Innehållsförteckning för Autumn 2020 från Computer Music

Jas Shaw is best known for his endeavours as Simian Mobile Disco with his partner James Ford. For his latest record Klavier he teamed up with Bas Grossfeldt to produce an album the latter describes as ‘piano studies in a breaky-technoish surrounding’. It was inspired by a Disklavier, a blend of acoustic and electronic tech first built by Yamaha in 1987. Sounds intriguing to say the least, so it’s time for Jas and Bas to explain all… 1 So what’s the story with the new album? JS: “The record is called Klavier as it came about from discovering a classic Disklavier in the studio. We abandoned the synths and let this strange but familiar instrument lead us down a path that neither of us had imagined.” BG: “The process was…

Given the subject title, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re going to talk about Tron. Nope. Instead we need to discuss yet another aspect of modern technology that might best be avoided if we’re going to go full-on retro. The subject up for consideration is audio fidelity. In the days when laser discs and Walkmen roamed the Earth, sampling was in its infancy. Early samplers were breathtakingly expensive and offered bit depths and sample resolution that seems laughable by today’s standards. For instance, the original Emulator offered eight voices of 8-bit, 21kHz sampling for £8,050. Yeah. Nevertheless, this was the sort of equipment used to create chart-topping hits and blockbuster movie soundtracks. Because RAM was costly, samplers of that era offered limited sample time. If the composer ever wanted more…

Maybe it was written in the stars but a revival of the so-called ‘Berlin School’ of electronic improvisation seemed inevitable. Pioneered by a cadre of psyche rockers orbiting Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese, the style is tied to its birthplace, though it’s also referred to as Kosmische Musik. Initially a subset of kraut rock, Kosmische evolved away from the standard instrumentation of rock, instead leaning heavily into electronic experimentalism, initially with organs and tape treatments, and later with synths such as EMS’ VCS3 and Moog modular systems. It was a Moog 960 sequencer that first gave the Berlin School its signature sound – a chugging eighth-note rhythm first established by Tangerine Dream on their Phaedra LP. Ex-Dreamers Klaus Schulze and Michael Hoenig further developed the style in the 70s, even while…

The term ambient music was coined in the 70s by ex-Roxy Music band member and ostrich feather aficionado Brian Eno, who developed new ideas about music while incapacitated after a car accident. As the story goes, a visitor put on a record on her way out of the room. Unable to turn up the hi-fi, Eno relaxed to the sound of barely audible music merging with that of rain from outside. “This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music – as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were part of that ambience.” Eno was familiar with Satie’s concept of furniture music (music to be enjoyed in the background) and the tape compositions…

OSCILLATORS DETUNING EQUILIBRIUM Detuning two or more oscillators in the same octave range is a great way to fatten up a sound. Here’s the correct way to do it. Detune each oscillator by equal amounts in opposite directions, say +/-5 cents. This keeps things from sounding too sharp or flat in the mix. ADDING LOWS WITHOUT USING EQ If you want to add some body or low end to a patch, add a sine (or triangle) wave oscillator. Tune the sine wave to the same octave or one octave lower than your main oscillator and adjust the volume of the sine wave to taste. This technique can be much more precise than EQ would be, and uses less CPU. TWO-FINGER JAZZ CHORDS Tune two sawtooth oscillators so that they’re seven…

Without modulation, our sounds would be static and lifeless – buzzing waveforms or dull drones bereft of motion or interest. More often than not, modulation is obvious – the gentle slope of an envelope generator’s decay or the rhythmic throb of a low frequency oscillator. We’ve touched on both of these particular modulation tools in previous instalments, but this month we’ll take a more detailed look. We’ll also consider some less obvious applications of modulation. For instance, we’ll look at how you might use audio-rate modulation to add some timbral character to a sound. You may already know something about frequency modulation – aka FM. We implore you not to overlook the human element in your explorations. Some modulation sources don’t appear in the form of showy modules with oodles…

