The 7:50 to Langwies
By NickLong on March 14, 2026 9:55 pm
The name of the track refers to the fact that it uses 7 Roland D-50s and Langwies begins with La for the LA Synthesis tech the D-50 was based on as well as being home to a famous alpine train.
The concept for the track is to be the soundtrack to a late 80's or early 90's TV show. Something weird like Twin Peaks (which used the D-50 extensively).
The challenges for this track were to use only the Roland D-50 plugin, change time signature and use some weird scales and key changes.
As a result it starts in 6/8 and then switches to 4/4 but with a rhythm which uses groups of threes to make it less obvious that it's transitioned (similar to the rhythm of "Clocks by Coldplay"). It then switches into a more obvious 4/4 section before going back to the A section in 6/8 to finish.
Musically I went with A double harmonic major otherwise called the Byzantine scale for the A section which I'd never used before. It's also commonly called the "Dick Dale" scale as it's the one used in Misirlou.
That lets you use some very weird chord progressions in this case A, A#, Dm, C#m for the A section
For the B section I went to Dm so I could put an A minor in and then finally shifted to A Dorian so I could put a D major in for LOLs.
Getting from A Dorian in 4/4 to 6/8 A major is a bit of a task so I smashed it through with a secondary dominant via E7 which kind of works, but could probably be smoother if I was better at music theory.
In terms of sounds it's all D-50 plugins running under Bitwig with the other Roland 80's legend the 808 providing drums (A few DMX samples slipped in for some beef in places). Other than that there is minimal FX and processing as the D-50 is famously record ready out of the box. I made a couple of musical jokes by using the ultra cliche "Soundtrack" patch on the intro and "Digital Native Dance" as the outtro.
I'm surprisingly pleased with how it sounds given the limitations in sound design, but I don't think piling all the D-50s together is ideal as it builds up too much of the washy digital artifact character of the D-50 meaning it was hard to get the more epic B section sounding punchy. It did give me a great respect for the D-50 as a truly amazing sounding early digital synth (and surprisingly friendly to program and understand) and I'll definitely be using it in future when I want that lovely crunchy digital glitchy crunchy wash, but maybe just one or two.
Audio works licensed by author under:
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