Indholdsfortegnelse for 12/2022 i Beat English

4 GB Convolution Reverbs Spaces Deluxe Megapack Convolution Reverb is not only a wonder weapon for natural sounding room simulations, but also a great sound design tool, as our software highlight of this month impressively shows. The Convolution Reverb effect, Convology XT from Impulse Record and Wave Arts, already comes with 126 Impulse Responses. With our 4 GB of extra Impulse Responses, you‘ll also be ready for a huge range of reverb effects and room simulations. Download: see page 9 | Info: www.impulserecord.com win | mac All serial numbers securely accessible: The Beat Serial Center To ensure that none of your serial numbers are lost in the future (for instance, in the event of a new installation, Outlook crash or disk crash), you can now conveniently manage them online. The advantages…

In James Cameron‘s Terminator visions, the day an AI took over the world took place back in 1997. In music, most have so far stuck to the statement of an online comment: „An AI is just a dumb computer. Microsoft Word is an AI with a proofreading function. It can‘t write a novel.“ But the project “Lost tapes of the 27 club” proved these skeptics wrong. From the recordings of Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse, among others, software generated new songs in the style of their idols. The Nirvana contribution „Drowned By The Sun“ turned out so well that it takes your breath away. From the riff to the chorus and even the lyrics, it sounds like a lost gem from the „In-Utero“ sessions. As a showpiece, the…

1 Install First install the Alter/Ego software on your computer and run the standalone application or load the plug-in. Then unpack one of the voice banks in any folder on your hard disk. There you will find the file, such as daisy. bank.xml, which you can simply drag onto the software‘s user interface. 2 Select In the upper left corner, under presets, you will now find a drop-down menu of the voice bank with different voice variations. First select the basic preset. An image of the virtual anime character of this bank will appear on the left side. If you now play notes via the connected keyboard, you should hear the matching voice. 3 Play In the lower right area you will find a large number of lines one below…

LANDR Mastering recordings in the blink of an eye is the credo of LANDR, a fully automated service. The upload area, which accepts files via drag & drop and without prior registration, is already waiting on the start page. There are no default settings. After uploading, a short demo of the mastered version is played immediately. Only if the result pleases, a customer account is necessary, which allows the full download. Two 192 kHz MP3s per month can be mastered free of charge for testing purposes. Unlimited WAV files are available for 35 Euro per month. The result is rather good, the MP3 is quite loud. Possible imbalances in the mix remain, however, and there are no options for correction. Nevertheless, we recommend testing. Delivery time: 10 minutes Retries:- Web:…

Almost no one expected this comeback. Eight years ago, Röyksopp said goodbye to the daily album business in order to concentrate on carefully selected projects such as a Kafka performance and jingles for Norwegian Radio. The duo had left a back door open, however: Their last work, „The Inevitable End,“ they now insist, was simply their last „traditional“ album. And indeed, „Profound Mysteries“ is by no means to be compared with the first phase of the Röyksopp saga. Over three independent yet connected albums, colorful collaborations, stylistic leaps and a flood of tracks, some of which took several years to create, Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland present a sonic bouquet that looks backwards and forwards in equal measure. For fans a must, for friends of audophile sound design a feast,…

1 Load reverb Duplicate the drum track or group. Load a reverb into the duplicate drum track that matches the drum beat and genre, and that should have a short decay time. Set Dry/Wet to 100% so that only the effect signal is heard in the track. Put an EQ Eight behind the reverb. Select Mid/Side mode, or M/S for short, as the global mode under Mode. 2 M/S processing To create spatial width and depth in the mix, you have the option of using stereo panning effects and M/S processing to intervene in the stereo image in great detail. Unlike stereo, which works with right-to-left placements, M/S splits the signal into center and side signals. All centrally placed instruments are in the center channel. 3 M/S processing with EQ…

1 4-Bar Loop Create a new Cubase project with a tempo of 65 BPM. Then, import the two enclosed audio files „Drums.wav“ and „Pad.wav“ onto separate tracks. Next, position the left marker at the beginning of the first bar and the right marker at the end of the fourth bar. Then, turn on the cycle function to play this section of music in a loop. 2 Identify chords Right-click the audio file „Pads.wav“ while holding down the Ctrl key and select the Create Chord Events option. Cubase analyzes the harmonic content and creates a chord track with the detected harmonies. We will use these chords as a guide when designing the bassline and have the notes align with them later. 3 Create bass track Then right-click in the track list…

