Indholdsfortegnelse for Autumn 2018 i Computer Music

Pianists and guitarists are forced to learn music theory from the start, but the average bedroom producer can quite easily get by with a total lack of theory knowledge. But although it is possible to make half-decent music using nothing but trial and error, a bit of theory grounding is guaranteed to give you more professional-sounding chord progressions, basslines and hooks. And guess what? It’s easier than you think! “Guess what? Learning music theory is easier than you think…” From p22, we’re going to walk you through music theory basics from a beginner’s perspective. Using our track skeleton, fire up our supplied Tutorial Files and follow along as we break down only the essential theory knowledge you need to get started. Then, once you’ve finished the track to your own…

Secure and safe online access, from anywhere Free access for every reader – print and digital Download only the files you want, when you want All the downloads from all your issues, in one place Get started 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,…

Patterning 2 Olympia Noise Co’s Patterning 2 iOS drum machine adds the option to record beats using the virtual drum pads or an external MIDI controller, new per-step randomisation features, and the division of steps into eight for stuttering effects. Other enhancements include drum kit switching within songs, quantised pattern launching, support for pattern tempo changes and much more besides. £14.99. www.olympianoiseco.com Audiobus 3 Version 3.1 of Audiobus focuses on Audio Units, enabling you to use them as MIDI sources and processors, and view them full-screen. It also lets you route the outputs of apps and AUs to different channels, or send audio to your device’s headphones socket and USB audio hardware simultaneously. There’s support for Bluetooth MIDI devices, too. Audiobus 3 costs £9.99. www.audiob.us Fortamento…

Believe it or not, it was all the way back in October 2008 that Universal Audio announced their UAD-2 platform – we brought you the news in 131 – but it’s still around today. We’re happy to celebrate its longevity but surely, after ten years, a new version is about due… Maybe it was because we were going through the Financial Crisis, but we got all serious and ran a feature about managing your career, with lots of talk about money and people in suits. “We’ve now gone meta and started discussing a feature within a feature” We also showed you how to create the most sought-after sounds of sci-fi, including the Tardis and lightsaber. For what’s supposedly a futuristic genre, the effects don’t seem to have changed much over…

We’ve given you a very practical demonstration of chord extensions in the walkthrough above, and while we’re generally avoiding too much jargon this issue, this is a topic that would benefit from a few concrete definitions. The first two types of extended chords are seventh chords. A major seventh uses the standard triad pattern for a major chord and then adds a note four semitones on top. So that’s C-E-G-B, for example. A minor seventh is similar, but adds three semitones on top of a minor chord – say, C-E-G-B. One more variant is the dominant seventh. This is a mixture of the two, in many ways, taking a major chord but only adding three semitones on top. C-E-G-B would be an example of that. If you look through a…

Xfer Records Serum cm248 » 10/10 » $189 “Probably the softsynth I use the most. I love how much you can edit a sound. You can modulate pretty much every setting with LFOs or Envelopes, and you can be creative. Visually it’s easy to understand, which helps a lot.” www.xferrecords.com Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2 cm220 » 10/10 » $499 “I haven’t been using it for long, but I really like it. I use a lot of the Ethnic World sounds; and you can get some really good atmospheric sounds from it, which I use as ‘background noise’ to add texture to my tracks.” www.spectrasonics.com D16 Group Devastor 2 cm126 » 9/10 » €49 “This is one of those plugins where I just mess around with the settings and see what weird,…

Creating a ‘wide’ mix can be one of the biggest challenges facing any producer or engineer. Go too far when dialling in panning, stereo wideners and ambience effects, and your track will suffer when played back through a mono speaker or PA system, with elements changing or even disappearing altogether. On the flipside, exercise too much restraint with your stereo effects and the mix will end up sounding amateurishly narrow – and pretty inadequate when played side by side with the wide, powerful commercial releases that you hear played on the radio today. So where’s the perfect middle ground between impressive stereo width and mono power? And how can we make sure that both headphone listeners and festival punters can enjoy your pro-sounding mixdown? You’ll find out over the next…

