Innehållsförteckning för June 2019 från Computer Music

Giorgia Angiuli The Italian producer and live artist reveals the software behind her recently released debut album, In A Pink Bubble ABLETON LIVE 10 “Ableton Live is a platform that you’ll fall in love with. It’s simple, versatile and reliable. Even if Ableton is the first and only DAW you’ve worked with, you’ll have no problems using it after a while – it’s so intuitive! I use it for everything: to compose, arrange and mix my tracks, and also when I play live. “Right at the start, when I was first beginning electronic music production, it quickly became the only DAW I wanted to work with. Without hesitation, I can suggest it to everyone who wants to make music. Every day, it will offer you new possibilities.” UAD THERMIONIC CULTURE…

INTERVAL An interval is the distance in pitch between two notes, and there are two possible types – harmonic and melodic. Harmonic intervals happen when two different notes are played together at the same time – in other words, a two-note chord. On the other hand, a melodic interval is between two notes played one after the other – that’s a two-note melody. OCTAVE An octave is an interval of 12 semitones between two notes that have the same name, eg, C3 and C4. An octave spans all 12 notes on the piano keyboard. SEMITONE / TONE Also sometimes known as a half-step, a semitone is the distance between any two adjacent notes on the piano keyboard – the smallest possible interval. It’s also the interval between the degrees of…

01 PLAY ALONG The simplest way to work out the key of a song is to grab a keyboard and try to play along with the main melody of the song. Chances are the tune will be in one of the major or minor keys, and you should be able to figure out from the notes it uses which key it’s in. For instance, if it mainly contains notes from the C major scale and the root note feels like C, the key will be C major. 02 ANALYSE AUDIO If you have a solo vocal or other audio track, try using a pitch-correction or analysis plugin to work out what notes are occurring in a melody (our Photosounder Spiral CM, available free with ) is great for this. Alternatively,…

Although both of them are currently toying with the idea of investing in some hardware synths, Jamie and Brendan work almost entirely in the box, using a range of plugin instruments and effects, hosted in Steinberg Cubase. What’s the thinking behind their choice of DAW? “We’ve used it since day one, really,” says Brendan. “We’re going back to the 90s here, when we were first coming through. I ventured out a bit – I tried Logic and Pro Tools – then me and Jamie started working together and it made sense to go back to Cubase. It felt a lot more comfortable than those other two, for me, so yeah, we’ve always used it. Some people use Ableton as well, alongside Logic or Cubase, but we just find we can…

Dedicated readers have doubtless already discovered our recent addition to the Plugins bundle, Fathom CM. Added only last month to our suite of free music-making tools, this leviathan of a synth offers up an infinitely deep sonic playground that puts many a paid-for plugin to shame. Fully modular and flexible, Fathom CM has enough features to leave even seasoned synthesists gasping for air. Despite its bottomless potential, Fathom CM is really easy to, erm, fathom, with a sleek and intuitive interface that gives immediate and impressive results. And unlike more complex modular environments, Fathom lets users start making sounds with the very first module. As easy as it is to get going, modular synthesis is all about options. Seaweed Audio, Fathom CM’s developers, are well aware of this, and have…

Last issue, we began our exploration of polyrhythms by layering up multiple drum and percussion elements, each in a different time signature but all playing at the same tempo – aka polymeter. This time round, I’m going to be showing you an alternative, even madder approach to polyrhythmic beat making: the cross-rhythm. In simple terms, a cross-rhythm is a combination of two or more time signatures, playing together over the same period of time – ie, sharing the same barlines – and thus at two or more different tempos. The most rudimentary of cross-rhythms is the hemiola, or ‘two against three’, which you can easily demonstrate yourself. Tap a repeating three-beat pattern on a desk with your right hand, then tap with the left hand on beat one and in…

It took them an age to finally get into the virtual instrument market, but over the last couple of years, Roland have nailed it with their Legendary Series of plugins. Available only by subscribing to the Roland Cloud service, this gradually expanding library of classic synths and boxes reborn in software form – TR-808 and 909, SH-101, Juno-106, Jupiter-8, JV-1080, D-50 and more – has put the Japanese giant at the top of the Roland emulation game, previously dominated in their absence by Propellerhead, AudioRealism and D16, amongst others. The latest in the Legendary Series is one that many dance producers have had on their wishlist since the Cloud first appeared: the TB-303 Bass Line. Launched on ‘303 Day’ (3 March 2019) to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the original…

