Innehållsförteckning för December 2019 från Computer Music

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 Musicpage (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 receive, and log in…

APPLE LOGIC PRO X “Back in the 90s, my attention was captured by Steinberg Pro 24 and Notator for my old Atari 1040. I didn’t even care about the MIDI delays! After that, I fell in love with Pro Tools and Cubase – Pro Tools for mixing and mastering; Cubase for creating and editing. Today, I must admit that my favourite is Logic, but it’s not the only DAW that I use. Ableton Live is vital for live shows and re-working my own tunes. And I cannot forget to mention Max for Live – it offers thousands of possibilities for the electronic musician. But when I have very specific ideas in my mind and I want to quickly start building a song, I need Logic. It’s where I feel comfortable.…

STORE Click the Store button to access a vast number of optional add-on modules and patches. PRESETS Voltage Modular Nucleus is packed with heaps of original and inspiring presets to get you started CV OUTS Use CV – short for ‘control voltage’ – to route voltage signals from your external controllers and beyond TOOLBAR Perform functions like accessing the Library, saving patches, zooming in and out and more MAIN OUTS The Main Outs section of the I/O Panel offers a master volume control, built-in limiter and VU meters for monitoring your levels LIBRARY This scrollable, searchable browser allows access to all of the modules you own. Voltage Modular Nucleus contains a whopping 22 of them! PATCH CABLES A modular patch can easily become a jungle of cables. Voltage Modular Nucleus…

RATCHET UP YOUR DRUMS You’ll find a nifty sequencer-based sound called ‘CM Ratchet’ among the many exclusive preset patches we’ve created for you. This patch makes use of multiple sequencers that – for the most part – play a typical Berlin School pattern. However, every few bars, there’s a skittering burst of rapid-fire notes – an old-school method to add interest to long-winded cosmic jams. You can use the same technique to add occasional drum fills to your sequencer-driven modular beats. DUDE, WHERE’S MY SAMPLER? The Nucleus incarnation of Voltage Modular is a decidedly analogue affair. It’s chock full of everything you need to create virtually any classic analogue sound. However, today’s modular synthesist isn’t restricted by such retro restrictions, drawing upon a wide variety of digital modules, including samplers.…

UVI Falcon drum sounds 00.23 The meat of the drums in Los comes from two software instruments that we don’t think have ever appeared in Producer Masterclass before. The first is UVI’s amazing hybrid synth/sampler Falcon. “We’ve been using it for quite a few years now,” says Ed. “It used to be Mark of the Unicorn Mach 5, and I think it was always made by UVI, but then UVI claimed it back. “There was some corporate thing, so now it’s reverted back to UVI. It basically does more or less everything, so it is quite tricky to get your head around at first. It does regular subtractive synthesis… it doesn’t do additive synthesis. It does sampling and granular sampling, and it also does a type of physical modelling. And…

HYPER/ DIMENSION The Hyper/Dimension effect is best seen as two awesome effects rolled into one. The Hyper part of the package lets you add lashings of unison detune to your audio, which is ideal for thickening and widening synthetic basslines and leads. Meanwhile, the Dimension section – admittedly inspired by NI Massive’s Dimension Expander – provides more transparent, controllable pseudo-stereo width. DISTORTION Serum’s Distortion unit is a powerful beast in the right hands, with 14 different styles of distortion onboard, ranging from characterful tube saturation all the way through to harsh sine shaping. There’s a switchable high/low/ band-pass Filter that can be placed pre- or post-distortion, with separate Drive and wet/ dry Mix controls that can be modulated. FLANGER Though appearing relatively basic, Serum’s Flanger can be extensively tuned to…