When starting work on a new track, it’s important to get sounds and grooves down quickly, to help stay in the ‘writing’ zone. I tend to concentrate on the main drums and bass elements first, focusing on the tone and rhythm of each component as part of the bigger picture. Once I’m happy with this ‘skeleton’, I’ll get straight into frequency and dynamic balancing while I’m still structuring and progressing the track. Mixing as I go keeps me inspired, whereas putting off basic mixing tasks until later can result in poor-sounding ideas that could never compete with other productions. This month, I’m going to show you how the ‘mix-as-you-go’ approach can help you cultivate a faster workflow and a better understanding of mix structure while producing. Quick doses of subtractive…

Picture the scene. You’ve spent three or four long years working on your music. You’re based in LA, but you’ve eschewed the city’s glamour and glitz in favour of warehouse raves and cheap beer from Costco. Your debut album has had great reviews, but it’s a million miles away from the musical mainstream. In fact, some might argue that the sound was defiantly underground… full of kinked, quirky songs that draw on the sample-heavy legacy of old-school house and techno. Out of the blue, you receive an email. It’s from rap royalty. A man whose last six albums topped worldwide charts and boasted sales of almost 20 million. Oh, and he’s married to one of the most photographed women on the planet. Together, they’re so famous that even their choice…

Xfer Records Serum cm213 » 10/10 » $189 Relatively complicated to program and use but lets you do much more with its wavetables Dmitry Sches Thorn cm253 » 9/10 » £122 Design your own waveforms and wavetables, and apply similar spectral effects and filtering Verdict For Huge, expressive sounds Three action-packed engines Fully visualised waveforms Amazing envelopes and good effects User-friendly and approachable Against No wavetable editing A triumphant new entrant into the ‘super synth’ category, Europa is exemplary in terms of both design and sound 9/10…

Being able to record quality multitracks wherever and whenever is all well and good, but naturally you’re going to want to get those songs out of Spire Studio, both as mixes for sharing, and component audio tracks for editing and mixing in your Mac or PC DAW. Happily, Spire Music Recorder can do both. The Individual Tracks Export option spits out every track in a project at 24-bit/44.1kHz via Dropbox, iCloud, email, AirDrop, etc. Any panning and levelling applied in Spire’s Mix page is baked in, though – the option to just get the raw WAVs instead needs adding. Internally bounced mixes are shared as WAV or MP4 via the same channels, and can also be published to social media and Soundcloud. Spire projects can be shared and exported as…

While MIDI note data can be recorded and imported into, and exported from ALK2, there’s absolutely no editing of it after the fact. A couple of simple tools are on hand for non-destructive MIDI processing, however. The Quantize menu for MIDI and Instrument tracks enables notes to be iteratively snapped to a variety of timing values, from 1/4 to 3/64, to a degree determined by the associated knob. The Note Repeat function offers the same list of note values, this time slicing sustained notes into repeated notes at the chosen resolution. Between them, these two systems effectively facilitate instant tightening up of sloppy performances, and a modicum of real-time manipulation that could prove useful from time to time. As handy as Quantize and Note Repeat are, though, ALK2’s workflow suffers…

The bipolar Bias control applies an EQ-style cut/boost curve to the Intensity parameter, for emphasising or de-emphasising particular frequencies, by a maximum of 12dB. 11 preset curves are included, and adjustments to Bias are visualised within the curve display – until you let go of the control, whereupon the graphic disappears. We’re not sure why it can’t just be left in place. If none of the preset Bias curves are doing it for your source material, you can switch to Custom mode and draw your own. This gives you nine vertical sliders with which to shape the ‘breakpoints’ in the curve at fixed frequencies from 50Hz to 17kHz. Any of the preset curves can be flown in as starting points, and a series of buttons below the display enable instant…

Sonuscore Origins Vol 4: Oud & Qanun £61 The latest Origins library recreates its titular Middle Eastern string instruments for dual or solo play. The Multi Arpeggiator Designer enables expressive arpeggios and cross-rhythmic sequences to be programmed easily, while the 12 Color presets set up the onboard effects to transform the sound – though, oddly, you can’t save your own. Great for its ‘realistic’ emulation, but the magic lies in its sound design potential. www.timespace.com 9/100 Sample Magic 90s Deep House and Garage £15 450MB of evocatively old-school beats, b-lines, vocal cuts, keys, mini construction kits and one-shots, mapped to various sampler formats. Everything is at 124 or 128bpm, and the capers kick off with 28 suitably swung, 909-driven stemmed drum loops (140 files) and 72 subby basslines, the latter…

