Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2018 i Future Music

Decksaver launch new ‘Soft-Fit’ synth covers While protective covers aren't the most exciting purchase, it’s certainly not be a bad idea to protect the look of your lovely new analogue beast from dirt and scratches. Help is at hand in the form of UK brand Decksaver’s new Soft-Fit range of synth cases, which use specially placed foam inserts to protect wood-panelled synths, cushioning contact between the protective cover and the synth itself. The first run of cases are designed to fit Novation Peak and Dave Smith Instruments Prophet-6, OB-6 and Tempest, with more to come later in the year. Head to www.decksaver.com to take a look at their full range of protective cases.…

CLASSIC ALBUM Lack of Afro Press On Freestyle, 2007 Words by Roy Spencer Before the five studio albums, sample packs, tours, and music for films and worldwide ad campaigns, Lack of Afro was just another struggling funky breaks producer. Back in the mid-noughties the man behind the moniker, Adam Gibbons, was just a young buck, working for Sky TV in London. After his usual 12-hour shift he’d ride the train home, bumping beats and scribbling down mixing comments in his little notebook. Then it was back to the bedroom studio to fire up his monolithic Dell laptop, boot up his pirated software, and work until the wee hours of the morning, fine-tuning his tracks. “I’d do that, every day, for about seven or eight months,” says Gibbons, shaking his head…

Matt Karmil Will Smalltown Supersound Dynamic UK producer Matt Karmil drops his wonderfully distinctive and diverse fourth studio album, Will. From his base in Cologne, Karmil has created a record that ebbs and flows with deft subtlety and skilful arrangement. Combining light and dark, heavy and soft, Will is a complex interaction of contradictions and intricacies that lay the foundations for an intimate and immersive soundscape. Fusing together his love of graceful, minimal techno beats and grainy textures, Karmil taps into an otherworldly and futuristic aesthetic. He masterfully blends an undercurrent of deep, bass-driven energy and momentum with well-like chambers of meditative reverb and delay. Shimmering synths, glowing melodies and dull, soft tones drift over the top of that simmering bottom end that slowly bristles amid potent rhythms and fluid,…

Feature | The Essential Guide to Vocal Processing THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO VOCAL PROCESSING Let’s get creative with vocals! Whether you’re recording your own, mixing other people’s or working with acappellas, we’ve got you covered. © Don Arnold / Contributor Which part of a production do you most regularly find yourself humming under your breath? Which part have you spent most time poring over to extract significance and meaning? Which part keeps you coming back to a favourite track time and again? Unless you’re someone who exclusively listens to instrumental music, the answer to all of the questions above, more often than not, is likely to be the vocal part. Vocals form the most immediate bond between ourselves and the music we seek out. Lyrical content can offer us an…

The Essential Guide To Vocal Processing | Feature Getting creative with chops and one-shot effects In this shamelessly pop walk-through, we’ll see how decorating lead vocal lines with supporting tricks and one-note harmonies can add real detail to your mixes. Synths, basslines and programmed drums all accompany the lead vocal which is already benefiting from a vocal chain and some basic volume automation. What we want to do now is to add some one-off touches to the vocal to make its performance that little bit less predictable. We chop this time-stretched file to create a rhythm, using fade ins/outs of 2ms on each slice to ensure we don’t hear a digital pop. We then use pan automation to send the second region left and the third one right, to create…

Feature The Essential Guide to Vocal Processing The hidden power of parallel Here we’re unearthing the biggest secret of the mix engineer whenever more vocal power is required. Let’s enter the world of multiple parallel compression treatments In this verse section of the song, we’ve already got a lead vocal channel strip which is providing a decent balance and tone to the backing track. But the vocal feels a little lacking in strength and body – it would benefit from some reinforcement. We send the lead vocal to a new auxiliary bus, setting up UAD’s 1176 Rev E compressor. We set high Input and low Output producing a hard compression treatment, with Ratio set at 8:1. This provides a lot of extra power. This auxiliary’s return level is set at -6dB.…

