Nik Kershaw - Wouldn’t It Be Good | Arp Synth Patch Remake

Remaking the arp synth from the 1984 song "Wouldn’t It Be Good" by Nik Kershaw can be an exciting challenge for any synthesizer enthusiast. Here’s how you can create the "Wouldn’t It Be Good" arp 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 blippy, falling arpeggiated synth in Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good” opens the track and returns as cascading fills between verses and transitions. It uses two square waves a fifth apart with a pronounced filter-envelope attack and high resonance that produces a squeak on downward runs. The part is widened with unison and fed to delay for echoing drops and stereo spread. On the original recording the main riff was produced using a combination of a PPG Wave 2.2 and a Yamaha DX7.

Original Performing Instrument

PPG Wave 2.2, Yamaha DX7

Our Remake of The Arp Synth sound

This audio clip is how close we've matched the original tone of the arp synth from the song "Wouldn’t It Be Good" by Nik Kershaw, 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

• Wouldn’t It Be Good (Wikipedia)
• How we made ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’ by Nik Kershaw (The Guardian)
• A Few Minutes with Nik Kershaw (Roland)
• Nik Kershaw: Recording Secrets (mu:zines / SOS Jan 86)
• Nik Kershaw – Wouldn’t It Be Good (re-creation) – Vintage Synths (YouTube)

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
• Vital

Comments

This recipe is the result of a Syntorial community preset remake request. Need support remaking this sound? Have comments?