The Plugins collection is a suite of complete, limitation-free instrument and effects plugins. It’s an incredible resource, boasting more than 80 pro-quality plugins that you won’t find anywhere else, all for PC and Mac, in VST and AU formats. All of the included software is created exclusively for us by respected commercial developers such as D16 Group, u-he, AudioRealism, Ohm Force, KV331 Audio, Cableguys, XILS-lab, AudioThing, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen, zplane and more. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Enough talking! Where do I get these plugins? You can grab them all on the cover DVD with our print edition, or as a download from FileSilo (see p5 for instructions on how to access). How do I install Plugins? It depends on the plugin. Some have dedicated installers, while others just drop into your…

To help you get the most out of our immense plugin collection, we’ve assembled the Plugins Tutorial Bank, containing over 100 guides and tutorials for our Plugins, specially selected from past issues. You’ll find Getting Started PDFs and videos for most of the individual plugins, along with tutorial PDFs and videos on using Plugins for sound design, mixing, and even creating entire tracks. You’ll find all of this as a handy download from FileSilo – go grab it now and start getting more out of your plugins! www.filesilo.co.uk/computermusic…

We’ve got a new system for downloading files. Whenever you see this icon, you can grab the files on your PC or Mac by going to filesilo.co.uk/computermusic. Tutorials featuring this icon make use of our own Plugins – find out all about them on p107. This icon means there are extra files to help you follow a tutorial feature: project files, audio examples, etc. There’s extra video content wherever you see this icon. www.computermusic.co.uk computermusic@futurenet.com www.facebook.com/computer.music.mag www.twitter.com/computermusicuk www.youtube.com/computermusicmag…

Read the full article on p22 1 Exploring basic three-note chords 2 Defining a musical scale 3 The basics of bassline theory 4 Ways to come up with a melody 5 Creating variations on a melody 6 Using chord extensions to add flavour 7 Chord inversions explained 8 Strategies for changing key 9 Scale transitions with shared chords 10 Playing through our final track KILOHEARTS SNAPINS Find out how to use your new triple pack of creative effects with our in-depth video guide Read the full article on p50 SAMPLES Create a track with your free Loopmasters 1GB and Bespoke Breaks packs Read the full article on p104 1 Producing a track with this issue’s free samples FL STUDIO 20 The latest version of Image-Line’s fruitilicious DAW is packed with…

cm Newfangled Audio products are “combining DSP technology with advances in the field of machine learning.” For the uninitiated, please explain… DG “When you brush away the marketing buzzwords, this is really about new techniques for solving problems with more than one right answer. The question becomes: how do you choose the best answer out of a number of good answers? In Elevate, we break the signal up into a number of frequency bands and need to set the level for each one so that the sum of these bands doesn’t go above the ceiling. So what should the levels be? There are a lot of right answers, but we want the one that gives you the loudest output while satisfying other criteria that we know make a signal sound…

With so many notes available, major and minor chords are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll take you through four-note chords later in this feature, but here are a few more three-note chords you can use to spice things up. A diminished chord is made by taking the root note, moving three semitones up, then another three semitones up. The diminished chord sounds ‘unsettling’, and can be good for transitions between sections. An augmented chord, on the other hand, takes the root note, adds one four semitones up, then another four semitones up. The sound of the augmented chord is mysterious – it’s great to play after a major chord by moving the first note one down, Beatles-style. How about going for a suspended fourth chord? With this one,…

Technique 3. The rhythm-first method Sometimes, laying out the rhythm with one note helps you get started, and from here, all that remains is the final 50% of the task. Experiment with different notes in the already-interesting rhythm you’ve laid down, and it’s hard to go wrong. Our project is a great example of building a melody with this method. As we’ve laid down the whole thing using just C notes, with the rhythms already programmed, all we need to do (as seen in the video) is move the notes up or down. There’s still plenty of refining to do though, of course… Technique 4. Recording then editing It’s not all about textbook theory. Set your music to loop, work out the scale you’re in (and therefore the notes you…

