Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Computer Music

“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…

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…

SATURATOR GAIN Push your signal into the saturation circuit, modelled on a class AB amplifier DC OFFSET Change the bias of the saturator’s virtual transistor for extra even harmonics and more warmth QUANTIZE Reduce the signal’s bit depth from 24 to 4 LEVEL Set the plugin’s final output level OVERSAMPLING Toggle to activate 4x oversampling DRY/WET Mix a modules effect with the unprocessed signal EXCITER ODD AND EVEN Add subtle odd and/or even harmonic excitement ACTIVE When the light’s blue, the module is active. Press the button to deactivate the module HoRNet are a software brand that should be familiar to regular readers’ plugin folders. After spoiling us with a classy compressor plugin (Fat-FET) and an all-in-one beat-mixing device (DrumShaper), they’ve returned with a third world-class plugin: Graffio CM, a…

Originally designed for use with the upcoming Virtual Microphone System (which they are included with), Slate have popped out Virtual Mix Rack modules of two of the best preamps of all time: the preamps from Neve’s 1073 and the Telefunken V76 of Abbey Road REDD fame. As well as gain (Trim) controls and polarity inversion switches, both processors include Virtual Drive controls which increase preamp gain while reducing the output to compensate. The VMR-hosted plugins (VST/AU/AAX) are available now on their own for $149, or as part of Slate’s Everything Bundle. READ MORE www.slatedigital.com…

This “multimode, frequency dependent transient shaper” (VST/AU/AAX) approaches envelope processing by strategically adding saturation to the input signal, with the intention of retaining the dynamics of your material, thus making it a good candidate for drum processing. TS-1’s attack and sustain stages each have Gain ( + /-24) and Frequency (20Hz-8kHz) parameters, plus detection-circuit filtering to improve results. There’s a Soft Clip switch, as well as Size and Blend parameters, along with Output gain and metering onboard. Envelope response curves can also be inverted. TS-1 is available now for €49. READ MORE www.audiority.com…

“We reviewed an early example of ‘wearable tech’” We got all chin strokey in issue 98, as we entered the “unconventional world of electronica” and created an IDM track. These days, of course, ‘intelligence’ in electronica is indicated by an ear-splitting white noise riser followed by an airhorn sample, so we’ve clearly come a long way. In our Burning Question, we rather pessimistically asked if music software developers had run out of ideas. If they had, then they’ve certainly done well to recycle old ones for the past decade. Over in the News section, meanwhile, we reported on Apple’s chargeable Logic 7.2 update, a far cry from the meaty point-release upgrades that they’re happy to let us have for free these days. We also reported on Mackie’s intriguing Satellite audio…

iZotope “While it’s been possible to do in-the-box mastering for years now, there are many more resources people learn how to do it, so more people are! Mastering no longer means trying to fit tracks into the Billboard Top 40 – it means making music sound good in whatever context. However, it doesn’t make mastering any easier. The same things that democratise the activity make it more challenging in some ways.” – Jonathan Wyner LANDR “As a lover of sound and the art of mastering, I’m still awed by great mastering done by the best mastering engineers. I don’t think the disruption that’s happening with tools like LANDR will touch that, but many of the millions of made-for-Soundcloud tracks, demos and bedroom productions will be mastered to a quality that…

We started off with the example of digital clipping, but distortion’s origins lie in the analogue devices of yesteryear. Many such units are now revered for their musical and pleasing distortion, the quest for which has led engineers right back to classic analogue designs based on valves, transformers and further components such as field effect (FET) or germanium transistors. All of these have their own distortion characteristics, and their desirability has considerable bearing on the demand for plugin emulations. But what is it about the distortions these designs produce that’s so likeable? The reality lies in the balance and level of harmonic distortions, their dynamic behaviour and interaction. You’ll often see specifics quoted about certain components, such as transformers and tape saturation both generating odd harmonics, and valves generating even…

