Innehållsförteckning för December 2020 från Computer Music

01 AUDIOKIT SYNTH ONE £FREE AUV3 (COMING)/AB/AL/IAA | iPAD/iPHONE | 300+PRESETS, 6-VOICE, SEQUENCER This synth is, as they say “completely free, fully functional, and ad-free – the ultimate free iPad music instrument app”. Synth One was designed as an open source tool for users to take and develop how they please but actually stands up as not only one of the best freebies out there but one of the best synths full stop. It has a character all of its own, a unique and flexible UI and a great overall sound. Of all the apps in our 100, download this one now! audiokitpro.com 02 BEEP STREET SUNRIZER $9.99 AUV3/AB | iPAD/iPHONE | 380+PRESETS, 6-20-VOICE, PHRASE SEQUENCER Virtual analogue synths are becoming as common to mobile music making as they are…

1 There’s no doubting that Audiokit Synth One represents a hell of a lot of synth for your money, especially as that money is zero. It would be a great paid-for synth but the developers are insisting this is a synth for everyone so download it now and we’ll give you a tour. 2 For the top half of the screen for the next few grabs, we’re keeping the Main synth screen with oscillators and filters shown from left to right. For the bottom half we’ve selected the sequencer which can be up to 16 steps, each step highlighted if on and here the faders adjust the pitch of each one. 3 Again, the top half of the screen has the Main synth with oscillators and filters. At the bottom…

False Piano £FREE iPHONE/iPAD | IAA A couple of piano sounds, created by FM synthesis, are all you get here but FP does them well, and you can adjust the keyboard size. Plus, said keyboard can be displayed as double rows. apps.apple.com Apesoft Electric Vintage $8.99 iPHONE/iPAD | IAA/AB/AUv3/AL The quality is high here, with effects like tremolo, chorus/flanger, wah-wah and reverb, so the sonic capabilities are that much wider and more authentic for an electric piano. apesoft.it Perfect Piano – Learn to Play $2.99/month iPHONE/iPAD/AN If you fancy doubling your piano app up as a learning tool, this is one of the highest-rated out there, with lots of sounds, scores, piano multiplay with other players and online chat. revontuletsoft.com Simply Piano…

FABFILTER PRO-DS $29.99 AUV3 | iPAD/iPHONE | DE-ESSER AND HIGH FREQUENCY LIMITER The first of a few appearances by Fabfilter apps in this feature – expensive but every bit as good as their desktop equivalents. This is the de-esser and we said in our review “you’ll sssstruggle to find better than FabFilter’s utterly comprehensive solution”. Brilliant (the quote and the plugin). fabfilter.com MICSWAP: MIC MODELER RECORDER $FREE AUV3/IAA/AB | iPAD/iPHONE | MOBILE RECORDING STUDIO Not only does this app function as a recorder, it also lets you try out different microphones to change the sound of your recording. You get three models to try in the free version plus 14 others to buy as IAPs, or get the lot in the Pro version for $19.99. future-moments.com VOLOCO…

01 AUDIO EVOLUTION MOBILE STUDIO $9.99 DAW | AN/ iOS | AUDIO & MIDI TRACKS, EVOLUTION ONE SYNTHESISER PLUS SOUNDFONT INSTRUMENTS This full DAW offers flexible MIDI and audio track recording plus a range of built-in instruments, including Evolution One which is based on the rather great Synth One from AudioKit (see the synth roundup). It features decent import and export functions, a good range of effects plus automation. There are more effects, sounds and presets by way of IAPs. extreamsd.com 022 BEAT OSCILAB PRO $9.99 GROOVEBOX | AN/iOS | STEP SEQUENCER PLUS OSCILLATOR GENERATOR A stand-out feature here is that you are generating much of the melodic parts of your grooves from flexible core oscillators and then adding beats with…

