Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Computer Music

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…

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,…

Audiomodern Riffer Software that helps you with musical ideas are all the rage, and the latest example is Audiomodern’s Riffer. This ‘creative MIDI sequencer’ automatically generates MIDI patterns for sending to your favourite synth apps or external hardware, and even over WiFi. Choose one of 50 scales and let RIffer know how complex the pattern should be. It’s £6.99, and you can read our review of the Mac/PC version on p101. audiomodern.com Apogee Jam+ This compact, all-metal USB audio interface gives guitarists and other instrumentalists an easy way of recording into their Mac or iOS device. Audio quality is provided by PureDIGITAL circuitry, and a headphone output has been added – great for owners of newer iPhones, which don’t have one of their own. There’s also a Drive Mode, serving…

SPOTIFY FOR ARTISTS For unsigned artists, getting music on Spotify has traditionally involved paying a third-party company to help out, but things are changing. The Spotify for Artists programme will enable creators to upload their music directly and free of charge. EASE THE LOGIC LOAD Double point-release DAW updates often aren’t much to write home about, but Logic Pro 10.4.2 is a notable exception. Why? Because it finally lets users move the sound library to an external hard drive, which is great news if you’re currently running short on space. SPOOL’S GOLD We thought the cassette revival might be short-lived, but it’s looking more and more like a proper thing. Sales are up, and music site Discogs recently hosted Cassette Week, plus the very first Cassette Store Day. If only…

BLUE Some producers like to call up a preset in their favourite plugin and tweak a knob or two. And then there are the few brave boffins who use Csound, an audio programming language dating back to 1985. Developed at MIT, it allows deep diving into code-driven composition and sound design. There are some dedicated Csound editors that help to bring it down to Earth. Blue is one of the best, with a growing user community and loads of pre-rolled instruments, effects, and other tools. It’s open source and available for Windows, OS X and Linux. Give it a shot if you think music production is becoming too easy… blue.kunstmusik.com…

Steinberg’s Cubase can rightly be thought of as the founding father of the linear timeline DAW. The first version appeared on the Atari ST way back in 1989, ushering in the standard blockson-a-timeline song arrangement approach so familiar to us all today. So, you’d expect all the necessary tools for flinging songs together in the traditional way of cutting, pasting and moving blocks of audio and MIDI data around the screen. However, there’s an additional trick up Cubase’s sleeve when it comes to trying out new arrangement ideas, and it harks back to the numerical, pattern-based methods employed by its erstwhile rival, Emagic Creator (the ancestor of Logic Pro X). Combining the best of both approaches, Cubase’s Arranger Track enables you to define regions of your song as named Arranger…

Reversed reverb is a tried-and-tested technique for enhancing transitions between song sections. Some reverb plugins – Rob Papen’s RP-Verb 2, for example – actually have a reverse mode built in, which makes dialling in this kind of effect a very quick and painless process. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to anything like that, though, as your DAW will be able to reverse any piece of audio with a mouse click or three, so it’s never been easier to create your own reverse reverb effects from scratch, using any reverb plugin. Start by isolating the downbeat of the section you want to lead into – the first beat of the drop, say. Select just that snippet, then either bounce, consolidate or copy/paste it onto a new audio track as…

An alternative approach to coming up with new sections for a tune is to take a loop or a section that already contains plenty of tracks – this could be achieved by creating a full drop section first, for example – then work backwards, progressively removing elements to find combinations of parts that you already know will work together, but with a more minimalistic approach. For builds, try just repeating the first bar or two of your musical elements over existing percussion parts. Or dive into a copy of an existing MIDI part and gradually remove notes a few at a time – this will have the effect of the part gradually growing from just one or two seemingly random notes or chords into a properly arranged part. Listening to…

Soundtoys EchoBoy NA » NA » $199 Tom: “We use this all the time. A lot of other delays are quite digital, which is nice for certain things, but we tend to go for the Space Echo emulations or the Memory Man setting here. There’s a nice bit of wobble on it.” soundtoys.com Korg MS-20 Mini £420 Tom: “We tend to use emulations of classic hardware a lot, but we particularly used the [hardware] MS-20 on our new track, for bass and a little square wave sound. We haven’t really scratched the surface of it – there’s so much you can do with it.” korg.com Spectrasonics Omnisphere cm 220 » 10/10 » $499 Ian: “The soundbank is enormous, and it’s got lots of ambient and organic sounds in it. You…

