Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i Computer Music

Audio interface All computers include some form of onboard sound and coupled with your DAW this may be all you need to listen to your computer output. Once you start using a mic, however, you’ll need a mic preamp to amplify its level, possibly phantom power (see below) and most likely separate headphone and master outputs. The simplest way to get all these elements sorted is to buy a dedicated audio interface. This typically connects to your machine using USB or FireWire, and once installed, its inputs and outputs appear within your DAW as physical connections. Accessories Analogue tape may be a thing of the past, but sticky tape certainly isn’t. With leads knocking around and various things to keep in place, you’ll find a roll of gaffer tape helpful,…

Armed with your recording-ready audio interface, the first thing is to get that installed properly. Many interfaces work straight away without the need for specific audio drivers, and you can simply hook up the USB or FireWire cable and get started. However, it’s worth installing the latest manufacturer’s drivers and firmware (usually from their website) as these often include extra applications with hardware monitoring options or software control over aspects of the interface. With your interface installed properly, open up your DAW and check that you can access its inputs and outputs. Next up, connect your monitors to your interface, making sure they’re turned off before you do so. Whether you’re using self-powered active monitors or running standard passive monitors via an amplifier, the main stereo output signal from your…

Time spent soundchecking is never wasted. Once the mics are set up, get the drummer to play the drums one by one. Get a rough recording level using the gain on your desk channel or preamp and listen to the sound. Ask yourself several questions: Are you hearing the drum like it sounds in the room? Is that the best you can get from that drum? How’s the pitching and damping? Is it right for the song? If you’re not happy, try other approaches until you are: a different mic, more or less damping, a different kick drum beater. Ideally you shouldn’t start EQing or compressing until you’re happy with the source sound, although for a beginner, it can help to play with the tone. Eventually you’ll learn what the…

So far we’ve recorded one or two mics, possibly blended prior to recording, but essentially we’ve been capturing the guitarist’s live sound. However, as we touched on earlier, there is another option, which involves recording a DI (direct injection or direct input, depending on who you ask) signal either in isolation or in conjunction with the miked sound. So what are the advantages of this approach? Well, first of all, if you split the DI immediately after the guitar or bass output, you have a completely clean signal that you can blend in with the amped sound, reprocess or even use on its own. You may think that this last option sounds absurd, but with bass guitar, a clean DI’ed sound can often be worked very effectively with some EQ…

Sequencers have played a role in modular synthesis from the start. Donald Buchla included one in his systems to alleviate the tedium of splicing passages together from bits of tape. Bob Moog likewise offered sequencing modules in his 960 Sequential Controller, 961 Sequencer Interface and 962 Sequential Switch. These would be offered as add-ons to the mighty Moog systems of the late 60s and 70s and were used by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Richard Pinhas. The first two of these used sequencers to forge the ‘Berlin School’, while the latter exploited the sequencer’s advanced functions to make a unique brand of prog. But what exactly is a sequencer? As the name indicates, a sequencer, well, sequences. Sequencers are mostly used to trigger notes in a robotic musical passage, but…

Over the years Arturia have considerably refined the look and features of their instruments and when you compare some of the early examples like the Jupiter 8 with its latest Jup-8 V 4 incarnation the difference is striking. In-App tutorials are an enhancement feature that first appeared in V Collection 7 and these are now refined in 8. Available from the new right hand side panel, tutorials are divided into Learn The Instrument and Sound Design categories and once launched provide walkthrough-style text instruction in the panel below. As you work through, the pertinent aspects of the interface are highlighted and whether you’re just after a quick overview or explanation of deeper features, these provide a great way to learn how these classic synths and instruments work. If you want…

Shade includes a bunch of quite regular filter shapes perfect for typical EQ duties and these are suitably labelled to show their purpose. The filters are still pretty powerful with 30dB cut/ boost and very sharp Q options (the shelves go up to 2000dB/octave). These shapes are complemented by some very flexible resonant and multi-resonant variants and a good example are the resonant shelves. Here you get both Q-Up and Q-Down parameters which allow you to individually tailor the pre-shelf dip and cutoff frequency resonance. Meanwhile, multi-resonant examples include high, low, band pass and notch filters. These feature additional resonant peaks across the frequency range, and the spacing of these is dependent on the slope. Shade also includes 15 Phaser and Comb Filter/Flanger filter shapes in regular, resonant and multi-resonant…