AUDIOMODERN FILTERSTEP $FREE NOT STATED | iPAD/iPHONE | 3 FILTER TYPES, VARIABLE LOOPER There are some great free effect plugins out there and this one from Audiomodern takes some beating sound-wise. Simply select your filter type – low, high or bandpass – and edit your steps (randomise if you like) for great filtered patterns on any sound. Lock steps, load presets, change the range for free! Brilliant. audiomodern.com EVENTIDE SHIMMERVERB $14.99 IAA/AUV3 | iPAD/iPHONE | PITCH SHIFTING REVERB , PERFORMANCE CONTROL If you want atmospheric reverb sounds this could be the app for you. It ‘combines a massively lustrous reverb with parallel pitch shifters’ and has a hands-on ribbon controller to morph between settings. With fx experts Eventide behind it, you are assured a great sound and it’s…

Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 EQ £134 “I’d use the EQ on Cubase for years, thinking it was OK. It might have been Chase & Status who said ‘what are you using that for?’. Then the difference between using that and the Fabfilter one – the sound quality was unreal. I didn’t realise so much went into an EQ; I thought it was just ‘take off the top, or take off the bottom end!’” fabfilter.com u-he Diva $79 “I use it because it sound analogue, with big warm sounds. It’s quality.” u-he.com Tone 2 Saurus $119 “Again it’s because it sounds analogue-y, so I use it on basslines, synths and arps.” tone2.com Waves L1 Limiter £42 “The L1 is amazing; all you have to do is bring down…

Step by step Creating the right kick and clap sounds 1 It is, of course, much easier and better to start with the right ingredients so we’ll start with the backbone of the track, a great kick drum. Plug time: you’ll find plenty in the CR2 Records Solardo sample collection! 2 Mark uses a compressor – in this case the G-Master Buss from SSL – and keeps things really simple. “All I do is mess around with the Threshold, and in this case hardly at all,” he says. 3 Then it’s the turn of an EQ, the Fabfilter Pro-Q 3, tweaking around 50Hz. “You just do it by ear,” says Mark, “whatever works for you.” 4 With the clap, Mark usually uses a few clap samples layered up together, although…

Mark’s new sample collection is out now on CR2 Records. He says of it: “I’ve been spending a lot of time on this and all the techniques I’ve mentioned are in action on it. All the basses are done on my Moog Little Phatty or Voyager. The beats are put together using the compressors I mentioned plus Decapitator to make them sound bigger; some are taken from my old tunes and you should recognise them. The funny thing is as I was putting it together I would create ‘starter packs’ so you can start a tune and have all the parts and do whatever you want with them. But they were coming out too well so I was thinking, ‘I can’t put them in the sample pack, I’ll actually release…

The sample and hold (S+H) effect was at one time probably the most familiar of synthesised sounds – not because it had appeared in chart hits (it had), but rather because it was Hollywood’s de facto sound effect for all things electronic. Shots of computer terminals, satellites, and unmasked androids were invariably accompanied by a rapid-fire rhythm of random bleeps and bloops that told the viewer that what they were seeing was what the so-called space age looked like. In truth, an S+H circuit is capable of far more than signifying an android invasion. It’s a versatile utility that belongs in every modular system, never more so than now, given the modern modular musician’s enthusiasm for random, self-generating patches. When used as a modulation source, it is all too often…

GROUP MULTI-BAND COMPRESSION Adding compression to a bus (group) channel can help to glue it together and create extra energy. Multi-band compression allows you to do the same while giving an extra control over the frequency ranges. You can, say, create energy by heavily compressing the top end and at the same time, gently glue the mid range. TIGHT PERCUSSION Percussion samples might have an excess amount of reverb and delay imprinted into the stem. A good processing technique is to use a gate. This will allow you to control the effect tails once they drop below the set threshold, resulting in a tighter sound. Ed Strazdas Ed is an experienced dance producer and sound designer, working in the scene since 2004 Neil Crockett Sound designer and mixing engineer, Neil…

Origin X includes four macro controls that you can assign to one of 18 specific aspects of the instrument. The vast majority of the target options are effects units (reverb, delay, filter and so on), however you can also control the speed of the step editors. Macros get their own dedicated panel and in the bottom half you assign the target and set the range for up to six preselected parameters. Any of the six parameters can be bypassed if desired and you’ll also find a handy shortcut icon that takes you to the page for the parameter you’re editing. So far, so good. However things get interesting in the top half of the panel, as here (once activated) you’ll find the macro play sequencer. This is a step-sequencer designed…