Step by step 9. Break it down, build it up again… 1 At the end of the track, we want to change things up a bit and switch to a different key. But how do we do that? In the original track, we have this breakdown, after which the music restarts, and builds back up again… 2 With this drop in the music, it’s quite an easy setup to build things back up, only this time in a different key. First of all, we cut out the outro parts for the Chords, High Synth, Low Synth and Bassline parts… 3 As we’re using Studio One here, we can right-click the separate MIDI clips, hit Transpose and move them up by, say, two semitones, which shifts all these elements into the…

Keeping it Casual Propelled to fame by his 2015 smash Make Me Feel Better and remix of Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud , London-based producer Alex Adair is known for his sunny, tropical house sound, which he produces almost entirely in the box. We caught him in his home studio on a rare day off, for an in-depth look at the production process behind floor-filler Casual, released last year on Island Records. So, where did it all begin…? AA: “I actually made Make Me Feel Better at uni, for a course. It felt like the first thing I could try and push out, so I sent it to some YouTube channels and blogs, it got picked up by TheSoundYouNeed, and went from there.…

Alex uses Camel Audio’s no-longer-available CamelCrusher to distort and filter the pitched-up vocal cut. “The filter’s really good on the distortion. I used the filter on the first bit [of the vocal] because it was piercing through quite a lot – without it, it’s got that really tinny high end. I could have EQ’d it out but I like the filter sound on this, especially when you’re distorting it a lot. The distortion makes it crisp, and cuts through. Having sorted out the octave-up ‘you’ vocal on one track, he applies the same processing to the rest – pitched up a further five semitones – on the track below. “I originally had it going throughout, and it sounded a bit repetitive, so I bounced it out and had the octave…

If you’re the sort who spends time dreaming of getting behind a massive, room-spanning SSL console, you’ll be thrilled to learn that FL Studio’s Mixer now offers up to 125 tracks. Whoa. We’d be happy if that was all Image-Line gave us, but they’ve gone much further by providing the much-desired ability to instantly reset selected Mixer tracks to their default states. Unfortunately, latency is a fact of life in our world. There is simply no way for software applications to take audio in, mess about with it, and then spit it back out without taking at least a little time… especially when loads of plugins are in play. Most modern DAWs offer some sort of plugin delay compensation, and the best of them work transparently with little intervention needed…

To paraphrase DnB supergroup Noisia’s approach to perfecting a track’s stereo width, outlined in a Reddit discussion from 2015 (see bit.ly/Noisia_AMA ), a good approach is to tackle a mix’s stereo width “from the inside out”. By nailing the perfect mono mix first , you’ll get the most important elements working well in the centre of the stereo field. From this solid foundation, it’s far easier to mix ‘outwards’ and add your stereo information ‘on top’, safe in the knowledge that the track will collapse nicely to mono. Some engineers like to write and mix an entire tune in mono first, then pan and widen elements after. Legendary 90s jungle producer Dillinja was known to mix through a single mono speaker for just this…

At its most fundamental level, music is essentially a collection of notes of varying pitches and lengths. This is represented on the printed page via a system of notation that has evolved gradually throughout the centuries into what we know today, with pitches represented by the vertical positioning of the notes on the stave. The rhythmical side of things, however, has always been depicted by the use of different note styles that reflect different durations, such as crotchets (quarter-notes), quavers (eighth-notes) and minims (half-notes). That’s all well and good, but to enhance the flexibility of this pictorial representation of rhythm, early musicians devised a system of amendments to these basic note forms, in the form of dots and ties – aka augmentation dots and tenuto ties. Essentially, adding a dot…

TRUST YOUR EARS Many plugins feature some kind of meter or graphical display to help you visualise what you’re hearing – eg, the spectrum analysers built into many EQs. Yes, these allow you to view problematic frequencies and overall tonal balance, and there are definitely times when you might need to confirm what you’re hearing – to help identify low frequencies, say, when working in a less-than-ideal studio environment – but it’s all too easy to become over-reliant on your eyes. A sound may contain resonant peaks when viewed in a frequency analyser, but those peaks might be what gives the sound its inherent character, and removing them could kill the vibe that you liked in the first place. That’s why I try to steer away from analysers and visual…