You’ve really got to hand it to Mr and Mrs Trentemøller. Some parents might not be keen on their children smashing the hell out of their best pots, pans, plates, bowls and serving spoons, but when five-year-old Anders started drumming along with the latest pop songs in their Nyråd kitchen… they just let him get on with it. “I was making so much noise that they eventually bought me a drum kit,” laughs Trentemøller. “But the crazy thing is that they put the drum kit in the room next to theirs! They had to listen to me first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I am so thankful for their patience. A lot of parents would have crushed my enthusiasm, but they were so supportive. They could…

The fourth in Arturia’s rapidly advancing series of smugly-titled plugin three-packs comprises two vintage hardware delay emulations and an original new design. Its 3 Filters… (8/10, cm257), 3 Preamps… (9/10, cm257) and 3 Compressors… (10/10, cm271) counterparts were all very successful, so expectations are high. To get housekeeping out of the way, all three Delays feature a resizable (60-200%) GUI, a consistent preset browser, and a pop-down ‘Advanced’ control panel housing extra parameters that extend their capabilities beyond those of their corporeal forebears. We’re surprised to find that the helpful ‘Sound Design Tips’ feature included with 3 Compressors hasn’t made the cut this time, though. Delay Tape-201 “Tape-201 does a stand-up impression of Roland’s timeless classic, delivering warm delay and reverb” Kicking things off, Delay Tape-201 is a virtual recreation…

Lion marks the third outing for Unfiltered Audio’s brilliant BYOME modular effects rack (after BYOME itself and its multiband counterpart, Triad), and no compromises have been made in its implementation – this really is the full enchilada. The BYOME Effects rack sits under the oscillators and filter, and up to 16 modules can be loaded into it, each one hosting any one of 44 effects in eight categories: Delays, Distortions, Dynamics, Filters, Granular, Mixing, Modulation and Reverbs. There are too many highlights among the modules to fully cover here, but of particular note are the entire Delays (the meat of Sandman Pro, basically) and Distortions categories, Deep Reverb, Frequency Shifter and Resonators. The controls on each module are immediate and accessible, and every one of them is available as a…

With a signature sound as recognisable as any in the history of rock music, Brian May has been Queen’s guitarist for almost 50 years. Due to the specifics of his setup, though, achieving ‘his sound’ with stock amp simulations has always been tricky. Enter AmpliTube Brian May. Developed in close cooperation with the great man himself and using IK’s latest Dynamic Interaction Modelling, this new collection provides a full software recreation of his guitar rig, serving up many of his most recognisable tones. Key components The rig includes two amps (BM 30 and BM DK) and three cabinets (BM 30 Blue, BM 30 H70 and BM DK) with adjustable miking and five pedals: Red Special, Treble Booster, May Wah, Star Gate and FOX Phaser, the last also available as a…

Haaze 2 (AU/VST/AAX/iOS) is the latest effects plugin from Swedish developers Klevgrand. It’s a stereo processor conceptually similar to their original Haaze effect, but a complete rewrite from the ground up, creating a sonically superior, more user friendly and considerably more powerful effect. Haaze 2 has 16 fixed frequency bands across which the four parameters – Haas, Pan, M/S and Gain – can be adjusted. Each parameter has its own tabbed window and colour-coded sliders, and the currently topped window also indicates the values of the other three parameters via coloured shadow lines. Metering is incorporated into the background, with band-specific VU level meters and a shaded stereo-width waveform across the centre. A drawing option allows swift changes to multiple bands. Haazy days Let’s look at each process. Haas (red)…

Loopmasters Max Liese Solar House £25 Uplifting dance producer Max Liese makes his soundware debut on Loopmasters with 670MB of samples (plus 300MB of REX file versions). Drums clearly aren’t the focus here, with just 19 full (and, it must be said, stylistically diverse) loops and 26 assorted stems on offer, as the meat of the material comprises basslines (28) and ‘music’ loops (79), the latter taking in synths, guitars, pianos and more. Eight processed vocal loops and the usual assortment of one-shot drums, basses, FX and synth hits wrap up an eclectic and distinctive library. loopmasters.com 9/100 Sample Magic Dusty Hip-Hop 2 £30 We were floored by the original Dusty Hip-Hop (10/10, cm258), and the sequel maintains the standard set by its predecessor, even if there’s a…

