Money for Nothing intro

[GeorgeLG]

I have a home studio where I record rock songs as a one man band. I am an experienced guitar player with developing keyboard skills. I am currently tackling the subject song and started studying up on the hardware synths used in the intro. Apparently it was the classic 80’s synths: DX1/7, Synclavier, Jupiter 8, Prophet 5. That said I am a piano guy so far and I barely know my way around the subject. Getting up to speed on analog, subtractive, wavetable, FM, etc. I am playing around with the simple VST’s in my Studio One DAW like Mai Tai but this seems limited. Now it’s time to get some additional Software VSTs to try my hand at those ethereal sounds without too much damage to my massive VST addiction, I mean collection. Can you give me some guidance on which type of synth(s) I need and some recommendations. Thanks,

George

[madtheory]

Arturia V Collection has all of those synths. I'd start with a trawl through the original factory presets of each one. The DX-7 and Jupiter 8 might be a bit of a challenge, since as you correctly say it was a DX-1 on the record, which has different presets to the DX-7 and also has layering. You could import the DX1 presets into Arturia DX, but it won't import the layered patches, since it does not support layering. Similarly with the Jupiter 8, which also had layering (but there's no patch import anyway). Arturia want you to use Analogue Lab for layering. Which might make it difficult to hear all of the same presets in exactly the same way as Guy Fletcher might have.

You could use this site to split the song into drums, bass, vocal and "other" to make it easier to hear the parts:
https://audiostrip.co.uk/

Guy talks a bit about the song here:
http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/keybo ... raits/1651

Not super helpful, but this article is an interesting read:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... ey-nothing

[nameless wonder]

The intro guitar has been spot on recreated this year on a synth (starts at 12 seconds in):

https://youtu.be/dDV0hbXeSQQ?t=12