Kanye West - Mercy ft. Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz | Lead Synth Patch Remake

Remaking the lead synth from the 2012 song "Mercy ft. Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz" by Kanye West can be an exciting challenge for any synthesizer enthusiast. Here’s how you can create the "Mercy ft. Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz" lead 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 bell-like 4-note motif in Kanye West’s “Mercy” is a chiming sample stack loop that sits behind the beat throughout the entire track, serving as the song’s harmonic anchor. The motif repeats as a four-note anthem and is audible from the opening bars and during the chorus and backing beds. That sound is a stack of instrumental samples as revealed by Anthony Kilhoffer, but it can be approximated with a synth. We recreate it here as a synth patch with a pair of saws one octave apart, rounded with a low pass filter, and combining Unison, PWM, and Chorus to get just the right tone and smear. A little reverb for ambience.

Original Performing Instrument

A stack of heavily processed intrumental samples (Flute, Piano)

Our Remake of The Lead Synth sound

This audio clip is how close we've matched the original tone of the lead synth from the song "Mercy ft. Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz" by Kanye West, 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 all 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.

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

Explore More

• The Making Of Kanye West’s “MERCY” With Anthony Kilhoffer (YouTube)
• Mercy (Kanye West song) – Wikipedia

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:

• Primer, our free synthesizer VST