Australian psychedelic band Pond released their seventh studio album, The Weather, expanding their sound with lush synthesizers and eclectic influences. The album was produced by Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, bringing his signature blend of spacey textures and modern production techniques. This article takes a closer look at the synth work behind two tracks from The Weather: Sweep Me Off My Feet and Paint Me Silver.
Sweep Me Off My Feet is a spacey synthpop track built around heavily layered synthesizers that underscore frontman Nick Allbrook’s soaring vocal performance. The song features a rich blend of analog textures, creating a dense, atmospheric mix.
The song starts with a thick sounding deep bass. I tried a couple of synths and the Prophet was the one that got me closest to this bass sound. The Moog was too dirty and the Juno was too clean but any Prophet-type synth will really nail this sound. Set OSC B an octave below OSC A and set the volume so that it’s a little quieter and blends well with OSC A.
Raise the cutoff and sustain up to max for a big, full sound. Then, turn on legato and set the glide to around 450ms. The Prophet synths have a really distinctive sound when used for bass, I’ve used Arturia Prophet V for this patch.
The next most prominent sound in Sweep Me off My Feet is the wobbly sounding synth line. The most important elements here are using both filters to get it sounding thin and using the LFO to create a vibrato effect. I’ve used a Juno type synth because it has a Delay parameter on the LFO, so the vibrato doesn’t come in immediately. Turn the glide on and set the glide time to halfway.
Doubling the lead synth is a simple glockenspiel mallet sound. These are a great way to add childlike wonder to a track and are easy to recreate without mic’ing up a glockenspiel. I’m using the great (and free!) Boscomac Twinkle, a Reaktor ensemble that is easy to use and sounds great.
There’s a classic string machine synth in the mix too. It comes in at 00:57, and while most string patches will do, the one I found to sound closest is the ARP Omni—a classic string machine most famously used for the lead line of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. I’ve used GForce Virtual String Machine with a patch that uses detuning for a really thick sound.
Last up is a quiet synth-brass patch that’s slightly buried in the mix but helps thicken out the sound. It comes in at the start and is easiest to hear at the end of the phrase. I used Arturia Prophet V again and took the filter cutoff right down to get it sounding nice and dull. Use the filter Env Amt and ADSR to shape the sound to where it’s sound brass-y and you’ll get a suitable patch.
Now you can listen to all the synths layered together, notice how each element complements the others; some are big-sounding and others are dull or light-sounding. They also cover all the frequencies from deep bass to high strings which is important when layering. I’ve also added some quick drums from Toontrack Superior Drummer so you can see how they all sound in a full-band context.
The dreamy, looping hook of Paint Me Silver is based on Cosmic Convoy by Todd Rundgren & Utopia, a connection that many listeners might not realize. The song even starts with a direct sample from Cosmic Convoy, before Pond members overdubbed their own parts to develop the main melody.
I was lucky enough to see Pond on their recent tour and their live synth setup consisted of a Moog Sub Phatty, a Korg Poly-800 and a Dave Smith Prophet 08. They mostly used the Moog for basses and the Korg for chorused pad chords, and for Paint Me Silver they used guitar for the lead, so it’s hard to tell what was used for the studio recording. I played with some different synths and think that the lead is either the Korg Poly-800 or a Roland Juno-106, which they also use regularly.
Tell me about your new album… There’s this new song you played that has a repeating riff, I loved that. It was sort of hip-hop-y. Jay: That song is a sample of a Todd Rundgren song, really slowed down, sort of like G-Funk and hip-hop. Nick: Not so much the G-Funk, but more flamboyant southern sort of stuff, like Kanye flamboyant. – Coachella Interview
To get an idea of where Paint Me Silver started, I’ll try playing around with the Cosmic Convoy sample a little. To get from Cosmic Convoy to Paint Me Silver we need to lower both the tempo and the pitch, and we can lower both at the same time with Repitch sampling. Put your sampler into Repitch mode and lower the tempo from 133bpm to 88.8bpm and the pitch will drop at the same rate as the tempo. This gives an immediate vaporwave vibe:
As mentioned previously, the lead synth line was likely created with either Pond’s Roland Juno-106 or a Korg Poly-800. It’s a simple sawtooth patch with some thick chorus and pitch-bending for the melody. I’m using a TAL U-NO-LX patch with just a sawtooth wave and the Low-Pass Filter pulled down a little.