Distortion can be a very extreme effect – too extreme, in fact, for many applications. The increasing signal level, overtones and harmonic content can be sonically overwhelming, which is why so many distortion effects are combined with some kind of filtering, particularly those that introduce lots of odd harmonics. But such effects applied to directly inserted distortion will only serve to further distance the source sound from its original state, and we often don’t want to mangle our sounds to that degree. So, a great way to tame these results is to combine the dry (ie, undistorted) signal with the distorted version using a parallel channel, send/return bus, or a plugin that has a dry/wet control built in. Indeed, a lot of the distortion you hear on pro tracks is…

The difference in tonal qualities of dedicated studio monitors when compared to smaller speakers such as those used in a laptop or mobile phone are obvious, with the little ’uns being incapable of putting out any serious low end, and often lacking up top too. Why, though? Well, just as American muscle car addicts might say, there’s no replacement for displacement. That is, size matters! All speakers have at least one driver, which converts electrical energy into sound vibrations. Reproducing low frequencies requires a bigger driver and more energy. A typical studio monitor has two drivers – in general, a low-frequency ‘woofer’ and a high-frequency ‘tweeter’ – and can generally reproduce frequencies from over 20kHz down to around 40-50Hz, giving a full sound. But the drivers in domestic audio systems…

“I’ve been doing it for over ten years and I’m still learning” You may not be familiar with pop heart-throb Bentley Jones, but his numbers put many higher-profile artists to shame: 14 million YouTube views, 2.5 million sales, plus 10 million sales as a featured artist. A literal posterboy for the digital-age DIY ethos, Bentley records and produces himself, makes his own videos, and even hustles as a remixer and composer on the side, working on huge names like Adele, Beyoncé and Madonna as Phunkstar, and contributing scores to games in the Devil May Cry , Tekken and Sonic the Hedgehog franchises. We tracked the muscular mogul down to his West Midlands studio to find out more about life…

Break Touted as ‘the DnB producer’s DnB producer’, Break – aka Charlie Bierman – has a discography that’s seen him sign tracks to the likes of Metalheadz, RAM, Critical and Shogun, as well as his own imprint, Symmetry. His latest album, Simpler Times, was released last year to rave reviews. www.symmetryrecordings.co.uk For me, using natural sounds to create texture and groove is one of the coolest and most enjoyable parts of music production. This is one of the first things that attracted me to jungle: acoustic sounds mangled in a sampler to sound electronic and strange but still with an organic edge. The same can be said for hip-hop, as the best of this music was made on samplers in a similar era. Producers such as Timbaland and Premier are…

Q SUMMER OF LOVE Andrew Pakuts What’s the deal with analogue summing? Is it something worth looking into? A Worth looking into? There’s nothing that’s not worth looking into, in my book, so yes. My feeling, however, is that adding analogue summing to an otherwise digital setup isn’t going to be the make-or-break difference. I love analogue gear, but realistically, there’s better ways to spend the money than getting a summing system. Certainly don’t take a leap of faith on that one – test it out if you can, or don’t do it. OP Q BRAIN SQUEEZE Aleksashka Zilkov What always makes my brain squeeze: if EQ does not saturate and band shapes are as usual, how can it possibly be that “with this EQ you can boost more than…

“When VMR was launched, it was made clear that further modules would follow” CUSTOM EQ BANDS Like the classic gear that inspired it, Custom Series EQ uses fixed frequency settings FILTERS The high- and low-pass filters are very gentle, delivering a highly musical outcome LOW LIFT ‘Big’ influences the weighty lows, and ‘Punchy’ emphasises the low to low-mids BOOST Custom Series Lift’s parallel EQ bands only boost HIGH LIFT ‘Present’ affects the upper mids, and ‘Silky’ affects the highs METER Shows the post-input, preprocessing level, to find the processing sweet spot DRIVE/INTENSITY Set the Drive so that the meter peaks roughly at the ‘bomb’ in the middle, then set the effect blend with the Intensity TONE Choose one of three frequency focuses: two low and one mid-range Slate Digital’s Virtual…

