Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Computer Music

01 Register your FileSilo account and log in. Even if you have a subscriber ID, you’ll still have to unlock each mag separately or migrate your old Vault account (see step 3) 02 Head back to the Computer Musicpage (filesilo.co.uk/computermusic) and choose an issue to unlock. You’ll need to answer one question to prove you’ve purchased the issue 03 You can migrate your old Vault account over to FileSilo to retain the issues you’ve added – head to filesilo.co.uk/vault and enter your Vault email address. Reset your password via the email you receive, and log in…

MAX/MSP “My desert island software choice! In fact, there are many Loscil records that wouldn’t exist without Max/MSP. There was a time when all my composition and arrangement was done using custom-built Max sequencers. Perhaps growing up playing Lego influenced me, but after being exposed to Max in university, I couldn’t stop building things in it. Since Max for Live came out, I don’t work with standalone Max as much, but I still turn to it for problem-solving. My most recent patch is a custom Max for Live device to send OSC from Ableton to Resolume for live video fades and triggers. It continues to be a very important part of my working process.” ABLETON LIVE “Ableton Live is the centre of my studio these days. For composition and live…

Pink Floyd – On The Run Probably the most emulated Synthi patch ever: a chugging sequence that propels this eerie instrumental from the band’s masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon. Though all members were credited as playing the VCS3 on the sleeve, David Gilmour said he actually came up with the eight-note motif on the Synthi AKS. Once he’d tapped in the notes, he cranked the tempo to a dizzying clip, over which various effects were layered. Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene (Pt 1) We could have just said Oxygene or Equinoxe or mentioned any of a number of Jarre’s classic cosmic compositions – after all, Synthis have been a mainstay of his career. His first synthesiser was a VCS3, which was used to great effect on his career-making…

Sound designers are always seeking fresh sounds, and love to get excited about new techniques and ways to craft original creations. Though using ready-rolled samples in their entirety is perfectly acceptable, of course, this’ll only take your creativity so far… So if you’re looking to give your sound design muscles a good workout, why not use unrelated source material to form the basis of something completely new? By recruiting the myriad of audio-processing tools lying within your DAW and plugins folder, almost anything is possible – as you’re about to discover! So for this issue’s Studio Strategies tutorial and its accompanying video, I’m going to use small parts of an existing vocal acapella sample to create a trio of instruments: a pad, lead and bass. After showing you how to…

Powered by the same engine as IK Multimedia’s SampleTank 3 ROMpler, Syntronik (VST/AU/AAX/standalone) is an epic-scale compilation of over 2000 sounds built on samples of 38 classic synths and divided up into 17 instrument categories. In our review of the full commercial version (8/10, 249), we praised Syntronik as “a quick, easy and convincingly analogue-sounding synthesiser compendium that delivers a voluminous and versatile library of highly customisable preset sounds.” Last year’s release of this analogue-emulating workstation came alongside a cut-down free version. That’s not the most unusual thing in the world, of course, but Syntronik Free is still mightily impressive due to the sheer amount of stuff you get access to compared to the full enchiladae. In Syntronik Free, you still get 17 ‘instruments’ to choose from, some of them…

When we reviewed the original Hive ( 221, 10/10) we described it as a potential Sylenth1 killer – a slick, easy-to-use virtual analogue synth that struck a great balance between depth and accessibility. Four years later, much has changed. LennarDigital’s softsynth is no longer the ‘must-have VST’ benchmark it once was and, with the recent addition of a wavetable oscillator, Hive isn’t just a virtual analogue synth anymore. The wavetable oscillators aren’t actually a new addition for version 2, however, as they were added to Hive 1.2 at the tail end of 2018. Because of this, the new version feels, in some areas, less significant than the ‘point’ update that preceded it – which is a little odd. This update does refine the wavetable capabilities, though, as well as adding…