Toontrack Hitmaker SDX As an add-on for the drum giant ,Superior Drummer 3, Toontrack offers the new Hitmaker SDX library by Hugh Padgham. The add-on was recorded and produced by legendary Producer/Engineer Hugh Padgham, who dominated the charts of the 80s and 90s with his hit sound for Phil Collins, Genesis, Sting and The Police. The recordings took place at the British Grove Studios in London, using five additional room microphones. There are six complete drum sets to discover, consisting of 11 bass and snare drums each, 4 hi-hats, 10 crash cymbals, 6 splash cymbals, 3 china cymbals, 1 bell cymbal, 23 rack toms, 10 floortoms, 4 octobans and a gong drum. For an extra dose of retro charm, the more than 400 sounds of classic drum machines such as…

»Do you have a clear vision, in advance, of how a new album should sound? « »Apparat / Initially, there are always big concepts. For my current album “LP5”, the concept was to create the greatest possible distance from our Moderat project. It always comes out different than you intend for it to be. You have to go with it. If you fight too much, you kill the essence. That‘s why the plans you had in the beginning always dilute after a while and the relationship between the songs is more likely to come from the sound design. In my song folder, there are a lot of basic ideas that you could easily turn into rock songs. It‘s only the electronic arrangements that give my songs that “Apparat feeling”. »Haelos…

SuperflyDSP Lost Vinyl Lo-Fi is arguably the hottest effect right now, and this is noticeable in the freeware sector as well. Lost-Vinyls by SuperFlyDSP is another candidate that aims to turn the years of development of digital technology on its head for the cleanest, most transparent and unadulterated sound possible. For this purpose, the effect combines virtual saturation, tape delay, and the recreation of the sonic distortions of a vinyl record. The appropriately designed interface clearly shows what you can expect sonically; and the sliders are also clearly labeled. The noise slider adds the crackle and hiss of a record player, and the quality of the virtual record can be selected from broken to brand new. The intensity and speed of the pitch fluctuations can be adjusted with the Depth…

When the JD-800 was launched in the early 90s, the synthesizer was a real eye-catcher: In the midst of the heyday of digital synthesizers with complex synthesis, but a slimmed-down user interface with just a handful of buttons and often in a sober rack format, the huge keyboard flagship seemed like a relic from bygone analogue times: Direct access via dozens of faders and buttons should invite you to tinker. The Japanese plan was only partially successful, because not everyone liked the special sound of the JD-800 and the operation was not always optimally solved despite the huge number of controls. But this is also due to the fact that the digital sound generation with up to four partials is very complex and, in contrast to the analogue synthesizers from…

1 Everything is a drum In principle, you can make a drum sound out of almost any noise, but some of them have a character that just needs to be polished. Metal objects, knocking on wood, noise, raindrops, and - especially short - phrases of various sounds are very productive. So, how do these become thick drums? 2 Ok, almost everything You can use the following techniques again and again with different sounds. In the downloads, you can find a lot of recordings from our field recording tours. Let‘s start with „Metal Railing“. The sound is directly reminiscent of ride cymbals. Load the sample on an audio track and cut the part where the metal (railing) fully fades out. 3 Spruce it up Load the part into a sampler. There,…

Jump start for inspiration It doesn‘t make sense to let the AI design a track completely. But if your creativity falters or you‘re running out of time, there are handy helpers that can jump-start the flow so that the flow doesn‘t come to a standstill right from the start. From loop to track The well-known problem: The beat is there, an idea has been found, maybe even the hook for the whole song. But anything beyond the infamous 8-bar loop just won‘t work. That‘s why in phase 2 we‘ll show you some clever tools that will help you turn a loop into a basic framework for a whole track faster. There‘s still work to be done afterwards, but the uncreative part of moving clips and blocks is significantly reduced. Making…

Jukeblocks The problem with making music with a DAW is often that you get stuck with a loop of four or eight bars and can‘t manage to transfer the elements into a meaningful song structure. This is where the browser-based software Jukeblocks comes in. After registering on the site, you can select a genre such as Pop, Trap, Hip-Hop, Trance, House, EDM or Drum & Bass. Clicking on „generate“ creates a track structure, which for Pop consists of verse, bridge, chorus and other elements, which are lined up in a proven manner. For EDM, of course, the inevitable drop and the upstream build-up part are also taken into account. You can export the finished project for DAWs such as Ableton Live or Logic and all of a sudden you have…