If there’s one tactic guaranteed to fast-track your mixing and mastering skills, it’s comparing your work-in-progress to great-sounding reference tracks. When done correctly, you’ll be able to identify deficiencies in your mix compared to those pro songs; evaluate areas of improvement in terms of frequency, dynamics and stereo balance; and formulate processing strategies that will not only improve your current song in line with world-class records, but also elevate your long-term mixing abilities. Referencing (or ‘A/Bing’) can be done directly in your DAW. We’ll look at this universal method in the tutorial below. However, this process can become frustrating as you battle with multiple song setups, level inconsistencies, file formats, playback positions, fiddly routings and so on. Thankfully, a handful of dedicated referencing plugins have cropped up in recent years,…

Synthesisers that focus on the visual side of spectral analysis Michel Rouzic Photosounder $79 Photosounder is a cross-platform image-to-sound converter that allows you to do exactly that, as well as the reverse. A wide variety of image editing tools and functions are provided to help you draw, paint, shape and shift your pictures and sound into something truly unique. Suggested applications include transmitting pictures via sound or converting existing printed spectrograms into audio. photosounder.com Image-Line Harmor $149 As with its stablemate Morphine, Harmor is a complex additive synthesiser with all the trimmings. Virtually everything we’ve discussed in this feature can be found in Harmor, ranging from spectral synthesis, additive resynthesis and, of course, image-to-audio conversion (and back again). The VST version is Windows-only, but the FL Studio version can now…

CIRCLE PROGRESSIONS In my final example, the progression I’ve used is described as a circle progression. The name comes from the fact that the roots of the chords that make up the progression follow the order of the circle of fifths. In other words, the root notes of the chords proceed in intervals of a fifth. Famous examples of this include Pachelbel’sCanonandAltogether Nowby The Farm. DOMINANT FUNCTION Moving a progression forward, each chord in a diatonic set can take on a purpose, known as ‘harmonic function’. So, if a chord has a dominant function, we expect an immediate resolution to the tonic chord. This is handy when composing progressions, as by delaying that resolution by following a dominant chord with something other than the tonic, you create an air of…

Last issue, we saw the ways analogue-style distortion can be brought to bear on drums, to make them dirtier and more energetic. This time, we turn our attention to digital distortion: that is, bit depth and sample-rate reduction. There are countless plugins for this job – many dedicated entirely to those processes, others incorporating them as part of a broader creative remit. Digital distortion – particularly dropping the bit depth – is about as riotous as effects get, so be careful with those controls, lest you blow your speakers, ears and/or mind; and exercise taste and aesthetic judgement when appraising the sounds you’re making. A good general rule with any distortion or saturation-based effect is to set it where you think it sounds right, then back it off a touch.…

Native Instruments’ S-Series MIDI keyboards (10/10, 250) provide deep hands- and eyes-on control of their Komplete range of virtual instruments and effects, as well as those of an ever-expanding range of third parties (u-he, Rob Papen, Arturia et al) via the open NKS standard and Komplete Kontrol ‘shell’. As great as the S-Series is, however, with prices starting at £239 for the 25-key S25 and hitting £799 for the S88, it’s a bit of a reach for many novice producers. So, to open up that end of the market, NI have come up with the A-Series – a much cheaper, cut-down, bus-powered USB 2.0 controller keyboard that interfaces with the exact same Komplete Kontrol software. Numbers game “The A-Series shares the superlative build quality of its more expensive siblings” Available…

Five years ago, Sample Magic and UK producer Marc Adamo released the unassuming but helpful Magic AB (8/10, 195). This simple utility plugin enabled instant in-DAW A/B comparison of mixes with up to nine reference tracks, and was followed up in 2016 by the iterative v2 (8/10, 227), which added host sync and stereo/mono switching. Magic AB 2 is still available, but Adamo, who owns the IP rights, has signed up with Plugin Alliance, under the ADAPTR brand, to release a seriously souped-up and renamed new version. A cursory glance at Metric AB’s delicious GUI makes it clear that this is a far deeper and more versatile proposition than its Magic counterpart, and that improvement is, naturally, reflected in the price (which is more than three times higher). Where the…