“Philharmonik 2 is effectively a custom version of SampleTank 3” PLAY/MIX/EDIT Make overall adjustments, mix instruments/ auxiliaries, edit articulation settings, including envelopes, LFOs, filter and key span INSTRUMENTS The main presets comprise single articulations and multiple articulations with key, velocity or mod wheel switching INSERTS Five mixer inserts for the currently selected part PATTERNS A full set of patterns that can be triggered from the keyboard or dragged as MIDI into your DAW LABELLING Instruments are informatively labelled, including whether or not patches include looping LEVELS A level meter for each part MACRO Each instrument includes macro controls for easy access to key parameters FX Edit the currently selected insert effect IK Multimedia’s original SampleTankpowered Philharmonik ( 92, 9/10) virtual instrument was built on the first library by orchestral sampling…

One thing Disto can do that its hardware progenitors can’t is operate in mid/side mode – although users of the real things can do it themselves by applying separate units to decoded mid and side channels. In mid/side mode, the top compressor channel and left saturator channels control the mid signal, while the right/bottom deal with the sides. The ability to set the compression and saturation for both elements of the stereo image independently is powerful stuff. You might, for example, use punchy compression to highlight transients in the mid channel, while applying broader transient-squashing compression to the sides; or soften the harsh high frequencies that often result from extreme compression and boosting of the sides signal. A nice touch is that the Output level knobs can be used to…

MADRONA LABS AALTO Aalto was one of the first – and remains one of the best – software synths to draw upon Buchla’s legacy. Like many of Buchla’s systems, Aalto offers a complex waveform generator, sequencer, and the low-pass gate that was key to creating those famous percussive tones. Readers get our version, Aalto CM, free within Plugins (see p14). madronalabs.com NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR 6 Reaktor’s sixth incarnation added hardware-inspired Blocks components, and among them are a few informed by the ‘West coast’ aesthetic. There’s a low-pass gate module (West Coast LPG), a Buchla-inspired waveform generator (West Coast DWG), and a wicked modulation generator and sequencer (West Coast XYS). Grab ’em and patch ’em! www.native-instruments.com ENCOREAUDIO IMMENSITY Encoreaudio offer Buchla-inspired devices for use in Max For Live. This particular one…

Step 1 On your PC or Mac, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk, then either register for a new Vault account, or log in if you already have one. Step 2 Click ‘add a magazine’ in the top bar, select the issue you want to add to your Vault (eg, this issue is 228), and answer a few simple security questions. Step 3 Go to ‘my vault’ to see all your mags – click a cover and use the links to download! You can download as much or as little as you like.…

Our fantastic software, samples, videos and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access to this content, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time to register new issues and download more content. For more info, see our Vault FAQ: bit.ly/cmvaultfaq * Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault, though Apple Newsstand users can watch the video via built-in internet streaming.…

“This sample set swings back to the simple old days of house” 916 EXCLUSIVE SAMPLES 177 drum hits14 multisampled instruments40 bass loops42 drum loops10 FX152 melodic loops128 beat stripes32 keys loops Feeling nostalgic? Come with us as we take a step back into the world of classic house music, where the bass is deep and the grooves are tight. Our expert samplesmiths have taken some vital house hardware staples down from their attics, and they’ve cooked up a storm of 909 beats, classic organs ’n’ pianos and low-down, dirty bass. While you’re waiting for your Vault download to finish, why not read what the brains behind this month’s pack have to say about the bounty that lies within it? Cyclick “This sample set swings back to the simple old days…

This ‘multistage equaliser’ plugin (VST/AU/ AAX) aims to be a spot-on model of Avedis’ E27 hardware, and it’s approved by the company themselves. Each band operates at one of nine selectable frequencies, with boosts or cuts applied in increments of 2dB up to + /-16dB. There are also low- and high-shelf filters. For the software version, PSP have thrown two virtual units together to offer operation in L/R or mid/side modes, linked or unlinked. You can also double the number of bands for each channel to six, and add a preamp featuring high-pass filter, drive and master output. It’s out imminently for $180. READ MORE www.pspaudioware.com…