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 KV331AudioSynthMasterCM Dual wavescanning oscillators Multimode filter and built-in effects FM/AM synthesis modes Based on SynthMaster 2.5 AU/VST, 32-/64-bit Synapse Audio Dune CM VA and wavetable oscillators Powerful per-voice modulation 12-slot modulation matrix Based on the full version of Dune AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit u-he Bazille CM Patchable modular synthesiser Sequencer and Mapping Generator Audio-rate modulation, Fractalizer Huge how-to guide in 232 AU/VST 32-/64-bit Dmitry Sches Thorn CM Dual spectral oscillators Analogue and Harmonic Filters Spectral and real-time effects Glitch Sequencer and Arpeggiator…

So how does your DAW know where to look for your plugins? Actually, it might not. Mac users have it easy, as there are OS-specified folders into which plugins are installed. These folders can be found by going to your Library folder (if you can’t find it, go to the Finder’s Go menu, hold Alt, and a Library option should appear). Find the Audio directory, and then the Plug-Ins folder within. There you will find more folders still. One will be labelled Components – this is where your AU plugins reside. Other folders will be found alongside it for VST and VST3 plugins. If you’re a Pro Tools user, you’ll find your plugins in an Avid or Digidesign folder. If your installers don’t automatically install the plugins into the proper…

PATCH LIKE A PRO Plug into virtual modular synthesis with your amazing free synth Read the full article on p22 2 Crafting a virtual analogue patch from scratch 3 Developing our bass patch with more modules 4 Fattening up our Minimoog-style bass 6 The basics of modular sequencing 7 Modular sequencing – drums and sync 10 Designing a modular drone with modulation cm Producer Masterclass PLAID The Warp Records duo get geeky in this month’s exclusive video session Note: this video is only available using the link on page 48 Read the full article on p46 SERUM FX How to use the pro effect rack Read the full article on p64 1 MIDI setup 5 Drum destruction 6 Vocal effects cm/experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their…

cm Tell us how Unfiltered started. MH “I started it with my colleagues Joshua Dickinson and Ryan Michael McGee. We were all grad students at UC Santa Barbara, where we learned most of the skills required for creating plugins. Writing plugins was something that I had wanted to do since school, but always worried I couldn’t, without an engineering background. The company is now just Josh and I.” cm What sets your new synth, Lion, apart from the pack, as it were? MH “Lion is a lot more streamlined than most synths. We stripped out a lot of features that we think slow people down, and instead focused on creating the widest array of sounds with the fewest possible controls. A lot of modern instruments are designed more as preset…

SampleScience SQ8ROM Wavetable synths are all the rage of late, and SampleScience have cloned a crunchy, crystalline classic US company Ensoniq had a habit of breaking new ground and old price barriers, bringing the price of sampling within wider reach with their first product, the 8-bit Mirage, back in 1984, followed by the affordable ESQ-1, a digital/analogue hybrid that plumbed any of 32 8-bit single-cycle waveforms through a classic analogue subtractive signal path. With a killer 8-track sequencer, it was an early example of what would be later called a ‘workstation’. They upped the ante in ’88 with the SQ-80, adding another 43 waveforms and a poly-aftertouch-sensitivity to the 61-note keyboard. Unlike PPG’s classic Wave synths (and Ensoniq’s later Transwave instruments), the SQ-80’s oscs couldn’t scan through the stored wavetables.…