MasterLab DynaQ 2 £119 Web masterlab.audio Format PC/Mac, VST/AU/AAX Most compressor plugins take your signal and reduce the level above the threshold. DynaQ asks whether we can go further, using the compressed signal’s level above and below the threshold as a way to split that signal, and apply different processing to each state. The signal flow starts with regular compression: threshold, ratio, attack and release, you know the drill. Next, though, there are dual EQs, dual Saturators, and dual Width and Pan controls – one each for processing the signal when above the threshold, one for while below the threshold. One obvious use of DynaQ would be in sculpting the sounds of your transients. Taming your signal’s peaks using compression may be necessary to clamp down on the dynamic…

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, and log in…

Rusty guitars Robbie Stamp from Cyclick tells us more about the inspiration behind his sample-pack creation: “The rustiness in question is sonic, though a couple of the guitars used have small spots of oxidisation on their metalwork due to their age. Each line/ loop was created to bring a feeling of aged, dirty, greasy noise, be it from overt distortion and fuzz to tape echo saturation and vibrato wobble. This atmosphere also comes out in the playing, in particular a leaning towards minor and minor pentatonic scales. “Rhythmically, I had to keep things tight enough that the loops would flow from the end point back to the start, but what happens in the middle may be a little looser. “The samples are, with a couple of exceptions, straight off the…

cm How did you get into software? MC “My background is in music and performance; I’ve released albums under Sketches for Albinos and my own name. I started designing software 10 years ago and have been at Krotos for six years. I started making music on a 4-track and a heavy laptop – music tech has come a long way! Everything I learnt was self-taught which helped me approach things with an unusual angle: misusing technology, whilst keeping it user-friendly are both important things.” cm Tell us a bit about Krotos MC “We started in 2014 with a university project from Orfeas, the founder: that was Dehumaniser, for creature sound effects. It got us lots of attention so we developed more from its ‘DNA’. We found a gap in the…

Untold is the third release from Bristol-based producer Sophia Loizou, an intense exploration of sound that blends extreme field recordings, granular textures and ambient rhythms resulting in some of the most striking sonic textures committed to a hard drive… 1 Tell us about your background? SL: “I was about 19 when I started to compose music, while studying fine art. I’d been listening to electronic music while working on my art. I realised that what I was hearing in the sonic textures and gestures translated across to my mark-making. My last large scale series of paintings were visualisations of sound – I had started to hear the sounds differently. This was what sparked my interest in working with sound. I decided to teach myself about the technologies used to make…

The simplest form of recording involves setting up a microphone, routing that signal to a recorder and hitting record, but this allows you no means of listening to how things sound before you actually record them. In contemporary recording we work on the assumption that we can listen to our microphones to see how things sound and adjust them accordingly, and that we will continue to listen to them during our recording process. What’s more, with multiple tracks and the option to overdub, we create a need to hear what’s already been recorded at the same time or ‘in sync’ with our new recording. These considerations are what we call our signal flow, and getting this concept clear helps considerably when you’re trying to get each aspect of the process…

Microphones probably generate more column inches than any other practical aspect of recording. Topics include mic positioning and orientation, mic types, brands and models, and of course ancillary gear such as classic mic preamps. Once you’ve considered those aspects you can move on to the specific techniques of famous engineers, who you’ll often find happily blogging about them. This is all interesting stuff, but it’s always worth keeping things in perspective. Remember, your goal is to capture the voices and instruments you’re recording so that they sound the way you want them to. Much of the time the source sound itself will have a much bigger impact on this than your mic or its position, so your starting point has to be to get your instruments sounding the way you…

In order to successfully record and overdub to the playback from your DAW, you’ll need a cue feed for your headphones. You’d think this humble process would be pretty simple to set up, but there are a number of potential hurdles to overcome, some of which could require a hardware workaround. Latency The first thing to tackle is latency. The signals you route via your DAW and back out again will encounter a round-trip processing delay. The length of this will be affected by the AD and DA converter, the audio buffer size your DAW is set to and the audio driver latency. Most DAWs allow you to reduce the buffer considerably to 64 or even 32 samples, but at these settings only a very powerful computer can record and…