In simple terms, distortion refers to the process of overloading a circuit with an audio signal until the circuit’s available headroom is exceeded, clipping the signal’s waveform and generating new harmonic content. You’ll probably be familiar with the act of running a clean electric guitar tone through an amplifier or distortion pedal, which creates an aggressively distorted tone; but in fact, many types of analogue audio equipment have long since imparted various strengths and flavours of this effect to sounds, giving our favourite songs of yesteryear a sense of ‘warmth’ that can at first seem difficult to achieve with today’s pristine digital systems. Luckily, modern plugin technology allows us to emulate all kinds of saturation, overdrive and distortion ‘circuitry’ within our DAW. Want to run your channels through classic preamps?…

So far we’ve looked primarily at how a simple sine wave is distorted to produce musically pleasing harmonics. However, in the real world, sounds include a complex array of frequencies. In a situation where two or more frequencies are combined and they encounter nonlinearity (such as distortion), you get intermodulation between those frequencies. This generates further frequencies based on the sum and difference of the original frequencies, and this intermodulation distortion is often inharmonic and can sound quite unpleasant. Nevertheless, with careful note selection, it can be used to your advantage, as we’ll demonstrate with the classic guitar power chord effect. Another byproduct that we can encounter is specific to digital systems and is called aliasing. In digital converters, the Nyquist theorem (Google it!) dictates that the maximum frequency a…

Multiband effects are designed to process separate user-defined frequency bands of a signal in isolation, and particular favourites of ours in the distortion department are D16 Group’s mighty Devastor 2, iZotope’s Trash 2, the überpopular FabFilter Saturn, and our own CrossDr CM by Tek’it Audio. The most obvious use for multiband distortion is when you’re looking to beef up or mangle a particular frequency region within a dense, multilayered signal such as a drum loop or frequency-rich synth sound. In the latter case, you might wish to design an aggressive, full-frequency bass sound; if you simply apply traditional ‘full-band’ distortion over the whole sound, the bass’s low frequencies, which contain the most energy, will likely trigger the distortion effect first, muddying up the low frequencies and creating a distorted mess.…

We all love shiny treble and deep, booming bass in our music, but there’s one area that carries particular importance: the midrange. Not all instruments have a lot of high or low frequencies, but most have a strong presence in the midrange area between roughly 400Hz and 4kHz. This makes it a particularly important area to get right, avoiding any unwanted frequency clashes that will only be magnified by smaller speakers. Listening on smaller speakers now and again when mixing will naturally bring the midrange into focus, showing up the vital balance between drums, lead vocals and the presence of the bass. Small speakers can also aid in getting the kick and bass relationship right, making it easier to hear if their upper harmonics sit together nicely. To help check…

Despite being almost eight years old, the popularity of reFX’s Nexus2 hybrid synth/ROMpler among dance music producers shows no signs of abating. In our review in 131 (that’s way back in the mists of 2008), we scored it 9/10, highlighting its exceptional ease of use, light CPU overhead, and seemingly endless parade of knock-out presets. Indeed, in interviews since, we’ve seen the likes of Dada Life, Afrojack and Fedde Le Grand sing the praises of this modern icon of virtual instrumentation. Built on a powerful underlying architecture that combines synthesis and sample playback with under-the-hood effects and performance processing, Nexus2 gives the user just enough control to be able to quickly and effortlessly tailor its many mix-ready presets to their tracks. Indeed, those presets are what the instrument’s all about,…

Owen Palmer As an in-demand dance music engineer, Owen’s worked with a slew of outstanding underground artists behind the scenes from his London studio. After years of meticulously studying what makes a great production tick, he’s promised to share his most coveted techniques each month exclusively in . You can sign up for Owen’s free email course on making mixdowns easy at… www.owenthegeek.com/cm For most of my school life I had a really bad reputation with the teachers. In my defence, I always had good intentions and was normally polite, but admittedly, I had a hard time accepting some of the rules, and I challenged authority whenever something seemed unfair. I had an innate desire to ask why things are the way they are. Why can’t I gaze out the…