Producer’s Guide To | Xfer Serum An overview of Xfer Serum Why has Serum been at the top of the synth tree for so long? Its excellent sound quality and sonic flexibility are likely to blame, but that doesn’t mean the synth is especially hard to use or understand – in fact, it’s pretty simple. Serum has four main ‘tabs’ in all: Osc, FX, Matrix and Global. These only change the top half of the display – remaining consistently visible are the bottom-half elements: all modulators, voicing controls, and global performance controls such as portamento and pitchbend. And there’s still enough room down there for the obligatory keyboard at the bottom of the interface. The Osc tab is where you’ll most likely spend the majority of your programming time. In…

Producer’s Guide To Xfer Serum Going deeper with Serum’s oscillators Once you’ve mastered the basics of wavetable movement, it’s time to get a closer look at the architecture behind those enviable sonics 01 > Let’s load another wavetable – go for Digital, and choose Prime. This is a more consistent sound – instead of stepping through waves, the movement is smoother and more evolving. 02 > Another way to mess with the wave is using the Warp control. Here you select between ways to skew and bend the waveform, inclusing assymetry, mirroring, syncing, remapping and amplitude/ frequency modulation driven from oscillator B. 03 > Phase dictates at which point in the cycle playback will actually start, and the Random control widens the scope of where this will actually happen. Tuning is…

In The Studio With | Mumdance Mumdance Danny Turner meets Jack Adams (aka Mumdance), an artist who has brought a fresh perspective to UK grime and rave through his minimalist yet contemporary approach, based on the principles of musique concrète © Kevin Lake Recognition came early for grime protagonist Jack Adams. Better known as Mumdance, he was inaugurated into Diplo’s stable 10 years ago via his bootleg remix of the Black Lips’ Veni Vedi Vici feat. MC Jammer. However, as an artist, he was attracted to the ‘awkward’ rather than the mainstream, which left Adams feeling peripheral to the testosterone-driven club environment and remix culture. During a three-year sabbatical, Adams worked on creating a more authentic sound – resulting in the adoption of specific vintage gear, computer-centric production tools…

In The Studio With | Daniel Avery Daniel Avery From his ‘indie’ roots, Daniel Avery has morphed into one of the UK’s finest proponents of forward-thinking late-night techno. Si Truss quizzes him about his ambient-inflected new LP, Song For Alpha © Will Ireland Having grown up in Bournemouth, Daniel Avery moved to London in the mid-’00s and was drawn into the club scene via eclectic ‘indie’ nights like Bugged Out! and Erol Alkan’s Trash parties. The electro-influence of these nights eventually brought Avery into the world of dance music proper, DJing and producing under the name Stopmakingme, and eventually landing a residency at London’s Fabric. In 2012, Avery reverted to working under his own name, signifying a move toward a more hard-hitting, machine-driven techno sound, solidified on his excellent debut…

Wide Delay Treatments Keeping source sounds panned centrally but creating effects solutions which are wide can be a great way to add detail and excitement to a mix Sparse mixes often provide the best platform to showcase effects setups which are wide. In this example, we’ve built a solid platform for a track with a prominent kick drum and bassline combination which are only supported by some high end tizz, in the form of ride cymbal and hi-hat parts. As a result, the synth blast we’re using every couple of bars has a chance to shine with a wide stereo delay treatment. There are two important mix considerations in this example, both of which are created from wanting the ‘side’ delay taps to differ from the source sound triggering them.…

