Computer Music's goal is to help its readers create great music with a PC or Mac. Each month find easy-to-follow tutorials for all sorts of music software, unbiased reviews of the latest products and answers to technical questions.
When I first started making music it was all pre-digital (yes, hard to tell from my picture I know – uh hmm – but we’re talking ‘the ‘80s’ here). Back then there was this horrific thing called ‘noise’; you had it coming out of every item of equipment, every cable, every damn output (and input). I even bought a 1/3U box from Alesis, an actual piece of hardware, that was supposed to cut out the noise on my system. It didn’t really work, to be honest, and all my early music was ‘blessed’ with hissy introductions. Fast forward a few years and all of that noise went out of the window as I went ‘in the box’. Around 2004 I was completely laptop only, boasting on these pages how noise-free…
It’s a hat-trick of vintage synths Just when you thought we’d run out of synth emulations, three more pop up > Like us you probably thought that every classic synth had already been emulated, rebuilt, reworked, built again, modelled, remodelled, souped up, dressed down and generally turned into software. Not so because we have not one but three new ones to bring you here! First out of the blocks are GForce Software, developers who are not exactly known for their fast release rate. Like the Bethesda of plugins they rarely release stuff, but you sit up and take notice when they do. So we weren’t expecting much in the way of new stuff since they only relatively recently released the rather great Oberheim OB-E. But hot on its heels and…
Pocket Operator If you thought that Teenage Engineering only made dinky, eye-wateringly priced hardware these days, Pocket Operator for Pixel is here to set you straight. Exclusive to Google’s more recent Pixel phones (5 and above), this clever app uses the Big G’s TensorFlow machine learning tech to pluck samples from your videos and place them on a 4x4 grid of buttons so that you can use them to create sequences. Clever, eh? It’s all very slick, particularly as video is displayed at the top of the screen and synced up with the music. Downloadable for free right now. teenage.engineering Koala Sampler On the subject of audio extraction, fans of the Koala Sampler – of which there are many – should be pleased to hear that a recent update introduces…
Sample licensing has always been a thorny, potentially costly business, so back in September 2012 we showed you how to cut your potential royalty costs by ‘replaying’ a sound rather than using the original. A handy skill to have during a cost of living crisis, we think you’ll agree… There was also a guide to recreating the off-beat organ stab in Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – already a classic, and now even more so – while In the reviews section, we had our eye not only on Sugar Bytes’ Cyclop (see what we did there?) but also Reason 6.5 and its “conceptually controversial” new Rack Extensions format. Still, we liked it. “Dr Bob’s surname actually rhymes with ‘rogue’ rather than ‘move’” Oh, and one reader emailed…
This is the slot in Computer Music where we generally cover freeware releases, but really it’s become ‘SampleScience corner’ because this company releases so many free (and imaginative) plugins. Their latest is Stylo Synthesis, a ROMpler based on “the famous portable organ from the 60s”, that being a Stylophone. It features longer sampling times to properly emulate the original hardware, plus effects and a filter. It’s free and available as a Mac and PC VST/VST3/ AU plugin or Kontakt instrument. samplescience.info…
CLAP TO THE FUTURE? You might wonder why Bitwig and u-he are launching a new plugin format – CLAP – but hear them out. This open standard promises better performance and more MIDI 2.0/ MPE-inspired expression features than existing rivals. More developer-friendly, too. RUNNING UP THE CHARTS The resurgence of Kate Bush’s 1985 single Running Up That Hill has come as a pleasant surprise not only to us, but also the artist herself, who admitted to being “astounded to watch the track explode!” Now, where did we put our Fairlight CMI plugin… TOP MARKS We’re definitely getting ‘cool music teacher’ vibes from Mark Ronson, who’s put together an 18-part music production course for the BBC Maestro learning platform. “It’s usable, accessible content,” says the acclaimed studio helmsman, which is just…