Knobster MeowSynth It’s a Windows-only synth with a cat meowing as the oscillator. You come up with the pun vstbuzz.com Arturia Buchla Easel V West Coast synthesis is back with a bang, and Arturia’s emulation of the semimodular Music Easel is a slick-sounding software option arturia.com XILS-lab XILS 4 Enjoy a virtual version of the unreleased EMS VCS4 suitcase synth, complete with Battleships-style pin matrix xils-lab.com SonicLab Cosmosƒ Saturn 7 If the name alone isn’t crazy enough, get a load of how this synth-slashspaceship-command-centre works and sounds… if you can ƒind it with a search engine, that is sonic-lab.com OhmBoyz SymptOhm:Melohman Granular, sub and noise oscillators feed into the filter bank from Quad Frohmage ohmforce.com Sonic Charge Synplant Find your own patch of sonic soil and grow your sound with…

With their monolithic facades of cables and controls, modular synthesisers – both hard and soft – can look intimidating to the uninitiated. Even a modest system might contain a dozen or more modules, each one a unique device in its own right and sporting a very particular arrangement of jacks, knobs, and switches. What does one do with them all? And how on Earth do you decide how to connect all those many cables? Surely only the most educated and experienced can achieve anything recognisably musical on the things! In actuality, it’s not hard to get going, but it helps to understand the origins of modular synthesisers, simultaneously but independently developed by American inventors Dr Robert Moog and Donald Buchla. Before Moog and Buchla, most electronic music was made with…

Delay The Delay module offers a quick and easy way to add a bit of echo to your signals – especially useful for those classic Tangerine Dream-styled sequences. Delay Time of up to 2s is available, as is control over the Feedback amount. A Dry/Wet Mix knob controls the blend, and a High Cut filter allows you to roll off high frequencies for a more muted tail-out. Distortion It’s crunch time! Voltage Modular Nucleus offers a handful of familiar effects modules, and we’re pleased to see that distortion hasn’t been left out. Unlike a typical fuzz pedal, this one allows you to select Distortion Amount as a modulation target. An Output Level knob provides a bit of compensation for any drastic gain changes imparted by the effect. Spring Reverb Reverberation…

PRESET PARADE As we pointed out many (many!) pages back, Cherry Audio have provided a massive collection of custom presets suitable for all styles of music. There are even more available for purchase (and for free) in the Cherry Audio store. You can buy them right from within the program itself. Some of the patches are basic, while others are exercises in complexity. They also serve as terrific examples of what can be done even with a modest collection of modules. Don’t just play the presets, study the patches! Take a hard look at what modules have been put into play and how they are patched together. THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY As we’ve discussed, the first fixed-signal path synths resemble a single modular patch. If you want, say, a…

UVI Falcon cm107 > 9/10 > €349 EH: “For me, it definitely has to be Falcon, which is a sort of multi-instrument that can do a lot of things in sampling and synthesis.” uvi.net AIR Music Tech Loom II cm252 > 8/10 > $100 AT: “Loom II is one that we both use quite a lot still. It’s not as versatile as Falcon as a synthesiser, but it has a particular sound that’s quite appealing.” airmusictech.com Tone2 Icarus cm237 > 9/10 > €149 EH: “We’re quite into Icarus, which is like a wavetable synth. You can resynthesise your own samples into it – it’s got a very particular sound, and it’s hyper-efficient, so you can use lots of instances of it.” tone2.com AudioSpillage DrumSpillage 2 cm206 > 8/10 > £75…

Compression Bitwig’s Compressor ties our drum sounds together a little. Slow Attack and fast Release keeps things punchy, then Ratio and Threshold can be adjusted as needed. For deeper control, use Bitwig’s Multiband FX 2/3 with individual Compressors assigned to different bands in the frequency spectrum. Reverb Bitwig’s stock reverb adds a little space to the patch, making it sound more natural and sit nicely in a mix with other instruments. We’ve gone for a fairly subtle effect as the default. Don’t be afraid to push things to extremes if it suits your track, though – a bit of epic reverb can sound great here. EQ We keep things simple with Bitwig’s dual-band EQ2. We have this set up to offer high-and low-shelf EQs – we’re just looking to boost…

