Future Islands "Seasons (Waiting On You)" Serum Tutorial & Breakdown
Future Islands has always been one of our biggest influences. Ever since we heard "Walking Through That Door" from the album In Evening Air, we were hooked: the slightly out-of-tune synths, the amazing bass lines and the mix of organic and electronic sounds blew us away. Not to mention the striking voice of singer Samuel T. Herring, the cherry on top of this brilliant project. Their most popular song is obviously "Seasons (Waiting On You)", so we took on the task of remaking it in Serum. Let's listen to it.
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The Synth
As simple as it is, this synth melody will get stuck in your head for days. To make this sound, we used a Basic Mini in oscillator "A" in its fourth wavetable position, and oscillator "B" has a Saw wave one octave lower to give the sound more body and presence. The important part of this preset is the filter: we used an MG Low 24 modulated by envelope 2, and the sound's character comes from the filter resonance, which is around 45%.
The Pad
Playing the same melody as the main synth, this layer adds a sense of movement: each oscillator has 8 voices detuned by LFO 2, which makes it sound a little ethereal. To achieve this, we used an Analog_Bd_Sin in oscillator "A", with its wavetable position modulated by LFO 1, and in oscillator "B" a Basic Shapes in its second position. The filter is cutting everything above 4 kHz, and in the FX tab we have chorus and Hyper Dimension at around 50% to make it sound wider.
The Rolling Bass
This is your classic rolling bass sound. To create it, we need a Basic Mini in oscillator "A" in its fourth position, and the same in oscillator "B", but bent to give it a little more treble and turned an octave down. To make the bass plucky, modulate the filter cutoff with envelope 1, which has a 650 ms decay. Also turn up the Drive on the filter to give the sound more body.
The Lead
Our favorite part to recreate was the lead. It has so many small details that it was a challenge to remake, but we can confidently say it's almost identical to the original. First, we start with two square waves: oscillator "A" has pulse width modulation (PWM) at around 80% and oscillator "B" has it at 30%, which makes it sound higher-pitched. To get the vibrato spot on, we need an LFO modulating the fine-tuning of the oscillators at around 7.2 kHz, and we cut everything above 4 kHz with a Low 12 filter. That's it.
Make your own Seasons-style track.
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