I’ve got Chorus I on, and the pitch-bend range set to 2 semitones. To make the lead sound a little less sterile, add some LFO vibrato to the DCO and keep the amount small, the rate fast and delay the vibrato a little to keep the initial sound in tune.
As with a lot of Pond’s music, the effects play a huge part in shaping the sound. After TAL U-NO-LX I’m running the sound into a delay, compression, saturation and reverb. The compression after delay is the most important element as it creates a smearing effect across the notes, I’m specifically using an analogue style delay and compressor to keep the effects element dark and driven.
The pad chords in Paint Me Silver are again from the Juno-106, making use of the Juno’s built in chorus effect and some additional phaser effects to get a swirling effect. I’m using TAL U-NO-LX again and I’m using the ADSR envelope to slowly open the Filter. To do this, take the cutoff frequency almost all the way down, raise the ENV amount to halfway and set the ADSR with a long, slow attack.
Turn Chorus I on, and change the VCA mode from GATE to ENV so that the volume rises along with the filter frequency. For a Phaser I’m using my trusty EHX Small Stone Phaser pedal on low colour mode. For software options, every guitar amp sim seems to have a Small Stone emulation built in.
I’ve covered the two main synth patches used in the song. Some additional tracks are some guitar layering, bass guitar and processed drums. To get the sample to sit better in the mix I’ve EQed it to make it brighter and add more treble to it. I’ve then added some bass guitar and sampled drums from Superior Drummer, listen to the different mixes below:
Get the Ableton Live Projects for my remakes on the Projects Store. All projects have frozen tracks in case of missing plugins and all downloads include multitracks and MIDI files for use in other DAWs.
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Thank you very much! I actually come to this website everyday to check if there’s any new tutorials. xD
Great job!
Thanks! Some of the articles take a while because I like to do my research and get things sounding as close as I can. Should be 2 more articles out in the next week.
I’ll be sure to return im the next week then!
Also, I’m not sure if you’re into video-games. I had a PlayStation 1 and 2 a few years ago and by doing a little research I found out that the boot sequence sound is actually sampled from synths. The PS1 one is sampled from a Roland D-50, a slightly modified patch called “Spacious Sweep”.
PlayStation 2, however, is some kind of a pad, I wanted to recreate that kind of sound however I’m a complete synth noob and I don’t know where to start. Here’s the sample: https://youtu.be/XW-_7PxEqyM?t=8s
And again, thank you. I’ve been trying to recreate the lead in Paint Me Silver for a few weeks now. 😀
Yeah I love those old PlayStation startup noises, I’ll look them up but I’m sure it’s one of those things where you really need the original hardware to pull it off, so I’ll keep an eye on eBay for them.
Awesome! Also, you can download the bios for both consoles, extract and convert the sounds to .wav with PSound if you ever want to take a closer look at them.
When you run it through delay and compression is that another software tool or is it external pedals? hope that made sense haha
Usually software plugins, like the DAWs plugins, Live’s Filter Delay and Glue Compressor are really good. Sometimes I use guitar pedals because there’s a few I really like the sound of. With them I use my audio interfaces outputs and inputs.
Can you post the patches, if you don’t mind me asking?
Yeah no worries, just updated the article with the download link at the bottom
Can you recommend any software effects plugins?
The first thing is to make sure you’re getting the most out of the plugins in your DAW. If you need more than your DAW offers and you have the budget then my favourites are Soundtoys Bundle and the ValhallaDSP reverbs.
More Pond stuff would be so helpful, if you get the chance!
Have you heard the song Silver by Caribou? There’s this crazy bass synth going on that I’d love to know how they made! Thanks for another great article!
Amazing tutorial! More Pond stuff if you don’t mind!!!
How much can I pay you to do more Pond synths? 🙂
Amazing page man. You should do some GUM synths
I love the sounds from the Korg poly-800 but not super into the interface. Are there any similar synths?