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Stranger Things opening theme with only one synthesizer
Sandstorm with Vital and Garageband
Ghostbusters with one free synthesizer
Michael Jackson – Baby Be Mine cover with Vital and TAL J-8
Stranger Things opening theme with only one synthesizer
To celebrate Halloween 2023 and ten years of using synthesizers made by TAL Software, here’s a fun little cover version of the modern classic theme from the Netflix series Stranger Things. The only synthesizer used for ALL the sounds you hear was the free TAL Noisemaker. No factory presets or downloaded presets were used, every sound was programmed by hand using the original version as reference. For mixing, TAL-Reverb-4 and small handful of Analog Obsession plugins were used. The main point was to demonstrate, that you don’t necessarily need to spend a fortune on hardware and software synthesizers, since currently available free tools can already get you pretty far if you take your time and learn how to used them properly.
The original Stranger Things opening theme was composed and performed by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein.
Feel free to contact Mikko for a free preset pack.
Sandstorm with Vital and Garageband
Darude: Sandstorm, quick and dirty cover version made using Garageband and Vital Basic (free version).
I finally gave a shot at this “electronic national anthem” of my home country. For video content, some late-90s nostalgia: the phone you see raving here is my first ever mobile phone, the mighty Nokia 3210. This incredibly popular and then cutting-edge phone came out in 1999, some months before Sandstorm was released. Partyshots of a small statue of our national composer Jean Sibelius also included. For me this was also the first time YouTube algorithm “found copyright-protected content” on my video. It might be because of the drum samples: I mixed together some Roland TR-909 -samples found online (sampled by Rob Roy Recordings in 1995!) and samples from the original Sandstorm (like the kick/snare “bombs” heard at the very beginning). I can assure you the synthesizer sounds were created from scratch with Vital, and you can copy the settings at the end of the video.
Ghostbusters with one free synthesizer
Yet another one-synth cover published for Halloween 2024, this time featuring saxophone parts by Jimi Ahlroos.
u-he Tyrell N6 was used for all synthesizer parts on this video. Originally released in 2010, Tyrell was based on a reader survey made by Amazona.de, in order to design a perfect budget analog synthesizer. Urs Heckmann (u-he) offered to program a free plugin version of the synth design, since there wasn’t enough money or a wealthy enough manufacturer to fund mass production of the real hardware synth.
Fun fact: Behringer DeepMind 12, released in 2016, is somewhat based on the Tyrell design, with added functionality and effects.
The original Ghostbusters theme song was written, produced and performed by Ray Parker Jr.
Michael Jackson – Baby be mine cover with Vital and TAL-J-8
Another cover, this time with two synthesizers: the free version of Vital and TAL-J-8. Again, in order to demonstrate how far you can get with minimum amount of synthesizers, all the sounds were programmed from scratch with the original version used as a reference.
Keyscape was used for rhodes.
The song was originally composed by Rod Temperton and produced by Quincy Jones.
Feel free to contact Mikko for a free preset pack.