With the Synth and Sampler layers presenting plenty of options for tonal and temporal editing, potentially going well above ‘bass’ territory, SubLab’s trademarked X-Sub engine not only ensures that the sub itself stays locked, but also that it translates on laptops, phones and other speakers incapable of handling low-frequency content. Aiming to be a more accurate and convenient alternative to psychoacoustic bass enhancers, X-Sub synthesises a fundamental sub note (a gently distorted sine wave) that tracks the MIDI note input but stays within the 30-65Hz (C0-B1) range, and a series of harmonics that can define an audible note from C1-B3 and extend above that at decreasing amplitude. The level of the fundamental is controlled by the Lows slider, while the Harmonics handle sweeps horizontally to balance odd and even harmonics,…

We were utterly enraptured by Psychic Modulation’s ‘VHS-style’ EchoMelt effect in cm 248’s review, scoring it 10/10. VectoMelt is to all intents and purposes ‘EchoMelt 3’, despite the original still being available to buy for £49. In a nutshell, VectoMelt is a multieffects plugin (VST/AU) geared up for decidedly retro and organic-sounding pitch modulation, delays and distortion. Its three audio signal processors comprise Chorus, Equalizer and Echo, each with its own dry/wet Mix control. The first is a luscious two-voice chorus with voice separation and widening, while the EQ offers three bands (down from five in EchoMelt for unknown reasons, but now with resonant LP/HP filters) of frequency shaping, plus saturation and overdrive. The Echo module is the star of the show: a feedback delay and pitchshifter with stereo and…

Zero-G BeatMaster £56 This groove-manipulating Kontakt 5 instrument comprises 14 NKIs, drawing on 4,000 pre-sliced drum and percussion loops, in categories like Techno, Urban, Drum & Bass and more. Loop and slice selection, playback and repitching is controlled by clearly colour-coded keyswitches, and various parameters can be edited on a per-slice basis, including sound selection and timestretch: serious experimental potential. Coming from Zero-G, it’s no surprise that the loops are excellent, and despite its semi-intuitive interface, ineffective groove quantise maps, and waveforms that don’t update to represent slice changes, Beat Master is a powerful tool at a very fair price. timespace.com 8/100 UNDRGRND Sounds Breaks Techno £35 Fusing the driving momentum of techno with the sonic, dynamic and temporal styling of breakbeat and its derivatives, this 1GB, 132bpm…

HYBRID SYNTHS Our synths have been created by the best software developers in the world to bring you a suite of sound-making tools for all music production scenarios u-he Zebra CM Blendableoscillatorwaveforms Super-programmable step LFOs Slick delay, reverb and chorus Original synth designed just for CM AU/VST, 32-/64-bit KV331AudioSynthMasterCM Dualwavescanningoscillators Multimode filter and built-in effects FM/AM synthesis modes Based on SynthMaster 2.5 AU/VST, 32-/64-bit Synapse Audio Dune CM VAandwavetableoscillators Powerful per-voice modulation 12-slot modulation matrix Based on the full version of Dune AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit u-he Bazille CM Patchablemodularsynthesiser Sequencer and Mapping Generator Audio-rate modulation, Fractalizer Huge how-to guide in 232 AU/VST 32-/64-bit Dmitry Sches Thorn CM Dualspectraloscillators Analogue and Harmonic Filters Spectral and real-time effects Glitch Sequencer and Arpeggiator VST/VST3/AU/AAX, 32-/64-bit Psychic Modulation Phonec CM…

So how does your DAW know where to look for your plugins? Actually, it might not. Mac users have it easy, as there are OS-specified folders into which plugins are installed. These folders can be found by going to your Library folder (if you can’t find it, go to the Finder’s Go menu, hold Alt, and a Library option should appear). Find the Audio directory, and then the Plug-Ins folder within. There you will find more folders still. One will be labelled Components – this is where your AU plugins reside. Other folders will be found alongside it for VST and VST3 plugins. If you’re a Pro Tools user, you’ll find your plugins in an Avid or Digidesign folder. If your installers don’t automatically install the plugins into the proper…

