Outrun

What it is

Sega put Out Run in arcades in 1986 with a Ferrari Testarossa, a coast road and a cassette player built into the cabinet so you could pick the music. Hiroshi Kawaguchi wrote Magical Sound Shower on a Yamaha YM2151, and the whole aesthetic that later attached itself to this corner of synthwave came from that machine. Where synthwave leans on a rock backbeat, outrun leans on Italo disco, so the kick goes on all four beats and stays there for six minutes. The tempo is faster, the arpeggios are busier, and the arrangement is built around a key change rather than a chorus. It is driving music in the literal sense, and the tracks are usually two or three minutes longer than they need to be, on purpose.

What it sounds like

Bright, fast and relentless. The kick is a short DMX or 909 sample with a click and no tail, because at four to the floor a long kick turns to mud. Snare is a tight electronic crack, less drowned than synthwave and higher tuned. Hats run in sixteenths, closed and metallic, with an open hat marking the end of the phrase. Over the top: a sixteenth arpeggio on a Jupiter or a JX-3P, an FM electric piano straight off a DX7, a slap bass sample, and a lead with a pitch bend at the top of every phrase. Cowbell is used without apology. There is a lot of gated reverb but it is on the toms rather than the snare.

Key elements

• Four to the floor from ItaloThe kick never leaves the beat. This is the clearest structural split between outrun and the rest of synthwave, and it comes from Italo disco rather than rock.
• Cowbell on the aThe last sixteenth of every beat, mixed forward. It gives the bar a forward lean that a straight four to the floor otherwise lacks.
• The FM leadA YM2151 or DX7 patch: two operators, a bright attack, a fast decay. It is the sound of the arcade cabinet more than any synth Roland made.
• Sixteenth arpeggiosA hold-pedal arpeggiator running the full bar with the filter opening across sixteen. Movement comes from here, not from the drums.
• Key change instead of a chorusThe whole track lifts a tone at around three minutes and stays there. It is a structural device borrowed straight from Italo twelve inches.

How to get them

• Kick shortDecay under 180ms, peak at 70Hz, click at 3kHz, high-passed at 45Hz. Anything longer smears into the next beat and takes the arpeggio with it.
• Sixteenth hats with a ladderSet the beat around 74, the and around 56, the e and a around 42, and never let them get louder than that. The velocity ladder is what stops sixteenths sounding mechanical.
• Cowbell placement808 cowbell on the a of each beat, band-passed 700Hz to 3.5kHz, sitting about 12dB under the kick. Pan it a touch off centre.
• Bass as eighths, not sixteenthsOctave-jumping eighths on a Moog patch with a 60ms decay. Sixteenths fight the arpeggio; eighths lock to the kick and leave the top half free.
• Gate the tomsSimmons toms into a 1.5 second plate gated at 180ms. Save the fill for the eight bars before the key change and use it once.
• Modulate up a toneTranspose everything, including the drums, up two semitones for the last third. Pitching the drum samples with it is the period-correct way to do it.

Reference points

Hiroshi Kawaguchi and the Sega Sound Team, Kavinsky, Miami Nights 1984, Timecop1983, Lazerhawk, Power Glove, and the Rosso Corsa catalogue. Reference points for the sound rather than endorsements.