FireSonic FirePresser €99 9/10 cm282 This is a chain of classic compressors – think Urei 1176, Empirical Labs Distressor, dbx 160 and more – linked together in series, with global controls for the main tasks plus an X-Y graphic to mix each one. “Ease-of-use, powerful blending of four classic character compressors, and warm, fabulously authentic analogue sound come together beautifully in a studio tool that’s much more versatile and ‘high end’ than appearances might suggest.” unitedplugins.com Universal Audio UA 175-B and 176 Tube Compressor Collection £229 9/10 cm275 As with Arturia, we have a set of emulations of classic gear, this time the all-valve forerunners to Bill Putnam’s more famous 1176 design. These have a character all of their own, not dissimilar to the Fairchild 660/670. And darn fine they…

Looking back at the 90s – which more people are doing, as the popularity of our recent 90s issue (which sold out as fast as a jungle breakbeat) proves – it’s amazing to see, or hear, how much of that music was defined by the music production technology of the time, notably sampling technology. The limitations of sampling back then really turned producers into creative thinkers as they had to work so hard to wrestle anything decent from their hardware – see our explainer below for more. And while the results might not have been sonically perfect, they had a character that is in demand today, and it’s a character that simply oozes out of SampleX by Beatskillz. Lo-fi Skillz The Beatskillz programmers have studied the original hardware circuitry to…

Soul Rush Records Within The Warehouse £20 A riotous assault of old-school techno, rave and acid house loops, shots and MIDI files, Within The Warehouse kicks off with 95 beats (many of them with a hat-, ride- or snare-free variant), and a truckload of discrete kick, hat, clap and percussion loops. There are separate folders of 50 ‘driving’ (simple and sub-focused) and 30 ‘melodic’ basses, a spectacular array of chord sampling workouts, hoovers, 303s and other dayglo synth-based ammunition, and loads of one-shots for sampler deployment. The production is on point, and it all adds up to a storming bargain. loopmasters.com 10/100 WA Production Future Dubstep Jade $20 WA Production offers ‘everything you like about future bass… with more intensity’. Whether you agree or not, this pack thrives…

Kilohearts Anders Stenberg How did you get into plugins? AS “We started in 2011, aiming to make computer games and do consulting. We made tools for game audio and that whet our appetite for audio tools. We had some free time and said ‘maybe we should try making a synth?’. That was kHs ONE, which we were very happy with. Then we started imagining what the ultimate synth might be and BOOM! Eight years later we released Phase Plant.” What makes your software stand out? AS “Our philosophy is based on solid computer science. We avoid frills and gimmicks and also strive for elegance. Some might see that as bland and think our effects don’t have cool names, but familiarity and reliability are more important than creating new words for…

Christina Broussard of SciFiSol is becoming well known for captivating live electronic performances, while her music productions veer between ambient and industrial with intriguing vocal performances being the standout, unifying theme. Here she details the process and technology – which can veer between complete hardware or software – behind the varied SciFiSol sound. 1 Tell us a little bit about your musical background? CB: “I’ve always been musical and began singing in choirs and performing as a young child. It was a natural progression for me to start playing in bands and I was part of a few punk rock experimental projects in my late teens. These were heavily inspired by bands like Sonic Youth and ideas surrounding the No Wave philosophy, which didn’t demand much formal musical training, only…

MAIN FORMAT iPHONE/iPAD/AN Some iOS apps are only available on the iPhone or iPad, plus we list the ones (sadly less) available on Google Play/Android. AUDIO UNITS V3 AUV3 Audio Units v3 is the format – rather like desktop Audio Units or VST – which allows compatible iOS plugins to run within iOS DAWs just like (almost) your desktop instrument and synth plugins run in your desktop DAW. AU iOS DAWs include Steinberg’s Cubasis (above), WaveMachine Labs Auria Pro, Apple’s GarageBand and many more – check our Top 12 DAW roundup on p36 for more. ABLETON LINK AL Ableton Link allows various pieces of hardware and software to stay in time playing together when connected wirelessly. It includes Akai hardware, Reason and Bitwig desktop software and various…

