Recreating The Lead Sound From Talking Head’s ‘Burning Down The House’

Sound designer Paul Schilling shared this video, which explores recreating the lead sound from Talking Head‘s Burning Down The House.

Schilling demonstrates the patch with the Sequential Prophet-5, but provides tips for recreating it on the Prophet-6, too.

Here’s what he has to say about it:

“I only mention this at the end of the video, but the way I hear it in the original, the filter in this sound is wide open. The character comes mainly from the combination of pulse waves, detuned unison, and oscillator sync. I focus mainly on the oscillator, unison and glide settings but the envelope settings are also quite simple…fast attack and release, sustain all the way up.”

Tips for creating this on a Prophet-6:

  • To get a fresh “init patch”: While holding down the PRESET button, press the WRITE button
  • To set the number of Unison voices: Hold down UNISON button, use the BANK/DECREMENT and TENS/INCREMENT buttons to set the number of voices
  • To set Unison detune amount, use the SLOP knob
  • To get Osc A to have both saw and square/pulse waves, set the SHAPE knob to 2 o’clock (halfway between saw and square shapes)

5 thoughts on “Recreating The Lead Sound From Talking Head’s ‘Burning Down The House’

  1. Nice. I could reproduce it fairly well on a Prophet 6. Should be reproduceable on many a synth though, since the filter doesn’t come into play. Unison is important though.

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