Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Computer Music

Though luddites scoff at the thought of assistance from audio technology, we can’t escape the fact that, here in 2019, we have access to a whole new generation of software tools only dreamed of a few years ago. Far from ‘plugins for dummies’, these clever processors – when used with skill and a keen ear – will perform complex tasks in seconds, streamline your workflow, and even act as virtual assistants in the studio. With all these advancements in audio tech, it’s no surprise that this month’s cm is packed with examples of time-saving tools that warrant your attention. “Today’s virtual gadgets can instantly improve your sonics” First up, head to p22 and find out how today’s virtual gadgets can instantly improve your sonics in our Mixing Magic cover feature.…

cm We gather you guys have form? Tell us about Devious Machines’ history. Jim “Dom and I were introduced a couple of years ago – we only lived five minutes walk from each other. A year, later Devious Machines was born. We both have studios in our basements in Guildford. Dom has an electronic music act, Neurodriver, and was doing a lot of sound design for video games. I made the Big Kick and StereoSavage plugins, and before that was doing trance production with releases on Armada and Nukleuz.” cm Explain the concept behind Texture… Dom “Texture was inspired by a production trick that I use a lot when producing records, which is to layer gated and filtered white noise into my programmed drum tracks, to act as a kind…

Setting yourself a sound design mission like this one is a surefire way to jumpstart your creativity in the studio, especially if you usually follow a particular workflow. While it’s completely fine to design sounds in isolation, crafting a mini track sketch at the same time means that each new sound fits within the real-world context of a song, as we’ve processed each sound to fit in the mix. Even if the track you create isn’t a masterpiece in itself, you can later go through and export each sound to your samples folder for use another time.…

Creating the highest quality sounds possible will make your life a lot easier when starting a new track. Presets designed by others are fine to use, of course, but making your own patches from scratch will force you to psychologically connect with those sounds that are only yours. This is why I set aside time and spend entire sessions developing new synth patches to use in projects at a later date. Wavetable synthesis is especially fashionable at the minute, and can be used to generate a broad range of timbres you’d struggle to come up with through other means. In this month’s step-by-step tutorial, then, I’ll show you how to create a pad part from scratch using Xfer Serum, arguably the most fashionable softsynth of recent times. To create the…

“From the age of two or three, I started to play rhythms on pots and pans in the kitchen. I guess my parents quickly realised they’d given birth to a drummer! My grandmother bought me my first kit when I was about five and I started having lessons a couple of years later. The drum teacher was great. Even though I was young, he started teaching me about hip-hop, R&B and funk. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning how to play and deconstruct breakbeats. “I think he was trying to open all the music doors for me… to show me what was out there. I remember him going off to study African percussion and coming back with all these amazing sounds. Different ways to play…

Fuse Audio Labs DrumsSSX $35 Web fuseaudiolabs.de Format PC/Mac, VST/AU/AAX An acronym for ‘Drum Signal Source Separator and Re-mixer’, DrumsSSX is a drum kit separation plugin that claims to be able to carve mono and stereo drum loops and tracks up into five constituent elements: Kick, Snare, Toms, Floor Toms and Cymbals. The interface presents the kit as a six-channel mixer (including Master), with per-channel level, pan, mute and solo controls, plus four-band EQ, transient shaping and saturation. Each channel is set up to tap off its named drum type, but there’s always a lot of crosstalk (the top of the kick drum appearing in the Floor Tom channel, for example), so you can’t kill unneeded channels without having a subtractive effect on the overall sound. The code doing the…

01 SD Bass House 02 Organic Loops Brazilian Drum & Percussion Grooves 03 Mad Villains Artist Series 181 Ghetto Deep 04 Artisan Audio Late Night Deep Tech 05 Organic Loops Cinematic Oboe 06 SD Dark Future Beats 07 RV Build Effects and Melodic Risers 08 DJ Vadim Urban Dub Modern Dancehall 09 RV Jackin’ Tech House 10 LM Hybrid Trap Domination 11 RV Tranquillity Chill Trap 12 Leftwing & Kody Tech From The Vaults 13 Artisan Audio Cosmic Techno 14 LM Neo Jazz Funk 15 Frontline Producer Americana Guitars Vol 2 16 SD Dreamlike Textures 17 Retro House 18 Sterling Void Jackin’ Tech & House Step by step Creative track-building with this issue’s Loopmasters 1GB Pack 1 Let’s open our DAW (Bitwig Studio 2.4 in our case), set the tempo…

E-MU SYSTEMS PROTEUS VX Ten years ago, Creative Labs revived and updated both Emulator and Proteus in virtual form. The commercial Emulator X was the flagship, but a stripped-down version, Proteus VX, was also made available free for Windows XP users. Like the originals, Proteus VX offers a wealth of sample-based instruments with which to play. Its old, but still around. creative.com/emu/proteusvx SONIC CAT RAVITY Initially released under the brand name ‘Luxonix’, Ravity was at the time one of the few ROMplers that sought to emulate the limitations of famous sample-based synths such as the Proteus. Though Ravity sounds far more like a Yamaha module, the sentiment and experience are similar to those found on E-MU’s Proteus. Windows only. sonic-cat.com/ravity DIGITAL SOUND FACTORY E-MU PROTEUS 1 Digital Sound Factory offer…