REVIEWS Elektron Digitone £699 Hot on the heels of the Digitakt comes the FM-based Digitone. Dan ‘JD73’ Goldman takes it on a test drive… CONTACT WHO: Elektron TEL: +46 317437440 WEB: www.elektron.se KEY FEATURES Eight voice polyphony/eight FM algorithms, base-width filter and multimode filter, two assignable LFOs, four synth/four MIDI tracks, chorus, delay and reverb FX, overdrive master effect, Elektron sequencer. I/O: MIDI In/Out/Thru with DIN Sync out. DIMENSIONS: 215 x 176 x 63mm WEIGHT: 1.49kg THE PROS & CONS + Well built, portable. Seamless integration between sequencer and sound engine Can also be a great FM MIDI module or a powerful external MIDI sequencer Clear yet fat sound quality. Can process other external gear via inputs - Elektron sequencer and file system are tricky (if new to it) No individual…

Teenage Engineering PO KO! & PO Speak £85 each Teenage’s latest Pocket Operators step things up with sampling and vocal synthesis capabilities. Si Truss gets grooving… KO! and Speak are the eight and ninth additions to Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator range, joining last year’s PO-32 Tonic to complete the ‘metal’ series, the unifying characteristic of which is the addition of a small mic to the top of each unit. While the first two batches of POs were effectively sound players – pre-loaded with samples of synth tones – this latest trio use their upgraded hardware to add an extra layer of flexibility to the PO formula. However, where the Tonic used its mic purely for data transfer – allowing preset import and sharing – these two new instruments both use…

Modor Formant Filter £265 From the fiery pits of Mordor – sorry, Belgium – comes this Eurorack module based on Modor’s NF-1 formant filter M odor, a new synth developer from Belgium have taken the formant filter from their flagship NF-1 synth and produced their first Eurorack module. What’s a formant? The dictionary defines it as ‘each of several prominent bands of frequency that determine the phonetic quality of a vowel’. Basically, a formant filter simulates the human vocal system. This effect is created by four-band pass filters working in parallel; the frequency of these bands can be adjusted with the four knobs (though this is defined as an ‘expert level feature’, for the beginner, presets are available). What sets the Modor filter apart from other quad-bandpass filters is the…

RME Fireface UFX+ £2418 and ARC USB remote £116 With up to 94 inputs and outputs, is this the best connected interface on the planet? Stuart Bruce plugs in Over the past 20 years RME have consistently produced equipment that has won them the respect of audio professionals in music, broadcast and film with their innovative designs, excellent value for money and incredible reliability. The UFX+ is the latest in a long line of products which incorporate a high level of connectivity both in the analogue and digital worlds and will seamlessly provide enormous flexibility when recording across multiple formats. Starting with the basics, the UFX+ will connect to a computer either via Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 or USB 2.0. It can run up to 94 simultaneous inputs and outputs (at…

Tour Bonus Content FILESILO Your bonus content… filesilo.co.uk/futuremusic This issue’s bonus samples, videos, audio and bonus archive samples are all available to access via FileSilo. At the link above, log in or register, then unlock over 12GB of goodies! SAMPLE PACKS Exclusive new sounds with every issue GROOVE CRIMINALS PRESENT… MPC Madness We break out Akai’s iconic beatmaker for this crunchy pack of hits, loops, stabs and one shots CYCLICK SAMPLES PRESENT… Instant Hooks Need a catchy lick for your next hit? Look no further than these synth, guitar and key earworms PLUS ACCESS THE FM SAMPLE ARCHIVE! Download the ‘Sample Archive’ packs and get over 10GB of loops, hits and instruments from our back catalogue of high-quality and royalty-free samples. From vintage synths and beats to esoteric sounds and…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… DJ Shadow Endtroducing The ultimate samplers’ album, and an almighty influence on the Lack of Afro production sound. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Organ Donor, The Number Song, Building Steam with a Grain of Salt The New Mastersounds Keb Darge Presents: The New Mastersounds Legendary Brit funk outfit. LoA looped up their drums, and poached their bandleader for his own debut. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Drop It Down, GT, Hot Dog Lack of Afro Analogue Soul Part one of a series of Loopmasters sample packs from LoA, chock full of funky breaks, soulful grooves, and next-level sampler ammo. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Drum Loops, Bass Loops, Percussion Loops Small Faces Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake Ah, so this is where Steve Marriott’s vocals on Touch…