Selecting and tuning the drums in isolation is only part of the process. You should consider the drum kit as a single instrument and listen to the way each drum interacts with the others – particularly the way the toms and kick drum interact with each other and the snare. If you’ve tuned the snare drum down for a deep sound and slackened off the snare wires, the chances are that one or more of the toms – or, worse, the kick drum – will set the snare buzzing every time it’s hit. You might have to compromise on the snare tightness or tom tuning to avoid this continuous buzz. Likewise, undamped toms might sound big and lively, but the rest of the kit can set them humming and spilling…

Preamps If you’re recording in a makeshift studio and you’ve spent time gathering a collection of good mics for your drum session, spend the same amount of time getting together a good set of preamps to go with them. These are really as important as getting the kit to sound right and procuring good microphones to go on it. Drums are of course loud, so beware of overloading the preamp input. If your gain setting is very low, engage the microphone pad to allow you to turn it up. The pad will protect the input stage from clipping. Click track/tempo Whether or not to use a click track is a choice that has a huge impact on what can and can’t be done, and on the final result. The decision…

With all the amazing developments in software amp simulation over recent years, you might think the process of actually recording a real electric guitar or bass through an amp in a room has become a thing of the past. Consider, however, that every guitarist spends time and effort developing their own sound, contributed to by their amp, pedals and playing style. To suddenly ditch all that in favour of universally available software would be a little hasty. Ultimately, a real electric guitar amp setup in a real-world space can sound amazing, and will always be something well worth recording. Although we’ll touch on the subject of amp simulation plugins in this tutorial, and show you how to record guitar and bass with a view to using such applications, the main…

Amplifier simulations have become the DAWbased equivalent of re-amping, and with so many quality plugins to choose from, you should be able to find the sound you want very easily. They’re affordable, recallable and – for the most part – extremely flexible. Features tend to include a preamp stage, often with a choice of amp types, and a cabinet stage, often with different mic types, positions and so on. In some cases, you also get a pedal board and studio master effects, and the best ones also add in routing and split processing, so you can split one input signal and effectively bi-amp it, all within the one plugin. We’ve also seen a few more bass-specific simulations come to market over recent years. These tend to be a bit more…

Like it or not, repetition is a vital ingredient in music, especially pop. I’m not necessarily talking about the kind of relentless hammering of a chorus hook that makes your parents mutter darkly – annoying parents has been, after all, one of the main remits of pop all along. No, the kind of repetition here is more to do with individual notes, or pairs – specifically using repeated phrases or motifs to build melodic hooks. The main idea behind repeating elements in your music, be it individual notes, small groups of notes or even complete hooks, is to fix the tune firmly in your listener’s ear, so that they both expect it when it happens again, and remember it once it’s over. It’s all part of the ‘singalongability’ factor that’s…

SWING ENGINE In decades past, sequencers were seen by some as mechanistic melody-makers marching to a tyrannical, implacable clock devoid of human feeling. Savvy synthesists can side-step the lock-step groove by subtly modulating the sequencer’s internal clock with an LFO. Moog’s 960 (and its faithful clones) can be switched to a mode wherein each step of the third row controls the length of its associated steps in the two rows above. With a little creative patching, a second sequencer may be called into play to achieve a similar effect. BEYOND THE BUNDLE Though the Eight-Step Sequencer module included within Cherry Audio’s Voltage Modular Nucleus is a veritable catalogue of classic sequencer functions, you might find that it doesn’t fit your workflow or contain enough esoteric features for your needs. If…

Jeff Russo never intended to be a leading film and television composer although that is certainly what he has become. After making his mark on the ground-breaking series Fargo he has now become synonymous with Star Trek, composing the scores to two of the latest and most successful incarnations of the brand: Discovery and Picard. However, it was the lure of rock ‘n’ roll that first drew Russo into music making and he originally found fortune as guitarist in the 90s alternative rock band Tonic with lead singer Emerson Hart. The band was successful enough to release several albums and tour extensively, but while on a break from the band, Russo hooked up with Wendy Melvoin from the duo Wendy & Lisa and ended up writing some cues for some…

