Indholdsfortegnelse for Autumn 2021 i Computer Music

As last year’s Covid restrictions meant a diary full of crossed out live dates, Meagan turned – reluctantly – to livestreaming to get her music heard. “It’s funny, at the beginning I was really opposed to live-streaming, which was less to do with thinking it wasn’t a legitimate alternative to a gig, and more the fact that it made me sad,” she says. “I did a few initially and would get into it, interacting with people – get a little bit of that high of being in that community of people. It felt almost there. But then, the stream would stop and I’d be alone.” Her attitude began to change, however. “I did start to warm up to it a bit more, and started doing it more consistently over 2020.…

When it comes to constructing your rhythm tracks, it can be tempting to load up a sampler, fire a pattern into your DAW with a MIDI controller, quantise, then move on. Indeed, lots of genres practically require such a process. But follow this sequence enough times and you’ll quickly find yourself frustrated with the results. So, how do top producers keep this procedure from leading to barren, banal and ultimately boring beats? In this month’s tutorial, we’re going to take a look at various simple steps you can take to give your drums their swagger back, from using a few well-chosen plugins, working with loops and embracing the chaotic side of life, to taking lessons from the best drummers on the planet. If you didn’t think electronic beatmakers could learn…

ARPEGGIATOR AS A MODULATION SOURCE Many synth plugins have some form of arpeggiators built in. To come up with interesting patterns, try to assign them to various modulation sources such as pitch, filter cutoff, fx returns etc. CONTROLLING SHARP TRANSIENTS There are a few effective tools you can use to control the sharp transients of your arpeggiator sequences. Some of these are limiting, tape saturation or soft clipping. These round off the transients, making them softer and will also give back some vital headroom.…

The audio waveforms shown in DAWs and other audio tools map amplitude changes over time, which is easy for a computer to create and easy for a human to read. They say nothing about the frequency content within a sound, though. This is where spectral editors come in. These allow us to see the constantly-fluctuating frequencies within a passage of audio and, more importantly, they allow us to edit specific frequencies and frequency ranges. This makes spectral editors well-suited to corrective tasks, although they are also powerful sound design tools, and so these are the use-cases that Steinberg have focused on with their latest version of SpectraLayers. SpectraLayers Pro 8 is Steinberg’s third iteration of the software (it’s changed hands a few times). The program can run in standalone mode…

One point Slate and Ash continually promote, is the ability for all of the instruments to work so effectively as performance instruments. Whether you like to work in a studio environment or a live setting, the real-time control nature of Landforms will really set your music apart. Armed with simple MIDI CC control, either via a real-time controller or through a DAW, the ability to make things happen over time prolongs the usage possibilities of the product considerably. This extends from simplistic control over aspects such as volume or mic placement, to the extensive effects control, through an absolute barrage of highly engaging effects. If you consider this within the realm of sound design and music, you could employ a single layered sound to slowly appear from nowhere, build, climax…

We’ve long been tinkerers with SynthMaster One, KV331’s 16-voice semi-modular beauty that first appeared in our App Store in 2018. While we were dazzled at the high-quality wavetables and flexible sound design potential that this ridiculously underpriced monster provided, we couldn’t help admit that a truly mobile version of the more versatile desktop version of SynthMaster would be a much more appealing prospect. Nevertheless, SynthMaster One has remained a reliable go-to for years. Now, in 2021, with the desktop SynthMaster being periodically updated and still maintaining its status as a renowned player in the softsynth hierarchy, KV331 Audio have released the iOS successor. This time though, this isn’t any kind of ‘lite’ version. SynthMaster 2 sports all the bells and whistles of its desktop parent. Synth-pop master The main headline…

300 issues is a lot of magazines, and we’re so excited to have reached this milestone that we’ve decided to share a huge set of the best sample collections that we’ve given away over that 300 issue history (as many that we could fit on a DVD anyway). So we have over 10,000 samples from 17 sample packs in this mighty Issue 300 Sample Spectacular. The samples cover every genre and style so you should find plenty to use in whatever type of music you produce. You’ll find beats, loops, hits, effects, Battery packs, chords, pads… just about anything and everything audio! Most of the samples are in .wav format so will load straight into any DAW. There are also many multisamples and .sfz files which were originally designed to…

