What Is SYNTHWAVE? - A Musical Analysis
Published 2023-11-29
Let’s step back into the 80s as we look at the awesome genre that is Synthwave. Here we’ll be looking at the music's visuals/general aesthetics, and subgenres. We then go into quite a bit of detail on certain musical aspects of synthwave such as harmony, melodic features, and instrumentation.
00:00 What is Synthwave?
00:23 Synthwave Emerges
01:57 Aesthetics
03:47 Subgenres: Horrorwave
04:37 Darksynth
05:36 Chillwave
06:08 Vaporwave
07:03 Nostalgia
08:32 Musical Features: i.Scoring
09:30 ii.Textures
11:00 iii.Harmonies
12:57 iv.A very particular set of notes
13:13 The Synthwave Lick
17:02 The Outrun Rise
20:23 Further Listening
20:52 I Heart 80s
22:10 Mono no Aware
ALL film, music video, meme, & audio clips are included under FAIR USE. This is an educational video discussing features of a music genre in detail. The use of all song/video clips are transformative in nature and not detrimental to the market, nor are they substituting/in competition with the original works.
NOTES:
(4:33) Ennio Morricone is of course credited with the excellent score to The Thing. John Carpenter also contributed towards this; the point being made here is the soundtracks for the 3 films cited feature keyboards/synths heavily.
(12:30) Not claiming The Police invented the Synthwave Lick decades before synthwave actually became a thing. It was just very interesting to explore a musical coincidence in more detail!
(20:09) RIP Matthew Perry
SYNTHWAVE CHANNELS:
/ @newretrowave
/ @theprimethanatos
/ @neros77
/ @the80sguy
RISE OF THE SYNTHS Documentary Film: theriseofthesynths.com/
NOSTALGIA STUDIES (cited at 7:35)
1 (2008) - eprints.soton.ac.uk/63844/1/Zhou_et_al__2008.pdf
2 (2013) Batcho, K. I. (2013). "Nostalgia: Retreat or support in difficult times?" (American Journal of Psychology)
3 (2012) - pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22390713/
CREDITS:
End Music:
'Retrowave' by Alexey Anisimov
Some fonts created by
a href="www.textstudio.com/"Text effect/a
Software used: Shotcut, Audacity, Canva.
For a list of credits for certain images/videos used in this video, please see the link below.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/17wrxgUy-CSDxrgkSg-…
If you spot something that needs a credit and it is missing from this list (absolutely not intentional), please let me know and I will add it accordingly.
All Comments (8)
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I can't believe this only got 500 views! I added it to my What is Synthwave playlist and really appreciate the hard work you've put into this. 🌴
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subscribed without looking at other videos because this video deserves more views
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Great vid mate - I was a teen all through the 80's and though i didnt drive a Lambo, it was mega! Great music - new styles of music coming from every direction, games consoles, home computers were just becoming a reality. renting out those John Hughes, and breakdancing films from a video shop and also taking a chance on some low budget sci fi film because you really liked the box art! , BMX'S, so many briiliant t.v shows from America we all watched. All those films we saw at the cinema- Cinema going wasnt as dire as it was in the 70's, so by the time the early 80's rolled around they had started to improve them, so watching Star Wars films, Star Trek 2, Cannonball Run, E T, Rocky 3, Lethal Weapon etc with my buddies was truly special! I lived 10 mins walk from a cinema, so we went a lot! 😎 Great memories! Synthwave is like distilled 80's nostalgia and i love it! ❤
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Love this - great video! I hadn't realised how common those little melodies were in so many snthwave tracks. I was listening to a Pylot album (Shadowtask) and both the Synthwave Lick and Outrun Rise feature in it. Once you start noticing them, they appear very frequently! Those particular notes do sound very 80s.
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Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be
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As regards further listening, if you choose to accept, I'd recommend the playlist titled "1 Hour of Melancholic Sovietwave 2nd Mix" on Truckfighter's channel.
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Couldn't get very far into that video without reference to Carpenter. I really enjoyed that extended one of The Thing you did, I'd like to see more along those lines... the scoring of Terminator, Alien and films like that - from your perspective obviously. Ever get into GGFH, Acid Bath, Suicide Commando and etc?