AUDIOSPILLAGE ELEKTROID While few plugins are going to be as fully-kitted out as the Machinedrum, some offer a similar combination of synthesis and sampling. Elektroid is one example, with four different synthesis models and drag-and-drop sample support, plus a built-in sequencer and effects. Their DrumSpillage 2 offers more models, but ditches the sampling. audiospillage.com ROB PAPEN PUNCH Again, this isn’t going to replace Elektron’s beatbox classic, but it provides a healthy selection of sampled sounds and combines them with some rather powerful drum-based synthesis. User sample support is also here. Additionally, there’s a slightly unusual layered sequencer and a comprehensive effects section to spice things up. robpapen.com/punch IZOTOPE BREAKTWEAKER The most expensive of our group, BreakTweaker is the one that arguably comes closest in spirit to the power of the…

HANDS- ON MIDI Watch our step-by-step guides and master today’s new breed of keyboards and controllers Read the full article on p22 1 Setting up Zones on the Novation SL MkIII 4 NI Komplete Kontrol S61 and Ableton Live 8 Getting started with NI Maschine Mikro Mk3 9 Hands-on with Ableton Push 2 and Live 10.1 13 MPE with ROLI Seaboard Block and Equator 17 Setting up and using the Sensel Morph cm Producer Masterclass METRIK DnB maven Tom Mundell walks you through the making of Hackers Note: this video is only available using the link on page 45 Read the full article on p44 OUTLAW CM See how to use WA Production’s gain-rider plugin – free this issue Read the full article on p54 cm/experts Our resident music production…

cm Tell us how FAW came to be. GB “We created FAW about ten years ago to experiment and develop future-facing synths. Then, the trend was to emulate older synths. We felt that this approach was limiting and we were interested in pushing virtual instruments into a new space.” cm Your Circle and Circle² synths are known for their ease of use. How do you approach that? GB “A lot of effort goes into it. We keep the musician in mind and view things from that perspective from start to finish. If a feature or control feels awkward to use, we’ll keep working on it until it feels right.” cm Describe the concept and realisation behind SubLab… GB “SubLab is designed for 808 style sub-bass that you hear mostly in…

VCV Rack 1.0 One of the best ever free virtual synths finally earns its 1.0 badge, bringing lots of great features with it It’s hard to overstate just how great a gift VCV Rack is to electronic musicians everywhere. Free and open source, it’s available for Mac, Windows and Linux users. Taking the form of a Eurorack-styled modular synthesiser system, VCV Rack offers a wide variety of free and paid-for native and third-party modules from the developer’s website, all accessed from within the rack itself. VCV Rack has been available in beta form for some time, and we’ve covered it extensively in the pages of this magazine, all the while watching it grow in power and flexibility with each new update. Nevertheless, we weren’t quite prepared for the massive leap…

Ableton Probability Pack Bundled with Live 10 Suite, these five Max for Live step sequencers excel at creative MIDI randomisation ableton.com Xfer Records Cthulhu A wicked MIDI-generating plugin, Cthulhu makes conjuring up instant chords and melodies a snap xferrecords.com Sugar Bytes Thesys Thesys blows away bog-standard arpeggiators, placing live performance at the forefront sugar-bytes.de Kirnu Cream A kick-ass arpeggiator with a mind-boggling array of MIDI-generating and manipulation systems onboard kirnuarp.com HY-Plugins HY-SeqCollection2 Six sequencer engines, MIDI recording, randomisation and more from the creators of last issue’s cm Plugin hy-plugins.com AutoTonic Map any scale to your keyboard’s white keys, and call up custom keyswitches on the fly using your black keys autotonic.net Sonic Faction Tricky Traps A pack of 16 Max for Live “creative contraptions” featuring five esoteric MIDI effects: 4Play,…