Yes, next month it’s an Eighties Special! Think Dua Lipa, The Weeknd and so many more, and how we make music in 2021 is most definitely influenced by the 1980s. So it’s time to look back at the production tricks of yesterday and see how they can help you today! PLUS! An 80s studio! Build a complete 80s studio in your DAW for free Sound like How Dua Lipa and The Weeknd get their sound from the 80s Interviews Public Service Broadcasting and Kurtis Mantronik…

cm/free daw TRACKTION FREE CM300 We’ve got a complete DAW with extras worth $80 for you! Here’s how to claim your goods See p16 Instructions at File Silo (p81) cm/free samples CM300 SAMPLE SPECIAL A huge collection of over 10,000 samples from our 300 issue history On the DVD or download from File Silo (see p81) cm/free videos SYNTH GUIDE & TRACKTION Download our Synth Masterclass video plus a tutorial on using Tracktion Free Download via File Silo (see p81) cm/plugin suite THE CM PLUGIN SUITE An all-new PDF detailing our complete Plugin Suite of instruments and effects Download from File Silo (see p81)…

cm How did you get into music software? RL “I’ve been composing music and programming since I was 10. I had a passion for both, the common denominator being the design of structures. I made music for a couple of movies and video games but the software side took over with SpectraLayers.” cm What is your philosophy? RL “Take the time to find the right frameworks and technologies, and then everything that can be factorised or automated. That’s what allows me to develop multiplatform software despite being a single developer. Also, don’t be afraid to throw away and redesign half of your software, or all of it. If something’s not going to work in the long term, or is going to be difficult to maintain or won’t meet expectations, go…

Say the words ‘Paul Oakenfold’ and you instantly think of dance music, but the superstar DJ and producer has influenced a lot more than that – like that’s not enough in itself – over the last four decades. He begun his career proper at Champion Records and in his A&R position there signed Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and Salt-n-Pepa, tipping an already burgeoning hip hop movement over into the mainstream. But it was on a visit to Ibiza in 1987 that Oakenfold, along with Danny Rampling, Nicky Holloway and Ian St Paul, discovered a Balearic house sound, and brought that back to the UK to kickstart dance music, the whole Madchester movement and club culture in general. Since then, of course, Oakenfold has gone on to become a…

Awash with lavish synth textures, mangled ghostly vocals and head-bobbing house beats, QRTR’s debut album Drenched is certainly among the most characterful debuts we’ve spun recently. Built using a sound design ethos that resulted from years of professional study, merged with a love of transcendent house music, Meagan Rodriguez’s electronic alter-ego has carved a beguiling sonic identity. The three main facets of her life as QRTR – that of sound designer, gigging DJ and an experimental electronic artist – are all integral to her approach to making tracks that skirt around the dance music genre, while still diving headfirst into its tropes if she feels the need… Examples of which include the trance-like movement of the hypnotic You Won’t Return, or the lo-fi synth stammers of My Bad. Making up…

Pads are a staple of the electronic music diet, but they’ve been around for many years in various forms. Back in the 70s, polyphonic synth technology was relatively non-existent, relying on basic organ-like textures to provide padded interest. This frequently took the guise of some form of string sound, often generated by synths known as string machines. It was only when synths such as the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 appeared that keyboard players realised that they could go huge with synthetic brass-pad patches. The natural evolution of this was the big-haired poly-sounds of the 80s, just as present in electronic music and pop as it was in rock anthems. As the 90s dawned, so did the evolution of this padded tone, into a thicker detuned texture, which became associated with the…

SAMPLE START POSITION Taking our sampler parameter mapping idea yet another stage further, I’ve found that one of the most effective methods in humanising drums is to map the sample start position to MIDI velocity (ie, the louder the note, the closer to the start of the sample we get). This is a bit like when a drummer hits different parts of a given drum with every stroke – it needs to be very subtly applied so be careful when tweaking the modulation amount! MULTI-SAMPLED DRUM KITS Getting a more natural, organic sound from our drums comes a lot easier when working with multi-sampled drum kits, which when done right should trigger different samples, recorded at different strike forces, depending on MIDI velocity. Even only taking advantage of multi-sampling with…

