Making Synthwave Music With Music Technology
Jess Blaise Ward · Focal Press eBooks · 2025
This chapter explores the online synthwave community’s engagements with music production and technology, particularly in using virtual synthesizers, hardware synthesizers and plugin emulations of legacy synthesizers (e.g. from the 1970s–1990s) for creating the style. The chapter establishes (through virtual ethnography, artist interviews, musicological and production analysis and participant–observer audio experiments) key considerations in the synthwave creative process and ultimately illustrates recognised synthwave style parameters. A further case study analysis of a track associated with synthwave is included (‘The Comeback Kid’ [2016]). Ultimately, the chapter outlines how the community engages with music and creative technologies to privilege 1980s culture and emulate sonic markers from this decade, as well as how they convey nostalgia through music made with ‘retro’ synths (1970–1990). I also illustrate how community spaces and resources support the continued creation and dissemination of synthwave music.