While at no point does Century Tube Channel Strip get even vaguely overwhelming in either its concept or controls, obviously the EQ can’t possibly consist of just a more/less knob like the preamp and compressor. Nonetheless, it does still make two of the key decisions for you, with preset high- and low-shelving bands fixed at a generally useful 110Hz and 10kHz respectively, each with up to 12dB of cut or boost, for effortless broad-strokes control of the highs and lows. It’s with the sweepable semi-parametric +/-12dB mid band that the user does have to get their hands mildly dirty, though. This is an adaptive Q design (ie, the peak filter resonance gets narrower as the gain increases), and with the centre frequency ranging from 300Hz to 7.2kHz, it’s useful for…

Animate is a plugin effect (VST/AU/AAX) that applies four independent modules – Expand (expansion), Punch (transient enhancement), Ignite (distortion) and Grow (stereo widening) – to individual tracks, busses and full mixes. Switching the interface between them is done using the four central buttons, and the modules are colour-coded for easy identification. Each button is grey until the amount slider for its module is raised above 0%, whereupon it takes on the relevant colour, although that’s the only information you get for the three unselected modules – there’s no indication of mute status, which needs addressing. The output slider, despite being global, also changes colour, which feels kind of weird – it really doesn’t need to. Motion capture Each Animate module can be set to process the Mid, Side or L/R…

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-bitwww.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-bitwww.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-bitwww.cableguys.com Synapse Audio Dune CM • VA and wavetable oscillators • Powerful per-voice modulation • 12-slot modulation matrix • Based on the full version of Dune…

Kuassa PreMix CM • Subtle saturation or overdrive • Three-band Baxandall EQ • A/B comparison function • AU/VST, 32-/64-bitwww.kuassa.com Audiffex STA Enhancer CM • Valve-style signal exciter/enhancer • Separate low/high enhancement • Choose from five tube circuits • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bitwww.audiffex.com Audio Assault BassAmp CM • Ampeg-inspired bass amp sim • Gain and Deep controls for drive • Three-band EQ plus mix Blend • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bit www.audioassault.com Mercuriall U530 CM • Emulation of ENGL’s E530 preamp • Customisable Clean & Lead circuits • Presence, Contour, Chorus & Gain • Changeable mic/speaker position • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.mercuriall.com HoRNet Graffio CM • Flexible three-flavour distortion • Saturator module with DC offset • Exciter and bit reducer • AU/VST/VST3/AAX/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.hornetplugins.com…

TOGU AUDIO LINE TAL-SAMPLER Designed to recapture the gritty magic of vintage samplers, TAL-Sampler allows you to ratchet down the fidelity in order to match that of old-school digital instruments like E-MU’s Emulator II and Akai’s S-series. Though even its lowest settings might make a Casio fan blush, like with the SK-1, its fast workflow makes it a lot of fun to use. www.tal-software.com ARMAN BOHN SK-CROONER It may not be a carbon-copy clone of the original SK-1, but this Windows-only one-off does capture the spirit of one specific – and beloved – sound from the original SK-1: the 8-bit, PCM-based Human Voice patch. SK-crooner adds a resonant filter and reverb to the original’s vibrato. The envelope, meanwhile, is of the ADSR variety. www.armanbohn.com SEAWEED FACTORY CASIO SK-1 RHYTHM AND…

Arranging music in a DAW is a somewhat unintuitive skill that takes years to master. ‘Proper’ bands jam together with feeling, but us computer musicians are forced to drag blocks around on a screen in the hope that a short sketch will extend itself into a fully-fledged song. With such a technical process driving such an emotional art form, it’s no wonder that so many producers crank out 16-bar loops without really finishing anything worthwhile. “So many producers crank out 16-bar loops without finishing…” It takes focus and effort to escape this common trap of ‘loopitis’. But it can be done. Arm yourself with the knowledge, tools and techniques required, and your forced attempts at finishing tracks will evolve into flowing floods of inspiration, to the point where your music…

cm The key changes to Cypher2 are obvious, but what’s changed internally? AH “The oscillators have been tweaked rather than drastically remodelled; plus the additional Sine cores, more FM paths, variable depth ring modulation, and a few more subtle things like a taper on the FM depths to make them respond more musically to modulation-depth changes. The sum total is an oscillator that’s a lot stronger on FM-heavy sounds in particular, while still capable of all the classic VCO and hard sync sounds that the original was so great at. The shapers are a straightforward upgrade, but don’t underestimate the power of wave-folding – very interesting tones there. As to the filter, that’s a bigger upgrade. There are entirely new filter models in the MS20-ish Fat, the JPT (similar to…