WIDE LOAD It’s a doddle to create a quick stereo widening effect using Serum’s Chorus. Start by setting the Rate to 0Hz, with Delay 1 and Delay 2 both set to 0ms. Push the Depth to 100%, then reduce the Feedback to 0. After turning off the low-pass filter, use the Wet/Dry mix to blend the effect in to taste. GOING OTT Did you know Serum’s Compressor can also be used as a limiter? Set the Ratio control to max to switch in the limiting mode. Also, if you hit the Multiband button you’ll flip the compressor into a 3-band offering. Adjust the three bands by dragging the three bands on the display, similar to Xfer’s OTT. STATIC ELECTRICITY You can use either the Flanger or Phaser to apply a…

When mixing dance music, producers often adopt a ‘mix-as-you-go’ approach, and there’s nothing wrong with this. In many cases, this workflow will help you craft a track that sounds good right from the start, keeping you inspired throughout the entire writing process. The main problem with this method, however, is the lack of a final mixing stage. We want our mixes to have ‘life’ and body, especially when dealing with sterile softsynths and digital sound sources, so it’s important to take a step away and tackle the sonics of your track with a pure ‘mixing mindset’. One way to do this is to try and emulate an analogue workflow within a mixing template, using analogue emulation-style plugins to recreate the sought-after magic of hardware processors. That’s why, once a track…

More notably a crucial stage in the development of hip-hop than the dance music genre that bears its name today, electro came to be in the early 80s as a fusion of European and Japanese electronic music and funk, the earliest example track being Afrika Bambaataa’s seminal, Kraftwerksampling Planet Rock (1982). Although modern electro is, of course, far broader in its instrumentation, old-skool electro was largely defined by the use of talkbox vocals, analogue basslines, zappy synth effects and drum machine beats, the last of which were most often generated by – you guessed it – the Roland TR-808. With patterns having been programmed using the 808’s step sequencer, key to replicating the sound of electro drums in your DAW are a rigidly quantised, robotic feel, skittish hi-hat lines and…

The stand-out plugin here – for us at least – is the completely original Eternity, but when crusty vintage vibes are called for, Tape -201 and Memory Brigade are the two to turn to. Manufactured between 1974 and 1990, Roland’s RE-201 Space Echo is one of the most sought-after and beloved delay units ever made. The characteristic dark, melting feedback of its tape delay, and funky ‘sproing’ of its spring reverb made it a perfect fit for dub and reggae in particular, and it still commands serious prices on the second hand market. Debuting in 1976, the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man bucket brigade delay pedal has remained a firm favourite of guitarists through numerous revisions over the decades, and indeed, you can still buy it today. The bucket brigade delay (BBD)…

IK Multimedia have been busy building emulations of some classic European and American analogue tape machines, and the result are four processors, available individually or as part of the money-saving T-RackS bundle. They come both as individual plugins (AU/VST/AAX/ standalone) as well as modules for use in the T-RackS 5 plugin and the standalone version of T-RackS 5. The source machines are the MCI JH24 2" 24-track, Studer A80 ¼" stereo, Revox PR99 MkII ¼" stereo and Ampex 440B ¼" stereo, and the corresponding plugins are name Tape Machine 24, 80, 99 and 440. It takes all types Visually, each plugin is uniquely styled and clearly inspired by the original hardware. The general feature set is largely standardised across all of them and includes the choice of Tape Formula, Tape…

There are four further pedals in addition to the Red Special pickup emulation, all of which bring their own special sauce to the mix. FOX Phaser is based on Brian’s own rocker action fOXX pedal from the 70s. The Mode option sets the pedal action to either control the phaser frequency (green LED) or the LFO depth (no LED). A further control, Range, sets either the frequency range or LFO speed, based on which Mode is selected. Finally FDBK controls the feedback amount. Obviously the treadle (rocker) action is great for guitarists, but we were equally impressed with the awesome tone of this phaser, which ranks amongst the best we’ve heard. Part of Brian’s sound is a treble booster before the amp; however, his settings have changed over time. To…

