Tyler Gregory Okonma, better known as Tyler, the Creator, is an American rapper, musician, songwriter, record producer, actor, visual artist, designer and comedian. He rose to prominence in the early 2010s as the co-founder and de facto leader of alternative hip hop group Odd Future and has performed on and produced songs for nearly every Odd Future release.

Tyler released the albums Wolf (2013) and Cherry Bomb (2015), the latter of which was considered to be a contrast from his previous releases as he experimented with a more melody-focused and jazz-fused sound. His fourth album, Flower Boy (2017) was met with widespread acclaim. His fifth album, Igor (2019), was also acclaimed by critics, became Tyler's first number-one album on the Billboard 200, and won Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards.

In this article I am going to deconstruct the song 'See you Again' from his Flower Boy album, where Tyler shows all his skills in a very complete album, colored by synthesizers of all kinds.

Below you can see my remake video:

The structure of the song is as follows, with a beautiful second chord and a descending chromatic chords at the end:

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SYNTHS

'See You again' is mainly composed of a series of synthesizers accompanied by a piano and a very present voice.

The song begins with a piano with a bright and clear sound that I have recreated with the Arturia Piano V and the American Jazz Studio preset. This piano alternates the lower note with the higher notes to offer some additional movement as the voice develops overhead. For those who are just beginning to play the piano, this song is a good exercise to start to get practice playing a line that is quite simple as well as colorful.

This piano line is repeated throughout the verse. Check it out below.

Piano

In this line, another piano with the same configuration also appears repeating some high notes throughout the song. Check it out below.

‍Piano 2

At the end of each bar, a metallic bell sound also appears, making a brief appearance. To recreate this sound I usually use the glockenspiel preset that Ableton comes with by default with some slight adjustments. Listen to the previous pianos below with this added at the end of the first bar.

Glockenspiel and piano

From the second bar the synthesizers start to appear, starting with a pad sound that I have recreated with two layers of the TAL-U-NO, each one with a different sound to give it a little more density. You can listen to both below.

Pads TAL-U-NO

Later on, a sub-bass appears accompanied by a kick with an 808 sound. To recreate it, I used the Arturia Mini V with the following configuration to achieve a dense sub-bass punchy sound. Listen to it below.

Kickbass 808

In the final part of the verse, when the voice of Kali Uchis show up, a synthesizer with the sound of strings appears, which I usually recreate with the Solina as you have also seen in my previous articles.

Below you can listen to these strings.

Solina Strings

As you have seen, the instrumental is simpler than it seems, without the need for a guitar or bass like other songs that I have analyzed. Remember that you can find the synth presets for all the songs I've reviewed and the Ableton projects with all the tracks on my Patreon page. Dig it!

For this song, I created 4 new TAL-U-NO presets, 2 Solina V presets, 1 Piano V preset, 1 Mini V preset, and 1 Stage-76 preset.

VOCALS

In this song, I have encouraged myself to also recreate the voices, since this part is one of my favorites on the album.

The effect chain I have used is the same for all tracks, except for some final EQ setting to differentiate some voices. The effects that I have used are the Autotune Pro 8 by Antares with a slight adjustment without losing the natural character of the voice, the Virtual Mix Rack where a microphone emulation, an EQ and a compressor, the FabFilter Pro-DS to correct the pronunciation of some "s", and the FabFilter Pro-Q 3 to give a final EQ to each voice.

To get clearer and closer vocals, I have tried to record fewer vocal tracks than other tracks. As a main vocal, this time I have only recorded a single track panned to the center, and for the choruses I have recorded 2 additional tracks, each panned to one side.

At the beginning of the song, the main vocal is high-pitched while the choruses are one octave lower, while afterwards the main vocal is low and the choruses become one octave higher. Listen below as they complement each other.

Vocals

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