01 MINIMOOG MODEL D $7.99  AU3/AB/IAA/AL | iPAD/iPHONE | 160+PRESETS, 4-VOICE, ARPEGGIATOR One of the very first hardware synths of all time, the 1970 Moog Minimoog Model D, gets a fantastic emulation by the very company that made it in the first place. The wonders of tech add presets, polyphony, the ability to run it in any iOS DAWs (thanks to AU3 support, which the more expensive Arturia version lacks) and effects, plus you can add more presets via IAPs. A classic synth and future classic iOS app. moogmusic.com 02 ARTURIA IPROPHET £9.99  IAA/AB | iPAD/iPHONE | 380+PRESETS, N/S-VOICE Arturia’s i-emulations have been out for a while but still do a great job of bringing back some classic sounds. Alongside the Minimoog and ARP Odyssey, the Prophet V is probably…

1 Download Beat Machine for free now and we’ll give you a tour of this flexible beat maker. You can cycle through the options using the top five tabs. Here is the Pads screen complete with sounds loaded on the first 10 pads (of the 16 available) using the sounds from the Acoustic Room Kit. 2 If you want to change the currently loaded Kit or Pattern for one of the extra ones (10 and 11 respectively) supplied, simply hit the Load option and you will get this screen: kits down the left and Patterns in the middle together with complete Song options. 3 The Pattern tab is for sequencing and allows you to place individual sounds, or a run of the same one per channel, very easily indeed. You…

IK MULTIMEDIA AMPLITUBE iOS/UA (FOR ANDROID REQ. IRIG) $27.99 IAA/AB | iPAD/iPHONE/AN | 17 PEDALS, 18 AMPS AND CABS PLUS IAPS Amplitube lets you assemble your own guitar rig via six stompbox effects plus an amp and a speaker cabinet with up to two mics. You get 17 stompboxes, eight amps, ten cabs and two mics. There is a free version which scores less reviews-wise than this. Either way it can really sound great and is sonically very flexible. ikmultimedia.com POSITIVE GRID BIAS FX 2 $FREE TO $99 IAA | iPAD/iPHONE | 77 FACTORY PRESETS, AMPS AND PEDALS This includes a range of vintage pedal emulations and high-end rack effects that you can combine for custom sounds of all types. You get four amps and eight effects pedals…

1 If you’ve never used a mobile DAW before, this tutorial will show you how close an experience it can be to using your desktop DAW. We’ve chosen Beat Maker 3 as our mobile DAW and loaded in an example song. You can see it flow left to right as on a ‘normal’ DAW but we’re going to create a new song ‘CM Session’. 2 Now we can add some tracks to the Session, going from top to bottom. We can add Bank (drums, plugin), Audio (sample) or Aux (effects) tracks. We’ll add a few of each. 3 To our first Bank track we want to add some beats, so we click on the pad icon (top left) and then load a kit onto the pads (in this case, the…

01 AKAI IMPC PRO 2 $24.99 AL/AUV3/IAA | iPAD/iPHONE | 64 TRACK MIXER WITH EQ AND 4 FX, WARP TRACKS + OTHER REAL-TIME FX It almost slipped into our Drum Machine category but iMPC Pro’s ability to load AUs, its mixing and audio editing functionality and great effects make it a full DAW in our eyes. And one of the highest-rated ones too, mixing classic MPC beat-making with in-depth sequencing and mixer features. akaipro.com 02 APPLE GARAGEBAND $FREE AUV3/IAA | iPAD/iPHONE | 7 INST TYPES, 32 TRACKS, LOADS OF SOUNDS, LIVE LOOPS Almost as attractive a proposition for iPad music making as Logic is for Mac production in terms of its power, the sounds and instruments you can use. It’s not however *whisper* as intuitive as it should…

