Kavinsky Ft The Weeknd "Odd Look" Breakdown
If you are a fan of synthwave like all of us here at Synth Ctrl, you surely are a fan of Kavinsky and if you are a fan of Kavinski surely you love his track with The Weekend called Odd Look, in this blog entry we recreated this amazing track using Serum so you can learn some sound design and apply it in your own tracks.
This article was possible because all of the presets from this breakdown came from our Darksynth Serum pack and it has have 20% off with the code: DS01.
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The first thing we have to do when we start a preset is to choose some waveforms, for this type of sound we assume Kavisnky used some kind of analog gear to make the bassline, so first we have to choose some waveforms from vintage analog synth, for the first oscillator we choose a Basic Mini waveform and adjust the wavetable position at 3 and add some FM coming from oscillator "B", now in oscillator "B" use an ICanHasKick with the sync being modulated by envelope 2, the important part of this patch is the sweep being made by the high resonance of the filter and envelope 2 being routed to the filter cutoff.
One of the highlights of the track is the arp and it is a very easy patch to make, to set up this patch first we need a basic shape in its second position in oscillator "A" with seven voices and slightly detuned and for oscillator "B" we need a PWM MG with its sync at around 1.8%, then we need to route envelope 2 to our filter cutoff, envelope 2 should have decay at around 800 ms so it gives that plucky sound we are looking for.
This pad sound is introduced toward the end of the song in the breakdown section and it adds a soothing orchestral atmosphere to the song, We need a SawRounded wavetable in oscillator "A" bend all the way and a Basic Mini in its fourth position in oscillator "B", envelope 1 should have an attack at around 2 s and envelope 2 its going to open your filter cutoff very slowly, your filter should be set at 1.5 kHz, for the final touch add the velocity source to the level of you oscillator so it sounds more natural.
This ascending string melody enters in the breakdown giving a larger than life feeling to the buildup right before the last chorus, to achieve this sound we need a Basic Shape in its fourth position in oscillator "A" with one octave up and sync at 1.5%, oscillator "B" uses a ICanHasKick, both of them are slightly detuned, now that we are set with the oscillator we need envelope 1 to have an attack at around 350 ms and our filter to cut everything below 4kHz, now add some chorus and reverb in the FX Tab so it sounds wide and big and that's it.