Ronan Macdonald Having previously served as Editor of drummer’s bible Rhythm as well as Computer Music, Ronan is clearly the right man for this particular gig. He’s been playing drums for over 30 years and making music with computers since the 90s. For the last few instalments of Dr Beat , we’ve been working our way through the list of Latin percussion instruments, and this month it’s the turn of claves and timbales. A pair of thick, short wooden batons, one cupped in the hand to maximise resonance and struck by the other, the claves are the most primal of instruments in any Latin band, tapping out a sort of complex click track that guides the whole ensemble. In non-Latin music, they’re ideal for creating a feel…

Michigan-born Tim Wu’s parents were understandably proud when he landed a place at the prestigious Harvard University – famous alumni include John F Kennedy, Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Leonard Bernstein. And they were understandably ‘super-pissed’ when, having majored in economics and landed a well-paid corporate job, he gave it all up for progressive house and Ableton Live. “It was a fantastic job,” explains 26-year-old Wu, “but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted out of life. Outside of the office, I was spending 30 or 40 hours a week working on music, putting together bootleg remixes and digging deep into Ableton. That’s where I was at my happiest, and eventually I just said to myself, ‘Tim, why spend your life doing something you don’t want to do?’ You gotta…

EDIT MODE Choose from Pro and SE Modes for comprehensive or simplified editing EARLY REFLECTIONS CONTROLS Control overall early reflections for level, pan, filtering and more POS MODE Access the X/Y grid for positioning sounds by panning and proximity LATE REVERB Choose from one of six Late Reverb algorithms, ranging in length from 0.05s to infinite EARLY REFLECTIONS EDITOR Freely drag Early Reflection ‘taps’ around DECAY The parameter range adjusts to suit the currently loaded late reflections algorithm MULTIBAND & GATE Further advanced editing is achieved via these two Screen Modules AUDITORIUM A new algorithm with its own near/ far control and Bright setting Released in 2011, EAReverb (cm164, 8/10) was an algorithmic reverb plugin that used one core algorithm to create a choice of nine carefully tailored Late Reverb…

Unmix::Drums (VST/AU/RTAS/AAX) claims to let you manipulate the level of drums in a full mix without dynamically affecting their harmonic content. It’s arranged across three pages of increasing complexity. The Main (basic) layer contains three principal controls that do the majority of the setup: Drum Level, Threshold and Release. The Fine Tune (advanced) page repeats the basic controls and adds to them with Attack, Detection Density (the amount of threshold-exceeding signal scanned in terms of time and frequency), Mix Cut, Unmix Feathering (blurs the distinction between drum and non-drum material for a smoother result) and Bass Synth. The third page, Curves, gives frequency-dependent control of the three Main parameters. Above the main parameter section is the Global area, where you call up presets, set the core Algorithm (Punchy or Smooth),…

Raw Cutz SmokersUnite £50 The follow-up to the excellent Turf Smoke (9/10, cm217), which is actually included (hence the high price – owners of Turf Smoke can upgrade for £25), Smokers Unite is another hazy virtual crate digging session, featuring 146 laid-back, jazzy loops and 255 one-shots, plus 16 small but perfectly formed Live and Maschine projects/Groups/Drum Racks. The sound and vibe of ‘golden era’ hip-hop has been captured to a T, with a broad range of ‘real’ instrumentation covered; and we love the attitude and spirit of both collections. www.loopmasters.com 9/10 Sample Magic Golden Era £35 Another classic hip-hop-style library, Golden Era is cleaner and more structured than the grittier, dustier Smokers Unite, but neither is qualitatively ‘better’ than the other. Sample Magic’s contender comprises a whopping 1382 samples,…

