4.8 seconds, EQ cutting highs and lows, Kickstart 2 for bounce and movement, FabFilter Volcano in lowpass mode for automating later in the arrangement process.

Main Melodic Element

The main melodic element for our track is also a custom patch I designed, but this time on Arturia OPXA, based on pulse-waves.

In terms of the melody, I gave it movement with combination of long and short notes and using yncopation in the rhythm. The melody is based on the C major pentatonic scale with a predominance of the notes E, D, G and A.

As for processing, I added delay, Valhalla VintageVerb with a 4 second decay, and used EQ to cut some of the highs and the lows. I also used FabFilter Volcano in lowpass mode for automating in the arrangement down the line.

Secondary Melodic Element

The secondary melodic element is a custom patch in Arturia Juno 6 V, based on a sawtooth wave, with a fast attack and medium release for a trumpety, brassy sound. It also has delay, Valhalla VintageVerb, Kickstart 2 and EQ cutting off the highs and lows.

I wanted this element to feel different from the main melody, so I chose something rhythmically different. Melodically I chose chord tones and non-chord tones, also from the C major pentatonic scale.

Arrangement

 The arrangement is what I call a micro arrangement consisting of only 40 bars. Every section consists of 8 bars. The idea is to have elements constantly coming in and dropping off throughout the sections. Transitional FX and drum fills are used to keep the listener's interest.

Automation is very important to get an authentic TimeCop1983 sound. He uses a lot of automation in the parameters of synths like cutoff, decay and volume. The goal is to have the voices in the arrangement feel alive and as if they're constantly evolving.

Conclusion

Wow, we covered a lot of ground today! I hope that you’ve found this useful and that I was able to get you closer to making the synthwave music that’s in your heart. If you have any specific questions comments about any of this or about anything else related to synthwave, let me know in the comments.

Make sure to watch the companion video at the top of this post.

Happy synthwaving!