Selected kit list HARDWARE Apple MacBook Pro Apple iMac Genelec monitors Korg Monologue Novation Bass Station 2 Novation Launchkey 25 Moog Voyager Moog Little Phatty Roland TR-09 Yamaha Reface DX Universal Audio Apollo interface SOFTWARE Arturia V-Collection Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 EQ Nicky Romero Kickstart SSL Compressor Soundtoys Decapitator Steinberg Cubase 10 Tone 2 Saurus UA Plugins u-he Diva Waves L1 Limiter Moog Voyager One of the best Moog synths you can buy – and it costs a few quid – Mark uses this for big bass sounds and a whole lot more besides Acoustic treatment Useful absorbers and dispersers make sure reflected sounds don’t come back to Mark to affect what he’s hearing Roland TR-09 As good as the real thing but a fraction of the price, the Roland TR-09…

Step by step Snare processes 1 Mark starts with the Fabfilter EQ to lift the snare at around 200Hz by a few dB, which also serves to give it a little more warmth. 5 SSL’s Master Compressor is now brought in but Mark warns not to over-use it or else “you’ll lose the dynamics of the sound”. 2 He then, as with the clap, takes some of the top end off around the 20kHz area. “Not too much,” says Mark, “just to give it a little clarity.” 3 The L1 Limiter (from Waves), is then brought in to bring up all the elements of the snare and bring them further forward in the mix. 4 The Era Reverb Remover from Accusonus is one of Mark’s regular plugins for this stage…

If your chord progressions sound a little stale, why not use diminished seventh chords to beef things up a bit? Diminished seventh (or ‘dim7’ from here on out) chords are nowhere near as scary as they sound – once you know the formula for how to put them together, they’re pretty easy to suss. This is down to the unique, symmetrical way in which a dim7 is structured, with all four notes in the chord separated by the same pitch distance or interval – three semitones. This in turn means that, by shifting each of the three chord shapes up or down three semitones, you can cover four different chords with the same shape, each chord rooted on whichever note is at the bottom of the stack you’re currently playing.…

Production duo Hermitude – Luke Dubber (aka Dubs) and Angus Stuart (aka El Gusto) – have had major success in their native Australia with singles including HyperParadise and The Buzz. After more than two decades together, they’ve developed a production ethos unique in dance music, which ultimately led them to LA for a session with none other than Daniel Bedingfield… 1 Tell us how you got into music? El Gusto: “We started playing in bands when we were at school in the Blue Mountains. Luke played piano and I played drums. We both had a real love of hip-hop and electronic music, and then at some point we started hanging out and making some tunes together in that style. Music was always around us growing up; both of our dads…

PreSonus’ ioStation 24c was announced back at January’s NAMM show as an all-in-one control surface and audio interface, but we didn’t realise quite how low the street price for this one-box production unit would be. Around £250 for what is touted to be a high-end interface plus a controller for all major DAWs with a motorised fader – albeit just the one – sounds like incredible value on paper, so let’s see just how it shapes up. Two-in-on You could quite easily think of ioStation 24c as an amalgamation of PreSonus’s FaderPort and the company’s Studio 24c 2-in, 2-out audio interface. In fact you don’t even have to try and conjure up a Frankenstein image of the two units joined at the hip – ioStation 24c is literally a one-fader…

Whether you’re a seasoned producer or musical novice, understanding and isolating an existing track’s musical components can be very useful. Most DAWs already have features that can help, such as tempo analysis or time-stretching. Veteran developers Zplane’s new app, deCoda (OS X 10.7 or later, Windows 7 or later), bundles together features ranging from tempo, key and chord analysis to pitch-shifting, time-stretch and filtering. To get started, you simply load or drag-and-drop an audio file (wav, aiff, mp3, wma, flac or ogg) into the window and it analyses it. The workspace has an overview navigation bar at the top and transport play bar at the bottom. The central strip shows a looped section of the track and you can select one of two views: waveform or piano roll. The analysis…

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…

Native Instruments’ holiday haul The German tech giant unleash a salvo of new goodies Native Instruments have launched five new products, including the standalone Maschine+ groovebox, which we reported on last issue (so won’t go into again here), and the latest version of their value-packed Komplete bundle. Komplete 13 arrives two years after Komplete 12, so there are a fair few new additions to its already enormous roster of instruments, effects and sample libraries. Chief among them are the Straylight and Pharlight granular Kontakt instruments, Super 8 vintage-style polysynth, Session Guitarist – Electric Sunburst Deluxe virtual guitar/guitarist, and Nils Frahm’s Noire concert piano for Kontakt; but there are a couple of completely new entrants, too. The first of these is the long awaited Guitar Rig 6, updating the acclaimed virtual…

