Innehållsförteckning för March 2018 från Computer Music

“Up your studio game and fast-track your skills for the coming months” The start of a new year gives us the perfect opportunity to look back at our music production achievements from the past twelve months, and also identify areas for improvement. Yes, it might sound a little ‘self help’, but it really is the best way to up your studio game and fast-track your skills for the coming months. That’s why this issue’s cover feature, starting on p22, is designed to give those production chops a premium workout, with an array of challenges, ideas, exercises and strategies to help you make better music than ever before… starting from right now! Speaking of looking forward to the next year, I already can’t wait to see the new music software products…

“I use the term ‘Melt’ because that’s what it sounds like to me” cm Your Phonec synth is, in your own words, inspired by the sound heard at the start of VHS films. What is it about that style of sound that inspires you to create music-making tools? JR “I remember sounds like this from my childhood. There was just something strange and mysterious about them. These ‘video logos’ were typically accompanied by really weird sounds from some kind of obscure electronic instrument. The audio was slightly warped by the worn out VHS tape, which added an eerie quality to it. That’s what Phonec is all about. It’s the strange electronic instrument from a child’s imagination. I created Phonec to tap into that vibe.” cm What’s actually going on with…

MARCUS MARR, THE MUSIC “It’s eight minutes of pure funk bliss. I’m easily bored by longer songs, but The Music is the most engaging song I’ve ever heard. It’s a journey. It’s one of those songs I come back to every month and fall in love with again and again.” DEADMAU5, RAISE YOUR WEAPON (MADEON REMIX) “One of the first tracks that made me want to produce. It’s intricate and complex, but at the same time accessible. It’s an inspirational track for me, the kind of thing that I’ve always what I wanted to make.” DJ SNAKE FT BIPOLAR SUNSHINE, THE MIDDLE “The Middle is the perfect dance pop song in my opinion. These days it’s tough for me to totally fall in love with a song…

RENEGADE, TERRORIST Ray Keith and Nookie first sampled the ominous bass from Reese’s Just Want Another Chance, and many ripped and resampled the sound from this track. bit.ly/ReneTerror SHADOW CHILD, SO HIGH Taking inspiration from raw house, speed garage and jungle, this dancefloor weapon blends skipping drums with sampled siren sounds and a pumping Reese riff that steals the show. bit.ly/SCsohigh LA ROUX, IN FOR THE KILL Ex-dubstepper Skream broke through to the mainstream with this genre-flipping remix, juxtaposing the vocal against melancholic synth chords, rolling Amens and, of course, that rumbling Reese bass. bit.ly/LaRouxKill…

MAGNETO MKIII While 9.5 isn’t bursting with new plugins, three of the best have been given an overhaul with new looks and features. Every Cubase user’s favourite tape saturation plugin gets a significant stroke of the brush, with bigger, bolder controls. Most obvious is the pair of actual knobs provided for Low and Hi Frequency Range. VINTAGE COMPRESSOR We have to confess being a little disappointed in this one. Not because it isn’t improved – it is. However, we always dug the familiarity of the faux cm1cm176 interface, which made it easy for old studio hounds to get around it! Still, the newly Neve-ish veneer is pretty swanky, and it does have that new Mix knob to make the change easier to swallow. TUBE COMPRESSOR This one must be the…

In my productions, I use automation to get the most out of each sound across the different sections of a track. I increase tension with filters and reverb for dramatic growth, or use sharp volume cuts to allow the main elements to breathe. Here, I’ll demonstrate how automation can bring energy and drive to a composition when arranging. To achieve this, I’ll begin by wiggling different parameters such as volume, mute and pan on certain events. Over the next couple of pages, I’ll start with a rising white-noise sweep, before moving on to filtered vocal loops and other arrangement tricks. Automating the pitch of elements can produce great musical variety, alongside time-based effects such as delay and reverb. I love to use techniques like these on sweeps, stabs and vocals,…

SAME INTERFACE The interface hasn’t changed save for the new instruments hanging out in the rack RADICAL PIANO The custom piano modeller, once a paid rack extension, is now free for all GRAIN A granular synth (obvs) excelling at modulation and playhead manipulation SOUNDIRON INSTRUMENTS Pangea, Humana and Klang bring a touch of reality into the Reason rack EUROPA This three-engine wavetable synth was built for super-thick unison lead sounds. The spectral filter impresses especially In 2017, Propellerhead announced that they were bringing onboard the private equity firm Verdane Capital. You’d forgive us for thinking that this meant a Mitt Romney-style dismantling of assets and slow sell-off of the legendary Swedish developer, but in May we realised this might not be the case, as Reason finally did the unthinkable, changing…

