Bright Juno

The bright sequence that serves as the main melody of Eight Fifteen was possibly recorded on a Roland Juno-6, a vintage synth with a highly recognisable lush chorus effect. It is this chorusing that creates the signature brightness that can be hard to recreate on other synthesizers. In TAL U-NO-LX lower the sub oscillator volume to just below 2 to make the sound bright and not as bass-y. Set the filter with the cutoff frequency at 2 and the envelope amount to 5, which will make the envelope trigger the filter. Set the ADSR envelope with a long delay and release, around 8 and 7 respectively, which gives each note a trailing effect and makes the sequence notes bleed into each other. Lastly, activate the Chorus effect to finish off the sound.

The song’s production is drenched with delay and reverb to create a dense, lush atmosphere, and the reverb/delay sounds themselves are long, dark sounding effects. Set up two return channels in your DAW with your favourite reverb and delay patches and send all the tracks apart from the bass track to these. Usually, it’s best not to send too much signal to Return channels but for this piece the effects levels are really high. My favourite delay and reverb are SoundToys EchoBoy and ValhallaDSP VintageVerb which I’ve used for the audio tracks below, but use whichever reverb plugins are your own favourites, just remember that darker sounds work best as they’ll fit into the mix better.