Replicating the Blade Runner Soundtrack

Ridley Scott’s 1982 Cyberpunk film-noir adaptation of the 1968 Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? changed science fiction forever. Similarly to how Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey had done previously, and how later The Matrix would, the genre could never be the same after Blade Runner.

We follow Deckard (portrayed by Harrison Ford), a Blade Runner tasked with retiring four escaped replicants, which are genetically engineered bio-robotic androids superior in strength, agility and intelligence, designed by the Tyrell Corporation to labour on other planets deemed unsafe for humans.

Scott had just come off the back of the hugely successful 1979 Alien, however Blade Runner grossed just $33.8 million (a drop in the ocean compared to other films of the same year) and the film wasn’t seen as triumphant, but its cult status has cemented its place in cinema’s history. Perhaps releasing it two weeks after Spielberg’s E.T didn’t help.

Blade Runner raises existential questions about what it is to be human and artificial intelligence, as well as drawing parallels to the Atlantic Ocean slave trade. All this is over a backdrop of a (shortsightedly near future) 2019 Los Angeles megalopolis, accompanied by a strangely optimistic Vangelis soundtrack, which is arguably as renowned as the film itself.

The all-analog sound design coupled with Vangelis’ idiosyncratic haunting harmonies has resonated through the ages. Whereas some sci fi soundtracks have dated badly, Blade Runner has aged gracefully. A musical glimpse of the dystopian foresight found in much eighties sci fi whilst sounding oddly timeless, the film’s indelible mark is echoed in the countless examples of the soundtrack being liberally sampled and re-purposed, particularly in the future-obsessed end of drum’n’bass and jungle.

Replicating The Yamaha CS-80

Vangelis’ weapon of choice is the Yamaha CS-80, an instrument almost synonymous with him. Manufactured between 1977-79, this polyphonic beast is one of the most sought-after sounds in electronics music.

The synth itself has two independent channels, each with four notes of polyphony running into its idiosyncratic voltage controlled resonant multi-mode filter. The ability to store up to twenty two presets and four storable user patches, a ribbon strip and various other modulation sources made this an extremely flexible yet powerful and expressive sounding synth. And it was famed for its unstable tuning, making it fantastic for pads, brass, strings and leads with a natural, almost living character.

Weighing in at just shy of 100 kg and incredibly hard to find, you won’t see much change from £20,000 for one of these in good condition. Thankfully, the good eggs at Arturia have developed a very convincing vst emulation, the CS-80V.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Old Hit Factory (@theoldhitfactory)

Main Titles

After we’re treated to some opening words explaining the world we’re in, the Voight-Kampff test on replicant Leon and Deckard being arrested downtown, we finally hear the main Blade Runner theme in all its glory as we pan over the futuristic Los Angeles sky-line. Let’s listen in from 1:06:

We can approximate Vangelis’s famous CS-80 sound with most other virtual analog subtractive synth. The sound is comprised of two detuned sawtooths running into a resonant low-pass filter, shaped by an envelope with slow attack and long release.

The expression on the original CS-80 comes from the aftertouch opening the filter – some MIDI keyboard, particularly bigger ones, can simulate this (some DAWs call it Channel Pressure). If you don’t have aftertouch you can use your modwheel to further open the filter. Add some plate reverb to taste. This is done with Logic’s ES2.

The first part of the cue starts around 1.29. It’s played very rubato. The below score is close to what’s there but not perfect. The main idea is in E major with a brief modulation to B major in bars 7 and 8 before resolving to E major.

The second half of the cue picks up around 2:23:

Let’s have a look at some of the tracks that have sampled the opening theme:

Blush Response

“Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation, the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil…involuntary dilation of the iris.”

Here’s the first time we hear the main Blade Runner motif reimagined in another mode, a technique used at various points in the film by Vangelis to recontextualize the theme with darker connotations:

Here’s a comparison of the first four notes from the main theme moving from the original key of E major to D Phrygian, a mode of Bb major a tritone apart from E. The semitonal movement from the Eb to D coupled with the drone underpinning gives this mode a pseudo-eastern flavour.

Below are some examples of Blush Response being sampled; often the dialogue from the scene where Deckard first meets Rachel at the Tyrell Corporation HQ is used rather than the music from this scene itself:

Rachel’s Song

A lyricless vocal-led number with some very folky chord sequences.

It includes what’s known as a tierce picarde, or a Picard Third. This is an unusual harmonic device accomplished by ending a minor chord sequence with a major chord, popular in the middle ages. It gives this piece a lute-like courtyard quality (at least to my ears!)

The absence of drums (as with much of the score) makes it a prime candidate for sampling, as you can hear below:

Love Theme

Perhaps a polarising palette of sounds to modern ears, a reverb soaked Grover Washington Jr.-styled alto sax, chorused fretless bass and a Yamaha CP-80. All the components of a Kenny G ballad.

The chord progression is quite simple. In the key of Db we have a repetition of the IV and I chords for the first eight bars. There’s then a fairly long-winded turn around moving from ii, III7, vi, viº, bVII, V7, I.

Blade Runner Blues

Outside of the main titles, this is perhaps one of the most famous cues from the film as it’s been sampled relentlessly:

Quite a simple CS-80 improvisation on just two chords, F#m and D. The string sound is likely from a Roland string synth like the VP-330. The “harmonica” sound is all F# minor blues scale on a very expressive CS-80 patch. Sound designer Paul Schilling has made an amazing free version of this for Arturia CS-80 emulation. Here’s what he has to say about the patch:

The Blade Runner Blues lead / harmonica patch is one of the most expressive patches Vangelis ever did on the CS-80. Among other things it features sensitive and fine-tuned velocity and aftertouch response, with quite different settings for each of the two synth lines. Since it is not directly derived from the CS-80’s preset buttons, as many of his other go-to patches were, and especially because it has so many expressive nuances, it is not a straightforward patch to recreate.

After many hours of fine-tuning every possible parameter on the CS-80V3 and much A/B comparison, this is the closest I have gotten. The pad background was created with the Roland VP-03 strings to emulate Vangelis’ gorgeous VP330, and some Rhodes flourishes were added.

You can buy some Vangelis/Blade Runner inspired patches for Arturia instruments by Paul here.

This piece gives the film perhaps some of its more obvious auditory film noir head-nod, and is to my knowledge the most sampled piece from the soundtrack. Let’s have a look at some examples:

Memories of Green

This song was pre-composed, from Vangelis’s 1980 album See You Later. It’s a piano piece supported by some sound design and subtle synthesiser FX.

Tales of the Future and Damask Rose

More of the soundtrack’s Middle-Eastern themes here, with pedal and quarter tone laden pseudo-Arabic lyrics. Various sources attribute the vocals to the late Demis Roussos, which is entirely plausible, however his vocals have been processed with some rudimentary pitch shifting to make them sound female-like:

Next on the OST is Damask Rose, another modal number. This time a bowed-string line is based around C Lydian, a mode of G major that has a broadly mystical quality to it, at least to Western ears. It sounds semi-improvised to me; the piece is quite short and has no real chord changes so this is entirely believable. That said, there are some harmonies that enter an octave below around the 0:50 mark so there could have been some pre-agreed motifs floating around.

Blade Runner (End Titles)

You know when I said that the soundtrack hadn’t dated badly? Well…I remember being quite disappointed when this sequenced italo bass came in over the ending credits watching the film for the first time. It actually gets a lot better as it goes on though:

I’m going to look at the main chord progression which is moved across different instruments throughout the piece but is generally the same. The main sequenced bass can be emulated with any subtractive synthesiser, particularly if it has an onboard sequencer. Thankfully the nice people at LennarDigital have done the hard work for us with Sylenth1 – patch 385 (aptly named Blade Runner) gets pretty darn close. The patch is two sawtooths separated by an octave with some envelope controlled low-pass filtering. The crux of the sound comes from the synth’s arpeggiator, found in the master FX section.

Tears in Rain

Rutger Hauer’s perishing soliloquy, colloquially known as Tears in Rain or The C-Beams Speech, is the last piece on the soundtrack:

“I’ve…seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those…moments will be lost in time, like…tears…in rain. Time…to die. I have known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I’ve been Offworld and back…frontiers! I’ve stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching the stars fight on the shoulder of Orion…I’ve felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I’ve seen it, felt it…!”

Thematically, the music ties together several previous cues including the opening titles and the love theme. The main title motif is modulated up through various keys, using a call and response between a Rhodes and the CS-80. Vangelis then slides into the love theme’s harmonies before flirting briefly with some Chariots of Fire-esque lines around the 2:00 mark:

xThe “Tears in the Rain” monologue has been sampled within an inch of its life:

Miscellaneous Sounds

The soundtrack is laden with beautifully crafted foley, spot FX and incidental music, many of which has seen itself on to other records looking to capture the atmosphere it conveys.

Post Script: Blade Runner 2049

The new film is actually quite good, and as there will be a plethora of literature cropping up about the film as a whole, I will refrain and simply discuss the soundtrack. The sounds and visual of the original picture were undeniably a selling point and I can’t think of another film where the two are more closely related or embedded in the culture surrounding the film.

Blade Runner 2049 paid homage to the visuals of the first, though lacking some of the more noir-y scenes compared to the first, instead opting for a bleaker tundra. I felt the soundtrack did the same; whereas Vangelis’ score was epic (in the truest sense of the word) at times, Blade Runner 2049 meandered around more industrial sound design. There’s a really good musical comparison between the two scores here, by James Denis Mc Glynn.

I was disappointed to learn that in the build up to production, Jóhann Jóhannsson was replaced, as I was a big of his music in particular his work on Arrival, which was incredible and one of the better contemporary sci fi soundtracks I’ve heard.

A huge thanks to film buffs Mike Hall and Daryl Bär (both of Hot Donkey) for their help with some of the fact checking about the production and release of Blade Runner.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Old Hit Factory (@theoldhitfactory)