“At 0%, the buffered frame is looped, turning it into a synth oscillator, for on-the-fly manipulation” FFT SIZE AND WINDOW Set the analysis style and resolution SPECTRUM DISPLAY View your spectrum in one of six modes EFFECTS Load each slot with one of SpecOps’ 36 spectral effects AMOUNT Raise and lower the processing depths of the three effects START Set the bottom of the processed frequency range WIDTH Set the extent of the processed frequency range FILTER A two-pole analogue-style filter at the output MIX Blend the dry and wet signals to taste MODULATION Get things moving with the modular modulation setup SPECTRAL COMPANDER Apply per-bin dynamics processing SPEED Adjust the rate at which new frames are generated GEOMETRY Pitch- and frequency-shift the spectral bins A spectral multieffects plugin from…

Still, we assume, a member of their affordable SilverLine family of plugins, the second generation of D16’s spangly algorithmic reverb plugin comes eight years after the launch of the first. Toraverb (10/10, cm146) blew us away with its stunning sound and great value, and while one of the biggest changes made for Toraverb 2 (VST/AU/AAX) is a doubling in price, the hope, of course, is that the new features will balance the scales and maintain the VFM factor. On reflections For v2, Toraverb’s layout has been rethought and rebuilt from the ground up, not only to accommodate several added knobs, but also to streamline workflow and make it more logical. The Early and Late Reflections controls – previously all visible at the same time but now too numerous in the…

The Plugins collection is a suite of complete, limitation-free instrument and effects plugins. It’s an incredible resource, boasting more than 75 pro-quality plugins that you won’t find anywhere else, all for PC and Mac, in VST and AU formats. All of the included software is created exclusively for us by respected commercial developers such as D16 Group, u-he, AudioRealism, Ohm Force, KV331 Audio, Cableguys, XILS-lab, AudioThing, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen, zplane and more. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Enough talking! Where do I get these plugins? You can grab them all on the cover DVD with our print edition, or as a download from FileSilo (see p5 for instructions on how to access). How do I install Plugins? It depends on the plugin. Some have dedicated installers, while others just drop into your…

NAMMER TIME The 20cm18 NAMM Show takes place between 25 and 28 January, and is sure to yield new music technology products aplenty. We’ll tell you about the best of them in 254, but in the meantime, check MusicRadar.com for all the big news as it happens. STREAM BIG The music streaming business model might not be perfect, with many artists complaining that they don’t receive a large enough slice of the pie, but it helped to increase UK music revenues by 9.6% in 20cm17. Revenues from streaming services were up by more than 4cm1%. XG AND YOU KNOW IT If you fancy a new multitouch display, how do you like the sound of a 39-inch transparent panel atop an all-glass stand? That’s what you get with Touch Innovations’ XG…

In today’s world of insanely technical plugins and DAW packages, it’s easy to forget that some of the most hallowed techniques used by producers and engineers today originated from the use (and abuse!) of the auxiliary sends and buses provided by mixing consoles. Parallel compression, gated reverb… many of today’s workhorse techniques came about as the result of flagrant abuses of the norms of technique. Indeed, revered engineers such as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry took the use of aux sends and buses to extreme lengths when creating original dub versions of reggae classics back in the 1960s and 70s, turning their mixing consoles into musical instruments in their own right, with on-the-fly tweaking of plate reverbs and tape delays to create dubbed-out soundscapes and feedback loops that came…

Going in full Throttle With millions of YouTube views and some impressive remix credits including Ed Sheeran, AlunaGeorge and Earth, Wind & Fire, Spinnin’ Records signee Throttle (aka Robbie Bergin) has already had an incredible career despite having his first release as recently as 2012. We met up with the rising star at Red Bull Studios Amsterdam during Amsterdam Dance Event 2017 to discuss his love of music making and find out what went into creating his hugely-popular collaboration with Niko The Kid, Piñata . cm: How did you get into production? RB: I started in the DJ world as a lot of young kids do. I was 13, I started listening to dance music through Ministry of Sound CDs, and I became interested in how the…

MIDI drag in the Sampler Track The introduction of the Sampler Track in Cubase 9 made integrating and manipulating audio samples much easier by allowing users to drag and drop audio files right into the built-in Sampler Control editor. Now users can likewise drag ’n’ drop MIDI files from an instrument track into the Sampler Control, where it will be instantly rendered to audio for playback. Adapt to Zoom It’s a simple idea, really: zooming in or out on the project should increase the resolution of the visible grid. Now it does, and better yet, Snap resolution can follow suit. This feature is familiar to users of Ableton Live and, frankly, we wonder why it took so long for it to be implemented in Cubase. Now that it is, we’re…

With so many superb prefab cinematic loop libraries on the market, working massive, Hollywood-style drums into your desktop productions has never been more instant and effortless a process. However, next time you find yourself looking to infuse a track with that epic blockbuster feel, why not give yourself the satisfaction of programming your own percussion section rather than take the creative path of least resistance? All you need are a few well-chosen samples and an instrument from which to play them back. You don’t even have to create that many parts – it’s amazing how big a sound can be achieved with just five or six sparse elements and a dose of reverb. In this tutorial, I’ll put together a tense, cinematic percussion loop of the kind that might herald,…

“Modulation in Thorn isn’t animated at all, and that includes the oscillator waveforms” OSCILLATOR FX Apply spectral effects at the oscillator level HARMONIC EDITOR Click the waveform to open the editor GLITCH SEQUENCER Thorn’s secret rhythmic weapon ARPEGGIATOR Every synth should have one, and Thorn’s is great NOISE OSCILLATOR Generate noise or load up a sample MODULATORS Three envelopes, three LFOs and two MSEGs HARMONIC FILTER Directly shape the Harmonic Oscillators DUAL FILTERS Zero-delay feedback filters in series or parallel MASTER OUTPUT Features a limiter, high-pass filter and the Boost circuit EFFECTS Nine top-notch effects – drag to change the flow MOD MATRIX View and tweak up to 27 modulation assignments Dmitry Sches’ second virtual instrument after the superb Diversion ( 173, 9/10) is a spectral synthesiser vying for ‘super…

“The keys are light, responsive and playable, with satisfying travel and minimal lateral movement” Described by IK Multimedia as their “all-in-one music production station”, the iRig Keys I/O combines a MIDI controller keyboard (49- and 25-key; we’re looking at the 49 here) and audio interface in a single unit, designed to be as compact as possible without compromising on playability. It also comes with a seriously impressive line-up of bundled software – see Soft sell, right. Small and mighty First impressions of the iRig Keys I/O are fine. It’s not the prettiest keyboard we’ve ever seen, and it looks and feels quite plastic-y, but it acquits itself as sturdy enough. Hook-up to PC, Mac or iPad is done via IK’s archaic USBor Lightning-to-mini-DIN cable (both are in the box), which…

Mode Audio GridRacer £18 Mode Audio love synthwave, and this bundle of samples, MIDI files and Live projects – produced with their in-house trove of analogue and digital gear – hits the retro-influenced nail on the head. Each project and its component loops, one-shot drums and tails is very much its own thing, but there’s a common theme of 80s-style emotiveness and bombast throughout that fans of the genre will love. The 150 main loops are full of plunderable material, and the 121 MIDI files enable reassignment and editing of Grid Racer’s melodic and rhythmic themes. www.modeaudio.com 9/100 Sample Magic Synthwave 3 £30 The third in SM’s Synthwave series (the last scored 9/10 in 225) continues down the same 80s road as its predecessors. 40 driving, stemmed drum loops get…

Secure and safe online access, from anywhere Free access for every reader – print and digital Download only the files you want, when you want All the downloads from all your issues, in one place Get started 01 Register your FileSilo account and log in. Even if you have a subscriber ID, you’ll still have to unlock each mag separately or migrate your old Vault account (see step 3). 02 Head back to the Computer Music page (filesilo.co.uk/computermusic) and choose an issue to unlock. You’ll need to answer one question to prove you’ve purchased the issue. 03 You can migrate your old Vault account over to FileSilo to retain the issues you’ve added – head to filesilo.co.uk/vault and enter your Vault email address. Reset your password via the email you…

