# How to recreate synth sound from Best Friends by the weeknd?



## Rigbone (Jul 9, 2022)

There's a sound that's been bugging me from Best Friends on the weeknds Dawn FM album. It's a bass sound that starts off the track. I've been trying to recreate it but don't even know where to start from. Can anyone give me an idea of how to recreate it and what effects to use? An exact replica might be asking for too much 😅 but if anyone can do it then it'll be appreciated. I'm pretty new to synths.

Here's the song:


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## richmwhitfield (Jul 10, 2022)

Not sure how close I can get to achieving it, but which synths do you have? If I have the same ones and get close I can give you the preset.


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## Rigbone (Jul 10, 2022)

richmwhitfield said:


> Not sure how close I can get to achieving it, but which synths do you have? If I have the same ones and get close I can give you the preset.


I have the arturia v collection. That'll be prophet, juno, etc. I also have massive and zebra. You can also just make a preset with the synths you have and tell me how you did it in details here if possible. Thanks in advance.


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## richmwhitfield (Jul 10, 2022)

So I had a go at it and didn't get very close. To me it's based around a brass stab - if you can find better samples (KSHMR has some great ones in his packs) then you should be able to get very close.

I used Rapid - I can give you the preset but you didn't mention that you had it, sorry. I will try in Pigments, but the brass samples I used (from Freesound) were not the best and didn't have much bite to them. I would have used a sample library, or one from KSHMR's latest pack, but not sure about the legalities of sharing presets that include a bounced sample of them.


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## R. Naroth (Jul 10, 2022)

@Rigbone, try this in Zebra. Not a replica but close.


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## richmwhitfield (Jul 11, 2022)

Here's a Pigments preset - again not especially close 😬 but maybe you can take it further/closer.


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## richmwhitfield (Jul 11, 2022)

I also created a Vital preset but then realised you will need to be a Pro licence holder as I made it in the pre release version - 1.5.1 - here it is anyway. 

Not sure when the official 1.5 update will be out for everyone - it has been in pre release for a quite a while now, so hopefully not too much longer.


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## Rigbone (Jul 11, 2022)

Thanks all 🙏🏾


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## Pier (Jul 11, 2022)

Of course there's a lot of processing, but I think what makes that sound so special is the heavy use of an all-pass filter (usually called a phaser).

I'd dare say they probably used KiloHearts's Disperser which for some years was super popular.

See this video for some examples of what it does:


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## Rigbone (Jul 11, 2022)

Pier said:


> Of course there's a lot of processing, but I think what makes that sound so special is the heavy use of an all-pass filter (usually called a phaser).
> 
> I'd dare say they probably used KiloHearts's Disperser which for some years was super popular.
> 
> See this video for some examples of what it does:



This is great. I'll look into it. Thanks a lot 🙏🏾


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