Focusrite iTrack Solo NA » NA » £123 Compact 2-in/2-out audio interface for PC, Mac and iOS. Needs a DAW to do anything, though Steinberg Cubasis 2 cm239 » 9/10 » £24 With an interface attached, this iOS DAW is much more powerful than Spire, but far less immediate Verdict For Standalone multitrack recording Seamless integration and sync with app Good built-in mic and lovely preamps Zero-latency monitoring with effects Against Effects are record-only App offers minimal editing Very limited audio import A couple of niggles aside, Spire Studio is a slick, impressive and wonderfully convenient portable recording system 8/10…

Audiority Grainspace cm243 » 8/10 » €35 Similarly easy to use, this granular effect features a nifty Freeze function for looping the buffer Steinberg Padshop Pro cm184 » 9/10 » £65 Steinberg’s groovy granular synth also imports external samples Verdict For Granular made easy! Analogue and noise oscillators are a fantastic inclusion Wicked modulation system Dual filters Supports MIDI Polyphonic Expression Against No onboard effects Not just a granular synth, but an intriguing and rewarding hybrid that successfully merges ‘analogue’ and digital techniques 9/10…

iZotope RX 6 Standard cm245 » 10/10 » £315 This surgical spectral audio editor includes a shedload of restoration modules and plugins Zynaptiq Repair Bundle NA » NA » €799 The acclaimed Unveil, Unfilter and Unchirp, all in one place. Costs more than twice as much, though Verdict For Foolproof one-knob interfaces Lack of detailed editing rarely an issue Excellent for sorting dialogue and vocals ERA-D is amazing Standard Bundle is a bargain Against No ‘difference’ monitoring for the four Standard plugins ERA-D is undoubtedly the star of the ERA Bundle show, but we love the simplicity and sound of its four one-knob siblings 8/10…

Audio Damage Kombinat Tri 247 » 10/10 » $49 13 distortion algorithms, 12 filter modes and multiband operation D16 Group Decimort 2cm229 » 10/10 » €39 Deceptively cheap sampler-emulating digital distortion and filtering plugin Verdict For Delicious clipping, digital and AM-based distortion Freak’s Radio mode is so sick We love NI’s groovy new UI style What a bargain! Against Dirt and Bite would be even better with a little modulation Another must-have creative signal-processing pack from the German giants, at a ridiculously low price. Don’t miss it! 9/10…

Ableton Live 10 cm255 » 9/10 » €349/549 This studio/stage DAW presents a different take on live performance Bitwig Studio 2 cm243 » 9/10 » €379 Also geared up for gigging, and deployment as a studio DAW Verdict For Brilliant core concept Flexible I/O routing and submixing Good timestretching Panic Mode is a reassuring safety net Against No MIDI or audio editing No QWERTY/trackpad MIDI Can’t open multiple projects at once Taking the looper concept to new heights, ALK2 achieves its remit but a few fixable shortcomings currently hold it back 7/10…

iZotope Neutron 2 Advanced Cm252 » 9/10 » £389 A phenomenally good channel strip and surprisingly effective “smart engineering assistant” Soundtheory Gullfoss cm257 » 9/10 » £139 This similarly forward-thinking auto-EQ plugin models “human auditory perception” Verdict For Just… works! Easy to use once understood Customisable Bias curves Sounds great on pretty much anything Against Can do slightly odd things with reverb tails at times A genuinely groundbreaking plugin, Intensity costs a pretty penny but does truly amazing things to full mixes and individual tracks 9/10…

Bringing it together This track summarises a few concepts from this issue. Firstly, our 808 bass riff is in the key of E, and as we saw earlier in our cover feature, a low E provides the lowest sub weight possible – any lower, and the sound will break up. We’ve also followed our advice from our Stereo Mixing Strategies feature: the FreqEcho delay on the chord stab is kept mono for central power, but a second widening delay provides subtle stereo flavour on top, preserving the delay’s mono integrity. Hear our progressive, dubby track take shape in the video!…

