Analog Melodic Techno - Oberheim TEO-5 / Moog Minitaur / Volca Nubass / Behringer JT Mini

Finally! After two months with the Oberheim TEO-5 sitting next to me I'm ready to feature it in a jam! I wanted to do another analog melodic techno track--I dig the genre and the last one I did was really well received. Also, I set up a second camera to get another angle to cut to. But I was in such a rush I that I didn't do a good job focusing. So enjoy a few clips of my slightly out of focus face and the tack sharp mess in the background of my studio! 😅 If I keep including the second angle in the future, I'll probably experiment a little with the positioning and also try to remember to focus the camera!

So the setup for this track: Drums are the Tekno plugin from Baby Audio, and all the instruments are sequenced in my DAW (Reaper). The single midi out on my interface is split to four channels with the CME Midi Thru 5.

The synths here are all analog. The Oberheim TEO-5 plays pads throughout the track. I'm using one of the factory presets, but this thing is a blast to sound design on. It's super intuitive, and really easy to make great sounding patches on.

The Moog Minitaur plays a huge bass sound on this track. The bassline is simple, which is common in Melodic Techno, but I've used the Minitaur software editor to take advantage of some of the cool features that aren't represented on the panel like Hard Sync for Oscillator 2 and Velocity and Key tracking for the filter. I think those features are all available via CC changes, but the editor makes them much easier to enable. I think the Minitaur sounds really good in this track, I'm super happy with how this sound came out.

The Korg Volca Nubass plays a couple of acid lines. The distortion comes from a Rat distortion pedal plugin (BX BlackDist). I do have a hardware Rat clone and it sounds great for acid, I was just too lazy to include it in the setup! Lately I've been thinking about getting something to handle acid lines that includes a built in distortion, but for now I'm sticking with the Volca.

Finally, The Behringer JT Mini handles lead duties here, playing a pluck sound through a delay plugin. It's a good sounding, small synth. I need to spend some time playing with it to see if I can unlock more variety, but for now I've used it in a couple tracks for lead plucks and it does the job well.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions about the setup. If you're new, please subscribe for more analog hardware electronic music! I don't have a standard publishing schedule but I try to upload a new track every month or two, and I change up the gear I'm using every time. I love to chat about synths, music, lighting, and who knows what else, and I'd love to connect!