SYNTHESIZED LOW-END OF THE KICK If you have a nice-sounding kick, but the lowest (sub) frequencies are not strong/clean enough, try replacing them with a solid sine wave. First, add a high-pass filter to your original kick, set the frequency around 50-90Hz. Next, layer the kick with a clean sub tone sample or synthesise it from scratch. Any synth with a sine wave should do the trick. Make sure the kick sub tone is in the right key with your track. Use ADSR amp envelope to get the perfect length for the kick sub. SOFT/HARD CLIPPING KICKS WITHIN YOUR MIX Most of the time clipping is an undesired digital distortion. However, there are a few exceptions where soft/hard clipping can be used as a mixing tool. First, add the clip…

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. Rigging it 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…

KV331 Audio’s SynthMaster has been reviewed in Computer Music no less than half a dozen times and on every occasion bar one has scored a massive 9/10. It’s the mothership of a synth range that includes the cut-down One and Player. There has been a free version of Player available as a download for some time – complete with 550 solid presets – and it appeared in our 100 Best Freeware Apps in 281). But this is the first time the full version of Player, with its massive 1800 factory presets, has ever been free. And it’s yours, so rejoice! Never has a synth been so well named as SynthMaster. It truly is, as one clever reviewer once noted, ‘the master of synths’, managing to combine several engines, great routing…

This month we have an amazing EDM sample pack from WA Production worth nearly $20 free for every reader. Here’s how to claim it! Exclusive EDM is the latest sample pack in WA Production’s Redhead Roman series. Of it they say… “These are Redhead Roman’s finest sounds and have been collected and curated over a long time just for you. Everything you need to make incredible EDM music is included in this pack from FX, presets, kicks, loops, MIDI files and so much more! This pack is great for big room, EDM, progressive, electro, future house, future bass, bass house, trance, and more! “Exclusive EDM has everything you need to make killer big room/festival EDM! Earth shaking drops, beautiful melodies, driving progressive basslines, massive FX and so much more. This…

SYNTHWAVE POWER New Wave Synth Synthwave Power It’s a Synth Special this month so we’ve got our expert sample producers to get those knobs twiddling. Here’s what Robbie Stamp from Cyclick Samples says of Synthwave Power: “This collection splits into three folders: Arpeggiator Loops, Lines and Loops and Chord One Shots. They each contain samples made from 11 synths (see below) which were first programmed for the Line and Loops samples and then tweaked for the Chord One Shots and then again for the Arpeggiator Loops. “The Line/Loop samples are 2- or 4-bar loops with tempo and key included in the filenames. Not every synth appears in every tempo (they appear in four each) and are spread across keys to make sure there’s always something in key, or close for…

If you took advantage of the $50 Amped Studio giveaway last issue – and you’ve still got until 30th September to do so – then you also have the chance to enter a remix competition. Warner Music artists Artik x Karcher have made their song Bailame available to remix in the online music creation app, and the winning producer will receive $500 and a chance to release the remix on Warner Music! You’d better get moving though as the competition closes on 14th September. ampedstudio.com/artik-remix-competition…

We have something of an ultra-special issue this month as we celebrate the synthesiser and its legacy, with all sorts of synth-based practical workshops, top tips and buying guides. First up, we have amassed a mountain of hands-on tutorial features that all use the mighty Plugin Suite to great effect, either as source sounds for various synth genres, or to produce exacting copies of famous synth sounds used over the last few decades. We start by guiding you through some of the most popular synth genres there are using the same format of tutorials we introduced in our ‘Make A Track In An Hour’ special a few months ago, so they should have you making everything from synthwave to ambient style music in no time. Or an hour to be…

Though the term synth pop suggests the genre is produced entirely from synths, the artists that created it embraced any new tech they could get. As such, drum machines and samplers were also commonly used to create synth pop tracks, though their initial cost put them out of reach of all but the moneyed few. Those that did have access to such lofty instruments often found that the cutting edge wasn’t exactly razor sharp. Early samplers and sample-based drum machines were limited by the tech of the day, meaning 8-bit sample depths and sample rates that would scarcely be acceptable to today’s producers. Remember this when trying to re-capture the sound of classic synth pop. The lo-fi vibe of that old digital gear can be simulated with the use of…