Once you’ve made it through the ordeal of installation, a vast and – for the most part – impressive world of multisampled instrumentation is yours to command, adding over 200GB of entirely new material and previously separate expansion packs to the SampleTank 3 library (also included). Recorded at numerous studios around the world, as well as IK’s new facility in Modena, the ST4 library prioritises the depth of its headline instruments as much as it does the sheer volume of its sounds. The new Yamaha C7 grand piano (145GB), with its multiple mic setups and treatments, is absolutely beautiful, and the other keyboards (electric pianos, clavs, etc) aren’t exactly shabby, either. ST3’s awesome selection of acoustic and electric guitars was already a triumph, but ST4’s 25GB stash trumps it for…

The latest in Scottish developers Krotos Audio’s series of sound design plugins is geared up for the creation of real-world and ‘imagined’ vehicle sounds – cars, trucks, motorbikes, helicopters and planes – using a combination of granular and conventional sample playback, and a five-oscillator synth. Igniter is available in two versions: Igniter, which we’re reviewing here, incorporating 6GB of samples, and Igniter Full Tank, which adds another 70GB of samples (“onboard recordings, ramps, static rev bands, Foley sounds, skids and slides”) for those who crave the ultimate in sonic detailing – and don’t mind paying £881 to get it. Start your engine Igniter loads as a virtual instrument (VST/AU/ AAX), and all you have to do to get started is load a preset (see The cars are the stars), hit…

From assertive arp lines to cutting-edge supersaws, this month’s exclusive sample pack – as ever, lovingly crafted by Cyclick and Groove Criminals – is here to provide your projects with synthetic punch and potential. All of the samples come in .wav format, and there’s a dozen multisamples patches included, too. You’ll find the pack in the Samples folder on the print edition’s DVD, or log in to FileSilo (se p5) and download the zip folder from this issue’s Miscellaneous Files category. Step by step Exploring this month’s Power Synths samples 1 Want access to powerful bass captured from renowned analogue and digital hardware synths? Then head straight for the Groove Criminals >> Loops folder, where you’ll find categorised, BPM-labelled loops from the Access Virus B, Moog Mother-32, Korg MS-20 Mini…

Though there are a wide variety of DAWs, each with its own unique interface, there are similarities when it comes to loading up and using plugins, and most stick to one of two approaches. The first – as seen in Steinberg’s Cubase, Apple’s Logic, and Cakewalk’s Sonar – involves insert slots on a track or mixer channel. These are used in the same way as an insert effect would be used on a hardware mixer. In other words, the effect is placed ‘in line’ on that mixer or track channel. Plugins might be loaded in by use of a dropdown menu tree or right-clicking in the effects slot. Clicking in the insert or effects slot in some DAWs – Cockos’ Reaper, for instance – will reveal a dedicated browser from…

STL Ignite Emissary Plug-in Bundle A collaborative effort from a pair of metal-minded developers, this bundle is all bark and bite Ignite Amps have made quite a name for themselves among the plank-spanking populace (erm, that’d be guitarists) with their powerful software amp sims and ear-shredding hardware counterparts. Among their most popular products is Emissary, a recreation of a one-off custom head. For the latest version, they’ve joined with STL Tones to bring out the Emissary Plug-In Bundle, a free collection that features the brand new version of Emissary, and the latest 2.0 version of NadIR, their convolution-based processor. Plus, they’ve included a sextet of studio-quality impulse responses tracked at a pro studio, with the hardware version of the Emissary driving a limited edition Kirk Hammett 4x12 cabinet. NadIR itself…

Drum processors A handful of plugins to pump up your beats and percussion Voxengo Drumformer All-in-one multiband dynamics, harmonic excitement, gate, drive and more voxengo.com Waves JJP Cymbals and Percussion US producer/engineer Jack Joseph Puig’s top-end treatments boiled down into a handy multieffect waves.com SoundRadix Drum Leveler Apply upwards/downwards compression or expansion to specific drums within a multitrack soundradix.com Audified DW Drum Enhancer Choose a drum type, then apply gating, compression, EQ and tube saturation audified.com MeldaProduction MDrumEnhancer This advanced drum processor uses clever sample-based trickery to bolster your kicks, snares and percussion meldaproduction.com Joey Sturgis Tones Transify An affordable four-band transient shaper to help you customise drum dynamics joeysturgistones.com Audio Damage Rough Rider 2 Embiggen drum hits and pump up beat busses with this assertive freeware compressor plugin audiodamage.com…

