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.
“Distortion is a tool with real nuance and depth” Distortion is distortion, isn’t it? Pick a plugin – any plugin – then nudge the gain till you get warm saturation, crunchy drive or all-out cranium-crushing distorted mayhem. Job done! Or so I used to think… Yet once I began to take music production seriously, I realised that distortion is a tool with serious nuance and depth – as much as any EQ, compressor or reverb, in fact, and with the potential to sound way worse than any of those if you get it wrong. So, what’s the trick to using saturation to create mixes that are warm and classy, and not just cheap and, well, distorted? How do you get those grinding, chainsaw distortion tones to sound solid, controlled and…
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HoRNet Graffio CM Scratch the itch for saturation, excitation and bitcrushing with this plugin giveaway, p10 Samples A huge pack of royalty-free one-shots and loops to give your tunes that authentic house energy and atmosphere, p12 Tutorial videos High-quality videos to guide you through our tutorials. Wherever you see the icon on the left, there’s a video version to watch See this issue’s entire video content on the next pages Tutorial files A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials CM Plugins Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on p14…
1 Basic clipping and waveshaping explained 2 Harmonic distortion in plugin emulations 3 Intermodulation distortion: theory & practice 4 Examining aliasing and sample-rate reduction 5 The common distortion types and how they’re used 6 Exploring the effect of EQ on distortion 7 Using parallel distortion in the mix 8 Subtle enhancement with multiband distortion 9 Multiband distortion on a clean sine bass 10 Rock and metal guitar distortion with AmpliTube 11 Processing sounds in the mix with digital distortion 12 Improving a mix with subtle distortion TIP1 Vocal distortion TIP9 Polyphonic distortion Read the full article on p34 GRAFFIO CM Check out this month’s free plugin giveaway as we take it for a spin in this tutorial video Read the full article on p10 MIXING FOR SMALL SPEAKERS…
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EASY GUIDE BLUES CONCEPTS See the theory behind the blues at work in Dave Clews’ expert tutorial Read the full article on p76 DESIGNER SOUNDS VOCAL SOUND DESIGN Break transforms vocal samples into entirely different sounds Read Read the the full full article article on on p pxx 78 GEEK TECHNIQUE ANALYSING REVERBS Gain deep knowledge of your reverb plugins with Owen Palmer’s tricks Read the full article on p80 DR BEAT CLAVES AND TIMBALES Ronan Macdonald’s latest guide to Latin rhythm and vibe Read Read the the full full article article on on p84…