Rock ‘n’ roll has always embraced aggressive and even atonal sounds at times – the barely contained feedback squall that opens The Beatles’ I Feel Fine being one example – but industrial artists went much further, producing sounds that were intentionally abrasive and even at times painful. Whereas rock artists might use feedback as an occasional accent to the main event, Industrial musicians might make it the dominant sound throughout the arrangement. Further to that, industrial artists often refused to be limited to traditional instrumentation, choosing instead to create their cacophonous rhythms by banging on oil cans, girders, pipes, just about anything that might produce a thud or clank. Groups like Test Dept. and Einstürzende Neubauten performed in scrapyards, abandoned buildings and built their own instruments from found or salvaged…

Drums rarely play the same sort of role in Kosmische Musik as they do in other genres. When Tangerine Dream kick-started the Berlin School with their Phaedra album, they tapped into Moog’s 960 sequencer module to create a sense of rhythm in lieu of employing an actual drummer. The chugging 1/8th-note sequencer passages provided the pulse while the band improvised with various other instruments, drawing the blueprint for future Kosmische performers, many of whom would similarly eschew acoustic and electronic drums in favour of the gentle tick-tock of the sequencer. One-time drummer Klaus Schulze did, however, incorporate live acoustic drums, often played in a freeform, improvisational manner. Still, the sequencers and synthesisers provided the main rhythmic thrust of those performances. Still others would use drums as a rhythmic accent, adding…

Composer Terry Riley’s famous 1964 piece In C was a groundbreaking performance piece consisting of 53 musical phrases ranging in length up to 32 beats. Performers would choose which of these phrases were to be played and when each phrase would begin, all against the backdrop of repeating C notes on a piano or some other chromatic percussion instrument. Performers might sometimes omit some bits, but all of those bits were to be played in order. Today, this sort of musical indeterminacy has become something of a fad among electronic musicians, and the term used to describe it – aleatoric – is used to describe pretty much any randomly generated noise. However, ‘modern’ aleatoric music is actually nearly a century old, coming to prominence at the hands of adventurous composers…

Step by step An 80s-style stab 1 Time to make some classic synth sounds just using synths from the Plugin Suite! First an 80s stab that will be at home in many modern genres. Start with the default Zebra patch, a simple polysynth setup with a filter envelope. Turn up the Sustain in the second envelope – this stops the sound filtering away to nothing after a second or two. 2 While we’re looking at the Envelopes panel, turn up the Sustain level in the first envelope, too – this will keep the output loud when sustained chords are played, which is essential for this kind of sound. Play and hold a chord and notice how the synth remains full-sounding in the sustain phase. 3 That’s the essence of a…

Baby Audio is an LA-based boutique software developer with a handful of plugins, including Comeback Kid, which is a highly flexible delay with in-built transient shaper, tape saturation and modulation, and Super VHS, which is a multifaceted tape saturation and noise effect. Last year they released I Heart NY, a flavour filled black box-style parallel compressor designed to quickly inject some classic Stateside punch and colouration into your sounds. Emboldened by the success of this simple plugin, their latest release, Parallel Aggressor (AU, VST2, VST3, AAX) sticks with the parallel concept (see boxout) but ups the ante, extending it to two separate processing chains. Parallel Lines Parallel Aggressor’s two processes are compression (Spank) and saturation (Heat) which alongside the original dry signal are balanced using a 3-fader mixer. This includes…

Synapse Audio Dune 3 £139 10/10 cm267 *Whisper* Dune 2 was already close to classic status, a favourite with the dance community and right up there with Serum. Dune 3 was never going to dramatically change the situation but does enough to seal the classic deal. “If we had to choose a single instrument to cover all our synthesis needs without making compromises in any of them, Dune 3 would be right up there.” Great value too. synapse-audio.com UVI Falcon 2 €349 9/10 cm277 If you want an easier modular-based system, then Phase Plant (bottom right) might be a better option – Falcon 2 delivers a wider scope but the complexity that comes with that depth. Once mastered, though, it really delivers the wide-ranging goods. “The learning curve is well…

House producer OFFAIAH’s debut single Trouble was the biggest dance hit of 2016 and has now notched up over four million views on Youtube. Since then he has enjoyed huge success with singles including Push Pull, Work It Out, Somewhere Special and Soldier. This year he’s been just as busy with releases including Play It By Ear and That Makes Me Love You and has also just landed a long-term album deal with Defected Records, with that release promised soon. 1 How did you get into music production? OFFAIAH: “I come from a musical family so I’ve always been into music as my father is a piano teacher, but I never actually thought I’d end up making music professionally. One day I happened to be hanging out at my sister’s…

New Music Technology Show! Four big brands unite to put on a bit of a show… With Winter NAMM 2020 now cancelled, a new online show has just been announced that will help quench your thirst for music technology news, production advice and top artist chat. And we’ve got just a little something to do with it… Launched as The Music Technology show, this new event is being driven by four of the biggest music production brands in the world including us, Music Radar, Electronic Musician and Future Music. The show will take place online at musicradar.com on 30th and 31st of October this year, with a number of special events, product demos, production masterclasses and artist features. The show is being broken down into several areas including Artist Q&As…

We seem to be wading through a sea of small controller keyboards; at least we would be if they were made of water and bigger. Hot on the heels of those from Novation (LaunchKey Mk3 reviewed last issue) and IK (iRig Keys 2 Mini reviewed on p74) we have the Akai MPK Mini Mk3. This “third iteration of the world’s legendary best-selling mini keyboard controller” features control options including a joystick, eight pads and eight rotaries, 25 mini keys and a software bundle including the all-new MPC Beats. Better still, it is available in three colours: normal red (zzz), reverse keyed (yes!) and black (double yes!). Price TBA. akaipro.com…

5G is the next generation of mobile cellular technology. Before you ask, it is not just faster 4G (although it can be up to 20 times quicker). 5G brings with it lower latency figures and higher bandwidths – that is, more data and quicker – and it’s more about what you can do with this extra girth that counts. 5G will mean some obvious improvements – like better sound quality for your streamed music and being able to play properly in time with other musicians online – but there are some other less obvious, yet far more exciting 5G musical possibilities. From enjoying a virtual band on stage to accessing a recording studio on your phone, 5G will transform the way we make and enjoy music, and it might just…

It’s hard to say where synth pop began – maybe with Roxy Music and the artful wobble of Eno’s VCS 3. Kraftwerk had an undeniable influence, as did Bowie’s Low LP. One could argue that it rose from the ashes of punk, with its emphasis on simplistic song structures and DIY ethos. Would-be post-punk popsters like Daniel Miller and John Foxx switched on to the possibilities offered by cheap, monophonic synths, tapping into their limitations to create smart, sparse arrangements – a minimalism that became a synth pop hallmark. Artists like Fad Gadget and The Human League found acceptance with the post-punk crowd, thanks to their unusual, often extreme shows, while Ultravox and Gary Numan evoked a cold intellectualism a world away from the sex-and-drug excesses of stadium rockers. Yet…

For many, the term ‘Industrial’ conjures the tuneful primal scream behind Nine Inch Nails or in-your-face aggro of Ministry. For others, the moniker is forever linked with the electronic body music of Front 242. Yet, as a genre, it was initially harder to pin down than its familiar form of the mid-90s. Monte Cazazza coined the term to describe the art-noise of bands like Throbbing Gristle, who used it for their own record label. Bleak, hopeless, dystopian, and with the faint whiff of desiccation, early industrial music could at turns sound like a symphony of printing presses or an unashamed nod to Tangerine Dream – and just about anything in between. Industrial music in its most familiar form wouldn’t happen until the art-noise contingent began adding drum machine-derived rhythms. Ex-Throbbing…

Everything old is new again. Just this once, it’s appropriate to begin with a cliché. After all, synthwave as a genre is all about clichés snatched from PG-13 movie posters circa 1985. As a consciously-considered (contrived?) genre, synthwave has only been around since the mid-2000s, but the music that inspired it has been around for 40 years. Created and consumed by a generation weened on equal parts Blade Runner, Battle Zone and Back to the Future, synthwave owes everything to the aesthetic of the 80s. So what is it? You’ve got it etched into your memory – the pulsing synth basses of a John Carpenter movie or Michael Boddicker’s gloriously goofy end titles for Buckaroo Banzai – not to mention the low-rent electronic scores to dozens of straight-to-VHS sci-fi flicks.…