Brawther Transient States Negentropy French house producer Brawther celebrates a decade of releases with his first studio album, the highly atmospheric and assured Transient States. Released on his own brand new label, Negentropy, the album showcases the typically deep, diverse and dubby sound of this much-loved DJ and producer. Encompassing the open-mindedness of its creator, the record straddles jazz, breakbeat, house, techno, downbeat and dub with total freedom. Woozing synths, lush pads, warm melodies and deep, grumbling bass join lucid grooves and intoxicating rhythms to create a soundscape as restless as it is immersive. Brimming with self-expression, Brawther takes us on an expansive journey through his influences, while finding the hazy, dub-heavy energy of his DJ performances. Like his club sets, this record has a natural, impulsive flow. Working from…

Feature | The Essential Guide To Vocal Processing Bring vocal mixing to life with automation As we’re seeing in the walkthroughs, effect chains are the creative source for many a vocal treatment. Remarkable things can be done with tools to shape reverbs, dynamics and tone and sometimes, core settings can work well from the start of a track to the end. Beyond the basic parameter balances you configure to get a vocal sounding good, however, automation will nearly always be needed for both ‘remedial requirements’ and more creative moments. It’s a common misconception that compression is a volume-balancing tool. Yes, compressors do adjust dynamics, to bring the volume discrepancy between the loudest moments in a performance closer to the quietest, but they don’t automatically sense the overall volume of a…

Working with one-shot vocal samples A little can go a long way. Want proof? Here, a single one-shot vocal sample is used in three different guises to enhance this basic track Sometimes vocal samples have already been layered with other musical parts, or treated to rafts of effects to turn original performances into lush, developed parts. But sometimes that material can be readily accessed, in uncooked form, to be used with our own techniques and tricks. In this musical example, we’re taking that as far as we can by restricting ourselves to using a single one-shot vocal sample from Native Instruments’ Battery 4. We’re using three versions of it, each shaped by envelopes, time-stretching or pitch-offsets, while also building unique effects chains for each iteration of the sound. Added to…

In The Studio With | Scuba Scuba Paul Rose rests Scuba in favour of his SCB moniker for the bristling techno tour de force that is new album, Caibu. Hamish Mackintosh spoke with the electronic maverick © Will Ireland Something of a dance music renaissance man, Paul Rose, burst on to the dubstep scene as Scuba in 2008 with incendiary debut album, A Mutual Antipathy, launched via his own, Hotflush Recordings imprint. A slew of well received albums and EPs later, Rose has evolved beyond easy categorisation as witnessed on excellent new Caibu, released under his club-focused SCB moniker, which highlights his deftness as a producer and purveyor of atmospheric electronics. Album opener, Test Tubes, crackles into life and sets the scene for a sumptuous feast of reverbdrenched techno, compulsive…

Serum’s wavetable oscillators: the basics The most immediately recognisable thing about Serum is its wavetable oscillators. Here’s a quick guide to getting up and running with them Wavetable synthesis isn’t a new concept – it’s been around since the ’80s when Wolfgang Palm released the PPG Wave synth. Back then, digital technology was still new and exciting, and Palm’s breakthrough idea was to load as oscillators not just one sound wave, but a collection of them. Known as a wavetable, this collection of waves could then be modulated to produce a collection of sounds that had been hitherto impossible with analogue technology. While synth fashions have come and gone, Palm’s wavetable synthesis has remained a firm favourite way of generating sounds, with supersynths like Massive – and, indeed, Serum –…

MODULAR MONTHLY MSTRKRFT Masters of Trash The electro duo joined WMD to bring us the TRSHMSTR. Let’s check it out Since 2009, MSTRKRFT have been blending a unique, trashy, almost punk set of distorted synth tones with hard hitting electro drums – a sound that, in crude terms, was akin to Daft Punk on acid through a tube amp. They’ve now teamed up with WMD to create the Eurorack module TRSHMSTR, based on that same unique blend of synth tones. MSTRKRFT’s favoured process is to run synths through wah pedals then into a distortion pedal, or vice versa (usually a Dunlop Cry Baby and Ibanez Tube Screamer). Working with WMD, they brought that tone shaping into modular form and heavily expanded on it. TRSHMSTR is great for driven and moving…