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…

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…

“iOS is still a pretty small market when it comes to audio plugins, but it’s growing quickly” cm Your interfaces are firmly abstract, rather than aiming to resemble traditional hardware concepts. What’s your reasoning behind that? JS “One of our primary goals with our products is to provide an interface where the user can be creative and is encouraged to use their ears. Making a software product look like a hardware product isn’t always the best way to go, and most of the time it’s a pretty boring way to go! The possibilities and characteristics of a flat surface differ quite a lot from those of hardware devices – there are things you can and can’t do when using both. I really don’t think one can compare them, though. We…

Pitch-to-MIDI processing is nothing new, and is even available as standard in some modern DAWs. The main thrust behind SoniVox’s new VST/AU/AAX plugin, though, is real-time operation, allowing you to input a live musical signal to be converted into MIDI to trigger other instruments or the built-in synthesiser. Pitch2MIDI’s suitability and effectiveness will be determined by the latency of your audio setup, of course. It’s also worth noting that it only currently processes monophonic audio. If it sounds right for you, it’s available now for $150. READ MORE www.sonivoxmi.com…

ROLAND LOOK TO THE CLOUD Roland have announced a new partnership with Virtual Sonics (a software, services and media solutions provider) that they say will “change the world through music”. But how, you might ask? Expect “a cloud-based suite of high-fidelity instruments” for starters. YAMAHA ARE YOUR BLUETOOTH FAIRIES MIDI controllers with built-in Bluetooth for wireless operation are starting to appear, but old devices don’t have to go without! Yamaha’s new Bluetooth adapters (bit.ly/YamahaBlMIDI) connect to USB and standard MIDI ports. STAR WARS HEADSPACE Just when we thought we’d seen every Star Wars tie-in possible, along comes Star Wars Headspace, a new electronic music compilation curated by Rick Rubin and featuring a cast of contributors from Flying Lotus to Röyksopp. Find out more at bit.ly/StarWarsHeadspace. BERNIE TORELLI RIP cm was…

As a computer musician, you’ll be familiar with the use of waveforms to represent audio signals. Spiky peaks are transients (such as drum hits), and – if you zoom in far enough – repeating cycles appear wherever there’s a musical tone (such as synth, instrument or vocal notes). Distortion, in a music production context, is an effect that transforms and deforms the curve of a waveform, and the most basic variety is clipping. Have you ever turned up the master output of your DAW too much and found that the signal meters maxed out, and the sound became harsh, noisy and, well, distorted? If not, try it now. That’s clipping in action! There’s a maximum level that the audio interface can handle (0dBFS), so any parts of the signal that…

When working with distortion processors, it’s vital to consider your levels and gain staging at both the input and output stages. We’ve already looked at the basic relationship between gain and distortion on the way in: raise a signal’s gain into a distortion plugin (by turning up its output, using the distortion device’s ‘input gain’ parameter, or a combination of both), and the waveform will be clipped, shaped or otherwise altered. At the other end, the distorted signal that emerges will typically sound far louder than the undistorted signal. In practice, then, there are two key points for the producer to bear in mind: firstly, the level of your input (ie, your pre-distortion signal) will greatly affect the distortion response; and secondly, you’ll almost always need to turn your post-distortion…

The first guitar amplifiers were intended to cleanly amplify the clear, bell-like tones of the electric guitar, but guitarists discovered that they could edge their way into a new realm of tone by deliberately cranking their gear past its intended operating point. Crunch, drive and rock ’n’ roll mayhem ensued, and distortion soon became an intrinsic part of the sound of electric guitar, to the point that some styles of music simply would not exist without it. The development of deliberate distortion effects came about in the 1960s, the simplistic clipping fuzz pedal being the first. Later came compact overdrive and distortion pedals from companies like Ibanez, DOD, MXR and Boss. Eventually, amp manufacturers began to build amplifiers with a distortable ‘preamp’ stage that could be used to create extreme…

