The Synth Sounds of Talk Talk's "It's My Life"

Let's be honest—many of you who recognize this song will know it more from No Doubt's Grammy-nominated 2003 cover than Talk Talk's 1984 original. Not that the original release performed poorly. It crested the Top 50 in North American and European charts, even hitting #1 on the U.S. dance chart.

But though No Doubt's cover and music video certainly made a big impression on MTV and pop radio in the early noughts, in this latest installment of our The Synth Sounds Of… series, we're looking at the emotive synth parts of Talk Talk's original.

Originally created with a Roland Jupiter-8 and perhaps an Oberheim OB-X, but in the video above, William Kurk uses the Roland Juno-106 to recreate the song's main brass part and secondary brass pad.

For the song's verse section, William pivots to the Arturia Fairlight CMI V plugin to emulate a choir sound Talk Talk created with an original Fairlight, one of the world's first samplers and digital audio workstations. Paired with another brass sound from the Juno-106 and some delicate pitch-bending, the verse is complete.

To recreate these sounds yourself with our provided audio files, download the sessions for Ableton Live 10, Logic Pro X, and Pro Tools below. You can also hear our demo track, created with the Arturia CMI V, Arturia DX7 V, and DiscoDSP OB-Xd presets, as well as the Roland Cloud Juno-106 preset from the Roland Cloud Instrument Suite.

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Use the Provided Audio Files in These Sessions
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