‘Cause I’m a Pad

The main synth pad heard in the intro and verses is from Kevin’s trusty Roland Juno-106, a vintage synth responsible for most of Tame Impala’s synth tones. He acquired it before the recording of Lonerism and has used it frequently since. On Cause I’m a Man it is used for a subdued but rich sound that fills out the production without overpowering it. TAL U-NO-LX is my go-to plugin for Juno vibes in-the-box, and the patch can be created with a square wave with no sub oscillator. Take the frequency fader down to the 2 mark, add some resonance and then raise the env fader to 4 to create some filter movement. Set the ADSR envelope with a medium attack of 4 and a long decay of 8, leaving sustain at almost maximum. Turn on the chorus II effect to add that lush Juno sound. The patch opens up at several key points in the song, such as the end of the intro, and this effect is achieved by simply raising the freq fader. Recording from a Juno-106 you have to sit and manually raise the fader in time with the music while recording, however with TAL U-NO-LX you can simply automate the frequency parameter.