Aaltoverb (VST3/AU) is a reverb plugin based on the reverb in Madrona Labs’ semi-modular synth, Aalto. As you’ll be aware if you own Aalto or have tried our cm edition (Aalto CM), its reverb is a simple one-knob affair. Nevertheless, it has a wonderful haunting tone, and is clearly crying out for some adjustable parameters. Aaltoverb complies, but with just four main controls – Size, Decay, Tone (see Tone Filter for more on this) and Mix – alongside input and output, this is hardly the most flexible reverb, right? Well, in this case, looks may be a little deceiving as, in keeping with their company ethos, Madrona Labs have designed Aaltoverb with performance in mind. To that end, the reverb encourages real-time tweaking, and if you move your mouse pointer…

This 500-strong pack of samples will provide the funky exclamation marks to your tracks that they were crying out for. You may know the concept of fills from drumming, where you underscore the end of a phrase before moving to another line… but it’s not just for drummers! Here you’ll find synths, guitars, keys and FX too, all built to punctuate melodic, instrumental or rhythmic lines, whenever you need to move the groove along. Grab it on your cover DVD or download from filesilo.co.uk/computermusic. Step by step Filling you in on this month’s Funk Fills sample pack 1 In the Groove Criminals folder, you’ll find 126 drum fills at tempos ranging from 100 to 130bpm. 76 are traditional drum loops, while a further 50 have been mangled and distorted with…

Korg Prophecy Long-time readers could be forgiven for taking virtual synths for granted. After all, they were among the very first plugins to appear, and are commonly provided as freeware by software developers. From simple single-oscillator bass synths to elaborate emulations, virtual analogue synths are now readily available. Back in 1995, however, things were quite different. Analogue synthesisers were old hat, long abandoned by players who’d grown weary of their simplistic sound and manufacturers who preferred to annually regurgitate a growing glut of menu-driven ROMplers. Those longing for the hands-on control and raw, electronic sound of an analogue instrument were forced to take their chances in the secondhand market. Still, as the 90s picked up steam, skint electronic musicians began using these dusty old darlings to produce an ever-growing catalogue…

Plugins Install Voltage Modular Nucleus, plus our full cm Plugins collection Tutorial Videos See and hear exactly how it’s done with our expert video guides Samples Download this month’s exclusive packs and power up your tunes 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 FileSilo The home of great downloads, exclusive to your favourite magazines 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…

iZotope Ozone 9 New balancing and bass enhancement features, and a whole lot more This year’s update to iZotope’s self-contained mastering plugin introduces a couple of new modules to the already well-stocked roster, and further beefs up many of the software’s existing capabilities. The two headlines are the Low End Focus and Master Rebalance modules. An ‘industry-first bass-shaping tool”, Low End Focus enables tightening up of low-frequency presence, with a Punch setting for transient-heavy sources (kick drums) and a Smooth mode for basses, synths, etc. Master Rebalance, meanwhile, performs the miraculous feat of boosting or lowering the vocals, bass or drums in a full mix, using some kind of equalisation voodoo, via a single slider. Ozone’s machine learning-driven Master Assistant – which sets up a full preset for you based…

AND THE WINNER IS... Congrats to FabFilter, who recently scooped an Engineering Emmy Award from The Television Academy in the US. This was given to the company’s Pro-Q 3 plugin, which the academy said has “become the preferred equaliser for mixing pros around the world”. OLD TOWN LOADED Think you can’t make a big record on a budget? Lil Nas X has confirmed that mega hit Old Town Road cost him just $50: $20 for the studio time – he took advantage of a promo rate and was in there for under an hour – and $30 to lease the beat. Not a bad investment. UNIQUE ACCESS You might have some plugin emulations of classic studio hardware, but Access Analog takes things a step further by providing a plugin that…

