How to make Duran Duran 'Save A Prayer' with DRC

While researching for these mini-pieces on the featured tunes and sounds from the DRC Sound Design Tutorial series, we come across some interesting (and not so interesting!)facts about the tracks. This week’s interesting fact (judge for yourself just how interesting you think it is!) is that the chorus of Duran Duran’s ‘Save A Prayer’ is actually based on the chorus of the folk classic ‘If you could read my mind’ by Gordon Lightfoot. (If you haven’t heard of Gordon Lightfoot, that fact will be slightly less amazing, but you should definitely look up ‘If you could read my mind’ on Spotify, Tidal or your music streaming platform of choice.)

‘Save A Prayer’ was released 9th August 1982 (when most of Team Imaginando were still babies!) and was Duran Duran’s sixth single release, taken from their second studio album ‘Rio’. In 1982, music videos were often either epic or exotic, or both! The official music video for ‘Save A Prayer’ certainly checks the location box, being filmed as it was in Sri Lanka, religious temples and elephants a-plenty. The elephants provided a memorable shoot for the band as during filming, the elephant carrying Roger Taylor decided to answer the mating call of a nearby female, and proceeded to charge down the hill in pursuit of said mate.

It’s the track’s arpeggio, digi-pipe and strings that we’re in love with this week though, as Lucas recreates them using everyone’s favourite digital analog emulation poly-synth DRC!

Click here to download the Ableton Live project file.

Saving a polyphonic prayer,
Team Imaginando

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