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 • Blendable oscillator waveforms • Super-programmable step LFOs • Slick delay, reverb and chorus • Original synth designed just for CM • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.u-he.com KV331AudioSynthMasterCM • Dual wavescanning oscillators • Multimode filter and built-in effects • FM/AM synthesis modes • Based on SynthMaster 2.5 • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.kv331audio.com Cableguys Curve 2.6 CM • Design-your-own-waveforms synth • New waveform capabilities for v2.6 • Phat 16-voice Unison mode • Based on Cableguys Curve 2.6 • AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.cableguys.com Synapse Audio Dune CM • VA and wavetable oscillators • Powerful per-voice modulation • 12-slot modulation matrix • Based on the full…

DYNAMICS Check out this huge collection of processors – from classic compressors to modern digital creations, we’ve got everything you need to shape your signals eaReckon CM-COMP 87 • Slick, punchy compressor • Mix knob for parallel compression • Limiter to keep the output in check • Clear VU- and LED-style metering • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.eareckon.com LVC-Audio Transector CM • Transient tweaking and saturation • Define and process envelope stages • Useful metering/display functions • Mix control for parallel processing • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.lvcaudio.com Audiority TS-1 CM • Flavoursome transient shaper • Set attack and sustain gain • Blend control for parallel processing • Based on the full TS-1 plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiority.com Unfiltered Audio G8 CM • Get tight dynamics or creative FX • Includes advanced gating controls…

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…

BERKLEE LOVES LAPTOPS If anyone still thinks that producing on a computer doesn’t make you a ‘real musician’, the prestigious Berklee College of Music disagrees. From 2019, the Boston-based school will recognise a laptop, software and controller as a principal instrument. EIGHT-OH-CRATE Roland aren’t ones to let 808 day pass without fanfare; this one saw them unveil a limited edition TR-808 Serato vinyl pressing. More importantly, though, they also rolled out the BR-808, an American IPA that promises a “solid Japanese kick”. Cheers! BELTING BIBLE Taking up a challenge set by deadmau5, Look Mum No Computer (aka Sam Battl) managed to circuit-bend the Wonder Bible, an audio book player that contains both the New and Old Testaments. Check out the video at: bit.ly/bible_bend. SENSITIVE SUBJECT The announcement of new Aphex…

SMARTELECTRONIX LIVECUT Not a single developer, but rather a collection of freeware and donationware providers, smartelectronix have been a go-to resource since the earliest days of VSTs. French developer Remy Muller’s smartelectronix contributions are released under the name mdsp, and one of his best is Livecut, a reworking of Nick Collins’ BBCut, written for SuperCollider. Livecut is a beat slicer, but forgoes the usual route of slicing a beat into equal-sized bits; instead, the length of the cuts and repetitions depends on context. Cuts are arranged into blocks, which are then formed into a phrase. Inspiring stuff. mdsp.smartelectronix.com…

Pay attention now – if you learn one thing about music theory, it should be this. There are 12 notes on a piano keyboard: C to C and repeat. But in almost all music, the point is to not use all of them. Most often in Western music, seven from those 12 are used. Put basically, if you restrict all the notes you play to that specific selection of seven – that ‘scale’ – everything you play will be in key. It won’t automatically sound awesome, but it’s half the battle. But here’s the thing: the question of which seven notes you use is very important. You can’t just use any seven, and the seven notes are what define the musical scale you’re using. If you play all the white…

A mainstream track won’t get very far if it doesn’t have that special something – that unique element that a listener can grab onto and identify time and time again. Something that’s familiar, yet new. A hook, essentially. Your tune’s hook could be a vocal phrase, a repeated melody, or even a funky beat, but for the purposes of this section, we’re going to be concentrating on melodic material. So what makes a melody? We’ll start off with the basics. Simple melodies (and even plenty of complex ones) tend to start and end with the ‘tonic note’ – that’s the note that starts the scale you’re in, such as C in C major, or G # in G # minor. But you can’t just use one single note throughout… as…

Our track is about seven minutes long, and that’s a long time to listen to a C major scale going around and around. The key to keeping the audience hooked is to make things interesting. When we go into the outro, we’re essentially repeating ourselves, and changing key at this point is one way to surprise the listener. There are other ways to do the same thing, but changing things up like this is a distinctly musical way to inject extra life, pace and energy into a tune.…