Version 2 of Akai’s iMPC Pro feels like a much more complete proposition than v1. You can now record audio tracks and use Audio Units, and there are pitchshifting and timestretching features. The interface has been redesigned, and the sound library updated to reflect current electronic music trends. The new Song Mode, meanwhile, promises to make it easier to create complete tracks. iMPC Pro 2 (iPad) costs £24. www.akaipro.com Having made their name with the excellent Elastic Drums, MoMinstruments have now released the equally pliable Elastic FX. A multi-effects processing app, it features four effect modules, each of which can be filled with one of 32 processors covering all the usual bases. An XY pad provides hands-on control, and support for Audiobus 3 and Inter-App Audio means that…

“Old-school all round, you might say” ‘Is solid state technology the future of storage?’ was our Burning Question back in 123 (March 2008). Although some of us still have hard disks clicking and whirring away in our machines, our answer from the future is a definite yes. Shame it’s still a bit pricey, mind. Speaking of storage space, we were going to need plenty of it to install Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere, which made its debut at the 2008 NAMM Show in front of a “stunned crowd”, according to our slightly hyperbolic newshounds. We also reported on the rumour that Apple were planning on launching a dedicated multitouch MIDI controller, but that never happened, and looking back, we can’t really understand why we ever thought it would. In the reviews section, we…

Joost Mono-Amine “I love that it makes music more accessible for people globally. I hate that it more or less killed the charm of full albums and the way full albums are best listened to instead skipped through.” Aidan Goulet “Streaming is great for underground artists to be heard by ‘discovery’ algorithms. Getting your music to the public is easier than ever, but it’s killing the ability to make a viable income as a musician. I think it’s around $5000 for every one million streams on Spotify, which is ridiculous. Imagine if even a fraction of those people bought the CD. The days of selling CDs and getting platinum records are sadly coming to an end...” Hartej Dhiman “Streaming is all fine and well, but I have yet to see…

SOUNDTOYS MICROSHIFT (£119) Soundtoys’ take on classic stereo effects from Eventide and AMS nails it with a lush, hardware-like sound that fits the mix like a glove. Try MicroShift on a return to accent the spread of vocal harmonies, sound effects or – with the Detune set to Max – synth bass! www.soundtoys.com WAVES DOUBLER ($99) A winner for creating convincing automatic double tracking (ADT) effects with ease. Placing an instance on a return (with the direct signal disabled) lets you add serious width to parts of your mix, while leaving scope to process the added width afterwards with EQ. www.waves.com JST SIDEWIDENER We might be biased, but the fantastic SideWidener (free with this issue – see pcm107) is just the ticket for adding mono-compatible width. Try Sidewidener on a…

Steinberg have taken us entirely by surprise with the new Cubase 9.5 update. Oh, we knew it was coming – Cubase updates have become something of an annual tradition. This year, though, Steinberg showed up early to the celebration and with an overflowing bag of new party favours. It seems that they’ve been paying close attention to their users’ wishlists, too, as Cubase 9.5 manages to pack in just about everything we’d wanted, with a few unexpected gifts thrown in for good measure, the most significant of which may be the new 64-bit mixing engine. This provides a massive upgrade to Cubase’s already-excellent sound quality. That’s twice the precision and accuracy of the old version. Now we’ve only ourselves to blame when our tracks sound bad! Audio isn’t the end…

If you’re a regular reader or viewer of the Easy Guide series, you’ll have seen loads of Roman numerals scattered liberally all over the place, and while I’m always at pains to point out what they mean when I use them – in case this is your first time – I thought it would be good to look into them in-depth once and for all, and properly explain not just what they’re all about, but why we use them so often and how they make music theory a little bit easy to communicate. The main purpose for using Roman numerals is when talking about harmony, ie, chord progressions. For single notes, we still tend to use regular individual note names like A, Bb , C, and…

Mention Essex these days and most people automatically think of Lauren, Megan, Gemma, Diags and Arg as they pit their wits against the mighty challenges of modern life – buying shoes, using cutlery and the complexity of Ab Initio quantum computation of bulk properties. But, believe it or not, this much-maligned county has had a sizeable part to play in the development of British electronic music. There’s the Prodigy, of course; formed in Braintree. Underworld are based in and have occasionally namechecked Romford; frontman Karl Hyde refers to Romford as his ‘New York’. There was a dark side to Essex’s history, too: it was the entry-point for much of the E that landed here during the rave years. But we can go back even further than that. To 1980, when…