What do you get when you combine a deep modular patching environment, a pattern-based tracker/sequencer and the ability to host VST and DX plugins? A Buzz, naturally! This legendary freeware music production system for Windows first hit the scene in 1997, the product of one Oskari Tammelin, a demoscene programmer from the Jeskola group. Popular with some soon-to-be big names (most notably James Holden), the whole shebang came to a temporary halt when the source code was lost in 2000. Luckily, Buzz was restarted in 2008, and is still going strong today. If you fancy getting well inside your music, give it a look. jeskola.net…

Oscillator The heart and soul of any analogue synthesiser, the voltage-controlled oscillator (sometimes called ‘VCO’) is the module that produces the various audio (and often sub-audio) waveforms – usually sine, pulse, sawtooth and/or ramp, and triangle waves. Frequency can be controlled via external modules. The Pulse Width of the pulse wave can also be modulated. Noise Generator A noise generator does exactly what its name implies: it produces a noise signal. Noise, by definition, is comprised of random signals, each with equal power. The result is something like a steady ‘hiss’ or ‘wind’ sound. This Noise Generator produces two types of noise: White and Pink. Pink noise has a more muted frequency spectrum than the white variety. Filter A filter puts the ‘subtractive’ in subtractive synthesis. Its role is to…

If you haven’t already clicked that Store button and checked out the numerous items that can be added to your Library, you really should. There, you’ll find a wide variety of presets, modules and bundles ranging in price from free (Dust, a SuperCollider-based noise generator from Hetrick) to $149 (legendary software developers PSP Audioware’s Ultimate Modular Collection consisting of 33 custom components). Cherry Audio’s own Year One Collection of 19 modules tops the list at $199 but, at the time of writing, is reduced to $99. Also from Cherry Audio comes Core+Electro Drums, their premium bundle. Normally priced at $99, Nucleus owners (ie, you!) can take advantage of an upgrade price of $79. This killer bargain includes no less than 90 modules in addition to those found in the Nucleus…

Occupying a pair of seats at the very top table of electronic music, Plaid – aka Ed Handley and Andy Turner – made their name in the 90s and 00s as pioneers of intelligent dance music (IDM) alongside the brainteasing likes of Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. Summer 2019 marked the release of their tenth long player, Polymer, a dazzling and eclectic mix of time-bending electronica, mesmerising sonic meditations and more overt techno-influenced floor-fillers, and we caught up with Andy and Ed at Warp Records’ in-house studio for a deconstruction of one of the album’s standout tracks, the brilliantly polyrhythmic Los. Before that, though, let’s go back in time for a bit of history… “We met at school, in our early teens,” says Andy, when asked how Plaid…

cm: How do you write a Plaid track? EH: “We tend to start it in isolation, so we work as individuals initially, as that’s the nicest way to get things started, really. It’s like a personal thing, and then at some point we’ll generally get together on how the mix sounds, or we’ll play each other tracks and give each other feedback on stuff like that. Occasionally, we’ll sit together in a room – we don’t really have an active studio at the moment. So it tends to start with one person’s idea, and then we collaborate. “We’ve written a lot with our friend Benet Walsh, who plays guitar and various other instruments, too. We just ping-pong ideas – much of it is just sending either Logic projects back and…

A pedal point – aka a pedalled note – is best defined as a sustained note that continues unchanged over a set of chord changes. In classical organ music, these kinds of sustained notes in the bass register were played by foot on the pedalboard. From a sustained single-string note floating over a breakdown in a club tune to a single pitch ringing out in a series of guitar chords, pedal points are everywhere in music – but why? The chief reason for them is to increase tension or excitement in a chord progression – broadly, excitement is the perceived mood with major keys, while tension tends to be the feeling that comes through in minor keys. Imagine Faithless’s Insomnia without that insidious, unvarying sequenced B bass note through the…

