November 20, 2025
by GForce Software
“Everything You Do Is a Balloon” comes from Boards of Canada’s Hi Scores EP, released in 1996 before their debut album Music Has the Right to Children. It’s one of their early tracks that really established their sound: murky analog production, nostalgic vintage synths, and trip-hop drums. The main track is preceded by an almost 2-minute synth intro, then settles into a looping four-bar chord progression that continues for the rest of the song.
For this remake*, I recreated the main part of the song using several different patches, all created in GForce OB-X. Here’s my condensed remake, created without using any samples from the original track:
Pad 1
The main song opens with a drifting pad that plays slow minor third intervals. You could create this patch by tuning one oscillator up +3 semitones and playing with one note, a trick used in the ’90s and often heard in BoC’s fifth-based sounds, but in this case I just programmed the MIDI part in thirds.
To recreate the patch, I used one sawtooth and one square wave, with the saw turned down by about 6 dB to make the square wave more prominent. I set the frequency of Oscillator 2 to +0.12 semitones to add some detuned thickness to the sound. The square wave gives the sound a hollow quality, and setting the filter low (300 Hz) gives it a dark sound with no high-end.
Boards of Canada rely heavily on effects to get their hazy, ambient sound. For this patch I used OB-X’s chorus at 60% wet, delay at 50%, and reverb at 50%. There’s also an extra layer of reverb coming from a global send using Valhalla VintageVerb, which all of the synths in this remake are routed into.
Pad 2
The second pad plays a brighter, higher part with a clearer tone that still sounds vintage. I used two square waves, with Oscillator 2 pitched up an octave for brightness. There’s no filter envelope modulation, just a static filter set around 900 Hz. This keeps it soft but with a bit more brightness and space than the first pad, helping the two sounds layer together nicely.
Lead 1
There are a few different lead sounds in “Everything You Do is a Balloon”. The first one is a resonant synth that creates a light “wah” sound each time a note plays. My patch uses a single sawtooth wave with the filter dialed down to 45 Hz, resonance set high at 72%, and the envelope amount at 26%. The filter envelope has a soft 146 ms attack, long enough for the filter opening to create a clearly audible wah-like sweep on each note.
Lead 2
There’s also a detuned lead sound that comes in later in the track. This one is built from a pulse wave with 64% pulse width and a sawtooth wave detuned by +0.13 semitones. The filter is set to 98 Hz, with resonance at 55%, and there’s no filter envelope movement this time. Most of the character comes from the oscillator detuning and the slightly nasal quality of the pulse wave.
Lead 3
Later, there’s a soft melody that plays short two- and three-note phrases, using a polyphonic string-style patch. For this, I set the filter cutoff low (around 58 Hz) with high envelope modulation. The filter envelope has a long 550 ms attack and a slow 900 ms release, which softens the start and end of each note. There’s also subtle pitch vibrato from the main oscillator to give it some movement.
Putting It All Together
In the Ableton Live project, I grouped all the synth tracks together and applied a light Glue Compressor to keep things cohesive. I also used a touch of sidechain compression triggered by the kick, just enough to help the kick push through the mix slightly. I added a bass track that layers the bass notes from Pad 1. It’s a filtered unison saw patch that fades out quickly and helps fill in the low-end.
The drums were tricky to recreate, as the original likely uses a sampled drum break that hasn’t been identified. For my remake, I used two separate drum tracks. One is a snare loop that’s been high-passed around 545 Hz to create a thin sound. This tracks plays from the very beginning. The other track contains the kick, main snare, and hi-hat. This one comes in slightly later and has a gritty trip-hop feel.
Project File and Presets for Oberheim OB-X
*For educational purposes.
