Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2020 i Electronic Musician

Ninja Tune and Coldcut release Jamm Pro, an iPad music-making app for production and performance Ninja Tune and Coldcut have unveiled Jamm Pro, a significantly enhanced follow-up to their ageing Ninja Jamm app. This is designed for both production and live performance and runs on the iPad. Unlike its predecessor, Jamm Pro enables you to use your own sounds – you can record through a mic and from external sources or import audio from other apps. You can also download Sound Sets from established artists and producers. You can work across four channels, each offering nine sequencers (six modulation sequencers, a slice sequencer, a pitch/reverse/drill sequencer and a gate sequencer) and up to 64 patches. As well as being able to create tracks, Jamm Pro also promises a multitude of…

There’s something wonderful about working with good stereo monitors in a treated acoustic space. Knowing that throughout the production, mixing and mastering phases, your listening environment is rewarding the subtle changes in level, tone and dynamics added and taken away throughout the creative process is reassuring. Once your masters leave your room, however, they’ll need to survive the hundreds of ways they’ll be heard. How does your master sound through an iPhone speaker, or different consumer headphones? Will the label’s first playback be on a laptop speaker? It’s been standard practice for years to recommend testing tracks through as many systems as possible, but plugins like Audified’s MixChecker Pro software makes that a whole lot more time-saving. We set up a mastered track in a new project, duplicate it and…

For each new project, make sure you’re clear about the sample rate and resolution your client, publisher, record label, collaborator or co-writer is expecting from you. Music-for-picture projects are commonly delivered at 48kHz/24-bit whereas ‘CD quality’ is 44.1kHz/16-bit and those may be the defaults. Of course, some composers/producers like to work at considerably higher sample rates during the writing process, ready to render down to lower sample rates when it comes to delivery, and that’s fine, so long as you remember to adjust sample rates accordingly before delivery (submitting a rogue 96kHz file in a batch of 44.1kHz files won’t make anyone happy.) Similarly, if you’re receiving files from someone else, check the resolution of files before you start, so that you don’t inadvertently drag in an audio file which…

We have previously explored how legato (connected) and detached articulations can be used to control how envelopes respond, adding nice musical phrasing to your synth solo lines. The same attention to how you consider your touch can also be used to introduce glides between notes, which is called portamento. Set Up The Sound It sounds simplistic, but first you need to turn on the Mono/Legato parameter in your synth. In general, I like to have a high sustain value for the filter envelope on a lead sound that I am going to experiment with glides, so that the sound sustains brightly enough that you can hear the transition. The portamento parameter (often called Glide) may be on the front panel of your synth, it may be on the pitch page,…

Siegfried Kullmann SQ8L FREE It might be a little long in the tooth, but age has done nothing to tarnish this exquisite reproduction of the mid-80s Ensoniq synths. Specifically modeling the Ensoniq SQ-80, the Windows-only SQ8L also provides every sample and feature from the ESQ-1. It’s a 1:1 copy, so users of the original will feel right at home with the interface. bit.ly/EnsoniqSQ8L Neil Paddock ESQ-1 Re-Boot FREE The only direct ESQ-1 recreation available is sample-based. This set of ready-to-rock ESQ-1 samples comes in both SFZ (bit.ly/ESQ-1sfz) and Reason ReFill formats (bit.ly/ESQ-1rfl). Bedroom Producers Blog have also rolled them into a Kontakt version: bit.ly/ESQ-1ktk. www.howtoprogramdrums.com 112dB Morgana $130 It goes without saying that any number of ROMplers can better the sound quality of the original ESQ-1, but if you want…

soundspot.audio Strengths Wavetablegeneratoris a winner Veryeasyto use Dedicatedfilterfor each oscilator Massiveunisonmeans massive sounds Limitations -Fartoomanymodal windows -Onlyonemodsource per parameter -Wavetablesarent interpolated -MainLFOsarefree-running only The first virtual synth from erstwhile effects plugin developers SoundSpot made quite a splash with its bonkers low launch price, before rising to its full tag in December. Hopefully, you picked it up then, because if you didn’t, you’ll be kicking yourself by the end of this review… Union, man Union is a three-oscilator synth with a couple of key points that set it apart. First, the interface goes out of its way to make programming quick and intuitive – to varying degrees of success. More importantly, though, it enables ‘rendering’ of Oscilators 1 and 2 for use as a wavetable in Oscilator 3. Bouncing synths down…

It’s fair to say that Hamburg-based performer Niklas Paschburg has so far drawn on a fair amount of maritime influence for his neo classical-strained ambient releases, from the stormy seas of 2018’s Oceanic to the icy climes of new release Svalbard. It was in the latter Norwegian archipelago that the Ólafur Arnalds-influenced artist holed up with just a piano and his thoughts to compose his newest work, before relaying the whole thing to UK producer Andy Barlow (formerly of Lamb and the producer behind hits for U2 and Willie Nelson) for recording and mixing. But is his studio environment equally tempestuous? We found out… When did you start making music? I started to play the piano aged five. My grandparents had a piano at home and I started to play…

After 40 years, Moog launches $5000 reboot of its 16 Channel Vocoder Vocoders aren’t hard to come by in modern studios, no matter what you think of them. Many synths these days come with vocoders built in, and, of course, there are countless plugins out there that’ll do the job perfectly well too. But if you want the ultimate in vocoder luxury, and a price tag to match, Moog may have the answer. After 40 years, the company is resuming production of the classic Moog 16 Channel Vocoder. Introduced in 1978 – and as heard on Giorgio Moroder’s E=MC2 – this enabled musicians to create not only the famous vocoded vocal effect, but also to process synths and other instruments. The new version is cut from the same cloth; in…

We've seen compressors that let you dial in a custom response with a choice of emulated circuitry, but how about one that lets you mix and match four types of processing flavour from different stages of the process? That's exactly what you get in VooseQ's Material Comp plugin (VST/AU/AAX). In a similar bent to DMGaudio's EQuilibrium, which lets you mix and match different flavors of EQ bands, Material Comp has you selecting processing types for the compression algorithm, the distortion of the preamp, the character of the emulated analog circuitry, and even the type of glue embued by its processing. Material Comp is available from voosteq.com for $149. 1. Compression functions Everything's pretty simple when we first load Material Comp. It looks a lot like a regular modern compressor plugin,…

As a means of understanding just what a potential minefield mastering is today, consider the requirements of mastering’s role during the CD era. The music industry in those pre-internet days was a much smaller place, with an emphasis placed on ‘high quality’. Hi-fi enthusiasts would buy a choice amplifier, a pair of speakers and a CD player and having spent a fairly extortionate amount of money on a CD itself, they would return home, effectively looking to recreate the precision environment in which the record was mixed and mastered in the comfort of their own home. This period represented a kind of ‘audio pinnacle’, where there was a genuine desire to preserve the detail which had gone into the creation of a record at playback. Music-makers continue along this same…

01 We start by importing our mix file into a new project. We’re using Logic Pro but any DAW will work for this purpose. We’ve left 2dB of headroom in our mix file and we start by setting up DMG’s Equilibrium. Any EQ which allows for precision frequency-targeting will work well. 02 We’re keeping our EQ flat for now. Next we set up FabFilter’s Pro-MB Multiband Compressor. This allows us to make individual compression choices for different areas of the frequency spectrum. We gently tighten sub and low mid frequencies before taming a little harshness between 1.2kHz and 5kHz. 03 Next we set up iZotope’s Ozone 8 plugin. We start with the EQ module, making surgical, post-multiband compression choices to gently pinch frequencies at 1.04kHz and 1.97kHz. Settings here are…

A ‘stem’ is a term used to describe either a single sound or a group of ‘comparable’ sounds from your mix. In all kinds of musical scenarios, being able to access the single sounds in a mix or, say, all of the drums (but nothing else) is extremely helpful. Perhaps the best example of this is in remixing, where your remixer might want to use the whole of your drum stem and sample bits of the vocal stem but make do without guitars, synths and basslines altogether. Similarly, in music-for-picture scenarios, it’s not uncommon that the picture edit will change after the score is recorded and mixed, so it’s a music editor’s job to work with the stems of a cue to ‘fit it’ to the new cut. It’s harder…

01 Our work-in-progress track features piano, a string ensemble, a cello solo and a taiko drum track. We want to stem these into four parts – Strings Long (cello), Strings Shorts (strings ensemble), Piano and Drums. In our examples you can hear how the track sounds in its current form. 02 As each new track is created, its default output is the ‘Stereo Out’. We manually change this, sending the cello to bus 1, the short strings to bus 2, the piano to bus 3 and the taiko to bus 4. As these busses are routed to the stereo output, the mix sounds the same. 03 We’ve held off adding effects to each track but we do this now, setting up a FabFilter Pro-R reverb for the ‘strings shorts’. We…

When you first hear the term ‘slash chord’, you could be forgiven for conjuring up images of heavy metal guitarists with poodle hair and stovepipe hats, but it actually has nothing to do with your favorite former member of Guns N’ Roses. Instead, in what turns out to be something of a punctuation-based anti-climax, the ‘slash’ merely refers to the way a chord is written when played over a bass note other than the root. So what does this actually mean? Well, a chord can be thought of as a vertical stack of notes, which is actually the central concept around which modern music notation is based. Pop music generally uses a system known as ‘tertian harmony’, in which chords are built by stacking up notes that are separated by…

modalelectronics.com Strengths Verysolidlybuilt and nicely compact – which makes it great for gigging Fairlypricedconsidering the features/sonic power available onboard Soundsuniqueand can cover a lot of varied sonic ground Limitations -Whileits compact, this means a lot of secondary parameters for each control -Theeffectscansuck life out of the sounds if you’re not careful -No4-polefilter Modal Electronics is a Bristol, UK-based synth design company who already have a solid range of well-respected synths, ranging from their smaller four-voice virtual analog Skulpt, through the monophonic wavetable-based Craft, to their flagships – the 002 hybrid poly and 008 analogue poly. Having the lower-end and higher-end markets covered with these models, there was an obvious gap in the product line which needed filling with something which may be a little cheaper, but still packed with bags…

steinberg.net Strengths ProperdesktopDAW experience Workswellon an iPhone Greatnewworkflow improvements Touchoptionsfeel intuitive Workswellwith other apps Limitations -Expensivenexttosome apps -Someeditingissuesneed addressing Steinberg’s Cubasis was one of the original fully-featured iPad DAWs, which offered talented users as near a desktop music production experience as anybody could wish for, and all with the wonders of iOS touch control. It’s always been a rather expensive option for iPad musicians – who are used to paying single figures for apps – but also one of the most professional; this is Steinberg after all. The latest version 3 includes many new features like Group Tracks, rearrangeable insert and send effects, a whole bunch of new effect presets and an improved mixer. But the biggest news is that Cubasis now runs on an iPhone. Steinberg claims that the…

Here's a black-sheep plugin that's not quite like any other. It may work in the same vein as some automatic noise-layering plugins (Devious Machines Texture, Denise Noize), but the way Voxengo's CRTIV Shumovick does its business is, in many ways, completely different. Running as an insert or send effect, CRTIV Shumovick (VST/AU/AAX) analyzes incoming audio and imprints a noise signal based on its dynamics and its spectral content. Voxengo describe it as a "creative noise floor padding" effect used to soften bass drums and provide a burst of stereo width, but the potential applications are probably wider still. Voxengo Shumovick is a strange one to get your head around, but it'll add some organic life to heavily synthesized music, and provide some crunch and vibe when there's none to work…

Every tip and trick discussed throughout this article is applicable regardless of which DAW you favour… with the exception of this one. When Apple introduced Track Stacks with Logic Pro X, initially they just seemed like a useful place to have a fader which could control any sounds assigned to that Stack, with the added bonus of being able to apply auxiliary effects directly from each Stack, thereby allowing a single Reverb assignment, for example, to apply to multiple, complementary sounds. However, Track Stacks go further and as we’ll discover through the following steps – taking particular note of the key commands required – they become an extremely useful means by which to render stems, ready for delivery or sharing with a collaborator. Start with a track featuring two keyboard…

Raised in the heart of Minneapolis, Doc McKinney’s love of music was inexorably shaped by the new wave influence of Prince and R&B/pop songwriting combo Jam & Lewis. Having played in numerous punk and indie bands, and aspiring to be a producer himself, McKinney made contacts and settled in Toronto where he was introduced by then-EMI president Michael McCarty to Jenny Bea Englishman. Immediately impressed, McKinney formed the outfit Esthero and was courted by every major label in the US, resulting in an critically acclaimed debut album entitled Breath from Another. McKinney then teamed up with Santi White of Santigold fame to produce the Res album How I Do before hitting the jackpot with Canadian singer/songwriter Abel Tesfaye of The Weeknd. Co-producing his mixtape House of Balloons, McKinney later returned…

