September 29, 2025
by Graeme Rawson
“Odd Look” is a classic synthwave track by Kavinsky, from his debut album OutRun. It was produced by SebastiAn and was later remixed with vocals by The Weeknd. Released in 2013, OutRun combined retro synth sounds with highly-stylised visuals and storytelling.
“Odd Look” is built around a gritty arpeggio and a huge layered bass sound, both of which create a dark, cinematic character. In this article, I’ll break down the main synth parts and show how to recreate them using GForce OB-X, which is based on the classic Oberheim OB-X analog polysynth.
Firstly, here’s the remake, which doesn’t use any samples from the original song:
Pluck
“Odd Look” is built around an ascending 1/16th note arpeggiator pattern, which I’ve recreated by sequencing the full chords (G♯m D♯m F♯ A♯) in Ableton Live and using OB-X’s built-in arpeggiator to do the sequencing. The chords feature dramatic octave jumps, allowing the top note to create a melodic line.
To recreate the arp’s gritty sound, both oscillators are set to pulse waves with oscillator sync on. The frequency of Oscillator B, which sets the hard sync tone, is set to +9 semitones, which creates a nice mid-range bump in the tone.
The filter cutoff is set fully closed with envelope modulation at halfway to create a plucking sound. Both the filter and amp envelopes have no sustain, with decay times of ~500ms and ~600ms respectively, resulting in a short, almost percussive character. To thicken the sound, OB-X is in Unison mode, with only four voices, and with detune set to 10%. To add some stereo width, the voice panning (found using the ADV button) is set to preset 3.
To add even more grit, I used Soundtoys Decapitator with Drive set to 6 to add saturation, and EQed the track to cut bass and add high-end. There’s also some compression and reverb from Valhalla VintageVerb.
Bass
The bass sound in “Odd Look” is huge and completely fills out the mix. It’s a layered sound, with a distorted unison patch spread across the stereo field while a slightly quieter vowel-like sound sits in the centre.
To recreate the unison layer in OB-X, set to Unison mode with all 16 voices enabled and detune pushed up to 25%. This makes the patch extremely thick, as you effectively get 32 detuned oscillators. For a wide stereo image, I used Voice Panning preset 4, which is the widest setting.
The two oscillators are both sawtooth waves, with one tuned an octave above the other. The filter has a distinct sweeping sound, so crank the resonance to around 66% and apply some envelope movement with the modulation knob, using a long decay time (around 5 seconds). Leave the release time low to keep space between short notes and give the sound a clipped, slightly funky feel.
I used EQ to heavily shape the unison bass, cutting below 200Hz, dipping around 560Hz, and boosting 3.37kHz. The 200Hz cut leaves space in the low-end, which the second layer helps to fill. I also added saturation from Decapitator, and widened the sound further using iZotope’s free Ozone Imager 2 plugin.
For the second layer, I used the Beer Bass preset in impOSCar3, which uses the filter separation feature to create a raspy, throat-like character. I EQed out some high-end to help it sit better in the mix, but otherwise kept it lower in level than the OB-X patch. This layer fills in the low-end content lost in the unison bass.
Make It Pump
The song has a strong French House influence. One of the biggest keys to that sound is a big four-to-the-floor kick with all of the other tracks sidechained to it to create a distinct pumping effect. I usually apply sidechaining to Group channels to keep things simple. In this case, I used deeper sidechaining on the layered bass group than the other synths.
Sidechaining lets the kick cut through the mix clearly, as the other elements momentarily duck out of the way when the kick hits, which is especially important for bass, which often shares competing low-end frequencies. Listen to these audio clips and notice how much more the kick cuts through the second version:
