Wednesday 4 January 2017

Rene & Angela - I'll Be Good (1985)



I stumbled across this one a few years ago and immediately noticed how irrationally fat the synth bass was. I mean, before your ears acclimate to it, it's almost so fat it doesn't even make sense. But, as the song goes on, the fatness just keeps pounding you in the chest. This is the literal limit of how fat a synth bass can be before it breaks under it's own weight.

Now, oddly, this video shows Rene and Angela both playing a DX7, which is an FM keyboard. I am really having a hard time believing that this synth bass sound is coming from an FM source, but, perhaps they were doing some gnarly techniques that was uncommon. But when you add a chorus effect to any FM source, you usually get a lovely fat sound. Maybe the secret is using two keyboards at once?

In any case, fatness essentially refers to a level of detune happening, where there are several of the same notes being played, but they are all slightly out of tune with eachother. This causes the overall note you hear to wander and warble around every so slightly, and that is what gives the impression that the sound is much fatter and wider than it would have been if they were all playing an exact pitch.

I don't know if this song holds up on it's own for most people, but for me, I enjoy this song mostly because of this insanely fat synth bass. A double spinning DX7 setup isn't bad either, haha!

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