How to Make Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan: Breakdown & Tutorial

This Pink Pony Club breakdown and tutorial covers the chords, key and tempo of Chappell Roan's hit, plus how to play the track smoothly and build a bright synth-pop sound around it. The song came out in April 2020, later landed on her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and years after its release went on to reach No. 1 in the UK and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, She wrote the song with producer Dan Nigro, who also produced it. Let's take a listen to the remake.

The Main Bass

This bass is what drives “Pink Pony Club”. It’s fat and warm, and it never sits still. Oscillator A has a MB Saw wavetable, down one octave with 6 unison voices. That’s the low, wide body. Warp mode is Bend +/-, which squeezes and stretches the wave a little and gives it some grit. Oscillator B gets the Jno wavetable. It’s modeled on the old Juno saw, it has 2 unison voices and it sits on top of A and brings that analog bite. Set its warp to Sync Window for a hard-sync edge that cuts through the mix. Then turn on the sub with a triangle shape You will get a round low end with no extra buzz. Both oscillators run into a Cmb HL6+ filter. It’s a comb filter, so it adds a slightly metallic, phasey tone. A lot of the patch’s color comes from here. The part that really makes it work is LFO 1. Triangle shape, synced to 1 bar, sent to A’s warp, B’s warp and the filter cutoff. They all move together, so the bass opens and closes once every bar. It breathes with the groove. Envelope 1 is your volume. Attack at 18 ms, just enough to take the click off each note. Decay 1.20 s. Sustain -8 dB, so held notes settle a bit after the hit. Release 578 ms, so the tail stays short and doesn’t smear into the next note. Last stop, the FX tab. Hyper/Dimension first: 4 extra unison voices and a wider stereo image. Then a filter on MG Low 12. That’s a gentle Moog-style low-pass that rounds off the top so the bass stays out of the vocal’s way. A bit of plate reverb for space, and a compressor at the end to keep the level steady.

Chorus Bass

When the chorus hits, this is the bass that takes over, and it’s a totally different animal from the one in the verse, even though they play at the same time in the chorus, they just blend together. Oscillator A is an MB Saw with 6 unison voices. That’s what fills out the body and makes it feel big. Oscillator B is a plain square wave from Basic Shapes, dropped one octave lower. On its own it’s pretty boring, but under the saw it adds the weight and the punch you feel in your chest. Both oscillators go into an MG Low 24 filter, which is a warm Moog-style low-pass. Now here’s where the bounce comes from. Envelope 1 runs the volume, but it’s also pulling that filter’s cutoff down at the same time. Attack is 1 ms, so every note hits instantly. Decay is 682 ms with the sustain all the way at zero, so the note closes up very fast. Release is 81 ms, short enough that nothing hangs around between notes. Put that together and you get a tight, plucky bass that kind of pops up. Over in the FX tab there’s another MG Low 24 filter to tame the top end a bit more. After that comes Diode 2 distortion, which adds grit. Don’t skip this one, because the chorus gets busy and without it the bass just disappears behind everything else. Last is Hyper/Dimension, which adds 4 extra voices to thicken it up and spreads it out wide in the stereo field.

Sub Bass

Behind the other two basses in the chorus there's a sub holding down the low end. Oscillator A plays Analog_BD_Sin, a plain sine wave one octave down with 2 unison voices, for clean, deep weight. Oscillator B uses ICanHasKick, also an octave down with 4 voices, which adds a bit of extra thump at the start of each note. The sub oscillator is on too, with a triangle shape at -1 octave to make the lows even fuller. Everything runs through an MG Low 12 filter that rounds off any top end, so this layer stays out of the way of the other basses. Envelope 1 is simple: no attack, full sustain and a 290 ms release, so the notes start instantly and hold steady for as long as you play them. Mono is on with Always portamento, so the sub glides smoothly from note to note and never stacks up into mud.

