Trying an 80s Pop vibe in Kelly's Theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjpm42y-1-c

Firstly, I listened to some songs to steal from. Among them were 角松敏生 ANKLET and Piper - Night Shore. I also used a lot of tutorials from Eliana D'Angelo Music on Youtube.

Generally in 80s pop, there's a lot of thick and consistent snare. Eliana gave some some excellent advice to layer different snares and claps together, and to use EQ to only integrate the aspects that you like most. I didn't do this for the kick since I was already pretty happy with the sound, I just boosted its bass and rounded off the high end. Added some gated reverb of course.

The snare beat is placed consistently on the upbeat. For the kick, I took advice from Eliana to add some flavor to its positioning, and added some before/after the downbeat. I also stole some timings from ANKLET, which I realized didn't always have a kick on the downbeat. I thought it was a pretty cool and groovy, so I took some of it.

For the hi-hat and claves I also added some weird timings to fill in the empty space. I used the shaker to fill in all the eighths. Also among the percussion was cowbell (always on the upbeat courtesy of the ANKLET sound), bongos and tambourine. With a strong rhythm foundation like this I had a lot of room to experiment what kind of song I wanted without it feeling empty.

The drum/hat intro was courtesy of Night Shore, which I really like because it got right into the song and hit you with some thick 80s pads and jazzy chords.

I stole the intro progression from Tatsuro Yamashita - Mahou wo Oshiete, just changed the keys to fit what I created for the main progression. Cmaj7 to Cmaj7#5. I liked the tension and anticipation it brought.

The main progression came from me just messing around on my keyboard. I later used a website to find out with was Fmaj7 - Fm(maj7) - Em7 - C6/E. Apparently in the key of C, which is why I adapted Tatsuro's intro progression.

For timbre, I spent a lot of time messing around with the free synths PG-8X and Synth1, and downloaded some emulated presets of the popular synths from the 80s. I went with AM Strings with the PG-8X, with regular ol' rhodes keys. I also used a Crystal effect for the lead/ambience (PG-8X).

The Moog synth bass is from the Synth1, though I did try to use my actual bass for either slap or flat wound fingerstyle. But the Moog sounded best with everything, so I eventually just stuck with it. Also added some octaves at some points to it.

I did try to add some brass and stab at some points, but the Strings and bass already made everything sound so full. Maybe next time.

Finally, I tried to add some tape and effects and etc. Naturally a lot of the instruments were given a lot of reverb already. I added faint white noise, used EQ to roll off some high end on everything, and also used Saturation (Reaper). I used airwindow's ToTape6 to give it the tape effect and just messed around with it, boosting the flutter as well as the Head B (gave some bass distortion. Also used some of its Soften.

And that was the song. It's a little short, so I might possibly try and add some more interesting things to it. But I'd rather move on for now and work towards the next birthday song, which I want to experiment more with rhythm stuff and groove type stuff without synth pads. I really like brass synth/stabs but have not really learned a way to use it.