Arturia’s V Collection (VST, VST3, AU, AAX and standalone) is a mainstay of the VSTi world that has grown over the years to incorporate a combination of mainstream and rare synths, pianos, organs and string machines. Of course, you can purchase the instruments individually, but the collection delivers a considerable financial saving and also includes their Analog Lab package, which is a preset-packed workstation that pulls together patches from all of the instruments (see box out). Although the names are sometimes modified, Arturia’s V instruments are full-on emulations of original hardware synths and use their own component accurate analogue (TAE) and physical (Phi) modelling emulation technology. The highly accurate emulations are then enhanced with plenty of software-only extras. V Collection 7 added some tidy new emulations based on classics such…

It says a lot about the increasingly long history of computer music making – and indeed this magazine – that some soft synths have been with us for more years than we realise. Only the other day we were discussing how NI’s Massive is 14 years old! (How the winter nights fly by here.) The original Blade is not quite as old, but at close to nine years since its release, it has done the rounds and helped establish its developer, the mighty Rob Papen, as one of the biggest names in this business. A Marvel? The truth is that the original does look a little old when we load up our review from 178, although we did note that “Rob Papen’s take on additive synthesis has some clever tricks…

Tone2’s reputation for in-your-face synth sounds is well known, with the company offering a collection of raucous, full-on instruments to cut through today’s hardest genres. A new member of the line-up should be out by the time you read this. Warlock is a lot more restrained than Tone2’s other offerings – Electra, Icarus, Nemesis, et al – and also comes with the leaner price tag of just €59. Touting low CPU usage and a high-end sound, Warlock’s synthesis generation starts (would you believe it) with its two main oscillators. Each offers an apparent range of 53 oscillator types – the examples shown in the image (right) include the offerings Drumloop3 and Time Chaos, which seem mindbending enough to us. Tone2 say that “All spectra can be altered, morphed and looped”,…

If you have any experience with DAW-based music production, you will no doubt marvel at what you can achieve ‘in-the-box’ with virtual instruments, audio manipulation and MIDI control. These are wonderful aspects of today’s technology-based production systems, but what about the outside world and the domains of the acoustic instrument or band performance? How do you reach out and record those to blend in with your digital masterpieces? Well, to capture live instruments you need to park the mind-blowing tech stuff for a second and step beyond the cosy luxury of your software environment into the equally impressive but sometimes scary world of hardware, acoustics and performance. But where to start? Before you can hit record there are a number of things you need to get set up and working,…

Recording in a single room such as your bedroom or lounge brings various issues if you want to record lots of people together, or very loud instruments such as drums or electric guitars. When recording one thing at a time or on your own, however, the single-room approach has a lot going for it, not least the fact that it’s cheap and convenient. Even so, there are still some things to consider, such as layout, acoustics and isolation. Acoustics Most bedrooms and living rooms tend to be full of soft furnishings, and for recording purposes this is good news, as these reduce unwanted echoes. Even so, small spaces can still sound boxy, and bare walls, ceilings and windows can contribute a low-level ‘twang’ similar to the more marked effect you…

Capturing the desired sound of a piano can be tricky, and you should be aware at the outset that you may never get a result that sounds as clinical as a good sampled piano or as expansive as a grand in a studio. Even so, what you can achieve is a sound that’s unique to your production, with the warts ’n’ all benefits of a played instrument. Given the piano’s physical size and layout, your best bet is stereo miking for either upright or grand piano. You can use a crossed pair of cardioids (with a 90- to 135-degree angle between mics) or a spaced pair of omni-directionals (50cm to 80cm between mics), although the stereo image will be wider and less mono-compatible with the latter. In either case you…

If your audio interface doesn’t include a suitable means to monitor with low or zero latency and the software latency is unworkable, you might well want to invest in a small mixing desk, either alongside a separate mic preamp or just on its own. This will provide you with lots of zero-latency analogue routing flexibility in the form of at least one headphone feed, auxiliary sends, separate monitoring level controls, and probably four or more mic preamps with channel inserts. A typical setup would be to feed the master stereo output from your audio interface to a couple of line level channels, keeping the mic input channels free for mics. You’d then use the desk auxiliaries for your headphone mix and the desk groups or direct outputs to feed the…

