Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i Electronic Musician

A while back, Massachusetts software supremos iZotope acquired the respected reverb aficionados Exponential Audio. We've since seen some Exponential tech appear in iZotope products, but there's been no dedicated reverb plugin – at least not until now. Neoverb is the first full fruit of this new corporate combo, making use of what each company does best: a high-quality reverb with the best of artificial-intelligence assistance built-in. Actually, Neoverb is more like three reverbs in one, combining the early reflections and longer tail which are usually present in these processors with a second tail option. You can then blend between these three signals across three axes in the Blend Pad to weight the signal as you like it. There are plenty more interesting new approaches in Neoverb, such as Autocut, which…

01 A sampler allows you to adjust the coarse tuning (in semitones) or fine tuning (in cents) of a loaded sound. Tune your drum samples to extremes for creative effects, or detune them over smaller scales to help gently pitch the hits to fit the other parts. 02 To adjust the length of a drum hit over time, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with your sampler’s amplitude envelope. If a hit is too long and sustained, for example, simply pull back sustain to minimum, then set decay length to dial in the perfect amplitude shape. 03 Many drum samplers allow you to adjust the decay or sustain curve response over time. As drums are relatively short in duration, this can be a great way to precisely shape a kick drum’s…

01 We start by taking an atmospheric sound from Absynth 5 and adding several effects: UAD’s EP-34 Tape Echo, SoundToys’ FilterFreak, FabFilter’s Pro-R, Waves’ H-Delay and SoundToys’ Devil-Loc Deluxe. We’re setting high Feedback levels in the delays to get the sound ‘regenerating’. 02 We set up a second sound, adding Waves H-Delay with a non-tempo sync’d, ping-pong delay. Next comes a FilterFreak treatment where the cutoff frequency is modulated by the input level. Lastly, a round of delay ‘smear’ via Logic’s Tape Delay. 03 For the third sound, we use a Sound Generator from Reaktor 6: Space Drone. We insert another low-pass Filter Freak treatment, UAD’s Roland Space Echo, Eventide’s H3000 Ultra-Harmonizer for some auto-panning, and Unfiltered Audio’s Byome, which adds granular processing. For all three, we capture a long…

Over the last couple of issues, we’ve looked at the basics of tonal harmony versus modal harmony, highlighting the differences between the two approaches. This month, we’re sticking with the modal side of things, and scratching the surface of a nifty songwriting technique known as modal interchange. In a nutshell, this means borrowing chords from parallel modes – modes that share the same root note – to make your progressions sound a bit more advanced. In a previous Easy Guide, I talked about using borrowed chords from parallel scales, but in that tutorial we stuck chiefly to the major (Ionian) and minor (Aeolian) scales. Modal interchange expands on this idea, taking into account not just major and minor scales, but all of the other five modes as well. So you…

$128 beatskillz.com You have probably noticed that there’s a bit of a nostalgia thing happening out there. Okay, perhaps there has been a look-back longing in the synth world for years and years, and maybe it’s the fact that so many of us have been locked up watching old films (or yearning for better times) but, whatever the reason, there are definitely rose-tinted spectacles being worn above face masks the world over. RetroVolt taps into the midst of it all and tugs your heart strings. You’ll be Pretty in Pink and enjoying your Breakfast Club in no time. Beatskillz's latest marvel installs as a plugin as normal but you’ll then need to download around 2.5GB of data which turns up as five files. These are best placed in the Samples…

1 Trawl the web for info on any synth and sooner or later you’ll find that somebody has recreated the Blade Runner sound on it. Being a polysynth with lots of options makes the One great for this – so let’s do it! 2 The basic tone is simple. Two sawtooth oscs, at 16’, the first with its frequency modulated by LFO 1 but set low. Between .5% and .9% gives the patch an organic drift. The third, optional VCO, a mix of saw and pulse at 8’, adds something extra. 3 The first two VCOs should run through a 12dB ladder filter, with around 10% res. Set cutoff at 500Hz, or above. You don’t want too much buzz but add more high end using the XY pad or mod…