133 was an ‘Organic Sounds’ special, so it’s appropriate that the issue was also the one in which we brought news of Sonic Charge’s Synplant, the plant-based synth that enables you to cultivate a sound from a ‘seed’. We called it “bizarre” at the time, but it certainly grew on us. Sorry. “We called Synplant ‘bizarre’ at the time, but it certainly grew on us” We also carried a tutorial on remixing in Reason. Of course, this was at a time when Propellerhead’s not-quite-yet-a-DAW didn’t support audio tracks, so we had to call on both Ableton Live and The Props’ own ReCycle! Sample slicer to do it… but it was all very simple, honestly. Our reviews section was headlined by Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere, a beast of a synth that we awarded…

Zedd’s recent hit, Stay, is a good example of a traditional song structure with an EDMinspired twist, adding an additional instrumental drop chorus after what would ordinarily be a standard chorus, but which in this case is almost completely made up of acappella vocals. This would have been an unusual step even five years ago, but producers are continually experimenting and pushing the boundaries of the traditional song form. The three-minute pop song format currently offers a wider canvas for dynamic exploration than ever. Pounding drums now yield to atmospheric breakdowns more frequently than just once in the middle of the song, and innovative use of technology such as pitch warping, Auto-Tune and Melodyne, together with new instruments like iZotope’s VocalSynth 2, are making it possible to craft new song…

KEEP ’EM SEPARATED If your project contains a lot of tracks, create a blank track and place it between two distinct groups of tracks as a visual separator. This keeps things tidy and lets you home in on specific areas of your arrangement more quickly. COPY THAT Live’s Duplicate command (Cmd-D on Mac, Ctrl-D on PC) is a handy tool for knocking out arrangements quickly. It essentially duplicates the selected area directly after the selection – in other words, it’s brilliant for repeating sections. FOLD IT UP For a quick tidy-up of the Arrangement View, Alt/Option-click one track’s fold button to fold all the tracks in your set. Find it next to the track name in the track header column on the right of the screen. MARKER RESPECT Use markers…

Putting an arrangement together by assembling sections like building blocks is the accepted way of creating songs on a computer, and for good reason – it works! Like most things, though, there’s a certain knack to doing it well, and simply sticking a bunch of regions together so that they play back in a certain order is inevitably going to sound a little mechanical, unless you apply a little extra attention around the edges to finish things off. Putting a bit of thought into the points where the sections actually join together can make a huge difference to the overall flow of the finished song, accentuating the dynamics of an arrangement, and helping it sound like it isn’t just a bunch of sections arbitrarily jammed together. There are plenty of…

Automatable low-pass filters are probably one of the most important tools ever to have appeared in the computer musician’s toolbox. Rather than simply fading the volume up, gradually opening out filters on synth, percussion or vocal parts over the course of an eight- or 16-bar phrase has become a standard for introducing new sections, and for good reason – it’s a technique that always works brilliantly. Now that most DAWs feature sophisticated parameter automation, getting a filter to open over the desired section is usually just a matter of assigning the plugin’s cutoff parameter to an automation curve and drawing in the appropriate breakpoints. When doing this, choose a plugin with additional distortion control, and dial in a little analogue warmth to fatten the sound as the filter opens.…

Flying high As producers, DJs and live performers, brothers Tom and Ian Griffiths – aka Icarus – are responsible for a series of perfectly-crafted, genre-crossing electronic releases, including Don’t Cry Wolf , Love Has Come Around , October and – the subject of this issue’s Producer Masterclass – the sublime No Sleep . “Playing No Sleep live has really brought the track to life for us” Based in Bristol, the pair recently signed to FFRR and will be releasing their debut EP later this year. “We just really felt, throughout this year, that we needed to bang out a lot more music,” says Tom, “because the last few years we’ve done singles and…

LIKE FOR LIKE As soon as you load a pro song into your session, line up and overlay relevant sections – for example, both drops. This way, when you listen back and forth, the tracks will be at roughly equal ‘density’ at that moment. Comparing a reference track’s uber-loud chorus against your quiet breakdown is pointless, after all. BROAD STROKES Referencing isn’t about copying a song stylistically – it’s the process of using better mixes to guide your technical decisions. Yes, a famous producer’s latest record probably sounds incredible, and you want your mix to sound that way, but you should still maintain an analytical mindset throughout. Don’t alter your creative choices, as those give you your sound as an artist. Try flipping between several reference…