Getting the drum kit ready to record is just the first in a number of steps that you need to complete before you can call a drum track finished. Sometimes, in fact, the recording is the quickest bit – the subsequent editing and compiling can take much longer! After you’ve got the kit sounding how you want it, you might want to add some monitor processing to vibe up the performance. Possibilities here include compression, reverb and delay. You can add compression to the playback of individual tracks or an auxiliary group to which you can route any or all of the drums. Adding more space “Artificial space or reverb can inspire the player and put them more in the context of the production” Depending on the nature of the…

Static synth sounds have their place. Sometimes all a good bass requires is a nice sawtooth going through a Moog ladder filter. Still, when looking for a signature sound for your music, you’ll find yourself spending more time working on the finer details of synthesis. In this guide we’ll explore some of the patching techniques we prefer when designing presets to add interest to static sounds. Modern synths offer many out-of-the-box modulation options. In our example we’ll use Xfer Serum which offers a Chaos generator as well as custom shape LFOs, perfect to start introducing randomness into your signal path. Another useful modulation source is Note On Alt, which lets us achieve a different value of modulation upon each new key press. This is also implemented in the famous Prophet-6…

cm: How did the Modus collaboration with Orchestral Tools come about? JR: “Hendrik [Schwarzer, MD of Orchestral Tools] called me and we started discussing various things. Composers in this industry can’t and don’t use a single library or a single company’s libraries because that wouldn’t make any sense. I use libraries across the spectrum of what’s available to me in order to get what I need done. However, I’ve been using Orchestral Tools for years as they do a thing that nobody else does – there’s a sound to their sample recordings that is really great for specific purposes. So Hendrik and me were talking about Star Trek and Season 1 and in those sessions I had recorded a bunch of things which I could later use to mock up…

V Collection 8 includes Analog Lab V, the latest version of Arturia’s workstation-style host plugin. Designed for in-DAW use or as a standalone app, it acts as a user hub for all the Arturia instruments. It also provides library access to almost 7,000 factory presets (including some from their Pigments synth), management of user presets and also a purchasing storefront for additional Sound Banks. What’s more, if you’re a KeyLab or MiniLab owner, navigating these sections and controlling key preset parameters is integrated into your hardware. Analog Lab V allows you to combine two presets either as a keyboard split or dual layer and includes a pedal-style effects section. This has two hard-wired global send busses with reverb and delay, and two assignable insert slots with a choice from eight…

UVI are best known for their Workstation and Falcon hybrid synth, which collectively deliver an impressive array of sample and synthbased sounds. They are perhaps less well known for their effects, which include the excellent Relayer delay and Sparkverb algorithmic reverb. Up for review is Shade (VST, AU, AAX), the latest addition to their effects range. They describe it as a creative filter and EQ, and a quick look at the spec reveals extensive modulation. So, let’s find out what‘s actually going on. EQ Basics “It adds a whole further layer of complexity in the form of modulation, that truly takes it to the next level” Shade can be used as a regular EQ, and to that end it has potentially unlimited bands and a whopping 35 filter shapes that…

Sample Tools by CR2 The Purple Disco Machine Bundle £34.99 All three volumes of this tricky disco editor’s sample pack series, under one roof. And the price is right, too. You get access to a fat stack of groovy beats and pieces for your next dancefloor gem. Whether you plump for the slinky live bass, essential double-clap hits, or the meat from the occasional full song-starter kit, you’ll have the type of tools that make this dude’s remix and re-fix work such ‘must haves’ for you DJs out there. The licks and loops have been warmed through the circuitry of some fine period pieces, too, so the results have that vintage Purple glow. sampletoolsbycr2.com 9/100 Sample Tools by CR2 Micro House £15.99 Techy, groovy, intricate, complex. If any…

Krotos Simple Concept is a cut-down, but great-sounding version of the company’s Concept synth, a hugely versatile plugin capable of delivering pretty much any sound you need. Simple Concept features Macro Controls and an Envelope so that you can quickly synthesise new sounds and save them, simply allowing you to get on with the important business of music production. Simple Concept already comes with more than 80 preset sounds, covering a wide range of bases (and leads, ho ho). Load any one of these up using the simple drop-down menus shown below and three Macro controls in the centre of the UI will be assigned to change different parameters of that sound. These Macros can often change as you load up different presets, but the programmers at Krotos have made…