In the 23 years since Computer Music Magazine first launched, home music-making technology has undergone some rapid, dramatic changes. As boxy desktop computers were supplanted by sleek, powerful laptops, we watched the gradual rise of the internet – and the resultant music streaming industry – completely upturn consumer attitudes towards music itself. For the home producer, increasingly user-friendly gear has made many processes far easier, though little has changed at heart. All the while, Computer Music has kept a fixed focus on giving the average musician the tools, skills and insight into the best methods to expand their creative imagination – without shelling out a fortune. That ambition continues today. Poring over our decades-spanning archive also reveals a story of an industry-wide sea change, as the very concept of ‘computer…

We’ve long been admirers of the fantastical, outlandish sound libraries of Eduardo Tarilonte, from the very first Forest Kingdom pack back in 2012, which provided ambiences that implied sun-obscuring realms of wonder, to the Lord of the Rings’ soundtrack-evoking vocal suite Shevannai: Voices of the Elves, to Dark Era’s ominous medieval atmosphere in 2019. Plaudits for Tarilonte’s work have seen him rise to something of a celebrity in the sample library industry, with each new finely-tailored release being must-buys for otherworldly soundtrackcrafters. Needless to say, we jumped at the chance to get our hands on his latest work. Forest Kingdom 3 is the third instalment in this series, and builds on its predecessors’ aims to create the ultimate toolkit for crafting the ambience of a magic-sprinkled woodland. Thoughtfully, Tarilonte has…

Most sounds, with the exception of sine waves, consist of different frequencies that vary in amplitude over time. The standard waveform graphs we’re familiar with show only two dimensions of this information: time and the overall amplitude of the signal. A spectrum analyser also shows only two dimensions, frequency and amplitude, but has no way to represent time. So, to represent how the different frequencies in a sound change and interact over time, a spectrogram of the sort used by SpectraLayers has to show all three dimensions of information – time, frequency and amplitude – in a two dimensional graph. To achieve this, SpectraLayers shows time in the X-axis, frequency in the Y-axis, and represents the amplitude of those frequencies as changes in brightness and/or colour, depending on the display…

Smooth Operator (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) is a multifaceted spectral processor designed to suppress undesirable frequencies and add clarity to audio sources. It combines resonance suppression, EQ and compression, and uses Fast Fourier Transform to deliver both gentle and surgical results (see below). In keeping with other Baby Audio plugins, Smooth Operator is simple to use and if you need help getting started, it includes a decent set of presets. Smooth Operator has a curve-based interface with further settings and controls dotted around the edge including a choice of three colour schemes. The main curve control is Threshold and you set this by dragging the Middle Node up or down. You have four further Outer Nodes (two either side) that allow you to further tweak the shape of the curve.…

Propellerhead ReBirth £n/a cm2 Not the first soft instrument but the first great one, and one you could make complete tunes with… as long as you liked the sound of acid with Roland’s TB bass and TR drums. Sadly it’s gone – and the Props turned into Reason Studios and are still behind that fine DAW – but ReBirth is certainly not forgotten. Natural born killer (app). reasonstudios.com Apple iPad £Var Not reviewed, but the iPad appeared during our 300-issue history and revolutionised music making. Yes we could include phones, tablets and other devices but the iPad (particularly the Pro) elegantly recreates your desktop music production experience for anywhere music making. Now can we have Logic for it please Apple? Thanks. apple.com Celemony Melodyne €699 10/10 cm230 Of…

It’s the n-n-n-n 1980s! Even more of a nostalgia-fest is coming your way next issue… With the release of Korg Collection 3 – see below – plus UVI and Softube’s Roland Juno-106 synth emulations, as reported in these very news pages over the last couple of issues, there really is a whiff of the 80s in the air. Good job there’s an even stronger whiff of a hair-gel laden 80s special issue of Computer Music in the air too! We really can feel it, coming in the air tonight (or in four weeks actually). Yes, if you think we’re getting all nostalgic with this special issue 300 of Computer Music, where we dive back and look at making music in 1998 (see p50), then just you wait until our next…