TOOLKIT VIDEO ON FILESILO Stereo Width For this month’s Toolkit, we’re focusing on mix width, making your tracks as ‘widescreen’ as possible No-one wants to go to the cinema and find that their film is on a screen that’s little better than the flat screen TV and home cinema speaker system at their mate’s house. But what is it about that scenario which disappoints? After all, we’re watching the same film with the same critically acclaimed performances. We’re still seeing the groundbreaking CGI effects we heard so much about and, unless we’re really unlucky, we’ll still be listening to the music and sound design on a 5.1 surround system. The disappointment surely stems from the fact that we like our artistic experiences to be as fully immersive as possible. We…

QUICK TIPS 1 Low frequency content such as basslines and kick drums almost always work best either in mono or with an incredibly narrow stereo footprint. Most of what we’re exploring through this Toolkit only applies to frequencies from the mid-range upwards. 2 Auto-panners are key to making mixes sound wider. If there’s a sound in your track which would benefit from moving (either smoothly, or jumping) from side to side, great. Even a single musical element moving in a mix whose other sounds are all fixed in position can help to make a difference to our perception of the mix width. 3 Explore mid/side (M/S) effects. These let you independently process the middle signal (which is mono-compatible, with equal content in both channels) and the side signal (the ‘difference’…

THE ALTERNATIVES Yamaha Reface DX £241 Yamaha’s re-entry into the FM market in 2015. It features a three-octave keyboard and four-op, eight-note polyphonic FM engine with four touch sliders to alter key parameters in real time. uk.yamaha.com Yamaha DX200 £200+ used Ahead of its time, coupling a six-op FM engine to AWM2 sampled sounds/filters/FX and a four-track, 16-step sequencer with motion-type sequencing. Sounds great; editing limited. Ebay, Gumtree Korg Volca FM £209 Perhaps Digitone’s closest relation, this is super-portable, has a 16-step sequencer with motion sequencing, an arpeggiator, six operators/32 algorithms and a chorus effect. www.korg.com…

THE ALTERNATIVES Korg Volca Sample £130 Korg’s portable sample sequencer is a little less fiddly than the PO-33. It can’t sample directly though, and uses an accompanying app to get sounds in/out. www.korg.com Roland Boutique VP-03 £275 One of the more often overlooked additions to Roland’s Boutique range, this compact vocoder is a great source of vintage-style vocal synthesis and manipulation. www.roland.com…

Bitwig Studio 2.3 $169 (as a 12-month upgrade plan) A year into Bitwig’s upgrade plan model, version 2 gets some significant new tools. Si Truss checks them out… When Bitwig Studio hit version 2 last year, it adopted a new ‘upgrade plan’ pricing scheme, whereby users purchasing or upgrading the DAW are awarded 12 months’ worth of free upgrades, but then need to buy into a further 12 month plan for access to further updates. It’s an interesting idea, but one that lives or dies on how generous Bitwig Studio are with updates. Since 2’s launch, Bitwig have offered three ‘point’ updates, each with at least a couple of new tools, and a chunk of sound pack content. Version 2.1 added an amp sim and new MIDI tools, while 2.2…

THE ALTERNATIVES Lynx Aurora £3800 This is a stunning 1U AD/DA convertor with optional USB/Thunderbolt/Pro Tools connectivity and the ability to record up to 32 channels onto a micro SD card. But 16 channels will cost £3800… www.lynxstudio.com Focusrite Clarett 8PreX Thunderbolt £1000 If you’re looking for something simpler without the MADI connectivity, the Clarett range have great pres, ADAT connectivity and eight input/outputs. Well worth a look. www.focusrite.com Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt £2349 With its recent major redesign the new thunderbolt is a very powerful contender for the best personal convertor on the market. Again, without the MADI connectivity but it’s very fully featured and sounds great. apogeedigital.com…