DJ Rob spins around powerfully, grabs one of the records that had been placed behind him and carries it onto the turntable with one unerring movement. In his shiny silver and gold costume, he looks a bit like a character from a science fiction B-movie, two bright blue eyes flashing behind the visor of his helmet. It‘s a perfectly normal night for Rob, who has been entertaining guests on a cruise ship for TUI for four years. Despite long working hours, he has never complained. That‘s because DJ Rob is a humanoid robot, co-developed by Berlin-based design and multimedia company Pfadfinderei and the robotics team at pi4. In videos and photos, he looks pretty trashy. But Rob is by no means just a gag with which the rather traditional TUI…

Beat / The title of your latest album – Electronic Generations - suggests this was something of a roots-searching record. Carl Cox / I guess that‘s right! Even when I was a little boy, as soon as I heard a record that ran for just three and a half minutes on a 78 single, I‘ve always wanted to extend it. I have always loved techno, the idea of sculpting futuristic sounds and pushing things forward. My mind has always been about remixing, manipulating, recreation. And as an artist, I‘ve been through all these generations, from tape to digital, back to analogue, back to digital, back to tape. Beat / And yet, for a long time, it seemed as though your career as an album artist had come to an end.…

REGISTRATION & INSTALLATION To use Convology XT, you will be required to add the plugin to the shopping cart at Impulse Record: www.impulse-record.com/project/convology-xt-plugin. After entering your e-mail address and address details, you will receive your license key, which you can enter when you start the plug-in for the first time. 1 IR Arsenal Convology XT‘s library includes Impulse responses from 80‘s/90‘s reverb processors, vintage gear and amps, and reverb plates and spirals. In addition to Impulse responses from reverberators, our 4 GB IR library offers a huge arsenal of more exotic material such as drums and percussive synthesizer sounds and everyday noises. 2 Large reverb chambers So, nothing stands in the way of sound experimentation. Load Convology XT as an Insert on an audio track or a virtual instrument. In…

1 Typical Trap Trap usually can‘t happen without three ingredients: Subbass, brass sounds and dramatic melodies. The latter are usually played by pianos or plucked instruments, so why not a ukulele? They‘re extremely heavy hitting, and playing them is easy to learn on top of that, if anyone feels like playing live as well. 2 Misuse In the workshop downloads, you will find an MPC project with a ukulele keygroup that we use as a base. The keygroup contains the strings as a chromatically playable instrument that we can use for other purposes. Actually, a ukulele lives from the fact that chords are plucked, but the single notes are just perfect for Trap. 3 Find a basic melody To find a good melody, activate the PAD PERFORM mode, choose the…

1 Load vocals To try out Studio One‘s Vocoder, let‘s first load a vocal recording onto an audio track. Then, activate Vocoder as an Insert Effect. By default, Vocoder‘s built-in synthesizer provides the (Carrier) signal. It provides three waveforms: Sawtooth, Square and Noise (which is suitable for unvoiced vocal effects). 2 Mai Tai as sound source The frequency of the Sawtooth or Square wave oscillator can be automated, but for melodic or polyphonic playing, there is a better way: A synthesizer can also provide the carrier signal. To do this, we need to set up a Sidechain Input. For the synth, we use the Mai Tai, which we drag from the browser into the Arrange Window. 3 Activate sidechaining The Synthex Poly preset is well suited for our purpose. We‘ll…

It took a good two years for Native Instruments to update their Komplete package and raise it from version 13 to version 14. And rarely has a new Komplete version been discussed so controversially in advance. This is due to the change of direction away from innovative synthesizers and effects to gigabyte-sized sample libraries. This tendency was already foreseeable in recent times, but then there were still the one or the other smaller update for the synthesizers that brought NI into the upper league of music software manufacturers. In Komplete 14, however, not only have popular sound generators such as Massive, FM8 and Prism not been updated, but one of the most innovative and best-sounding synthesizers, Absynth, has been completely removed from the package - a great pity. Update to…