1 Here b we have a chord progression of E - Cm - Gm. This is represented in the key of G minor as a VI - iv - i. Let’s say we want to shift to the A minor key after eight bars. Our first job is to figure out which chords are diatonic to both keys… 2 In minor keys, the i, iv and v chords are minor, and III, VI and VII chords are major. Here’s the diatonic sets for Gm and Am keys. Note that the common chords are Dm and F – v and VII chords of Gm and iv and VI chords of Am respectively. 3 Let’s bring about the change of key by inserting a D minor chord at the end of our…

1 One diminished 7th can function as the viiº chord of four different major keys, and the iiº chord of b four minor keys. To illustrate, Bº7 (B-D-F-A ) can be the viiº chord of C major and the iiº chord of A minor. Known as secondary dominants, their job (harmonic function) is to resolve to the tonic of a new key. 2 The next inversion up b , Bº7, is the same chord as Dº7 ( b D-F-A -B). This can be the viiº chord of E major and the iiº chord of C b minor - . Ditto the 2nd inversion b , Fº7 (F b -A B-D), viiº chord of G major b and b iiº of E m, and the 3rd inversion, A º7 ( b…

Many producers compose tracks using audio one-shots and loops (ie, samples), whether it be ready-rolled audio files from commercial sample packs, loops they’ve created themselves and squirreled away for later use, or ‘naughty’ snippets lifted from records or YouTube. When digging for new samples or auditioning through your collection, it’s all too easy to disregard something because it lacks the texture or the thickness you want, even if the creative content of the sound might work. This leaves you with a heap of unused samples that could become the perfect raw material for processing and making your own – exactly what we want from a sample, after all! Let’s not forget that, historically, sampling is about turning pre-existing audio into something unique, and doing it in a way to create…

Originally released only as a Rack Extension for Propellerhead’s Reason DAW in 2015, Rob Papen’s latest plugin instrument (VST/AU/AAX), Vecto, employs a method of sound generation that doesn’t come around too often these days: vector synthesis. This powerful technique was pioneered by Sequential Circuits with the Prophet VS in 1986, and followed up most famously by Korg with their legendary Wavestation shortly after. Quite simply, it centres on manual control and modulation of the output blend of multiple oscillators using a joystick or similar controller. The complex, shifting tones of vector synthesis are well suited to sustained sounds – pads, strings and the like – and particularly favoured by cinematic sound designers and ambient producers. Fantastic four “Vecto employs a method of sound generation that doesn’t come around too often:…

The battery-powered and totally analogue Transistor Bass 303 was launched in 1981, alongside the TR-606 drum machine, to provide ‘realistic’ bassline accompaniments for guitarists. Sounding nothing whatsoever like a real bass player, and being less than intuitive to program, it only sold around 10,000 units and was discontinued in 1984. Three years later, Chicago-based group Phuture (featuring the legendary DJ Pierre) got their hands on a 303 and set dance music careering down a new path with the release of the seminal Acid Tracks. Acid house was born and suddenly the 303 was a must-have instrument for every DJ and electronic producer in the States, then the UK and Europe. Indeed, for many, it’s remained equally indispensable ever since, commanding silly prices on the second hand market to this day,…

DMG Audio founder and DSP guru Dave Gamble has made it his mission to make 100% in-the-box mastering a genuinely viable proposition, and Multiplicity (VST/AU/AAX) is the latest fruit of that obsession. A combination of multiband compressor/expander and dynamic EQ, it claims to give a “degree of control that isn’t possible with anything else”. Bands on the run Multiplicity has a lot going on within its user interface, but the layout is totally intuitive. The top section houses the curve/response display and makes certain settings graphically interactive; metering and global controls are in the right hand vertical strip; and all the per-band parameters appear in the main tabbed Band Controls section at the bottom. Up to eight bands are invoked by clicking the + button next to the rightmost tab,…

Boom Library ReCenter £69 Web boomlibrary.com Format PC/Mac, VST/AU/AAX Soundware and plugin developers Boom Library really grabbed our attention with the superb Enforcer last year (9/10, 258), and their latest is a VST/AU/AAX stereo centering effect. In a nutshell, ReCenter constantly analyses and rotates your wayward stereo (L/R or M/S) signal to keep it fixed at any angle you choose, while maintaining the integrity and positioning of the stereo field. Most of the magic happens behind the scenes, and it often gets the job done in its default state: just slap the plugin on any stereo or mid-side signal in which the main element – or the whole thing – is off to one side or the other, and marvel as it miraculously snaps to dead centre without affecting…

PPG Waveterm Wavetable synthesis is undergoing something of a revival at the moment, with multiple hardware and software variants on the theme available to musicians. Maybe the same old analogue waveforms are growing a bit stale. This is precisely what happened the first time around, when German company PPG unleashed the PPG Wave, a hybrid instrument with oscillators that offered the ability to draw from a vast collection of digitally-stored single-cycle waveforms that had been strung together in a ‘wavetable’. Unlike the static sample playback offered by the ROMplers that followed, PPG instruments could dynamically modulate through the waves of the selected wavetable. The results were sounds with timbral movement the likes of which had never before been heard. PPG perfected its design with the addition of an analogue filter…

Plugins Install and use Trax CM, plus our entire cm Plugins collection Samples Download this month’s exclusive packs and power up your tunes Tutorial Videos See and hear exactly how it’s done with our expert video guides Tutorial Files Follow along in your DAW with WAVs, project files, MIDI clips and more Log in at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic Register this issue for instant access to our plugins, samples, videos and files on your desktop computer Free for digital readers, too! Read on your tablet, download on your computer…

Native Instruments Massive X The eagerly anticipated softsynth is shaping up to be something special Having missed its originally suggested February release slot (and then some), the sequel to Native Instruments’ seminal Massive – arguably the first plugin ‘super synth’ – is now scheduled for availability in June. The wait feels interminable, but at least the developers have started sharing details and screenshots of Massive X via the Massive X Lab page on their blog – and, boy, is it looking good… First and foremost, Massive X is described as “an entirely new instrument, designed from the ground up”, and the interface reflects that, with its clear, clean layout, and enticing colours and iconography. The two main wavetable oscillators will apparently be boasting “around 125 wavetables at launch” and operate…

The relevance of music theory as a whole to the computer musician of 2019 is a much discussed and debated topic. With so many compositional aids and hugely powerful DAWs on the market, and the widely-held view that the average pop song is, by definition, inherently simplistic, you could argue that there isn’t really much need to know a great deal of theory. And yet, music is one of those fields in which there’s always something new to learn, no matter what level of musician you consider yourself to be, so it can’t be denied that a little extra knowledge is always a good thing. Here at , although we get that an in-depth music theory background is by no means essential to create great tunes, we’re always keen to…

Chromatic modulation Key changes – or ‘modulations’, to give them their proper, music theory-professor name – may have become a bit of a pop cliché (picture Westlife stepping off their stools), but knowing how to craft a smooth key change is a useful songwriting skill. There are various ways to ‘modulate’ to a different key, but one of the easiest is via chromatic modulation – taking a chord in one key and shifting it up one semitone to a chord that’s in the new key. In this example, a I - IV - V progression in E major modulates to the key of F major by way of the V chord – B major – shifting chromatically up by one semitone to C major, which becomes the V chord in…

A mode is a type of scale, and you probably already know at least two – the major scale is known as Ionian mode in mode-speak, while the natural minor scale is known as Aeolian mode. But what notes do we use to build them? Essentially, the thing that determines one mode from another is the pattern of intervals between the notes. An easy way to generate all seven major scale modes is to start with the scale of C major. Play this as you normally would, from C to C on the keyboard, and you get the Ionian mode. Start from any other note, however, and you’ll generate a different pattern of intervals with a different sound, and hence a different mode. Playing the notes in the C major…

IRREGULAR ARPEGGIOS Make arpeggiated parts more exciting by setting the loop length to an uneven number of notes – say, five, as opposed to the regular four, eight or 16. That way, the part will loop around with an irregular emphasis on certain notes, making for an ear-catching hook. HARMONIC TENSION AND RELEASE Music is all about a constant flow of tension and release, and you can # show this tension by playing D major (D-F -A) then G7 (G-B-D-F). Left hanging, the dominant G7 chord really wants to be finished off by resolving to another chord. Now play a C major chord (C-E-G) and marvel at the sense of release as that tension is resolved. USE SOFTWARE OK, some may see this as cheating, but making use of some…