As you’ve already found out in this month’s Dr Beat (p76), Roland’s TR-808 drum machine has played a seminal role in electronic music. The machine’s bass drum has taken on a life of its own, with today’s producers using the machine’s kick sound – colloquially referred to as an ‘808’ – to occupy a dual role of kick and bass. Today’s 808s hardly ever come directly from the source hardware, of course. In the search for the ultimate combo of hard-hitting punch and subby sustain, producers regularly layer a tight, sampled kick layer over the top of a longer, chromatically-sequenced sub-bass layer – a fiddly process that requires stacking of multiple sources, fiddly MIDI programming, complex processing chains and parallel routing setups. Enter Future Audio Workshop’s SubLab, a niche virtual…

Lion (VST/AU/AAX) is a momentous release for Unfiltered Audio, who are riding high on a five-year run of consistently excellent plugin effect releases. Having set themselves a very high architectural bar with the innovative likes of Sandman Pro (9/10, cm237), SpecOps (9/10, cm253) and BYOME (9/10, cm264), the pressure is on for the company’s first ever synthesiser to not only sound great but also to set itself apart from the pack in terms of functionality. Paws for thought Lion’s defining features, then, are the integration of UA’s freeform modulation system and the full BYOME modular effects rack (see BYOME inside), and – most importantly, it turns out – the remarkable diversity of its oscillators. “Things get weird in the Experimental submenu, where outlandish techniques are brought into play” There are…

Recording to analogue tape is a complex process that essentially aims to squeeze the most linear recording and playback out of a bunch of mechanical components. A number of issues are involved, including tape noise, speed instability, track-to-track bleed and tape deterioration, to name a few. However, tape can saturate nicely, and its handling of transients make it a popular choice for tracking drums. Plus, in the choice of tape formulation, operating level, bias and so on, the engineer has options for influencing how things sound as they’re recorded. The Tape Machine Collection plugins include a number of recognisable parameters that you can tweak to help emulate the analogue tape experience, including Bias, record Level to tape, pre and post record EQ, and, of course, tape type. To increase authenticity,…

The latest from creatively-minded plugin developers Boom Library is a fully synthesised (no samples) virtual instrument, dedicated to the production of crowd-pleasing tempo-synced (or not) risers, falls, drops, etc. LiftFX is entirely preset-driven, with the under-the-hood parameters for each of its 275 presets – and their ‘progress’ start and end points – already dialled in, but a degree of adaptability is provided for you by four macros and two filters. You won’t be designing your own sounds from scratch, then, but the presets are a pretty diverse and reasonably tweakable bunch – see Going up! for more. Elevator pitch Sending LiftFX a held MIDI note triggers the loaded preset, which sweeps through its rise or fall (as defined by the aforementioned parameter start and end points) in a manner governed…

To help you get the most out of our immense plugin collection, we’ve assembled the Plugins Tutorial Bank, containing over 100 guides and tutorials for our Plugins, specially selected from past issues. You’ll find Getting Started PDFs and videos for most of the individual plugins, along with tutorial PDFs and videos on using Plugins for sound design, mixing, and even creating entire tracks. You’ll find all of this as a handy download from FileSilo – go grab it now and start getting more out of your plugins! filesilo.co.uk/computermusic…

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…

MADRONA LABS KAIVO VA synths are everywhere, but acoustic modelling is harder to come by. However, the maestros behind Aalto and the Soundplane controller offer this instrument that combines Buchla-styled analogue synthesis with acoustic modelling in a flexible semimodular package. Emulating a Prophecy is a stretch, but it shares that experimental spirit. madronalabs.com NUSOFTING MODELONIA When it comes to acoustic modelling, few developers can match NUSofting. Their exotic offerings expand on real-world sounds, taking the technology to new and often inspiring places. Modelonia is an ideal example, offering a hybrid architecture that combines plucked-string and blown-bore models. Well worth taking a look. nusofting.com APPLIED ACOUSTICS SYSTEMS TASSMAN AAS are masters of modelling, acoustic and otherwise, and in fact, their former flagship, Tassman, combined acoustic and analogue models in a freely…