With the explosion of portable devices in the last decade or so, music has never been so accessible, with gadgets such as mobile phones, tablets and wireless speakers allowing us to listen to our entire music collection just about anywhere. Unfortunately, the leap forward in convenience has often meant compromising on sound quality, with dedicated hi-fi gear and CDs increasingly becoming a thing of the past – terrible news for the audio purists among us, and something that definitely needs to be taken into account when mixing. The first thing to consider is that even an inexpensive pair of studio monitors will give a level of detail and accuracy that most listeners will not be able to achieve with typical domestic playback devices. This makes it crucial that mixes sound…

Dave Clews In a studio career spanning almost 25 years, Dave has engineered, programmed and played keyboards on records for a string of artists including George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner and Estelle. These days, in between writing articles for and other magazines, he collaborates on occasional songs and videos with singer/songwriter Lucy Hirst, aka Polkadothaze. www.daveclews.com The subject of blues music is so broad that we could easily fill an entire magazine with it – but never fear, I’ll just be covering the very basics this month! Blues is a term that encapsulates a melancholic, soulful style of music rooted in late-19th/early-20th century America, originating with the religious spirituals and work songs synonymous with the slave trade in the rural Southern states, and evolving into the urban blues and…

Q HARSH WORDS Logan Atbud I think young producers like me have some problems with high frequencies (harsh zones). How can you manage hi-hat, white noise (in transitions), rides and clear synths in the 8kHz frequencies? I mean at the same time. A Yeah… not just young producers. You’ve got to be really careful letting those frequencies build up (ie, don’t). Make sure you use sounds with the absolute minimum amount of those harsh frequency areas as you can get away with. If you wait until ‘the mixdown’, you’re gonna have a very difficult job on your hands. So yeah, minimalism is the key. Also, watch out for 3-4kHz especially – the typical resonant frequency of the ear canal… very painful. OP Q TONALLY DIFFERENT Julian Ahmed Could you explain…

RESONATOR EDITOR Tweak the formants and resonances of each phoneme here EXCITATION EDITOR Controls the frequency content of the Excitation Generator FREEZE FX Activate to freeze Phonem’s reverb and delay effects PAGES These three buttons switch between the Timeline, Parameter and Effects pages TRACE Shows the modulation of the Resonator Filter from phoneme to phoneme in real time BROWSER Organise presets, banks and factory content SOURCE Select preset utterances here or program your own TIMELINE String phonemes together into words and phrases here PHONEME SELECTOR Browse and select phonemes RIBBON CONTROLLER Assigned to pitchbend and ideal for touchscreen use Coming from the brilliant mind of digital synthesis pioneer Wolfgang Palm, PPG Phonem serves up a combination of vocal and wavetable synthesis, sequencing and modulation. Its raison d’etre is the creation…

Italian developers SKnote have made a name for themselves with unofficial recreations of high-end classics such as EMT’s 250 reverb and Shadow Hills’ Mastering Compressor. Their latest, Disto (VST/AU), takes on two Empirical Labs industry standards: the Distressor compressor and Fatso Jr tape saturation simulator. These bad boys cost around £1,300 and £1,800 respectively, so the appeal of a 40-buck plugin addressing both is obvious. Disto’s gorgeous GUI is divided between the two emulations, the top two thirds housing the distressor and the bottom third containing the Fatso. Each features two identical sets of controls, enabling stereo, mid/side or independent L/R operation for both units. The Distressor section comprises a control-for-control recreation of the hardware. Four knobs set the (input) Gain, Attack, Release and (output) Volume, while the Ratio button…

The range of Unmix::Drums’ controls gives scope for subtle and extreme processing, and everything in between. For producers, the level of precision on offer makes complete rebalancing of drum loops genuinely possible. If a loop is all good apart from, say, a kick drum that’s killing the rhythm, the Drum Level and Threshold response curves can be used to target and attenuate the offending element. It’s also very good for frequency-conscious transient shaping, emphasising drum tails or giving more front to the initial hit using the Attack and Release parameters. And with automation in the host DAW, a loop can be made to evolve in terms of weight and power through the length of the track. For mastering purposes, Unmix::Drums can sort out that perennial problem of hi-hats becoming too…