As the weapon of choice for countless dubstep, DnB and bass producers over the last decade, NI’s Massive is considered the most iconic software synth of all time, packaging once-complex digital wavetable synthesis in a user-friendly, VA-style interface that set new GUI design standards. However, after being overtaken in popularity by Xfer Records’ Serum, expectations for a ‘Massive v2’ couldn’t have been higher. We got our first glimpse of the interface in September 2018; then, in March came an entire screenshot; and then two sonic demos in a blog post. Now Massive X has firmly arrived, and although its shortcomings have been widely discussed, it’s still a worthy entrant into today’s roster of ‘powersynths’. So let’s delve into the synth’s multitude of oscillators by building a handful of presets, ranging…

Major chords – we all love them, and even now they’re still the cornerstone of most modern pop records. However, the fact can’t be denied that they do have a certain nursery rhyme-ness to them; a kind of childish quality that sometimes proves quite hard to get away from when you’re trying to come up with a credible tune. So what can we do to make major chords a bit more relevant? One approach is to totally revoice them – take the normal ‘root-third-fifth’ formula that makes up your common or garden major triad and explode it, rearranging the notes within it into a totally different order, and adding a secret special ingredient. Well, in fact, it’s not going to be secret much longer, as I’m about to tell you…

“Everybody goes on about how brilliant Kraftwerk were. Yes, but they were only brilliant because they were rich!” Although Martyn Ware allows himself a mischievous chuckle, he is trying to make a serious point. “If you’ve got a studio that’s wall-to-wall synths and Bob Moog is custom-building stuff for you… yes, you still need a good idea, but the chances of you turning that idea into a great album have been greatly increased. “When I was a teenager, living in a two-up-two-down in Sheffield, with an outside toilet, my chances of owning a Moog [the cost of the original Moog Modular system ran into tens of thousands of dollars] were zero. Less than zero. Wasn’t going to happen. “But companies like Roland and Korg could see where things were headed.…

After what feels like forever, the follow-up to the most influential, ubiquitous softsynth ever made is here. Since Massive launched in 2007, playing a key role in the development of bass music, numerous high-profile rivals have equalled and even bettered it, chief among them Xfer Records’ more modernistic Serum. Time for a sequel, then: Massive X – an entirely new synth with its own features and sound, that coexists with the still-available Massive. All the Massive Like Massive, Massive X (VST/AU/AAX) is a wavetable synth at heart, but with two oscillators, rather than Massive’s three. Those oscillators boast many more wavetables, though – more than 170, including cleaned-up ‘remasters’ of Massive’s best-loved shapes (Crusher, Scrapyard, etc), alongside a ton of new ones – not to mention ten Wavetable Modes (Massive…

Hive 2 adds several handy and inspirational new modulation tools to the synth’s already well-stocked toolkit. The most interesting of these is the Shape Sequencer. A sort of mini step sequencer, this lets you arrange ‘blocks’ of modulation in order to create complex patterns. The sequencer comprises eight ‘steps’, each with its own editor for designing a segment of the overall modulation curve. These blocks can then be engaged/disengaged across a four-track grid, where each track has its own controls for speed, playback direction and modulation routing. It looks simple at first glance, but can quickly become very complex. Hive 2 also adds a pair of Function Generators. These are envelope-like modulators inspired by those found in the Eurorack realm and Buchlainspired ‘West Coast’ synths. Each has attack and decay…

When they’re not building groovy studio furniture, fast-rising American wunderkinds Output also develop some very serious plugins. Their latest offering, Portal (VST/AU/AAX), is a granular-based multieffect with a focus on deep grain manipulation and modulation, both automated and manually controlled. Grain surgery Like all Output plugins, Portal is blessed with an absolutely stunning GUI – clean, succinct and beautifully animated. The Main page is essentially a performance control interface, in which that sexy XY pad moves the two assignable Macro controllers next to it (which we’ll come back to) in tandem; the Reverse switch instantly kicks the output into reverse playback; and faders adjust input, output and global dry/wet mix levels, the last lockable for consistency when auditioning presets (of which there are over 250, incidentally). At the top of…