Piano

The main piano is Serum working as a sampler: we load a one-shot of a real piano playing C into the noise oscillator (here it shows as OS_01_SP), then turn on one-shot mode so it plays once like a real key strike, and pitch tracking so it stays in tune with whatever note you play. To give the piano more body and a synth edge, oscillator A plays the Prime wavetable and oscillator B plays FFT_Add_2nds, each with 6 unison voices, plus a sine on the sub oscillator for extra low-end warmth. Envelope 1 isn't just volume here. It also moves both oscillators' wavetable positions and the German LP filter's cutoff, so every note starts bright and slowly gets darker as it fades, the way a real piano does. Its settings are a 4.2 ms attack, a long 3.15 s decay, sustain down at -23 dB and a 1.85 s release, which lets chords ring out and blend naturally. Polyphony is set to 8 voices with Mono off, so full chords play without notes cutting each other off.

Stab Synth

From the pre-chorus to the end of the song there's a stab synth that gives the track its punchy, Juno-style chords. Oscillator A plays ICanHasKick and oscillator B plays Jno, the Juno-based saw, both with 9 unison voices. The Jno brings the classic analog brightness, ICanHasKick adds a bit of thump to each hit, and all those voices make the chords sound huge and wide. They run through an MG Low 18 filter, and Envelope 1 handles both the volume and the filter cutoff. The 75 ms attack softens the front of each stab so it swells in a little instead of clicking, and the 1.09 s decay with sustain at -4.6 dB means the chord opens bright and then settles slightly darker and quieter. A 320 ms release keeps the tails short so the stabs stay tight and rhythmic. Polyphony is set to 8 voices with Mono off, so full chords play cleanly.

Arp

The arp comes in with the chorus. Oscillator A plays a square from Basic Shapes one octave up with 7 unison voices, and oscillator B plays Jno, the Juno saw, with 8 voices. The square is what gives the arp its hollow, bright top, and the Jno makes it warm and full. A square on the sub oscillator adds a little more body underneath. Both oscillators go through an MG Low 12 filter. The secret is LFO 1: it's set to Envelope mode with a shape that drops fast and fades out, synced to 1/4, and it controls the volume of both oscillators and the filter cutoff. So every note gets a quick, bouncy pluck on top of the regular envelope. LFO 3 moves the pan of all three oscillators (A, B and the sub) every quarter note, so the arp keeps swinging around the stereo field and never sits still. Envelope 1 uses a 160 ms attack, a 1.25 s decay, sustain at -8 dB and a 603 ms release, so the notes swell in a little and leave a soft tail. In the FX tab, Hyper/Dimension widens the sound, plate reverb adds space, and a ping-pong delay set to 1/4 on the left and 1/8 on the right bounces the notes between the speakers, which makes the arp feel even busier. A compressor at the end keeps it all steady.

Lead

The lead in the track is a guitar, and we got as close as we could with a synth. Oscillator A plays a square and oscillator B plays a saw, each with 10 unison voices, plus a square on the sub for weight. The square gives you a hollow, reedy tone and the saw adds bite, and together they land close to an electric guitar. Both run through the Formant-I filter, which shapes the sound like a vowel and gives it that talky, guitar-amp character. For the guitar feel, LFO 1 moves the fine tuning of both oscillators at 1/16 to make a fast tremolo. Then open the Matrix tab and set Envelope 2 as the aux source on those LFO 1 routings. Its 471 ms attack keeps the tremolo at zero when the note starts and lets it ramp up while you hold, the way a guitarist eases into vibrato. LFO 2 moves the filter’s cutoff, resonance, mix and formant, plus the phaser frequency, so the tone keeps shifting like a real guitar. Envelope 1 has a 0.5 ms attack for a sharp, pick-like start, a 1 s decay, full sustain and a 424 ms release. Mono is on, so it plays one note at a time like a guitar line. In the FX tab, Hyper/Dimension widens the lead and the phaser adds a swirly, pedal-style movement. A delay set to 1/4 on the left and dotted 1/8 on the right fills the gaps between phrases, and HardClip at the end gives you the crunch of an overdriven amp.

FAQ

What are the chords to Pink Pony Club? The main loop is F# – G#m – D#m – B. It carries the verses and the chorus, and the song stays in F# major.

What key and BPM is Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan? Pink Pony Club is in F# major and runs at about 107 BPM, in 4/4.

What is the chord progression of Pink Pony Club? I – ii – vi – IV. In F# major that's F#, G#m, D#m and B.

Who wrote and produced Pink Pony Club? Chappell Roan wrote it with Dan Nigro, and Nigro produced it. It was released as a single on April 3, 2020, and later appeared on her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

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