GAME ON It’s probably the last thing we need, but we couldn’t resist downloading Klevgrand’s DAW Games plugin, which features variations on three video game classics in the form of Kletris, Flappy Mix and FFT Fight. Fun 1, Productivity 0. LINES CLEARED The Blurred Lines copyright case has rumbled on since 2013, but now, mercifully, it appears to be over. The original verdict – that the track apes the feel of Marvin Gaye’s Got To Give It Up – has been upheld. Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams will pay damages totalling around $5m. PROLOGUE PATCHED Remember we told you that a small number of Korg Prologue owners were suffering tuning problems with their synths? Well, as promised, Korg has released a firmware update that promises to fix these issues, so…

4FRONT PIANO 4Front Technologies made a big splash in the early days of VST instruments with their simple yet effective keyboard instruments, starting with 4Front Piano. Intended as a quick solution for musicians looking for a good virtual piano, it was released at a time when most piano options were based on enormous multisample collections for premium software samplers. 4Front Piano is a small, low-overhead plug that combines synthesis and samples to provide a good sound while also saving CPU cycles. It isn’t the finest piano, but if you want to recapture the days of banging away on the old joanna at your grandad’s, it’ll do the trick. yohng.com/software.html…

Mason in action Dutch producer and DJ Mason, aka Iason Chronis, has enjoyed success and acclaim in both the pop and house scenes, with a hits includingPerfect (Exceeder)(featuring Princess Superstar, 2007),Runaway(2010) andBoadicea (featuring Róisin Murphy, 2011), bolstered by an immense list of remixes and several albums. As well as affiliations with record labels (Island, LouLou, Great Stuff, Defected et al), he also owns his own imprint, Animal Language, home to much of his own output. We caught up with Mason in his studio in Amsterdam, where he gave us a top-down overview of his production style and techniques. We started by asking him where he finds musical inspiration. “I’ll probably never have a private jet, but who cares” “I’ve been a DJ for years,” he says, “so that always gives…

Scales! Music teachers are always banging on about how important they are, and with good reason too, as they’re the keys that unlock a vast number of musical mysteries. Yet that doesn’t mean that you have to learn all of them right off the bat – when you’re just starting out, there are some scales that are more useful than others, and one of the best ones to get to know at the outset is the pentatonic scale. The literal translation of the word ‘pentatonic’ is “five tones”, so a pentatonic scale is simply that – a musical scale, or sequence of notes, containing five notes. Like the regular major and minor scales we’ve encountered in previous Easy Guides, pentatonic scales also come in major and minor versions, and it’s…

AUTOMATION STATION Establishing movement and variation is important when laying down musical elements throughout the course of a track. I’ll tend to concentrate on certain sections – usually the intro, end-of-bar phrases and breakdowns – to develop the sound in question. Once I have a solid structure down, I’ll reach for last-minute effects plugins and automate these accordingly, depending on the vibe of the track. For me, automation is key when working on these distinctive final details. For example, subtle changing of a pad’s volume or increased space with reverb can greatly alter how a track ‘feels’ from section to section. Another example is using two filter types – a high-pass and low-pass, for instance – that swell into each other using different modulation rates. This particular trick works wonders…

“Right from the start, I always had the idea that a live show needed to be more than just one guy standing behind a laptop. Over the years, it almost became a band thing… live instruments and me. If people have paid for a ticket, I want them to walk out of the door happy. I want them to have witnessed something real. “Ironically, over the last year, I kind of stripped it back because I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go next. How does the idea of a live show move into the future? At the moment, we seem to be stuck with the idea that it has to be visually exciting. Lasers, giant video screens, explosions on stage, lots of black and white. “But…

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…

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,…

Synclavier Go! It’s time for another classic synth to come to iOS – the Synclavier landed in the late 70s and went on to be a cornerstone of 80s music. Synclavier Go! is the iPad version, while Synclavier Pocket! covers off iPhone and iPod Touch users. Both are designed to emulate the FM engine used in the Synclavier II, and use the same DSP engine as you’ll find in Arturia’s amazing Synclavier V. Prices were unconfirmed as we went to press. synclavier.com Numerical Audio RM-1 Numerical Audio’s RM-1 is billed as a Wave Modulator, and features not only two flavours of ring modulation – a virtual analogue model and an all-digital design – but also frequency modulation, phase modulation and amplitude modulation. That’s a lot of distinct modulation…

Even in 2009, the market was flooded with soft synths, so in cm136 we helped you to keep you head above sonic water and choose “the right synth for the job”. Of course, many of us remain convinced that patch-building nirvana awaits if we buy ‘just one more plugin’, but finding the appropriate tools and mastering them remains as good advice as ever. “Finding the right tools and mastering them is as good advice as ever” Elsewhere, we ignored the naysayers and showed you how to create a “pro-quality” mix in Apple’s limited-but-lovely GarageBand DAW. We also chatted to Vince Clarke, who told us that he’d like to see Roland make a software version of its System 100m synth. That still hasn’t happened, though we wonder if Vince has snapped…