1 Eurorack modular The Moog One has an array of CV ins and outs, which means you can hook it up to a modular rig with ease, assigning the ports using the controller section. You will need 8th” to ¼” patch cables however. 2 Logic, Live or any DAW The midi connectivity works well but I’d opt for using USB. It integrates extremely well and allows you to not only control the One via your DAW but also to use the One’s lovely keys to play any softsynths in your music. 3 Powered monitors You may have a daw-less setup, or might just wish to play the One as a standalone instrument. Either way, having decent speakers is a must, to really allow the complexity and depth of the One’s…

Many modern softsynths disguise complex synthesis behind familiar controls, and for good reason – we’re musicians, not scientists, after all. Audio Damage’s Quanta is a perfect example of such an instrument, boiling down granular synthesis into something any electronic musician can pick up and use straight away. Load a WAV, AIFF, MP3, OGG or FLAC file into Quanta, and the synth normalizes the audio ready for playback. The vertical playhead line (representing playback position) is laid over the waveform display, and its placement can be adjusted via the Grains >> Position knob. Breaking apart and recombining audio grains is nothing if you can’t get those granular parameters wiggling handsfree, which is why Quanta places easy-to-use modulation (or randomization) at the fore. Hooking up modulation is reminiscent of Ableton’s Wavetable synth:…

Iranian-born, London-based producer Amirali first made a name for himself in the earlier half of the last decade, releasing a cluster of infectious, synth-driven club tracks into the world with his Crosstown Rebels-released debut album, In Time. After a stint of relentless touring and DJing, he took an extended break in order to reinvigorate his music making. December sees him return with a fresh outlook and new release, titled Trial & Error. We caught up with him to talk studio sessions and creativity. When did you start making music? I’ve been into music my whole life. I’ve been playing the piano since I was about five, I had several piano tutors over the years and played classical pieces. I was always involved and into making music even before getting my…

Sequential announces a new Prophet-5, a faithful reboot of one of the greatest synths of all time After months of what’s being described as “clandestine development,” veteran San Francisco synth creator Sequential has announced a new version of the Prophet-5, one of the greatest synthesizers in history. It’s also confirmed the Prophet-10, which doubles the voice count. The original Prophet-5 first appeared in 1981, and quickly gained popularity among performing musicians and synthesists thanks to its balance of classic looks, well-equipped sound engine and unique modulation tools. Timed to coincide with Sequential founder Dave Smith’s 70th year, the new synth takes the iconic synth designer back to his roots. “It’s not often that you get to revisit your past, retrieve some of its magic, and give it new life,” says…

01 To add punch, use an envelope to modulate the drum hit’s pitch response over time. Then, set up a tight attack, minimum sustain and release, and decay to taste. Now simply tweak the amount of envelope modulation and decay length to customize the front end bump’s amount and shape. 02 If you need to extend a drum hit’s length, wrap your sampler’s loop points around a section of sustain (after the attack portion). Experiment with looping types – back and forth mode usually works well – and apply slight fading to create an extended tail. 03 To breathe motion into a static hi-hat or percussion sample, assign your sampler’s LFO to gently modulate various parameters such as sample start, amplitude decay/release and pitch. Make sure you turn off retrigger…

01 We’re starting with a track consisting of five elements. A chopped up vocal provides our melody, whilst this is supported by a kick drum and ‘top loop’. Harmony is provided by a pad from Absynth 5 and a thick bassline from Monark. A little delay and reverb have been added to the vocal. 02 The top loop sounds a little too energetic, so we’ll start by sampling that, so it can be triggered at half speed. We transfer it into Logic’s EXS24 sampler and trigger it an octave below the key note. We run the slower, lower version in the first half and both loops in the second. 03 We insert Output’s Portal on the vocal loop and create a granular treatment which breaks the vocal up, adds effects…

The year is 1988, and the electronic music industry is at a turning point. Knob-laden analog synthesizers have faded into memory, and the sample-based wavetable synthesis so beautifully presented by PPG is about to be whitewashed for the masses in the form of the soon-to-beubiquitous ROMpler. Roland’s entry for 1987, the D-50, combined sampled attack transients with sustained synthesized waveforms, and slathered the lot in a gauzy haze of reverb. It was a mighty success, with the instrument seeming to be on perpetual back-order. But the D-50 was only the start. Korg, too, had dabbled in sample-based synthesis back in 1985 with their DW-6000 and DW-8000 units, both of which contained a handful of single-cycle sampled waveforms that were pumped through filters, envelopes and even – on the flagship model…

$387 hitnmix.com In the decade since Hit'n'Mix’s audio software first appeared, it has come on in absolute leaps and bounds and not only grown in terms of features but also sounds a whole lot better now. Somewhere along the way it acquired the Infinity name and now, at version 4.7, could finally be ready for a much wider audience. Basic concepts Billed as the world’s first 'atomic audio editor', Infinity is a standalone application (OS X 10.10 or later, Windows 7 or later) that analyzes audio (WAV, mp3, Flac, Ogg) and presents it as melodic and noise components. These can be edited in various ways to achieve functional, reparation and creative tasks. Melodic and noise components appear in a typical timeline workspace with pitch/frequency on the y-axis and time on…

$48 It’s time to crack the surface and reveal the underground sounds of modern techno in this rock solid set of scorching samples and piping hot hits. The 700-strong selection takes in a host of jackhammer drums and programming, some truly cavernous bass grooves, and synth lines so sharp you could cut diamonds with ’em. You’ll have a blast mixing/matching the sounds, and everything chugs along at a steady 128bpm, with all loops categorized intuitively, allowing eager beat-miners to tunnel through with ease. Other highlights include a set of Rumble Loops so heavy they could rattle a tooth loose. Ouch! And a Pads & Atmospheres collection that sizzles so much, steam will come out of yer speakers. Oof! Roy Spencer audiotent.com Octopus Sounds – Basement Freaks: Spaghetti Western Psychedelia $7.99/mo…

1 Start with a single VCO, an equal mix of triangle wave and pulse. Observe the shape of the resulting wave – it’s the angles that makes this more lively. Adding LFO1 fm gives motion in pitch so each triggering is authentically different. 2 Add some noise. Somewhere between red and white works well with sustain on. Set your mixer so the VCO goes through both filters, set to low pass, removing high end. Set res to half. Adjust to replicate the tension of skins on an acoustic drum. 3 Set the filter and VCA envelopes so they have rapid attacks, quick decay, little sustain and short release. The envs are fast and clicky. To smooth them, hit ‘more’ and change attack curves to exponential and decay ones to logarithmic.…

1 Three VCOs: a sawtooth at 32’, a ramp at 16’ and an evenly-spaced pulse also at 16’. For vintage feel, vary their frequencies subtly. 1-25 of the FM modulation from LFO 1 adds movement. Add smoothing to LFO curve and set polyphony to unison. 2 Run the three VCOs (and a red noise added to the mixer at about 30%) through a SVF and set cutoff to 350-400Hz. We want a softer main sound here so a 24dB low-pass filter is best. For movement up the SVF spacing: brilliantly vintage. 3 For controllable fizz, choose your mod control source. We want to use aftertouch, which means pressing the AT button, then turning the filter cutoff knob to set the desired amount of high end to allow through when engaging…

Having three discrete synths in one preset can be fantastic for wide, complex soundscapes but also very useful for more of a performance-style setup, where your left hand plays a different sound to the right. There’s nothing stopping you from making a huge three-layer, full-spectrum preset but think about splitting voices across the board. Being able to play a bass part with your left hand, triggering a drone with a single key, then playing lead over the top is not just useful but immense fun too. You can also have a sequence running with no keyboard input for a voice. The possibilities are pretty wide ranging.…

01 Choose File >> Initialize Preset. The instrument’s four oscillators, called Sources, are capable of multiple synthesis and sampling types. Click Saw A’s top header and choose Import Audio to open the Import screen. After setting the bottom Analysis Mode to Granular, hunt down a vocal sample and punch Import. 02 Bash MIDI notes, and Alchemy plays back the audio, sampler-style. Set Speed to 0%, then sweep Position to move the playhead through the audio file. Now to the right Granular controls: set Density to 1, and a single grain is output once the previous one has finished. Sweep Size from the minimum 2ms to the max 230ms to lengthen and shorten the grain. 03 So far, we’ve just been repeating one ‘chunk’ of audio. Density defines how many grains…

Is Softube’s Model 72 plugin the ‘perfect’ Minimoog synth emulation? We think it’s fair to say that no synth has been emulated more than the Minimoog, which might make you wonder why anyone would bother having another crack at it. Softube, though, has taken up the challenge - what’s more, it thinks that, with the Model 72, it’s “perfected” that classic monophonic synth sound. More than just a straight synth plugin, Model 72 is described as “a vintage synth time machine”. Based on a 1972 synth in pristine condition, each component has apparently been modeled to the smallest detail, quirks and non-linearities included. That said, there are a few extra features, too: doubling, stereo spread and an expanded control set. What’s more, as well as the standard synth plugin, Model…

Where drum samples are concerned, the bass drum is the lifeblood of dance music. If you produce house, techno or hip-hop, it’s the primary focus of the entire groove, which is why top-tier producers in those genres anguish over every aspect of their kicks, from transient to tail. Kick drum design is also the area where production and sound design coexist. Sure, it’s fine to reach for ‘the perfect sample’ when you’re in a hurry to write a track but why not build your own bank of kick samples for those occasions? Not only is kick design fun, but it’ll furnish your samples folder with bespoke sounds no-one has, and will help you create your own signature sound in the process. So, in the below tutorial, we’ll craft a multilayered…

01 Use clever tricks to add movement over time. Send your sample signal to a reverb aux, then place a gentle, random, slow-moving tremolo pre-reverb on the aux. Subtle volume modulation causes the sample signal to hit the reverb differently each time, giving a feeling of drift and movement. 02 If you’re using upfront sounds from modern sample packs, they’ll be processed to extremes. This is fine if you want a ready-made to slot into a track, but can be a little over the top. Use mono-summing plugins to remove extravagant stereo width, and filter to shave away extreme highs and lows. 03 A counterintuitive approach is to instead seek out unimpressively clean, ‘naked’ samples. These won’t necessarily blow your socks off out of the box, but can be thought…

$1,399 native-instruments.com Few major brands have remained as committed to the software realm as NI. In that context, Maschine+ is a big move for the brand, its first product that isn’t designed primarily to work in conjunction with a PC, Mac or iPad. Technical details aside though, this isn’t some radical new product stream; Maschine+ offers nearly the exact same hardware/software workflow as 2017’s Maschine Mk3, albeit on an internal OS, not an external computer. That’s not to dismiss it – the Maschine range has become a slick, comprehensive sampling and sequencing system, and the Mk3 is undoubtedly the pinnacle. It’s testament to the tight hardware-software synergy of that controller design that you can effectively remove the computer from the equation without hampering it. As a concept, Maschine+ works. While…

$143 ikmultimedia.com The mini keyboard controller has been with us for many a year, but nowadays there seem to be more reasons than ever to own one. There’s the rise of mobile music-making through your phone, iPad and laptop, of course. Or there’s the lack of space after so much great hardware has infested your desktop. Or, mostly, it’s the seemingly constant falling in price of most computer music accessories. The new iRig Keys 2 Mini is the latest in the iRig Keys range and seems to offer a low-cost solution no matter what reason you have ticked above. First, though, let’s have a quick recap of the iRig Keys range as it can be a little confusing. iRig Keys 2 is the second range of IK’s compact keyboard controller…

