Tame Impala leaded the new wave of neo-psychedelic that began in 2007. It began as a home recording project by singer Kevin Parker, who has always composed all of the band's music, and is currently a producer on other projects. Tame Impala escalated rapidly with the first albums 'Innerspeaker' and 'Lonerism', which easily recall some 60's and 70's psych rock records. One of the biggest referents of Tame Impala was the Swedish group Dungen, whose emergence took place only a couple of years before Tame Impala started their activity.

Personally, Tame Impala were also one of my biggest references when I started composing music, fully immersing myself in the long psych instrumentals full of guitars and synths, with vocals full of reverb and delays. It is one of those groups that arouses the curiosity of many musicians to investigate the gear they use and their rack of effects; reverbs, delays, chorus, phasers, flangers, fuzz... Tame Impala make an unparalleled display of sounds. Being one of my biggest influences, I wanted to go back to my roots and write this article.

Tame Impala's evolution from psych-rock to more electronic music is evident from their third album 'Currents'. And from this album, I wanted to deconstruct the song 'The Less I Know The Better', probably one of his best known. This song perfectly represents this evolution towards electronic music with a rigid and powerful kick-snare rhythmic base typical of this style, but without losing its psych roots, with an incredible distorted bass, and perfectly fused with ethereal voices and synths.

Listen to my full remake and also the in-depth production tutorial video below!

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The structure and chords of the song are as follows, with a tempo of 117 BPM:

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SYNTHS

The variety of sounds and synths in Tame Impala is undoubtedly one of the more interesting things.

It should be noted that the song begins filtered in bass and treble as follows, and this filter is removed just when the guitars enter after the first beat.

In this first part, you can hear this pad, which I have recreated with the TAL-U-NO and which is repeated throughout all the verses, listen to it below.

TAL-U-NO Pad

A little later, an electric piano with phaser appears, one of the most used effects by Tame Impala that gives that wave sensation to the sound. I have recreated it with Arturia's DX7. Listen to this phased and non-phased sound below to see the difference.

DX7 Electric Piano without phaser

DX7 Electric Piano with phaser

To reinforce this sound with a similar one in the choruses, I have added a rhodes style piano with the following configuration. Listen to it solo and along with the previous piano!

Stage-73 Rhodes

‍Stage-73 Rhodes and DX7

On the second chorus, I've added one more pad to fill in some background frequencies, with a slow attack. I have recreated it with Arturia's CZ with the following parameters.

CZ Pad

In the second verse and in the second chorus, there is also an additional synthesizer with strings sound, which I have recreated with Solina VST from Arturia and automating the volume in the second verse, since in the original song it disappears and reappears sometimes  Take a listen below.

Solina Strings 1

Finally, in the outro two more sounds appear playing melodies instead of chords. The first of them is another strings type sound that I have recreated again with the Solina with the following configuration.

Solina Strings 2

The second one is a bell sound that I have recreated with Ableton's glockenspiel with the following parameters. Hear it here.

Ableton Glockenspiel Bell Sound

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BASS

The bass of the song is definitely the protagonist. Therefore, getting a similar sound has been the most important piece of the puzzle. To achieve this, I have used the following chain of effects, going through Waves EKramer Bass and CLA Bass preamps that offer compression, gain and EQ. Then the Waves OneKnob Driver to give it a little more gain and distortion, very easy to use. Finally, the Soundtoys Decapitator abusing the drive to finish distorting and give that broken touch to the sound. Remember that at the beginning of the song, there is a high and low filter in the general mix that disappears when the guitar enters.

Listen to the solo bass below without the effects chain and with effects to notice the big difference.

Tame Impala Bass sound without effects

Tame Impala Bass sound with effects

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GUITAR

The guitars that appear are basically two. The first one is a very characteristic melody that appears on several occasions. I used a clean guitar sound with Guitar Rig 5 and applied a bit of reverb. Hear it here.

Guitar 1

The other guitar is even cleaner, without effects, which makes a series of barely noticeable chords in the background, providing some rhythm. Hear it here.

Guitar 2

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DRUMS

The drums is another important pillar of the song that gives that electronic touch by following the straight pattern of kick-snare with hardly any variations. To recreate it I used Addictive Drums 2 with the following sound settings. However, I later realized that the kick drums offered by this software weren't big enough, so I used a kick drum sample on another track instead of the kick drum in Addictive Drums. Giving them a bit of compression and EQ, I finally got this result. Take a listen below.

Drums sound

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VOCALS

The timbre of Kevin Parker's voice is quite high-pitched, without much presence in the middle, and can remind us of the Beatles. His voices are always full of echoes and reverbs with that psych touch. To recreate them, I have used the same chain of effects that I always use and that you will be able to consult in any of my other recent articles. But the important thing, in addition to this, has been to create 3 signal sends to 3 different delays or reverbs, which provide that ethereal sound to the voice. The sends consist of the Waves RVerb, H-Delay, and TrueVerb, with the following settings. In this way a dense sound is achieved that surrounds the entire stereo. Listen to the solo vocals below.

Vocals with effects

That was all! I've been wanting to do an article about one of my greatest references for a long time, I hope you liked it.

Remember that you can download all the synthesizer presets that I describe in this article (there are quite a few!) and all the tracks separately on my Patreon.

Thank you very much for reading and supporting me, don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel and ask me anything you want, see you in the next one!

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