01 RUISMAKER NOIR $7.99 AUV3 | iPAD/iPHONE | MONO, N/S PRESETS Described as a ‘Relentless Rhythm Synth’, Noir creates beats and loops from scratch and is packed with drum synthesis options – indeed, such is its flexibility it almost veers into bass-sounding territory at times and we nearly put it in our Groovebox category (see p30). The layout will be familiar to any synth user with oscs, filters and amp sections but it’s all about sequencing, morphing and fluid sounds with superb implementation. ruismaker.com 026X806 NOISE DRUM SEQUENCER $2.99 AL/IAA/AB | iPAD/iPHONE | N/S SOUNDS/ KITS, MULTIPLE EXPORT OPTIONS This six-track drum synthesiser and sequencer is ideal for “creating beats, electro rhythms or wacky synth blips”. The interface is a little unclear at first, but once you get your head…

01 AMPIFY GROOVEBOX $FREE  AL/AB/IAA | iPAD/iPHONE | 5 INSTRUMENTS 8-20 PRESETS/GROOVES PER INSTRUMENT An inspiring tool that lets you quickly create melodies and beats. You get five free touchable instruments and while you can do a lot with these and the free patterns, they’re essentially teasers for the IAPs. That said, there’s enough to be getting on with without, so it’s well worth a download. ampifymusic.com 024POCKETS DIGISTIX $7.99 AUV3/AL/IAA/AB | iPAD/iPHONE | 256 PATTERNS, MULTIPLE EXPORT OPTIONS With added sampling options, Digistix steps up from being ‘just’ a drum machine to fall into our Groovebox category, and recording and editing audio is pretty simple so it’s easy to import your own sounds into the DigiStix world. The step sequencer is intuitive and can easily be sync’d to your…

Mark Foster is certainly in a reflective mood, but with over two decades of music production in a wide variety of styles – perhaps too wide as we eventually discover – he’s got a lot to reflect on. After discovering music production by way of cheap looping software, he fell in step with Reason, became something of a dubstep and grime pioneer in the 2000s before a brush with celebrity and taking his eye off the ball left him with ‘one more shot’ at making it in music production. In Solardo and new music partner James Barlow just that shot presented itself… and he’s taken it with gusto. The duo have certainly made waves with their cutting-edge blend of bass house that initially saw them borrow from the very roots…

Step by step Solardo first steps 1 Mark is a Cubase user – and has been since Chase & Status ribbed him for using Reason – and makes good use of the software’s Template features. 2 He has separate groups for Top Beats (both left and right channels), Mid Beats (set centre) and Bottom Beats (centre) plus Synths, Samples and Vocals. 3 He adds a set of three outboard plugins to each group channel to bring the groups together, warm them up and level them. 5 A Puigtech EQ is then used on each channel with the Lavyne Track Warmer preset to warm up all the elements within that group. 4 First up, there is a Waves Puigchild 670 on each group channel to help bring all the parts together,…

Step by step Dealing with the hi-hats 2 That said, in this instance, Mark has some hats going to Top Group Left so these ones will, with everything else in that group, pan left (the main ones are panned right). 1 With the hats, Mark makes use of the grouped tracks we talked about earlier – the Top Left and Right Beat groups (in this case the Right one). 5 Then it’s the turn of the Waves L2 Ultra Maximiser, adjusting the Threshold to bring up certain frequency bands within the sound. 4 The good old Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 comes in next, this time with a slightly different EQ curve to that used on the clap and snare, still with some top removed. 3 One of Mark’s other top plugins…

Programming drums using multiple sound sources can result in them sounding incoherent. The solution? Apply a few processing techniques to a drum group. In this tutorial, we will discuss the balancing of individual channels and sending all of the drum stems into one group ready for processing. Reverb will be used in order to imprint a distinct ambience and affect the way in which the drums will be perceived. Before modern advancements in digital technology, vintage outboard equipment was used to shape and colour the signal path. Current digital emulations of sought-after vintage gear have come a long way, sounding extremely close to their predecessors. We can apply the same techniques and access a distinct character of the past without breaking the bank. The main benefit of grouping is the…

