Happy Labor Day folks.

Here’s a selection of entries from Barbarism Begins at Home from August 2008:

• Sign In To Get Personalize Recommendations
• Classical Music Needs a Gary Vaynerchuk
• Writing Chord Progressions Is Like Playing Killer Instinct
• The iTunes “Last Chance” Playlist
• microKorg Editing – Hardware Synth Software is BLAH

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Photo by FLickr user marythom

I have a few classic synth lines I want to try to redo in Logic (or Reason 4) and today we’ll start with something simple: the synth in Genesis’s Abacab.

I’m not sure what synthesizer was used on the track, but part of replicating the sound is to really think about what you hear when it plays. Here’s what I hear:

• Monophonic synth
• 2 Oscillators
• Both of them Sawtooth waves
• One pitched a Perfect 5th above the other

This is very easy to make in Logic’s ES2 software synth.

First: Start with a clean slate. Apple knew you’d need clean slates, which is why they give you the tutorial presets. Pick the Analog Init preset.

This gives you a single oscillator set to a sawtooth wave.

Second: Enable that 2nd oscillator, set it to a sawtooth wave, and bring the tuning up 7 semitones.

Third: Change the oscillator mixing to give each oscillator 50%. Do this by dragging the point on that mixing triangle to the middle between oscillator 1 and 2.

Finally: The setting isn’t set as a monophonic synth. Holding multiple keys down won’t cut off the previous note. Set the ES2 to Mono.

There – now you have the Abacab sound. Adjust the glide/portamento to taste and you should be good to go. It should sound something like this (feed readers, please go to site for audio):

Alright, so maybe I wasn’t the first to do it, but I definitely had this idea over a year ago.

Back then there were no versions of Maneasy Lover, but if you do some Googling you’ll find at least 2 others that have come out since last summer.

Maneasy Lover – Subtonic

My version does not have a video.

Easy Maneater – Victor Menegaux

No Specific Name – No Specific Person

Nice flange all over the place.

Which one do you like best? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and don’t be afraid to be honest and hurt my feelings.

So, since nobody did it I decided to do it myself.

It’s Nelly Furtado’s Maneater vs. Phil Collins Easy Lover. Stir them together, you get Maneasy Lover.

Direct download: Maneasy Lover

Seriously.

And it’s pretty catchy! It’s got a nice, addictive hook. I really like it.

It’s got an influence I can’t really grasp. Maybe she listens to alot of 80s PHIL COLLINS!?

Maneating Easy Lover

Maybe a cheap shot on my part. A lot of songs probably sound like that.

I suppose that when addicts get out of rehab they may be tempted by a drug once in a while but resist the temptation. Yet sometimes they relapse after one event or experience reminds them of their euphoria.

The marketing campaign for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is what made me relapse. The commercials use Easy Lover for the background music, and apparently the protagonist is a big Phil Collins fan.

Scott once asked me, “Dan, how can you like Phil Collins?” He had been browsing through my iTunes library at the time, which contained …But Seriously. “I just don’t understand.”

My dad’s always been a pretty big Genesis fan, so he naturally followed Phil Collins’s solo efforts throughout the 80s. I was growing up during that decade, so the seed was planted.

In today’s recorded music industry, pop stars have to be sexy and attractive before any record label will even judge their music. But then there’s people like Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel; odd looking guys, one of which always had his face on his album covers and reminds me of the Kipper Kids, and they’re staples of 1980′s music culture.

Maybe they were doing something right.

We all grew up on what we would now consider to be crappy music. Over time we grew our own music tastes, or latched on to what we perceived to be hip.

The music that your parents listen to today – you would’ve probably loved it when you were a kid. Almost everybody was raised on lame music, including your folks. To deny yourself the guilty pleasure of listening to that lame music once in a while is akin to trying to forget anything you found pleasurable when you were a kid, no matter how uncool it is. I’m not saying it’s ok to eat paste again.

Plus, Easy Lover is just a very well crafted pop song. Besides, maybe GTA: Vice City is making it trendy to listen to this stuff again, too.