The sounds of frequency modulation synthesis are synonymous with twinkly glassiness, modern nastiness and overt dissonance – and that’s exactly what you’ll find in this month’s exclusive sample pack! Whether you’re after BPMcategorised loops or key-labelled one-shots, we’ve got everything you need to get the sounds of FM synths without requiring a degree in synth programming. Grab the full pack from the print edition’s cover DVD, or download the zip from FileSilo! > Step by step Inside this month’s FM Toolkit sample pack 1 Crack open the pack’s Cyclick folder and delve into the four BPM-labelled folders (120, 125, 128 and 132bpm), where you’ll find twinkly synth loops, organ lines, twangy bass grooves and bell riffs. As ever, the pack is royalty free, so don’t feel bad for using a…

Plugins Install and use Outlaw CM, plus our entire cm Plugins collection Tutorial Videos See and hear exactly how it’s done with our expert video guides Samples Download this month’s exclusive packs and power up your tunes Tutorial Files Follow along in your DAW with WAVs, project files, MIDI clips and more Log in at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic Register this issue for instant access to our plugins, samples, videos and files on your desktop computer Free for digital readers, too! Read on your tablet, download on your computer…

Unfiltered Audio Lion State-of-the-art synthesis meets modular FX processing Unfiltered Audio have consistently garnered high review scores in with their gradually expanding range of powerful and innovative plugin effects, the most recent being the fabulous BYOME(9/10, 264). Their latest release, however, sees the company making the move into the virtual instrument space: Lion is a two-oscillator synth featuring a modular effects row lifted from BYOME, a freeform modulation setup and more, all presented in a single-screen interface. As well as the expected subtractive analogue emulation, Lion’s two oscillators offer a further 25 modal algorithms, including FM, Additive, Superoscs, Chaos, Noise, Wavefolding and more, for a wide range of raw tones. The algorithms have been designed with modulation in mind, and Unfiltered say that Lion’s Drift and Unison features make it…

Longtime readers will likely be aware of LinPlug, the now defunct purveyor of some of the finest virtual instruments ever conceived. Old timers may have even used Alpha CM, our own version of the company’s popular virtual analogue synthesiser. Lesser known will be the GakStoar Alpha. This primitive-looking VA was the ancestor of Alpha CM and shared with it a comprehensive collection of analogue waveforms, squelchy dual filters (one for each oscillator) and even an early version of LinPlug’s mod matrix. You won’t find a copy of this old chestnut unless you happen to have old CM cover discs lying around! bit.ly/lingakalp…

Computer-based music production and the MIDI keyboard are a marriage made in heaven. That familiar layout of black and white keys still tops the charts when it comes to entering musical notes and programming tunes into our digital boxes. This popularity comes as no real surprise, considering that the keyboard adopts a layout that musicians have been familiar with for over 700 years. However, technology has now progressed to the point that several viable alternative methods of entering note and performance data are emerging. With this in mind, the time is surely right to explore a few of the alternatives to the good old ’board, and focus on a few of the more specialist features of some controllers that, as well as featuring a conventional piano-style keyboard layout, also possess…

These days, the automatic slicing of loops to a series of sampler cells and mapping of the those cells to individual MIDI notes is something most DAWs are capable of doing, and the usefulness of this feature when it comes to rearranging grooves can’t be understated. In this month’s tutorial, though, I’m going to show you a less flashy, more intuitive and ‘tactile’ way of cutting up beats to achieve similar – but not necessarily the same – results. Quite simply, we’re going to be taking a sampled loop, chopping it up manually in the arrange page, then rearranging and processing the slices to turn it into something new. Why, you might ask, would you bother to do this, when you could just ‘Slice to MIDI’ in the DAW, as…