$78 D16.pl Polish developer D16 produces some of the finest analog emulations available, ranging from the Roland-inspired Drumazon and Nepheton drum machines right through to hardware emulating effects such as the Antresol flanger, Repeater delay and Redoptor tube distortion. A decade ago the developer released its original chorus plugin, Syntorus. This captured the classic analog chorus sound you’d find on synths, pedals and beyond and needless to say we loved it and still do. But ten years is a long time, and so it’s great to see this excellent processor finally getting an overhaul. So what’s new? Syntorus 2 (VST, AU, AAX) builds on version 1 in a number of ways. The big news is you now have three rather than two delay lines and three rather than two LFOs.…

1 Set first VCO to 32’ with a slow LFO morphing the saw’s wave, second at 16’ with a blend between saw and pulse. An LFO modulates the mix. The third VCO is a saw, set to 16’ with a hint of detune. 2 Turn on all three state variable filters with the ladder engaged for the third VCO. Set to LP 18dB. Turn the res up on both, then link them in series mode. Set up expression as preferred. 3 Effects for this patch are minimal with no synth effects and just Eventide room 667 reverb engaged. Adjust and tweak the envelopes to suit. An almost instant attack works.…

1 Use a pre-existing bass preset as Timbre 2. Focus on voice 2, set 1 of the LFO’s destinations to the pan control of the VCA. Set expression to MW. Set the range, hitting the range low button and choosing a low note. Ditto for high. An octave of overlap. 2 Turn off keyboard control for voices 1 and 2 in turn to focus on each individually. Set VCOs to Triangle at 16’ and 8’ and saw at 8’. LFO 1 is smooth triangle modulating pitch. Set the mod env to around 1s decay, assigned to the FM mod knob. 3 Set LFO 2 to a sample and hold, press ‘more’ and add variation. Turn on sync and set the type to dotted 16ths. Destination is the filter cutoff. The…

1 Let’s make an old, worn sound that cleans up for longer notes: simple but useful. Start with a saw wave set to 8’ with 5% pulse mixed in. Add a small amount (under 1%) of mod EG. Add a second VCO, an octave higher, with some pulse blended. 2 Run both VCOs through the state variable filter, with the first also passing through the Ladder. Cutoffs for both should be kept low, for mellowness, with no fizz or sparkle in this tone. No filter envelope is used for this patch. 3 Now set up the mod envelope. It needs a fast attack and a gentle decay and release. This is controlling the frequency mod of the VCO. The envelope makes the note warble upon trigger before settling to its…

Audio Damage Quanta $99 With a focus on creative music software, the indie dev’s new virtual instrument gives granular principles a new lease of life with familiar modulation and visual feedback. Steinberg Padshop Pro $88 Throw samples on multiple layers, granulize them out of recognition, then shape with the onboard reverb and three-band EQ. Zero-G’s Gravity Expansion Pack also included. Monolake Granulator II The Max for Live granular sampler is included with Live Suite, and comes with a separate Input device for capturing and loading in other DAW signals in real time. Sound Guru The Mangle $26 Another awesome indie developer instrument, this one houses four sequencers, plus frequency-colored wave display with animation to help visualize your adventures. New Sonic Arts Granite $117 This innovative granular instrument serves up unique…

LVC-Audio Clipped-MAX $50 The actual clipping operation in Clipped-MAX can vary each time you see it. The plugin has four modules that can run at once. The main ‘clipper clipper’ is on the master page, offering the confusingly named ‘makeup’ parameter to get things working and the margin control as a soft/hard ‘ratio’. The ‘Shifter’ page leaves the clipping threshold dynamic, reacting to the volume of the input at any time to give a consistent impact on dynamic range. In multiband operation mode, you set Clipped-MAX up as a six-band (or fewer) processor, giving you the power of single-band operation but tailored differently across the frequency spectrum. There’s a stereo mode that offers separate clipping over mid and side signals. While four modes could be excessive, Clipped-MAX gives you real…