Meagan is keen to connect with her fellow New York artists, and has built collaborative spaces and events where like-minded creatives can express themselves in a judgement free-environment. “We started it in 2015,” Meagan tells us. “My best friend and I basically wanted to make a party that we wanted to go to. There was this kind of brooding, too-cool, atmosphere in a lot of electronic music nights in NY. We wanted to go, have fun, let our hair down and enjoy a variety of music without feeling judged. We started this thing basically as a monthly party. I’d invite some friends to DJ and perform as well. It became a little more sporadic in terms of when we’d do it. But we ended up opening a shared artist studio…

What is an arp? When we hear the word arp, we think of a chord that is played as a fast sequence of individual notes. Arpeggios are an excellent compositional tool to add energy and anticipation to a piece of music. Many arps are simple by nature. However, if you are aiming for excellence, it helps to know some Audiotent tricks of the trade to make your arps stand out from the ordinary! We are always looking to implement sound synthesis techniques that introduce a sense of randomisation to the given patch. One of the most powerful tools that enables us to do so is called sample and hold. It’s a random voltage processor that can be quantised to a bpm. You are never certain of its exact value, yet…

1998 Propellerhead ReCycle ReCycle was first launched in 1994. But it’s vital to begin with the world’s first loop-chopper. Solving a multitude of problems that hardware samplers couldn’t contend with, ReCycle allowed early computer musicians the ability to edit loops and manipulate the timing, tempo and arrangement of each beat within a sample. Pretty magic stuff, even now. 1999 Korg Triton A sublime end-of-century digital synth, Korg’s Triton was capable of 62-note polyphony and 32MB of multi-sample sounds. Taking much inspiration from the company’s legendary M1, the Triton pioneered more robust processing power and extraordinary dual-oscillator architecture. It arguably set the stage for the next 20 years of workstation synth design. 2000 Propellerhead Reason Responsible for a great many of the foundational products of the computer music age, Propellerhead’s Reason…

Forest Kingdom 3’s breadth of control over the wind and pipe instruments is among the finest we’ve experienced, with the ability to control the Blow and Vibrato intensity, the Vibrato speed and the Release and Holes volume allowing for the reproduction of phrases indistinct from hiring and recording a real-life piper for a few hours (and significantly cheaper, of course). Coupled with the silky-smooth nature of the legato – which is immaculate throughout the collection – these pipe sounds may be of wider interest, even if fairy-riddled forests aren’t something you’re looking to take a stroll into.…

Slate and Ash are Will Slater and Simon Ashdown; these are names which may not be instantly recognisable, but they are well known among a sizeable and respected clutch of elite cinematic composers. They have contributed music and sound design to mainstream Hollywood releases, working alongside the likes of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson and Daniel Pemberton. Apart from being fine musicians in their own right, Slate and Ash specialise in some of the most creative sound design work you’ll hear in media and music today. New territories Their latest Kontakt-based instrument is called Landforms and follows in the footsteps of their immensely creative instruments Auras and Cycles. Like its predecessors, Landforms has a unique calling card; in fact it has several, but the central creative tour de force stems from…

Beef (AU, VST3, AAX) is the latest plugin from developer Caelum Audio. It’s a multistage effect aimed at fattening up your audio and has six modules covering EQ, distortion and limiting. There’s also a rather intriguing process called Noise/Rate Modulation which we explain in the boxout below. The processors are arranged in a serial configuration with EQ feeding into the various distortion stages. This is then followed by transient shaping and limiting. There’s no way you can modify the order or place modules in parallel, which is a shame. However, there is a global wet/dry Mix so you can blend in the overall effect. The EQ module is pretty straightforward with an adjustable Mid band (150Hz to 2kHz), fixed frequency shelves (High and Sub) and a fixed Low peaking band.…

Software Pirates £0 cm1-300 and beyond Having been victims of software piracy ourselves – with our very own giveaways (They’re giveaways! Why pirate them?!) we’re totally on the side of developers with this one. Yes, some musicians started out with cracked copies but pay your dues folks otherwise we’ll all be out of jobs. Patronising? Us? stopbloodynickingstuff.com Plugin Bloat £var 21/10 cm1-300 We’ve all done it. We’ve seen those features (in, uh hm Computer Music) with the 100 Best Freeware Apps. Download them all! Why not? Fill your boots! Fill your hard drive! Well no, actually. Get to know fewer and you are more likely to go further, that’s our advice. We have to tell you which is best – it’s our job – but after that it’s…