Soundtheory Gullfoss £139 Gullfoss is an intelligent EQ that uses signal analysis and real-time adjustment to improve the clarity of your audio signals. Traditional EQ parameters are replaced by five controls that allow you to enhance masked elements, control dominant ones and then finesse the results. It’s about as close as you’ll get to a ‘click and forget’ EQ, and a wonderful time saving tool.. soundtheory.com iZotope Neutron 2 From £100 Neutron 2 is a quality modular channel strip plugin that’s been supercharged with a bunch of intelligent mixing tools. These include auto settings based on track analysis, plus visual tools that address mix balance, EQ masking and frequency content. Much of this is linked via inter-plugin communication. An excellent, multifaceted plugin for the serious mixer. izotope.com Waves Vocal Rider…

Apple Logic Pro cm195 » 9/10 » £200 “I produce mainly in the box in Logic – I’ve been with Logic since it was in black and white, so I’ve just grown with it. I think they’re all great, all the different DAWs, but I think it’s very important to stick to one and become fast at it.” apple.com Waves L3-16 Multimaximizer NA > NA > $549 “I have my L3-16 limiter if I master stuff myself. I used to master everything myself; right now I’m going back and forth with a mastering engineer, and using less limiting myself and letting them do that.” waves.com UAD Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor cm188 > 8/10 > $229 “There are a few compressors that I use lots, but I’m also using the outboard,…

Computer technology speeds ahead at a furious pace. In an industry where the shelf lives of new products are often measured in months, 30 years is an eternity. Yet that’s how long Cubase has been around. Initially released for the Atari ST platform back in 1989, Cubase was the follow-up to Steinberg’s Pro 24 – also for the Atari – and Pro 16 before it (initially released for the Commodore 64). Back then, Cubase was designed to allow musicians to sequence their MIDI hardware – a task at which the current version of the program still excels. Always on the move, within a few years, the company would add audio recording and eventually spearhead the shared plugin format with VST effects and instruments. This constant evolution and refinement continues with…

Soundtoys Effect Rack Stack up and save/load any combination of Soundtoys effects within this faux wood-clad interface. You can also pipe the entire output back into the input for wild feedback effects. soundtoys.com Unfiltered Audio BYOME With over 40 effects modules on tap, most cribbed from Unfiltered’s other creative effects, this modular playground encourages the patching of some ace processors and modulators. unfilteredaudio.com Universal Audio OTO Biscuit Modelled on a boutique digital effects box, this UAD-powered, sequencer-driven processor combines 8-bit crushing, waveshaping and analogue-modelled filtering. uaudio.com Native Instruments Molekular Developed in partnership with Zynaptiq, this modular signal-processor lets you set up a custom combo of 35 signal processors and 16 mod sources, then morph between four global ‘states’. native-instruments.com Sugar Bytes Looperator If complex rhythmic effects are your thing, this…

WINNING FORMULA Since the minor pentatonic scale is equivalent to a natural minor scale minus the second and sixth degrees, it can be written as a formula using b numbers b that refer to the scale degrees, namely 1, 3, 4, 5, 7. This makes it easy to apply to any key and thus work out what the actual notes should be for that particular key. MINOR CONSIDERATIONS The reason pentatonic scales work so well when improvising over diatonic chords is that, by removing what are effectively the two most unstable notes in the scale, they force us to avoid the notes that are most likely to sound ‘wrong’. Once you’ve got the scale under your belt, adding a sharpened fourth degree will convert it into a blues scale, adding…

Our promise We bring you honest, unbiased appraisals of the latest computer music products. Our experts apply the same stringent testing methods to all gear, no matter how much hype or expectation surrounds it. What the ratings mean 1-4 A seriously flawed product that should be avoided 5 This product’s problems outweigh its merits 6 A decent product that’s only held back by a few flaws 7 Solid. Well worth considering 8 Very good. A well-conceived and executed product 9 Excellent. First-rate and among the best you can buy 10 Exceptional. It just doesn’t get any better than this! Awarded to products that challenge existing ideas and do something entirely new A product has to really impress us with its functionality and features to win this one If the product…

The Dynamic Transient Control (DTC) knob sets Harmonics apart from other saturation plugins. Distortion inevitably has a destructive effect on the transients in a signal, flattening them out as they hit the dynamic ‘ceiling’. This can pull the life out of drums and percussion in particular, often requiring mixing back in of some of the dry signal to compensate. While Harmonics features a Dry/Wet mix control for doing just that, Dynamic Transient Control makes for a vastly preferable option. With DTC activated, Harmonics constantly analyses the dynamic profile of the input signal. The further the DTC knob is turned clockwise from centre, the more that profile is reimposed on the post-distortion output signal to increasingly dial the transients back in. Alternatively, twisting it anticlockwise pulls the transients down even further,…

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…

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…

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…