DOUBLE UP ON THE KICK “When making a kick drum on a modular synth using an oscillator, send your trigger to two envelopes. Set one envelope to a linear response and send it to the VCA CV in. Set the second envelope to an exponential response and send it to the 1v/oct on the oscillator. That second envelope makes all the difference in the world and adds a ton of punch (lasers optional). Thanks to Bon Harris for this pro tip!” Start anywhere “If you’re not feeling particularly inspired and can’t seem to get started, just sit down and make a sound, any sound, without any expectation. This usually leads me to some kind of an idea.” Step away “Whether you’re tweaking a modular patch or deep in plugin world,…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Goldmund Occasus Western Vinyl Pennsylvanian composer and multi-instrumentalist Keith Kenniff has sat at the intersection of ambient, electronic and modern classical music for the last decade. His music has been consistently lush, timeless and diverse no matter which route he has taken. Under his Goldmund alias, the American has become one of the preeminent composers of minimal piano music. On his ninth album as Goldmund, Occasus, Kenniff finds a sound so full of beauty and emotion that you take it in predominantly through feeling it instead of hearing it. At times forlorn, at others proud, bereft, peaceful, anxious or full of longing, Occasus is undeniably affecting as it stretches across the breadth of intense emotions. These feelings are conjured with only stripped back and minimal instruments,…

RECOMMENDED Booka Shade Cut The Strings Blaufield The Berlin-based duo of Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier return to their polished, melodic and emotive strain of house after the more experimental leaning last LP, Galvany Street. Cut The Strings features an atmospheric, densely-layered soundscape built around dancefloor rhythms and lush, warm melodies. Jangling keys, bright melodies, dubby synth stabs and elongated, emotive pads hover above deep, driving bass, shuffling rhythms and big, focused beats. Classic vocals and delicate piano licks add to the depth and size of the sound. Treading that line between visceral club music and cerebral home listening with consummate ease, Booka Shade infuse Cut The Strings with enough energy and grit to propel the record forward with momentum, but also with enough musicality and creativity to spin your…

Building a vocal chain In this three-step walk-through, let’s configure a plugin chain to balance the lead vocal to its backing track Let’s be clear, no two vocal performances are the same. The individuality of your singer, your lyrics, your studio, your choice of microphone and a million other factors, large and small, will have combined to produce the vocal part which now sits on the arrange page in front of you. And now begins the creative task of mixing the vocal, to blend it with the other parts in your arrangement, giving it pride of place in the mix but not at the expense of the rest of your arrangement. So, even though your vocal will be rich in originality, similar considerations always surface at the mix stage, including…

The Essential Guide to Vocal Processing | Feature Eight great vocal mics Deciding on a mic to use for vocal recording can be confusing. Options range from under £100 to over £1000, but it’s not always a case that the most expensive option is the most suitable. Here are eight options at different price points... Shure SM58 £92 Type: Dynamic Polar pattern: Cardioid 1 Probably the most common and well known vocal mic, this affordable mic is a regular feature of the live music scene, especially for vocals. This is due to its near-indestructible construction, internal pop filter and resistance to feedback. It’s also a good beginners’ mic for home recordists, especially male rock singers, though it lacks a little in the top end, rolling off at 15kHz. Sontronics Solo…

DOS & DON’Ts > DO: Check any recorded vocals through a frequency analyser when you’re EQing. You might find there are bass frequencies present you just don’t need (in which case use a low shelf or high-pass filter) or identify exactly which frequencies are producing sibilance. Using your ears is best but double-check with your eyes too. > DON’T: Automatically over-tune your vocals. We’ve heard extreme hyper-tuned vocal treatments so many times before and while there might well be a time and place for them, don’t make them a default choice. > DO: Think carefully if you’re writing lyrics. Make your songs mean something and try to avoid resorting to clichés. > DON’T: Make your vocals too loud. It’s easy to set vocal levels higher than they need to be.…