Whether it’s a subtle amount of tape saturation to add warmth to a clean synth part, retro bitcrushing to give a reverb send that crunchy 1980s digital feel, or over-the-top trashy distortion grunging up an entire drum kit, the various distortion plugins we have in our toolbox can open up new worlds of possibilities when mixing. Ironically, back in the day, mix engineers were always trying their hardest to avoid the characteristics of the hardware they were using, and dreamed of absolute sonic clarity; now, in the all-too-perfect software domain, we’ve since realised that in-the-box mixes can easily sound sterile and – dare we say it – digital. The best way to counteract this? With an expert application of saturation and distortion effects, of course! These heat-inducing tools allow you…

For the most part, us computer musicians are quite happy to stick with the usual major or minor keys that make up 95% of the stuff we hear on the radio or in clubs today. Every now and then, though, wouldn’t it be cool to colour outside the lines? The major and minor scales we’re all familiar with are key parts of the music that satisfies us as listeners, but there’s a whole new level of sophistication that opens up when you start to explore the vast number of permutations and variations on those scales that exist outside that major and minor sandbox. A lot of these scales are based around very simple tweaks of the church modes – the ones you get when you play through regular major or…

Although essentially the same in design as its modulation-generating equivalents on other Papen synths, the XY pad at the heart of Vecto is where the actual ‘vector’ part of vector synthesis takes place. The red dot serves as the virtual ‘joystick’ via which the four oscillators positioned on each corner of its containing square are intuitively blended. The red dot can be dragged around with the mouse and assigned as a modulation target in the matrix for automated movement. The XY pad’s killer feature, though, is the ability to record and play back manual movement of the red dot as a path defined by up to 32 editable breakpoints. The path can be looped from any breakpoint; played back monophonically (restarting with each new note), polyphonically (each note has its…

It’s been four and a half years since the arrival of the last full version update to Italian software/hardware powerhouse IK Multimedia’s SampleTank (VST/AU/AAX/Standalone) sample playback synth. Described in our review of version 3 as “big and beautiful, if not particularly bold” (8/10, cm210), this 16-part multitimbral workstation aims to put an enormous and comprehensive library of lovingly recorded drums, basses, keys, guitars, synths, strings, brass, ethnic instrumentation, FX and anything else you can think of at your fingertips, quickly and easily, but with plenty of sound-shaping, processing and customisation options. Hey, good looking “SampleTank 4 makes an immediate good impression with its redesigned, resizable, Retina-compatible GUI” SampleTank 3 introduced a completely new – and much improved – interface and engine, Live Sets (for quick switching between ‘songs’) and more,…

Many compressors and limiters offer processing of the sidechain signal before it hits the detection circuit in order to alter the dynamic response of the effect ‘at source’, but Multiplicity goes considerably further than most in this regard. First of all, clicking the SC EQ button flips the bottom left panel from showing the transfer curve and dynamic response to hosting the controls of a capable three-band EQ. The low and high bands are switchable between resonant low/high-pass and high/low shelving behaviour, with 6-96dB slopes for the filters and up to +/-24dB gain for the shelves. In between those, the mid band serves as parametric peaking or band-pass filter. Then it’s on to the pop-out Sidechain panel, wherein up to 50ms of Lookahead can be dialled in to hone transient…

The first two releases in their Phoenix Series, WOV and TTAP mark the move for Max For Live developers K-Devices’ into self-contained plugin effects for Mac and PC. An amplitude modulator and a delay, respectively, we’re reviewing them together here as the WOV+TTAP bundle, but they’re also available separately for €59 each. WOV file WOV is essentially a gate sequencer, cycling through anywhere between two and eight steps at synced or unsynced rates from 1/128 to 16/1 with triplet and dotted options, or 0.1 to 30Hz. The relative level of each step is adjusted using its Accent slider, and the shape of the steps is defined by the Wave, Peak and Warp controls, which between them provide plenty of curving/ cornering, skewing, widening/narrowing and positional offset. Interestingly, the Response control…

Sample Tools by Cr2 HeavyTechno £16 Packing far more sounds into its 865MB frame than their usual 20-of-everything fare, Cr2’s latest is all about hard techno of the kind purveyed by Pan-Pot, Charlotte de Witte, Victor Ruiz et al. The 50 superb stemmed drum loops (315 files) would be worth the asking price on their own, but throw in 51 raw and rolling basslines, 50 synth loops – from darkly atmospheric to spiky and aggressive – and 200 one-shot drums and you have a confidently produced and genre-correct bargain. Dare we say it, their best yet. sampletoolsbycr2.com 10/100 Niche Audio Disko Tekk £25 15 funky house projects for Ableton Live and NI Maschine, each one comprising a Drum Rack or Group housing all the elements required to construct…