The software from Izotope offers everything you need for mastering under one hood and facilitates the work with valuable AI help by making suggestions for a complete mastering chain within seconds. This concept has not changed, but the possibilities have become more diverse. The new Master Assistant It‘s quite simple: play the loudest part of the track and Ozone calculates an individual preset for the song within no time. The first thing you notice is that the previous choice between CD and streaming has been removed and replaced by DJ Player and streaming. Sure, you can customize the DJ preset (a master for the club) for the CD master with just a few clicks, but we would have liked it better if CD had been kept and the DJ option…

u-he Kinesis To expand the sound library of the Hive synthesizer plug-in with organic grooves and cinematic sounds, sound designer Bryan Lake (Sound Author) has created the Kinesis expansion pack. The total of 128 patches are assigned to the four categories Seq-Melodic, Seq-Percussive, Arpeggios and Pads. The sequences are ideal for creating melodic soundscapes. From dreamlike („Skyrise“) to mallets to diffuse („Resolved Mysteries“). Though still melodic, the percussive sequences are clearly more beat-heavy. Likewise, the arpeggios sound pleasant; „Snowing in July”, in particular, is pleasing. Nice pads for atmospheres like „Polargeist“ and Trance-heavy pads complete the expansion pack. Verdict While there are already nice pads in Hive, the Kinesis pads, along with the sequences and arpeggios, are a purposeful addition to cinematic music and ambient soundscapes. Also: All presets include…

Austrian Audio is a relatively young company, yet their products seem very mature and professional. This is because Austrian Audio was founded by former AKG employees after the AKG Headquarters in Vienna was closed by their American parent company, Harman. Therefore, there is concentrated knowhow also in the field of headphones available, which is why we subjected the Hi-X65 to a test with very high expectations. Open studio headphones Although the headphones are circumaural, they have an open-back design. This makes them less suitable as recording headphones or for on the road, since they do not isolate the outgoing sound as well during recordings (playback/clicking/companion) and, on the other hand, also protect less against disturbing influences from the outside. For Monitoring, Mixing and Mastering in the studio, however, open headphones…

An audio interface from the renowned manufacturer, Apogee, in a price range that is also feasible for hobby producers? Of course, we had to take a closer look. Design and feel of this very handy and robust hardware unit are immediately appealing; the operation using the large knob including a click function for leveling and so on also works well. There are two inputs on the front panel, an XLR/TRS combo jack for mic, instrument or line, and a jack for instrument/line inputs. Both can also be linked for stereo recordings. The interface is connected by means of a USB-C socket on the back, where you will also find the two balanced jack outputs for the monitor speakers and, rather impractically, the headphone output. Direct monitoring can be activated for…

1 Performance mode In the upper right corner of the Live window, you can see the CPU load display. For optimal CPU performance, set the Windows PC to High Performance mode. You can find it under Control Panel -> Hardware & Sound -> Power Options. On the Mac, disable all sleep and power nap settings in System Preferences -> Power Saving -> Battery. 2 Inputs and Outputs Always connect your laptop and Push directly to the power supply! Close all programs except Ableton Live and disable Wi-Fi. Save CPU by checking in the Audio Preferences under Output Config. that only the channels you actually use are active. If you are not using audio input, select No Device under Audio Input Device. 3 Conversion To save CPU when using audio clips,…

Mobile recording with Zoom R12 MultiTrak Zoom has developed the compact R12 MultiTrak portable multitrack recorder for musicians and songwriters. Eight tracks can be simultaneously recorded onto an SD card. The 2.4-inch small full-color LCD touchscreen is another central element with the transport fields. For recording, there are two XLR jack inputs, which can also be connected to condenser microphones, thanks to phantom power. Channel 1 can even be used as an instrument input. There is a 3-band EQ for all channels, and channels 1 and 2 also have a compressor. In addition, there are two mono jack outputs, the headphone jack and a USB-C port. In the rhythm section, 150 pre-installed drum loops are available for very different patterns. Furthermore, there is an internal FM synthesizer. The built-in effects…

