Caption: The original ARP 2600 didn’t have oscillator wave selector
switches. Instead, each oscillator had a default waveform that you
could override by plugging in patch cords. Here I’ve patched a sawtooth
wave from VCO 1 into the filter’s VCO 1 input.
New York duo MGMT has struck gold with their electro anthems “Time To Pretend” and “Kids,” proving that a hooky melody always wins. Of course, a slick retro synth patch to play it on doesn’t hurt. To cook up the “Time To Pretend” lead, we’ll use Way Out Ware’s TimewARP 2600, which faithfully emulates the classic ARP 2600 semi-modular analog synth. TimewARP 2600 is what the highly technical refer to as a “pretty honkin’ synth” — it has tons of parameters and routing options. We’ll use it in a straightforward way, though, so just about any virtual analog will work. The patch itself is only half the secret here — there are some key effects we’ll bring in afterwards.
1. This patch only uses one oscillator, set to a sawtooth wave. In TimewARP 2600, run a virtual patch cord from the “sawtooth” jack to the VCO 1 input in the VCF audio mixer section.
2. Using a lowpass filter (in four-pole or 24db-per-octave mode), set the cutoff about 75 percent open and resonance at 20 percent. The exact cutoff frequency on TimewARP 2600 is 2764Hz.
3. Make the amplitude envelope a simple on/off type: attack, decay and release at zero and sustain all the way up.
4. In TimewARP 2600’s VCA mixer section, turn up the Audio VCF slider and Control ADSR slider, and finally, turn up the Audio VCA slider all the way at the right in the MIXER section.
5. Now we have a bland sawtooth patch. We spice it up by adding vibrato. Most synths call the relevant setting something like “LFO depth” or “pitch mod amount.” In TimewARP 2600, any of the three oscillators can be switched to low-frequency (LF) mode, so I used oscillator 2 (VCO 2) to generate vibrato.
6. Then, I turned up the VCO 2 slider (the one in the VCO 1 section) to modulate VCO 1’s frequency. Use a sine or triangle wave set to about 7.3 Hz with depth set pretty deep.
Now we’ll add some plug-in effects in the DAW. I used a subtle amount of Logic’s Bitcrusher to make the tone a little more “in your face.” Then I added EQ with a steep low shelf rolloff from 440Hz down, an 8dB peak at 1,300Hz to emphasize the nasal honk, and a high shelf at 6,500Hz to dampen highs that’d make things sound too “hi-fi” otherwise. Finally, I added a medium amount of large, dark room reverb for sonic space — you can hear a similar one in the intro of the original MGMT track.
Online Extras: Audio Examples
pretend_all.mp3 is my little mockup of the intro, for reference.
pretend_riff.mp3 Just the riff.
pretend_novibrato.mp3 is the basic tone, with no effects and no vibrato. Use this to help dial in the filter cutoff and resonance settings.
pretend_vibrato.mp3 is the same as above with added crazy Devo-ish vibrato; rate is 7.3Hz. Play with the amount to get it right — too much and it sounds out of tune.
pretend_vib+bit.mp3 is with Apple Logic Pro’s Bitcrusher plug. I frequently use this plug really subtly, that is, no audible grit. Used this way, it behaves more like a compressor, so try one if you don’t have Bitcrusher.
pretend_vib+bit+EQ.mp3 I added an EQ to lop off lows and highs and increase the honk factor.
pretend_vib+bit+verb.mp3 Here I added a chunk of reverb from Audio Damage's Reverence (which may have a new name, because Steinberg/Cubase has appropriated the name for their new reverb plug-in).
If you have Way Out Ware TimewARP 2600, you can load up my patch, which you can download here. Just hit the "Patch Manager" button at the top of the TimewARP plug-in, click "Import", locate it in the patch list on the right (probably at the bottom) and you should be all good.