The Weeknd "Save Your Tears" Breakdown

Again The Weeknd has surprised us with a new Synthpop anthem and in all honesty, his album "After Hours" is in our top 5 albums that came out in 2020 so we have had it on repeat since it came out and the song "Save Your Tears" was always our favorite of the album so we were eagerly waiting for the single to come out so we could make the tutorial only using serum to recreate all the instruments, so lets give it a listen.

- Just a reminder that all the presets from this breakdown came from our Synthpop Serum pack and it has a discount of 20% off with the code: SP01. 

- - You can also get this Ableton Template in our PATREON!

RELATED BREAKDOWNS

- The Weeknd "Take My Breath" Breakdown

- The Weeknd "In Your Eyes" Breakdown

- The Weeknd "Blinding Light" Breakdown

This bass unlike the bass in their songs "In Your Eyes" and "Blinding Lights" is not a synthesized bass therefore we will try to recreate it as similar as possible with Serum.
We start with an MB Saw waveform on oscillator "A" slightly detuned and on oscillator "B" we use the waveform FFT_Add_2nds with one voice and its WT position at number fifteen, also the sub-oscillator has a Saw wave with one octave down.
Envelope one is controlling the filter cutoff, and LFO 1 is being routed to the amp in the global tab in the matrix working as a sidechain and ducking the sound every quarter note.

This pad is the melody of the song and I think he did a magnificent job as it complements the bass in a very harmonic way
To start we need a basic shape in the oscillator "A" in its waveform number two and in the oscillator "B" we use the same basic shape in its waveform number three both oscillators have twelve voices to make it sound extra big and lush
Our envelope 1 has an attack of 350ms so it opens a little slowly and a decay of 640 ms so it fades naturally, one of the most important parts of the sound design of this pad is that LFO 3 is modulating the detuned of both oscillators and for the final touch in our FX tab we drenched the sound with reverb.

To be honest these keys didn't need much sound design, Oscillator "A" is using a Saw wave wavetable with seven voices and Oscillator "B" is using a Basic Mg wavetable at position thirty and has 4 voices, the important part is that envelope 2 is modulating the filter cutoff making it sound a little plucky also we have a ping pong delay set pretty hard in the FX taband a little bit of detuning coming from LFO 1.

In the fourth and eighth bar of each chorus he uses this 80s kind of bell to filled the space he is not singing anymore and this sound is so reminiscent of Synthwave and Synthpop it just makes the whole song to have an aesthetic cohesion.
In oscillator "A" we use a saw wave with the sync mode at 1.4% for our oscillator "B" we use a PMW Weird wavetable with its wavetable position at 256, this oscillator is going to give to the sound a lot of shimmer and thats it drenched in reverb and delay and you got it.

In the last verse of the song The Weeknd changes the pad for an arp, and for me this little change in the arrangement its just magic it makes it sound more vibrant.
To do this we need we need a hypa wavetable in oscillator "A" and a square wavetable in oscillator "B", what makes this sound so distinctive is that the decay of envelope 1 is at 430 ms making this sound shorter and perfect to be arpeggiated, this envelope is also modulating the filter cutoff around 2kHz