Apple Alchemy with Logic Pro X, $199.99; or Mainstage, $29.99 Starting life as Camel Audio’s Cameleon 5000, Alchemy was initially designed as a proper additive synthesiser, complete with the ability to resynthesise audio files and even seamlessly morph between two distinct sounds. As mentioned, it also offers editing tools that can be applied to a spectral display. There’s also loads of pre-fab content to play with. blog.apple.com VirSyn Poseidon €169 desktop, $19.99 iOS version VirSyn’s Poseidon is a powerful spectral modelling synth. Like Iris, it provides colourful representations of sonic spectra which can be tweaked and shaped using a variety of tools. Resynthesis is one of VirSyn’s strong suits, and it appears here. Audio files can be imported as can bitmap images, which can be spat back out as sound.…

WarmPlace Virtual ANS We’ve discussed vocoders and their relationship to spectral synthesis, but, interestingly, a proper spectral instrument has existed in the analogue realm since 1938. The one-of-a-kind ANS converted images into sine waves printed onto glass discs, and WarmPlace’s Virtual ANS is an ace recreation. warmplace.ru/soft/ans Michael Klingbeil SPEAR SPEAR (Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis) is a free cross-platform application that does just what its name says. A spectral analysis engine can convert sources into thousands of individual sine waves, with control over how they behave in real time. Academic-looking, but the potential is virtually endless. klingbeil.com/spear oli4 LAoE LAoE is a layer-based audio editor that offers users a full range of spectral synthesis functions in addition to all manner of audio editing features. It’s completely free, and…

Drum programming is a fun part of the track-making process, especially when starting a new tune from scratch. Creating the right percussion early on will influence my choice of other sounds, and shape how other instruments fit the production, so I spend a lot of time digging into my sample library to find perfect drum kit sounds. While finding those perfect one-shots can be time-consuming, it’s equally true that using ready-made sounds from sample packs can feel a tad less ‘exclusive’. That’s why, in this month’s Studio Strategies tutorial, I’m going to be taking you through the creation of a bespoke bass drum. I’ll use basic subtractive synthesis techniques to construct a powerful, four-to-the-floor kick loop fit for a house or techno track. I’ll be using my Arturia MiniBrute analogue…

London-based Hugh Pescod, better known to his fans as Redlight, occupies a unique space in today’s electronic music landscape. The DJ/producer’s diverse taste is a byproduct of his Bristol heritage – the eclectic UK city where he first honed his craft as drum ’n’ bass producer Clipz – and this is reflected in his musical output. From bass-heavy tech bangers and radio-friendly flavours through to retro rave influences and half-time hip-hop stylings, the Redlight name is synonymous with (predominantly) four-to-the-floor club music that operates down in the low end of the spectrum – exactly what his new 10-track album, Active , is all about. Given the dancefloor-pummelling precision and clarity of his mixdowns, you’d be forgiven for thinking Redlight is a total plugin and gear obsessive –…

Way back in 2009, Tone2’s Gladiator 2 was one of the hottest softsynths around. With its enormous, punchy sound and genuinely ‘different’ Harmonic Content Morphing oscillator technology, it proved a popular choice among the dance music fraternity in particular, and garnered a score of 9/10 in 136’s review. Now, almost a decade later, the German developers have put Gladiator back in the limelight with a second full version update. It’s a free update from v2 but still a premium-priced synth otherwise… so can it hold its ground in today’s softsynth arena? Combat ready At first glance, upgraders would be forgiven for thinking that the installation had failed, as Gladiator 3 (VST/AU) looks very similar to its predecessor indeed. Closer inspection reveals changes to the layout, the replacement of orange backlighting…

At the bottom of the Animate interface are a small series of contextual controls for tweaking the response of each module. These can be hidden behind a slide-up panel if you don’t want to see them – not only is this totally pointless, but it’s all too easy to accidentally close said panel while aiming for the mute or solo buttons. Annoying… Common to all four modules are their Attack/Release envelopes, setting the onset time of each effect after the Threshold is exceeded, and how long it takes to ‘let go’ when the input signal drops back below it again. The Attack stage ranges from 1-100ms, while the Release covers 1-300ms. Alongside the envelope, the rest of the controls consist of Knee (Hard to Soft – 1-20dB) and Ratio (1:1-1:4)…