For the main instrument, Artistry Audio have designed a highly capable Kontakt workspace based around four key panels – Main, Sounds, Effects and Macros. Here you can access one of 350 master (Instrument) presets as well as sub presets that pertain to specific aspects of the instrument (Kits, Sounds, Effects and Macros). “Delivers production-ready, beat-driven, melodic sounds that are easy to play and manipulate” Origin X is a loop-based sample library for the Native Instruments Kontakt platform and is the first release from developer Artistry Audio. As an NI Kontakt format library you can use it in your own full version of Kontakt (VST, AU, AAX, standalone), or run it in the Kontakt Player which is free to download. Whichever you opt for, Origin X requires Kontakt version 6.4 or…

With all our chat about ioStation 24C’s DAW control capabilities, it is almost too easy to overlook the back panel and front controls that double this device up as an audio interface. There are two XLR/instrument line combos at the back plus two quarter-inch outputs, a headphone-out and a Footswitch control that can be used to start and stop recordings and the like. (Useful if you have your hands full with a guitar or something). The interface incorporates two XMAX mic preamps and 24-bit, 192 kHz analogue-to-digital converters which pay off with the resulting sound which delivers crystal clear recordings. Around the front you get Gain pots for the mic preamp inputs, a Line level button (that changes the input from Instrument level to Line level for keyboards and drum…

Killohearts have certainly caused a stir in Plugin Land with some incredible titles and a Snapin system that makes running the apps together both easy and inspiring. So we’re very pleased to be bringing you one of the company’s top-line EQs to you for free this issue. Slice EQ is an amazing EQ with super and accurate editing, both graphically and traditionally, plus Mid/Side processing and a lot more. Over the next five pages we’ll show you how to get it for free and give you a tour of the software so you’ll be slicing and dicing your tracks in no time… Slice EQ is what Kilohearts call ‘a truly modern and advanced parametric equaliser’ that allows you to get into your frequencies and adjust them with incredible precision thanks…

LEFTFIELD GUITAR AMBIENCE Leftfield Guitar Ambience We’ve gone left of centre with our new sample collections this month, both veering towards eclectic ambience. Robbie Stamp from Cyclick Samples says of his Leftfield Guitar collection… “Take one guitar, a chain of 12 pedals, add some looping delays, a dash of reverb et voilà: ambient guitar for days. The following types of samples are included in the collection: Atmaster – Jazzmaster guitar + pedal chain into Amplitube as well as delay/reverbs. Fripperary – Telecaster + pedals feeding a long dual delay to layer into 4-bar loops. PermaChord – Gretsch + many pedals and effects in Nuendo to create pads. Sunn-Ooh – Hondo guitar into Rat, SuperFuzz pedals and delays for making drones. VerbLaya – Jazzmaster. Chain of reverbs that are switched on/off,…

Tensnake, aka Marco Niemerski, has been making infectious house and disco music since 2005 during which time he has collaborated with Nile Rogers, Stuart Price and Jamie Liddell, launched his own label True Romance and remixed everyone from Pet Shop Boys to Dua Lipa. And all because of an unwanted drum machine. Time to take our 15 (aka 14) questions challenge… 1 Do you have a production philosophy? T: “I try to stay open minded when I work with other people. Working on my own can become limiting. Exchanging knowledge with other producers helps gain new perspectives.” 2 When did you get into production? T: “I think I must have been around nine or 10 years old, when my older brother came home with a [Roland] TR-606. He was the…

Another reality if you please Dear cm As a regular subscriber I always look forward to the Backchat section of the mag. The questions and thoughts of other readers never fail to inspire and encourage me to keep an open and unbiased mind. One question: I would like to know the opinion of both cm and other readers on the future of VR (virtual reality) in music making. Does music production even have a future in VR or is it something no one is asking for or needs? Imagine a virtual custom studio! Could it be the next revolution in computer music making or a totally convoluted process that robs the musician and producer of any actual creativity? Tyrone Rose Interesting questions Tyrone. After compiling the 100 Greatest Apps for…