Audiomodern Playbeat 3 Playbeat is a groove randomizer with four tracks, into which you can load any sample via drag & drop or via the browser. It doesn‘t have to be drums or percussion, you can also create exciting grooves with other short sounds. The starting point of each sample can be adjusted. Each sample has its own sequencer track with up to 16 steps. For each step you can set whether the sound is triggered and in which pitch and volume it is played. If you click on the big cube, Playbeat sets these values randomly and creates independent beats. The random function can be applied to all or selected tracks. In addition, the range can be limited, e.g. to 5 steps per track with a pitch from C2…

1 Sign up for Discord Midjourney (MJ) runs as a bot (MJ bot) from inside the discord platform. Discord is available via web browser or a native app. Whether you opt to use discord via the discord app or the discord website, you will use your discord login, to access the MJ bot, so, you need to have a discord membership. At the present time, there is no way around this. So…Sign up for discord first. Log into discord via web browser or app and proceed from there. 2 Sign up for Midjourney Once you have signed up for discord, head over to MJ and select „join the beta“. This url takes you to your profile page on MJ in your web browser. www.midjourney.com/app/. Once you start creating images, the…

South Korea. The software Musiio is currently working on combing through the history of music. The programmers‘ declared goal is to uncover the secret behind why some songs become hits and others flops. What seems like a romantic mission on behalf of the muse is actually statistical hard work. But it could pay off. Musiio is primarily intended to assist the A&R department in discovering and evaluating potential new superstars. Hazel Savage of Musiio explains it this way: „Millions of creatives upload new music to various sites every day. Listening to all that is simply not possible anymore. Rywn Walter discovered [successful Scottish songwriter] Lewis Capaldi by listening to songs by new artists on Soundcloud for six months, seven hours a day - each for ten seconds. He had 500…

1 Let‘s get wet We load the Fruity Reveerb 2 plug-in onto the Master Channel. We set the Dry control to 0%, while we set the Wet control to the maximum of 100%. This will later give us the pure Reveerb 2 signal, which we will then invert. We also set Size to 75 and Dec to 5s, so that the reverb sounds long enough. 2 Rendering We shorten the pattern from the instrument we want to introduce to 2 bars. If you right-click on the pattern, you can select the Quick render as audio clip option. The resulting Wav file is easier to work with. After rendering, the Reveerb 2 plug-in is no longer needed, so we remove it. 3 Audio editor Double-click on the wav file to open…

1 Preparation The first step is recording, because we need the drums to be individual samples. Program a MIDI clip with the desired notes and bounce the clip to audio or - if you are sampling hardware - record an audio track with the sounds. Make sure effects like delay and reverb are turned off, unless the sound design depends on them. 2 Record sounds The same goes for phasers, flangers and other effects that add movement to the sound. They can sound quite good in a static sample, but most of the time they don‘t work. In the end, it‘s your taste that decides. Make sure that the drums have sensible volumes that fit together, this will save you a lot of work later. 3 Sound design Once the…

1 A practical example Start the workshop with a new project at a tempo of 100 BPM and import the enclosed tracks. In this example, frequency masking appears between the Voice and Harp tracks. Load an instance of Fabfilter Pro Q3 as an Insert Effect on these two channels. We will use this to make the frequency masking visible in the following. 2 Visible masking Open the Fabfilter Pro Q3 audio effect on the „Harp“ channel. In the lower section under Pre + Post, the signal from another instance of Pro Q3 can be selected so that both signals are displayed in the frequency spectrum. Here, problematic frequency ranges light up red if there is frequency masking in the displayed signals. 3 In the mids less Click in the red…

Studio One has always been one of the most customizable digital audio workstations, from song templates to complex macro commands at the touch of a button. Version 6 takes this even further. With the Customization Editor you can individually select which commands and tools are displayed and which are not for the toolbar, inspector, transport area or browser. Since Studio One has grown over the years into a very complex program with a multitude of tools and functions, there is a risk, depending on the application area, that the user will not need some of these functions at all and will only be confused by their display - especially since the GUI is still optimized for display in a single window. If you hide the functions you don‘t need for…

UVI Dual Delay X With relayer, UVI provides a powerful multi-tap delay. Do you really need another delay plugin? While Relayer can overwhelm the user at first with its overflowing setting options, Dual Delay X is more classically constructed. This stereo delay allows a time offset of the two delay values. By modulating the pitch, you can add more life to the effect, up to chorus-like effects. The rotation/reflection and dispersion modules let you create lush stereo and spatial effects. Finally, in the feedback shaping section, you‘ll find low-pass and high-pass filters, as well as a peak filter that can also be coaxed into screeching feedback. The interaction of the various modules makes Dual Delay X remarkably flexible: Slap-back echoes for guitar or keyboard sounds are conjured up just as…