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…

For a number of reasons, the fadeout – a gradually diminishing, repeated hook – used to be the go-to way to end a pop song. The legendary SSL mixing consoles found in large studios in the 80s had a magic ‘Auto Fade’ button in the centre section, and there was even an urban myth amongst studio folk in the 90s about the existence of a world-class session fadeout artist, known as Johnny Bag’o’Doughnuts, who would put a top-notch fadeout on your song for the session fee of… yep, a bag of doughnuts. Yet although reports indicate that the peak year for the fadeout was 1985, since then it seems gradually to have fallen out of favour with producers across all genres, with only a handful of recent chart hits ending…

Apple’s Logic Pro X has evolved into a true production powerhouse since the company acquired it from Emagic, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. One of the many developments that have been added to the app over the years is the addition of a dedicated Arrangement track, intended to make it easier to come up with new arrangement ideas with the minimum of fuss and bother, by literally picking up chunks of your song up and moving them around on the timeline into whatever order you like. The Arrangement track works by treating song sections as single entities to be relocated at will – picking up a section collects all of the regions on all of the tracks contained vertically within it. Not only is this great for playing around…

Reverb Throwing a snare into a long reverb on the last beat of the bar before a breakdown makes for a smooth transition as the long tail dies away into the next section. Pretty much any reverb plugin will work for this – we particularly like D16 Group’s Toraverb 2. Delay Delay is, of course, an essential item in any producer’s toolkit – a ping-pong, quarter-note delay works brilliantly on risers and downlifters, and a synced repeat can add life to the dullest of synth parts. For a great result, try u-he’s new Colour Copy or Eventide’s QuadraVox. Filter Most filters or single-band EQs will be able to handle the task of filtering down drums during breakdowns and builds, but as stock plugins go, Ableton Live’s Auto Filter is a…

The ‘deck stop’ – an effect simulating hitting the ‘off’ button on a turntable mid-track – is a popular trick, and easy to create in Logic Pro X using the Fade tool. All you have to do is draw a crossfade across the portion of audio you want to place the effect over, then change the fade type in the region parameter box to Slow Down. That’s it – although it’s often a good idea to render the effect to a new audio file once you’re happy with it, to solidify the effect. The same effect is achievable in Live, too, though it takes a bit more work to pull off. Start by selecting the area you want to process, then use the Split command to separate it into a…

One of the most revered valve-based outboard processors of all time, the Teletronix LA-2A Leveling Amplifier has long been highly regarded by virtue of its transparent response, musical sound and foolproof operational simplicity. IK Multimedia’s White 2A is a superb virtual emulation of the LA-2A that works as a module in the company’s T-RackS 5 host ‘shell’ mastering system, and additionally as an individual plugin in your VST/AU/AAXcompatible DAW. Even better than that,  though, is that it’s now yours for free, only with this issue of Computer Music. An optical compressor, the LA-2A is known for its smooth, comparatively languid response. The input signal level controls the brightness of an electro-luminescent panel, which then shines on a photosensitive resistor. As the input gets louder and the panel gets brighter, the…

1 Load 4U+ BlindTest on all tracks you want to compare, after any insert effects. All instances ‘talk’ to each other – open one, and all BlindTest tracks populate the list. Select Settings >> Compensate to automatically adjust levels. Analyse your audio, then punch Compensate to match levels. 2 To compare tracks, simply click Start. This randomises the order of playback, and hides track names. We can now judge each signal in turn, without knowing which is which. There are two modes: Single and Series. We use the latter here, and give each entry a star rating out of five. 3 Let’s now reveal what we’re hearing. Click on the Solo button, track number or arrows to move through the list. To remove tracks, drag them to the inactive list…

One of the most interesting aspects of spectral or additive synthesisers is their ability to analyse a sound and then recreate it as a collection of sine waves that vary over time. A sound resynthesised in this manner is no longer a static recording, but rather a complete additive synthesis patch. Some additive synths therefore allow the user to resynthesise a pair of sounds and then interpolate – ie, morph – between the pair at will. Not to be mistaken with a mere crossfade, this sort of transformation is more like a macro function that adjusts every parameter simultaneously over time. This allows for wildly creative applications, like morphing a human wail into an animal’s howl, or musical patches that interpolate between different instruments over a range of notes. Once…