“In Mel mode, EQuivocate delivers the promised natural-sounding, transparent equalisation” MATCH LEVEL Compare limited and dry signals at equal volume CENTER METER Monitor the input and output signals in three styles SUB-MODULES Access the multiband controls for each section AUTO OUTPUT Compensate for output gain to keep the volume level SPECTRAL CLIPPER Clip the signal for extra loudness TRANSIENT EMPHASIS Reinvigorate crushed transients ADAPTIVE MODES Adapt each module to sonic context BAND MENU Set the number of band filters between 1 and 26 LIMITER Apply limiting across up to 26 bands, ideally in Mel mode MAIN PAGE Edit top-level controls and switch in Adaptive modes This two-plugin (VST/AU/AAX) bundle from ex-Eventide engineer Dan Gillespie’s new company comprises an EQ and an adaptive limiter: EQuivocate and Elevate. Both are based on…

Honestly, you wait an age for one quality software Distressor to arrive, then three come along at once… Universal Audio’s virtualisation of Empirical Labs’ seminal 1993 compressor for UAD-2 and Apollo systems (VST/AU/AAX) is described by original inventor Dave Derr as the definitive version, suggesting that it’s “probably indistinguishable from the hardware”. With EL8 Distressor sharing market space with his own supercharged emulation, the Empirical Labs Arousor (9/10, 244), as well as Slate Digital’s staggeringly realistic FG-Stress (10/10, 251), that’s quite an endorsement. ’Stressed out While Arousor completely reimagines the real Distressor’s 1U rackmount front panel to take its numerous extra features into account, and FG-Stress squeezes it comfortably into its own proprietary ‘lunchbox’ format, EL8 Distressor snaps it in the half and layers the original layout over two tiers.…

Powair (VST/AU/AAX) is a two-stage dynamics processor for mixing and mastering, from the makers of the equally innovative Drum Leveler (9/10, 214) and SurferEQ2 (8/10, 237). Its futuristic graphical interface gives the expectation of a similarly modern workflow and end result – and happily, it delivers on both counts. Brains and brawn First in the signal path is the BS 1770-compliant Leveler, discussed in On the level, below. After that, it’s on to the compressor itself. A fixed-threshold design with a soft knee, this keeps things admirably simple with its big central Compression knob: simply turn this clockwise to increase the input into the compressor and thus the amount of gain reduction applied. The detection circuit can be switched between Stereo and Mid/Side analysis, and the separation between left/right and…

HYBRID SYNTHS Our synths have been created by the best software developers in the world to bring you a suite of sound-making tools for all music production scenarios u-he Zebra CM • Blendable oscillator waveforms • Super-programmable step LFOs • Slick delay, reverb and chorus • Original synth designed just for CM • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.u-he.com Enzyme CM • Scanned synthesis sound generator • Easy-to-use preset-based synth • Assign parameters to controls • Based on the full Enzyme synth • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit humanoidsoundsystems.com KV331AudioSynthMasterCM • Dual wavescanning oscillators • Multimode filter and built-in effects • FM/AM synthesis modes • Based on SynthMaster 2.5 • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.kv331audio.com Cableguys Curve 2.6 CM • Design-your-own-waveforms synth • New waveform capabilities for v2.6 • Phat 16-voice Unison mode • Based on Cableguys Curve…

DYNAMICS Check out this huge collection of processors – from classic compressors to modern digital creations, we’ve got everything you need to shape your signals eaReckon CM-COMP 87 • Slick, punchy compressor • Mix knob for parallel compression • Limiter to keep the output in check • Clear VU- and LED-style metering • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.eareckon.com LVC-Audio Transector CM • Transient tweaking and saturation • Define and process envelope stages • Useful metering/display functions • Mix control for parallel processing • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.lvcaudio.com Audiority TS-1 CM • Flavoursome transient shaper • Set attack and sustain gain • Blend control for parallel processing • Based on the full TS-1 plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiority.com Unfiltered Audio G8 CM • Get tight dynamics or creative FX • Includes advanced gating controls…