Balancing backing and lead vocals In this three-step walkthrough we’ll learn how to put backing vocals in their place; creating effects chain for them to play a truly supporting role Backing vocals provide a wonderful way of supporting a lead vocal, so it’s no wonder that across multiple musical genres, they remain popular. How to make backing vocals feel ‘supportive’ is a key consideration for any producer or mix engineer, as mixes rarely sound good when they compete for mix space with the lead vocal. As we’ll see below, tone-shaping is crucial when sculpting backing vocals, with a ‘thinner’ sound than the lead vocal often producing the best results. However, we’ll also see that recording each part at least twice, so that BVs can be panned to create wide, stereo…

THE TRACK Alexander O’Neal Criticize 3.0 Resurrection Records, 2017 © Adam Gasson Soul legend Alexander O’Neal’s Hearsay was a defining moment in ’80s R&B: its cutting-edge electronic production courtesy of Jam & Lewis epitomised the electronic funk sound or the era and foreshadowed new jack swing’s arrival at the end of the decade. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the record’s release, the now UK-based Alexander re-recorded the album as Hearsay 30, and Future Music took a trip to his new home of Manchester to find out how he created a new version of the classic Criticize with producer Alexander Johnstone. Why revisit Hearsay now? AON: “My manager came up with the idea of doing Hearsay again. I was kind of apprehensive, like ‘I don’t know about that!’ He said…

PRODUCER’S GUIDE Xfer Serum In this Producer’s Guide series, we’ve been so busy showing you how to use the latest and greatest kit that we’ve sometimes been guilty of overlooking the classics. It’s fair to say Xfer Records’ Serum has now achieved legendary synth status, and mastering this plugin synth is essential for any producer… but not everyone’s up to speed yet. If you’ve been living under a rock for four years, Serum is a two-oscillator wavetable synth with a raft of effects and comprehensive modulation options cribbed from Xfer’s LFOTool plugin. While mainly the brainchild of Xfer’s main man Steve Duda, Serum was also constructed with the help of notable gurus like Deadmau5, OhmForce’s Laurent de Soras, filter king Andrew Simper, and Sonic Charge’s Magnus Lidstrom. In this article…

QUICK TIPS 1 Even though modulation is easy in Serum, don’t forget to ‘enter the matrix’ for more sources. You can enter amount values in semitones here by typing, eg, ‘12st’. 2 Shift-Alt-Click on the keyboard to generate a sustained note – it’s perfect for getting things going when designing patches. 3 Make sure you’ve got the latest copy of Serum from Xfer’s website so you don’t lose out on functions like PNG import. 4 Serum only has four LFOs. No, wait – if you’ve assigned four, a fifth will appear, then a sixth, seventh and eighth! 5 If you’re partial to Serum’s effects processors, check in your Xfer account – there’s also a copy of Serum FX, an effects version of the plugin, replete with its own modulators. Woohoo!…

Tutorial | Modular Monthly Let’s get filthy with the TRSHMSTR TRSHMSTR is anything but clean so embrace the dirt and dive into the saturated tones 01 > Patch a saw wave into the filter’s input and take the filter output to your mixer or soundcard. The filter is tuned for wah sounds and you can mimic the rocking of your foot on a pedal by patching an LFO into the freq CV input. 02 > Channel your inner MSTRKRFT and patch a full voice into the filter for processing. The Flavor switch on the filter lets you adjust the clipping from soft asymmetrical clipping, heavy diode clipping and also resonant overdrive. Experiment to find the right one for your patch. 03 > While the drive section is loosely based on…