If you like to back up what you’re hearing with visual feedback, you can always turn to a dedicated stereo meter plugin. A goniometer displays a signal’s width (ie, stereo balance and phase information) on a circular or semicircular interface, with the vertical axis representing mono and the horizontal axis displaying stereo content. A 100% mono signal will be displayed as a single vertical line, and stereo information that’s reasonably in phase will ‘fluff’ outwards and populate the inner marked 45-degree ‘safe zone’. The more out of phase the stereo content, the more it’ll breach outwards into the side areas. If your signal strays too far into the ‘danger’ regions for too long, your material is too out of phase, and may be lost when summed to mono. A phase…

PUSH IT If your melody features a kind of ‘skippy’ rhythm that crosses or pushes against the beat, the chances are that you’re using dotted notes without realising it. But it’s not about going out of your way to use them on purpose – whether you’re writing vocal melodies, basslines or even rhythmic synth chord patterns, playing with note lengths in the piano roll editor can really change things. As ever, experimentation is key. OPEN TO INTERPRETATION If you suspect that your DAW’s score editor isn’t displaying dotted notes properly, it may be that there’s a setting that you can adjust to correct this. For example, in Logic Pro X, note length values are represented more accurately with the Interpretation checkbox unticked in the Score Editor’s Region inspector. With the…

When you think of glitchy drums, the first things that probably comes to mind are overtly electronic sounds, with bit depths, sample rates and filtering manipulated on the fly, and triggered by rapid runs of notes. However, with today’s acoustic drum kit ROMplers being so flexible when it comes to sound design, extreme and strange sounds of a decidedly glitchy nature are well within their remit, too. By deactivating round robin sample triggering and other humanising features, individual drum kit components can be made to sound more robotic, and primed for super-fast triggering and modulation of pitch, envelopes and more. Sure, you could just fire up a plugin like Ableton Beat Repeat or Illformed Glitch 2 and have that do all the hard work for you instead, but programming your…

Rolling their ERA range of audio restoration and repair plugins (VST/AU/AAX) into a single package, Accusonus’ ERA Bundle Pro aims to provide all the tools required for cleaning up dialogue and vocals, sketchy instrumental and location recordings, found sounds, etc. It comprises five plugins in total, four of them – Noise Remover, Reverb Remover, Plosive Remover and De-Esser – working their magic primarily through the operation of just one knob each. The fifth, the ERA-D reverb and noise suppressor (see Keep a hand free for ERA-D), is a more involved affair. The saving made over buying all five individually comes to $185, and for those on a tight budget, the cheaper ERA Bundle Standard ditches ERA-D (which sells for $299 on its own) to bring the price down to $129.…

ISSUE 260 October 2018 • Next-Level Mastering • FREE Acustica Audio multiband compressor • Downtempo samples • Orbital interview • Wilkinson in the studio • Studio One 4 power guide ISSUE 259 September 2018 • Synth Secrets: unlock your synths’ true potential • FREE Phonec CM synth plus analogue samples • Morcheeba and James Wiltshire (F9 Audio) • VCV Rack Part 3 ISSUE 258 August 2018 • Unique Beats: rhythm, design and mixing tricks • FREE Dehumaniser Lite worth £34 (ends 5/9/18) • Joe Ford and Kate Simko • VCV Rack Part 2 and Feedback tutorials ISSUE 257 July 2018 • Essential Freeware: our pick of 2018’s best free music software • FREE Thorn CM synth • Youngr and Klingande • Audacity, GarageBand and VCV Rack guides ISSUE 256 June…

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR 6 The obvious commercial alternative to SynC Modular, Reaktor’s cross-platform status and massive user library of high quality ensembles give it an edge over SynC Modular, though Sync comes out in front for price! Still, $199 for access to all of that power and thousands of instruments and effects makes Reaktor a bargain by any measure. www.native-instruments.com JEFF MCCLINTOCK SYNTHEDIT Released to the public in 1999, SynthEdit caused quite some excitement when it was updated to v0.59 in 2002. A software modular environment for Windows, the 2002 incarnation was the first to include the ‘Save As VST’ option, and gave rise to a deluge of free and commercial plugins by would-be developers. Still Windows-only; still powerful. www.synthedit.com VCV RACK A modern modular software synth modelled after the…