Never Gonna Give You Up - Instrumental remake

Описание: Instrumental remake of Rick Astley / Stock Aitken and Waterman’s 1987 chart-topper “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

The video is essentially split into two parts, with a run though of the instruments used and then the full track, which starts at 6:40.


This has been hanging around on my hard-drive for a couple of years, so I thought I’d brush it up and upload. The remake uses all hardware instruments that are authentic to the PWL studios at the time, including the Fairlight Series III (white not grey!), TX-802, MKS-80 and MKS-50.


The Fairlight, whilst playing the authentic string, brass and guitar parts, also doubles as a replacement for the drum machines used on the original track (notably the Linn 9000 and Roland TR-7x7 machines).


The mix was done in Cubase 11, using hardware effects (Lexicon M-300L, Yamaha REV-1, Roland SDD-320 Dimension-D and Lexicon PrimeTime II) and the software UAD AMS RMX-16 for the NonLin 2 preset.

All channels are mixed using only SSL’s native channel strip, with Slate Digital’s VCC on the SSL E setting.


Thanks to YouTube user @Alex who pointed me to the correct Fairlight sounds for the guitar parts (Gtr06Pluk and Gtr07Funk). I’d always assumed that Matt Aitken had played these (as he had on a number of other SAW hits).


Lastly, my apologies for the quality of video – I had issues transferring to my version of iMovie.


Enjoy!