Braam Sound for Trailer & Epic Music For epic Braam Sounds for Trailer Music & more, Pigments‘ Wavetable Engine is your best friend. In our patch „Trailer Braam“ we use the Acanthite and Bismite wavetables, which are slowly passed through with LFO 1. This results in a sound rich in overtones, which sounds even more aggressive when distorted with the Distortion effect applied. It gets even more pop with the OPP preset of the Multiband effect, which is inspired by the Xfer OTT plug-in that’s so popular in Trailer Music. And a lush Reverb effect is a must, of course! Hypnotic Texture from Flute Samples Pigments‘ sample library contains some instrument sounds that are a wonderful basis for organic textures. How about a rhythmic texture made from flute samples? In…

The new Vocaster series consists of two audio interfaces specially developed for podcasting. Vocaster One has to make do with one signal path, while the Vocaster Two we tested can also integrate guests into the recording by way of a second channel. Both interfaces are also available for newcomers as inexpensive bundles with a suitable broadcast microphone and closed-back headphones. Vocaster Two is pleasantly large and easy to use at approximately 22.5 x 50 x 11 cm, yet is easy to transport due to its light weight of less than one pound. The black matte finish, combined with the red border, makes for a chic design. A USB-C port is used for connecting to the computer, and a cable to USB-A is included. The computer can also take over the…

Iridium offers the complex synth engine of Waldorf‘s flagship Quantum in a more compact format, but does without the analog filter. The five synthesis models include wavetables, virtual-analog waveforms, physical modeling in the form of a resonator, multisampling including granular option as well as the kernel mode, which among other things allows 6-operator FM in the style of the DX7. The audio input allows direct sampling as well as real-time processing of external audio, including live granular effects. In addition to the touchscreen, plenty of encoders are supposed to ensure uncomplicated operation. Four CV inputs as well as Gate and Trigger In allow the connection of Eurorack modules. Chic and robust Not only the sound generation working inside is premium, but also the outer packaging. The sturdy metal case is…

You can: Independently control the rise and fall times of the LFO waveform. By hand or CV. What is it good for? Design unique waveforms away from the standard „up and down“ of ordinary LFOs. Modulate the rise and fall of the waveform in real time with any CV source for unpredictable results. You can: Change the start and end points of the waveform in real-time with Phase Offset. What is it good for? Seamlessly invert an envelope, without changing its effect on Filter-Cutoff, Gain or any other Parameter. Shift the timing of LFO waveforms rhythmically for added groove. You can: Use Moonwalker as an oscillator, LFO or envelope. What‘s the point? You only need one module for multiple tasks and you can combine these modes or switch between them…

1 Research Set yourself apart from other plug-ins by researching in advance whether it should be just another analog synthesizer that‘s already a dime a dozen, or whether you‘d rather try something new and serve a niche. Ask yourself which features you miss in which plug-ins. Try to implement these functions in your plug-in. 2 More individuality To be sure, the building block modules from Flowstone‘s toolbox are helpful, but to incorporate more of your own elements, programming or assembling your own modules is beneficial. Extend existing modules with new functions. For example, you can add more waveforms or wavetable samples to oscillators. 3 Samples The integration and use of samples should be chosen carefully, because samples make a plug-in significantly more memory- and CPU-intensive and, therefore, slower. If you…

Feature: Microphones Total If you don‘t want to work with loops, digital sounds and samples forever, you‘ll pick up a microphone at some point - and dive into the fascinating world of acoustic sounds, spaces and atmospheres. BEAT shows how to record vocals, acoustic instruments and amps and integrate them into your tracks. Plus comparison of 33 microphones, so you can pick the perfect one for you. Test: Twisted Electron‘s BlastBeats BlastBeats is a 10-voice groovebox (6 drum parts, 4 synth voices) with retro FM charm. Inside is the chip you might remember from old Soundblaster soundcards and legendary game soundtracks. This chip is a complete FM synth with a lot of parameters, but at that time they were only accessible to programming freaks. With BlastBeats, things are different: with…