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2.x £339 10/10 cm220 “If being at the cutting edge of sound design appears on your list of music production priorities, it’s an instrument that you simply have to own,” we said in our review of Omnisphere. Since then, every sound designer – and everyone else, for that matter – we’ve interviewed has hailed this as the ultimate in synths. Take whatever audio you want, plus a huge amount of great quality supplied material, and mangle it through the best engine in the biz. If there was a top synth spot, this might well be on it. XFer Records Serum $189 10/10 cm213 Where every sound designer tells us (over and over a-bloody-gain) that they favour Omnisphere over all other synths, so every dance music producer…

If you find yourself browsing through your drum library in the search for the perfect kick, it can often be very time consuming and inefficient. The solution is to craft your own iconic kick using a variety of samples, each targeting distinct frequencies. Here, we will get into setting up the channels, applying the correct EQ crossover points and mixing the final sound to perfection. All sounds we use are sourced from the Audiotent Pure Kicks library. A big part of techno production and mixing is the use of reverbs for the kick drum. Surely, it’s not a textbook technique for any other genre, however it’s a signature stamp for techno. Different producers have their own take on this method as it’s not as simple as just applying a reverb.…

Parallel processing is a long-established mixing technique that was developed to more accurately combine a processed dynamics signal (often a compressor) and dry signal. It allowed us to take advantage of the colouration created by driving the processor hard, but at the same time retain some of the characteristics of the clean uncompressed signal. Conceptually it’s a simple enough idea, but in practice could eat up channel space and eventually some hardware designers introduced dry/ wet mix blend options to streamline the process. Software developers have expanded on this idea and Parallel Aggressor offers a 3-path topology with multiple processing stages in two of the pathways. This clearly goes beyond the simple New York compression emulated in their I Heart NY plugin, and is maybe more akin to multifaceted mastering…

You have probably noticed that there’s a bit of a nostalgia thing happening – indeed our recent 90s issue, for example, was one of our bestsellers. OK, perhaps there always has been a look-back longing, 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. Yes, it’s the 80s – here we come… Added extras RetroVolt installs as a plugin as normal but you’ll need to download around 2.5GB of data which turns up as…

Orchestral Tools are yet another Berlin-based music technology company – what is it in the water there? – and one who specialise in producing, you guessed it, orchestral libraries. However, these can be a little different, to say the least. The company’s award-winning Metropolis Ark collections supply everything from bombastic orchestral parts for trailers to deep and epic sounds, while Junkie XL Brass is their ‘artist’ title, a collab with the famous composer and producer. However, these retail at €549 each and €749 respectively, so how do you fancy some Orchestral Tools manoeuvres on the cheap, and a free player to go with them? Sine me up Orchestral Tools’ Creative Soundpacks are just that: packs of distinctive, themed sounds that run within OT’s new SINE Player that you can download…

Sample Market Originals ChrisStussy £40 Sample Market’s growing Originals series is the company’s artist-produced collection, this one being from ‘Dutch wunderkind’ and house producer Chris Stussy. He wears his early house influences with pride as he ably mangles distinctive and wide-ranging beats from early drum machines, and presents enough variations (sans kick, just percussion/hats/kick and so on) for you to create some great custom loops and variations. There are plenty of interesting, modulating synth loops and some of the bass loops are superbly understated, completing a fine entry in a market worth perusing. samplemarket.co.uk n8/100 Sample Tools by Cr2 Heavy Techno 2 £16 Cr2’s latest techno collection delivers 40 drum loops, 30 each of kicks, snares, hats and clap, plus varying numbers of effects, top loops, basses and melodies –…

Naughty: comparing DAW features Dear cm I am really a bit upset about the current issue of with a title like Logic vs Live. I cannot understand you releasing such an article, especially as Logic was already covered in the August issue of (title: Logic Goes Live). Why are you sacrificing eight pages in the September issue for the same thing, especially as it is only interesting for Apple fanboys? For PC users the question of whether to use Logic or Live does not come up at all. It is indeed very interesting to read about new features and workflow improvements in DAWs and I also want to be informed about Logic, but one article would really have been enough. I also find it quite interesting to compare DAW features…