Toto are a supergroup made up of top LA session musicians. They had a huge hand in the recording of Thriller, and the music of Human Nature was actually written by Toto’s Steve Porcaro, who performed the synths on the track alongside David Paich. It comes as little surprise that they also used the CS-80 V on their seminal album Toto IV, also released in 1982.

The Africa synth patch has been covered before, but it is super easy to set up on the CS-80 V plugin. Although it is a brass sound, and people assume the Brass presets should be used, I actually found the String 1 and String 4 combination better created the sound on the record. Set the mix fader so that the signal is about 75% voice I, then decrease the brilliance and boost the resonance. The song starts with the patch sounding quite muted, however you can hear the filter open just before the chorus, and you can also hear the resonance is cranked as there is a sweeping effect. Add a sparing amount of the chorus effect, and utilise the touch sensitivity to give different chords different volumes, making the part sound more real.

For the marimba/kalimba melody I used Arturia DX7, however the DX7 had not been released when Toto recorded Toto IV in 1982. The part originally came from a DX7 prototype called the Yamaha GS-1. Additionally, the recording is a composite of five or six different GS1 recordings! They said “If you like that sound, we can tweak it, tweak the filter, tweak everything. And that kalimba sound was something that may not have been used had it been in its original state. What you’re hearing are actually five and six individual little motifs that we tracked, little three- and one-note gamelan kind of things that when combined created this thumb piano vibe.” For the video, I faked it and used two instances of DX7, one set to the 1A 022-Marimba factory preset, and the other to an edited patch, then ran both through a chorus effect to create the illusion of many patches!