Research Information - 'Making Synthwave' (2025)

I completed my PhD in June 2023, which is titled 'An
ethnographic study of the online synthwave
community, a community of practice – by a composer
and performer'. I transformed this into a book in 2025,
titled: 'Making Synthwave: How an online music
community invented a genre'.

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It is available to purchase from Routledge directly
(the publisher - with free shipping worldwide), 
as well as many other online stores.

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Front Cover by David O (@davidostudio)

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Audio Materials from
'Making Synthwave'

 

Composition Works

• Strangers in the Dark (2019)

• Killing Dreams (2019)

• Futures Promise (2021)

• Ragequit (2023)

• Resistance Song (2024)

Style Parameter Audio Experiments

• 1b Drone Bass

• 2a Plucked Arp

• 2b Brass Arp

• 3a Detuned Saw Lead

• 4b Brass Pad

• [from Chapter 1 Part 1] JBW A Real Hero – Bass and Pad

• [from Chapter 1 Part 1] JBW Nightcall
  – Arp, Verse Drone Bass, Chorus Drone Bass, Chorus Chords, Piano

• SP1a Ostinati Bass SERUM

• SP1a Ostinati Bass

• SP1b Drone Synth SERUM

• SP2a Plucked Arp SERUM

• SP2b Brass Arp SERUM

• SP3b Bell Lead

• SP4a Lush Pad SERUM

• SP4a Lush Pad Strings

• SP4c Brass Stabs

• SP5 Gated Snare Drums

Remix

• ‘The Drone Racing League’ (2019) Gunship Remix by Jessica Blaise Ward and Jan Hajsen

Collaborative Works

• Replicant (2019)

• World's Without (2019)

• Fluorescent Light (2022)

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Some songs are released and are clickable (see above). Style Parameter Audio Experiments are available to view from this Google Drive.

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Conferences​

• SYNTHposium 2025 (Leeds) Making synthwave: using virtual synths to reimagine sounds of the 1980s October 2025 https://synthresearch.org/symposium/

• Retrofuturism Symposium (Online) The Online Synthwave Community: Vicarious Nostalgia for the 1980s and Beyond August 2025 https://musicalretrofuturism.wordpress.com/abstracts-2025/

• SMPR - Leeds Beckett - September 2024. https://musicproductionresearch.org/leeds-2024

• SEM 69th Annual Meeting Society of Ethnomusicology - October 2024.
  https://whova.com/embedded/event/gmn-pFaIW5yt1iyJjdqOnJm3-QNfVlqejdExHma3gBY%3D/?refer=undefined&day=3

• National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia - November 2024
  https://msa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/MSA24-Conference_Program-1.pdf

• BFE/RMA Research Student’s Conference, hosted by Cardiff University January 2024. Synthwave Identities: Tensions of gender and subgenre in the online synthwave community. https://bitly.ws/39KZS

• Internet Musicking: Popular Music and Online Cultures - Hosted by the University College Cork, Ireland. 'Metalheads in the online synthwave community' . <https://www.internetmusicking.com>

• Artistic Research: Various Fields, Approaches, Experiences - International Conference hosted by Jazeps Vitols Latvian Academy of Music, Riga, Latvia. 'A Hybrid Approach: Virtual Fieldwork and Composition as a Methodological Tool'. <https://www.lma.lv/en/actual-3/international-conference-on-artistic-research-various-fields-approaches-experiences>
  <https://www.jvlma.lv/data/foto/brosura-makslu-konf-web.pdf> 

• Gender and Age/Aging in Popular Culture - Interdisciplinary Online Symposium hosted by University of Graz, Austria - June 2021 <https://gendersymposium2021.wordpress.com/> ‘Millennial Generational Alienation and Synthwave Identities’.

• Leeds Beckett Virtual Postgraduate Research Conference – June 2021 <https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/the-graduate-school/community/postgraduate-research-society/> ‘Female Topliners: Popwave and Gendered Practices of Synthwave’.

• BFE/RMA Student Conference, hosted by Milton Keynes University <https://fass.open.ac.uk/music/events/bfe-rma-research-students-conference-2020> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I6t6J0j2tHx6OyjlDGvYrKu9iSwj4NsY/view> ‘Style and digital music genres: Combining music style parameters with the ‘paramusical’

• Punk/Noise: The 6th Punk Scholars Network Conference hosted by Newcastle University <https://www.punkscholarsnetwork.com/newcastle-conference-2019> <https://www.dropbox.com/s/1qam5n97fsvsqnb/PSN2019%20Newcastle%20Conference%20Programme.pdf?dl=0> ‘Who remembers post-punk women?’

• BFE/RMA Student Conference, hosted by Sheffield Hallam <https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/music/research/conferences/bfe_2019> <https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.824453!/file/BFE_2019_Programme.pdf> ‘Synthwave Music and Catalysts in the Creative Process’ 
   

Publications

• Who remembers post-punk women? (2019) Intellect Journal of Punk and Post-Punk

• An ethnographic study of the online synthwave community, a community of practice – by a composer and performer (2023). PhD. Leeds Beckett University. Access by clicking here.

• Making Synthwave: How an online music community invented a genre (2025)

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Unless otherwise noted, content on this website (and inclusive of the linked Google Drive) © 2017 by Jessica Blaise Ward is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.