Major and minor: the age-old struggle between good and evil. Well, maybe that’s taking things a bit far, but the point is, research supports the idea that everybody can recognise the difference between the upbeat vibe of a major key and the sadder feeling provoked by a minor key. If you’re setting out to compose a tune in a particular mood, how do you know when you’re in a minor key? After all, three out of the seven chords that belong to a major key are, of course, also minor chords. So just because the majority of the chords in a song are minor, you’re not necessarily in a minor key – you might have stumbled across the three minor chords that are diatonic to a major key. As long…

SHAPING TONE It’s a good idea to shape your bass drum with subtractive EQ. I often try a gentle notch in the low-mid area (usually around 150-400Hz depending on the kick in question), which will not only pull away mud, but also enhance frequencies above. Need to assign your kick to a secondary role in the low end? Then reach for a high-pass filter and carve space for sub-bass. Raise that filter’s frequency value – in the context of the entire mix, of course – until your kick has the minimum amount of low end it needs. If it sounds a bit too thin after this, dial in a little resonant bump around the cutoff point to push back some focused ‘oomph’. No amount of EQ will add frequencies that…

“There’s too much pressure nowadays, especially with social media. ‘I’ve got to be the best, wear these clothes, be surrounded by these people, wearing these sneakers, getting my likes online’. It’s the same with music – but what does any of it mean? Music is a creative art. When you paint on a canvas, you can paint whatever you want; when you make clothes, you can put the stitches wherever you want. Why can’t you do that in the studio? Why do there have to be categories on Spotify and Beatport, to make your music sellable to people who want something ‘linear’ so they can easily DJ with it? Everything’s so contrived that it’s hard for people to go into the studio and set out to make something that isn’t…

In 2016, version 6 of iZotope’s spectral audio editor and repair/restoration plugins suite (VST/AU/AAX) introduced machine learning to its technology base alongside a range of miraculous new modules, including De-wind, De-noise, Mouth De-click and De-rustle. Like every version before it, it scored 10/10 in 245. RX 7 adds a handful of new modules, as well as an ‘Assistant’ of the kind found in iZotope’s other flagships, Neutron and Ozone. We’re looking at the top-of-the-line Advanced version here, but there’s Standard edition (£299), which loses multichannel functionality and various dialogue-related modules, and RX 7 Elements (£99), which is decidedly lighter, feature-wise. See the iZotope website for a full comparison and upgrade pricing. You’re surrounded With RX 6, our only real complaint concerned the software’s continued lack of support for multichannel audio,…

Chaining a virtual tube preamp, a three-band ‘sweetening’ EQ and a one-knob optical compressor in a single plugin, UA’s Century Tube Channel Strip for Apollo/Arrow/UAD-2 is an intuitive and immediate recording channel built to get vocals and instruments of all kinds sounding smooth and warm on the way into your DAW. Of course, it’s also viable for mixing, but as the minimalism and simplicity of the thing imply, this is primarily a tracking strip: set it up on an input channel (guitar, bass, vocal, etc), hit record and commit. Old school. Catch the tube First in the chain is the Tube Preamp, which offers Low and High Gain settings for matching to condenser or dynamic microphones; an optional 18dB/octave high-pass filter at 80Hz for getting rid of unwanted low-frequency intrusions;…

FG-A is deployed as a module within Slate Digital’s Virtual Mix Rack 2. This is a modular channel strip plugin (VST/AU/AAX), graphically referencing the API 500 ‘lunchbox’ format, in which up to eight modules from a regularly expanding range of analogue-style compressors, EQs and other processors – including the superb Virtual Console (9/10, 169) and Virtual Tube (9/10, 247) Collections – are chained in series. You can buy modules individually or, alternatively, ‘unlock’ the whole lot with an All Access subscription. VMR 2 itself doesn’t offer any meaningful functionality beyond the ability to save out effects chains as presets, and the hooking up of host automation assignments, but the exceptional quality of the modules make it without doubt one of the most compelling ‘in the box’ mixing tools around. We…

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…

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-bitwww.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-bitwww.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-bitwww.audiority.com Unfiltered Audio G8 CM • Get tight dynamics or creative FX • Includes advanced gating controls • Real-time waveform…

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…