It’s that time of year again – and we bet you must have heard Paul McCartney‘s Wonderful Christmastime at least a handful of times so far in the run-up to Christmas. He’s even been performing it recently on his current UK tour.
For the music nerds among us, however, the often-polarising festive hit offers a smorgasbord of synth-based creativity. This is the basis of Reverb Machine’s Instrumental Synth Remake, which is impressively close to the original song.
The main synth heard in the 1979 hit is the Yamaha CS-80, a large, famously expensive synth famous for its use in Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack. It sounds especially unique thanks to polyphonic aftertouch, a 2-pole filter, a ribbon controller and more esoteric features.
Reverb Machine recreated the sound using Arturia’s emulation, the CS-80 V, using LFO modulation to the filter to achieve the rhythmic effect heard in the track.
Elsewhere, an emulation of the Sequential Prophet-5 is used for the strings heard in the background of McCartney’s track, and what seems to be a Gibson Les Paul taking on guitar duties.
Reverb Machine went deep into the tutorial and published an article demonstrating how to remake it yourself. You can also download Reverb Machine’s Ableton Live project for the tutorial and get the presets used.
If you’re looking for other emulations of the Yamaha CS-80, especially in the January sales, Softube recently unveiled the Model 77 Dual Layer Synth, a virtual instrument that “perfectly captures” the sound of the iconic Japanese synth. Cherry Audio also has an iteration, the GX-80, which emulates not only the CS-80 but also the Yamaha GX-1.
Otherwise, you can pick up a bona fide hardware Yamaha CS-80. Currently, there’s one available with a $65,385 price drop on Reverb.com…But you’ll still need $52,308. That might be a little too big for a Christmas stocking…