“I’ve been mentoring doctorate students on the Media and Arts Technology course at Queen Mary University and there’s a lot of talk about interaction. The convergence of different worlds… sound, light, AR, VR, XR. Again, there’s much to applaud, but I still think we’re some way short of the day when people will sit in a concert hall with a device on their head that allows them to listen to and watch augmented reality. At the moment, people are still hungry for communal experiences. They want to join together… they don’t want to be separated. “I just got hold of the Roland System-8, which is the latest hybrid of virtual and real synths – the Plug-Out system. It’s triggering a lot of memories. Reminding me of what I loved about…

A sound design playground, Massive X’s audio signal Routing page takes the system of the same name in the original Massive to a whole new level. The oscillators, Noise generators, Auxiliary PM input, Filter FM, filter, Insert FX, two freely assignable Mod sources and Feedback in and out points are all represented as modules, and connecting them up is as simple as dragging from outputs (on the right of each module) to inputs (on the left), with no limit as to the number of connections made to/from each. At the right hand end of the signal flow, the master FX adhere to three fixed routings of their own (X>Y>Z; X+Y>Z; X+Y+Z), and each has its own discrete input for concluding your chains, alongside a direct output that bypasses them entirely.…

We always appreciate a focused plugin, and SubLab (VST/AU/AAX), from the makers of the innovative Circle2 (8/10, 220), is about as task-orientated as they come, being dedicated entirely to the creation of sub-bass tones for hip-hop, trap and the like. A hybrid instrument, it enables a simple, analogue-style synth layer and the specialised X-Sub synth (see X-Sub focus) to be blended with an edited kick drum (or any other sound if you’re feeling adventurous) sample, before filtering and processing are brought into play, for the kind of floor-shaking tones so essential to today’s urban genres. In the ’Lab With its flat, attractively colour-coded interface (green for the Synth layer, orange for the Sampler and purple for the X-Sub), SubLab is easy to navigate and gives great visual feedback, from the…

AudioThing Springs €69 Web audiothing.net Format PC/Mac, VST/AU/AAX The latest virtual effect from Carlo Castellano is a combination spring reverb and Baxandall EQ, originally planned as two separate plugins but aggregated when it became apparent what a good fit each was with the other. Real spring reverbs are often shaped using guitar amp tone stacks, after all. Springs features an impressive eight different vintage spring reverb emulations, created using a combination of modelling and convolution, and including a six-spring GBS pipe from the 70s, the Roland Space Echo reverb tank, a late-60s Japanese 2-spring, and a modern Eurorack 3-spring. No control is given over the spring model itself in terms of tension, etc, but there are Short and Long Decay options, a knob for introducing background noise (constantly or…

Though there are a wide variety of DAWs, each with its own unique interface, there are similarities when it comes to loading up and using plugins, and most stick to one of two approaches. The first – as seen in Steinberg’s Cubase, Apple’s Logic, and Cakewalk’s Sonar – involves insert slots on a track or mixer channel. These are used in the same way as an insert effect would be used on a hardware mixer. In other words, the effect is placed ‘in line’ on that mixer or track channel. Plugins might be loaded in by use of a dropdown menu tree or right-clicking in the effects slot. Clicking in the insert or effects slot in some DAWs – Cockos’ Reaper, for instance – will reveal a dedicated browser from…

Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 In the 1980s, drum machines were ubiquitous. Initially available only to the moneyed few, as the cost of computer tech plummeted, so did the price of drum machines new and used, allowing access to all. Eventually, sequencer-equipped sample-playback ‘workstations’ would push the drum machine out of the limelight, and by the 1990s, they were seen as little more than metronomes and practice aids for would-be guitar heroes. It was, therefore, something of a shock when up-and-coming Swedish outfit Elektron followed up their popular SidStation synthesiser with a dedicated – and decidedly electronic – drum machine in 2001. Dubbed the Machinedrum SPS-1, it would reshape what a modern beatbox could be, even while wearing its influences proudly on its brushed aluminium sleeve. With the Machinedrum, the emphasis was…