Daft Punk - Human After All | Gritty Synth Patch Remake

Remaking the gritty synth from the 2005 song "Human After All" by Daft Punk can be an exciting challenge for any synthesizer enthusiast. Here’s how you can create the "Human After All" gritty patch and play this iconic sound on most hardware or software subtractive synthesizers (Serum, Vital, Pigments, Prophet, Korg, Moog, etc). We've included the preset download directly for your convenience, but we strongly recommend you use our programming tutorial to recreate it yourself.

Original Audio

The gritty, voice-like “yeah” lead in Daft Punk’s “Human After All” is an octave-stacked sawtooth patch processed to resemble a human syllable. It opens the track and repeats as the central hook throughout the song. The timbre is buzzy and lo-fi, produced by heavy downsampling/waveshaping plus a filter sweep that creates the “yeah” inflection.

Our Remake of The Gritty Synth sound

This audio clip is how close we've matched the original tone of the gritty synth from the song "Human After All" by Daft Punk, giving you a reference point as you design your own synthesizer preset. Play it as often as you need to familiarize yourself with the nuances of the sound.

Synth Patch Programming Recipe

Getting Started

• Start by initializing your synthesizer to a plain saw with no filter, modulation or effects. For soft synths use the "init"/"default" preset or the the button to reset allx parameters to their default factory values.
• No two synths are exactly alike, so treat the values below as approximate, and use your ear.
• Percentage values (e.g. 50%) represent the relative position of a knob or slider within its full range. The full range of each parameter may differ from synth to synth, so use your ear.

Voices

• Voice Mode: Mono

Oscillator Setup

Oscillator 1

• Mix: 69%
• Wavetable: Default Saw
• Routing: Filter 1
• Transpose: -12 st
• Unison Voices: 2
• Unison Detune: 6%
• Unison Stereo Spread: 100%

Oscillator 2

• Mix: 71%
• Wavetable: Default Saw
• Routing: Filter 2
• Unison Voices: 2
• Unison Detune: 6%
• Unison Stereo Spread: 100%

Envelope Settings

Envelope 1 (Amp)

• Attack: 0 ms
• Sustain: 100%
• Release: 42 ms

Envelope 2

• Attack: 0 ms
• Decay: 554 ms
• Sustain: 0%
• Release: 37 ms

LFO Settings

LFO 1

• Mode: Envelope
• Sync: Tempo
• Tempo: 1/4
• Shape: Triangle (custom)
• Destinations:
• Distortion Filter Cutoff (amount -21%)

Effects Processing (Ordered)

Distortion

• Mix: Default (100%)
• Drive: 77%
• Filter Blend: Low Pass (0)
• Filter Cutoff: 1028.0 Hz
• Filter: Pre
• Filter Resonance: 94%
• Type: Down Sample

Modulation Matrix

• LFO 1 → Distortion Filter Cutoff -21%

Note: the patch settings may slightly differ in the Syntorial challenge.

Explore More

• Human After All (song) – Wikipedia
• Positif Synth School – Daft Punk “Human After All” sound (HelloSamples)
• How to Achieve the Human After All Sound with a Digitech Synth Wah (YouTube)
• Daft Punk – Human After All – Synth Recreation (YouTube)
• Human After All — Equipboard (gear and effects listing)

Preset Downloads

Don't want to learn synth programming now? Use our synth preset as your starting point and tweak it from there. Register an account with Audible Genius and download the presets for free for the following synths:

• Vital