FMCHOICE Six plugins to make your mixes super-stereo iZotope Ozone Imager | Free Using technology that’s central to iZotope’s Ozone Mastering tools, this Imager lets you play with stereo width with minimum fuss. Oh, did we mention that it’s free to download? Waves S1 Stereo Imager | $49 Harnesses powerful processing via minimal controllers. Width controls overall stereo image, but you can also tweak low frequency content’s width, and atone for asymmetrical signals. UAD Precision K-Stereo Ambience Recovery | £149 Made with renowned ME Bob Katz, this plugin helps greatly at final production stage. Its USP is in enhancing source sound ambience. SoundToys Microshift | $129 Uses two key widening components – detune and short delay. By offsetting pitch/time by tiny amounts to one side of a channel, perceived width…

How can you make your drums sound wider? Programming drums from multiple sources is great, just don’t pile them up in the middle of your mix 01 Here we’re starting with a laid-back groove constructed from a number of elements. There are two kicks, hat and tambourine tracks and multiple parts – snares and claps – providing the backbeat. A bassline and Rhodes complete the line-up. Each part is programmed on its own track, with no pan dial offsets. 02 While each sound playing back centrally provides lots of weight, the stereo image is unremarkable at the moment. We can think of sounds in pairs here and we start with the hats and tambourine, panning these -25 and +25 to begin to open out the top end. 03 This immediately…

SERIES CHARACTERISTICS As with all the previous iterations, both KO! and Speak are rough-and-ready, battery-powered hardware units with a footprint not much bigger than a credit card. Both pack a built-in speaker, along with a mini-jack input – used for pulse sync and audio – and a mini-jack output. The POs are fairly robust, despite their vulnerable-looking exposed innards, but each can be spruced up and protected with the addition of the silicone ‘pro’ case, available from TE for an additional £25. Both have screens, albeit offering a fairly limited amount of parameter feedback. They’re mostly dedicated to cartoon-like graphics (plus an alarm clock). Both POs have 16-step sequencers, which can chain patterns (up to 128 for the KO!, and 64 for Speak). Both lack sound mute/solo though, which is…

WS Audio Trueno USB synth £140 Housed in a USB drive and controlled via software, Trueno is the world’s smallest analogue synth. Si Truss sizes it up The very existence of Trueno is impressive. It claims to be – to our knowledge accurately – the smallest analogue synth on the market, housed in a slightly above-average sized USB dongle. The hardware itself offers no controls, so all interaction is handled by an accompanying software interface. Inside that diminutive package are housed three multi-mode analogue/ digital oscillators and an analogue filter, which are accompanied by digital modulation, amp and effects sections. An onboard 44.1KHz 24-bit ADC handles communication between the two elements. The oscillators can produce analogue saw, triangle and square waves – Osc 1 has an adjustable pulse width for…

HEDD Audio Type 20 £1,499 each Can these German-designed offerings compete in the three-way nearfield market? Joe Rossitter dives in HEDD first As a newcomer to the studio monitor marketplace, the Berlin-based HEDD Audio – set up by ex-Adam Audio MD Klaus Heinz and his son Dr Frederik Knop – are quickly gathering a buzz. Their range spans several sizes and configurations: the Type 05, Type 07, Type 20 (on review here), Type 30 and the forthcoming Tower Mains. Before receiving the review pair, I was sceptical – I’ve found Adam monitors a tad bright and analytical for my taste, and so expected a similar sound from the founder’s new brand. However, being in the market for new monitors, and with several UK electronic producers gushing with HEDD praise on…

DURec STANDALONE RECORDING The UFX+ can also function as a standalone recorder making it an even more flexible unit, and can record a staggering 72 channels of audio onto a suitable memory stick. This is a particularly useful feature if you want to record, say, a live set from a front of house desk equipped with MADI. Using the Record View option in TotalMix you can assign channels to either record or play back (so you can do virtual sound checks too) and once set up, record and playback functions can be accessed from the front panel. It removes the need to take extra computers along to shows and can even be used as a simple way of recording rehearsals or jam sessions using the mic and line inputs.…