It’s hard to imagine today, but in 1986, analog equipment was stale and passé, yet instruments based on digital synthesis were expensive or unfathomable. Yamaha’s DX7 was nicely priced but hard to program. PPG’s Wave 2.2 (and later 2.3) had caused something of a stir with its blend of digital wavetable oscillators and analog filters, but it was priced out of reach for all but wealthy professionals. The industry was primed for change, and there was indeed a whiff of something new in the air. Korg had unleashed the DW-8000 only a year earlier, merging sampled waveforms with a familiar subtractive signal path. That same year, Ensoniq – founded by ex-Commodore bigwigs – had begun shipping the Mirage, an 8-bit sampler based on their own custom chip technology, utterly shattering…

KORG Wavestate $799 The Wavestate takes Korg’s wave-sequencing concept to new levels. 37-note compact form factor much like the Argon 8. Classic wave-sequencing, modeled filters, superlative effects and sound shaping! korg.com STUDIOLOGIC Sledge 2.0 $899 Criminally overlooked, the eight-voice virtual analog Sledge is now available in all-black. Onboard is a great Waldorf synth engine with plenty of power/versatility, lovely effects and user sample upload options too. studiologic-musi ASM Hydrasynth Desktop $799 The Hydrasynth is a truly innovative eight-voice synth with poly aftertouch, five LFOs, five envelopes and three wave-morphing oscillators per-voice. All killer. ashunsoundmachines.com…

audiaire.com Strengths Designandsequence your own custom controller sets! Greatsequencerworkflow and features LFOsenvelope and note modifiers SysExsupportfor many synths Limitations -Maximumof24controllers -Faderstakeuptwo grid slots -Sequencedcontrollersdont animate One of the best features of Audiaire’s Zone synth is its brilliant sequencer, which not only generates note patterns, but also automates almost every one of its parameters. The company’s new plugin, Zenith, is that entire system extracted and repurposed as a VST/AU instrument able to output static, sequenced and modulated MIDI note, Continuous Controller (CC) and SysEx data to any plugin or hardware device capable of receiving it. Zen’ garden As with any plugin that outputs MIDI, setting Zenith up involves a bit of inter-track routing, the specifics of which will depend on your DAW, but are by no means difficult to negotiate. Logic…

www.rolandcloud.com Strengths Interfaceismuch easier to use than the original hardware Funpowerful and inspiring sounds Goodrangeof effects Limitations - Can’t compete with modern sample instruments for realism and nuance Roland now have a cloud-based subscription offering that allows users to access a wide range of sonic content in the form of downloadable plug-ins, like many others. Unlike many others though, they have their own list of legacy products to draw on when choosing new instruments to add to this ever-growing digital collection. Initially, most interest perhaps lay with the emulations of analog synths and beatboxes that Roland have been exploring in digital hardware form over the last few years. As well as including classic Junos, 101s and earlier synths (plus some famous X0X boxes), the collection also includes modern virtual synths…

Originally a product of block parties thrown by pioneers such as Kool Herc, the Black Spades and Grandmaster Flash in 1970s New York, hip-hop became a cultural and musical phenomenon worldwide during the 1980s and '90s. To start with, hip-hop music was created live at parties by the process of cutting together two copies of the same breakbeat record using turntables and a DJ mixer, making a danceable beat out of a short loop. Rappers would then add lyrics over the music, telling stories while getting the crowd involved through toasting and shout-outs. Artist created music in the studio using early sampling equipment from the likes of Akai or E-mu to take breakbeat or instrumental sections of other records from a multitude of genres, and make them into a new…

Togu Audio Line TAL-Sampler $61 Vintage sampling is the order of the day here. Sure, you’ve got four layers of sample-loading, three envelopes, three LFOs, and EQ, delay and reverb units on output, but the point behind TAL-Sampler is to emulate the sound of early sampling tech – E-mu, Akai and so on – with fine-tuning of properties like jitter, sample rate, converter quality and more. Classic digital machines are emulated, right down to the DACs with their idiosyncracies in tow. What you also get are some classic ’80s/’90s sampled presets, with a Factory collection and an additional collection from Hollow Sun, giving you not just an incredibly competent tool at recreating classic sampling sounds, but also a bunch of fodder for the sounds themselves. With most presets using just…