Innehållsförteckning för August 2021 från Computer Music

Thunderous, pounding percussion has been a hallmark of Tom Holkenborg’s soundtracks for decades. Little surprise then, that following the successful meeting of minds that brought us Junkie XL Brass, Tom’s next signature project with Orchestral Tools foregrounds this love of all things hittable. Not only does Tom Holkenborg Percussion allow access and insight into Tom’s percussive approach, but tantalisingly contains all of the drum sounds that Tom himself sampled for his own personal use when making such monolithic scores as Mad Max: Fury Road. We gave Tom a call to find out more about this awesome-sounding suite. Hi Tom, so can you give us an overview of Tom Holkenborg Percussion, how did the idea for this originate? TH “Well I actually started developing this library as early as 2013, when…

1. Your first Reaktor synth 1 Fire up Reaktor in standalone mode, create a new Ensemble, and adjust the split-screen layout to taste. We don’t need the Ensemble’s default In Port modules, so delete these. Undocking the Properties Manager can be useful whilst building in Reaktor, allowing you to keep the parameters you’re working on close to hand – you can do this from the program’s View menu. 2 Click an empty area of the editor and hit [Enter] or [Return] to open the Searchbox. Type “MIDI” then in the results list locate and click on Note Pitch MIDI In. Repeat to add a Gate MIDI In. Take a moment to hold the mouse pointer over the new ports and their terminals to read the popup hint text. 3 Let’s…

Four years ago Loraine James released her debut album , Detail, to widespread critical acclaim, but it was her next album on Hyperdub, For You And I, that earned the London-based producer even more praise, including ‘album of the year’ in both DJ Mag and Quietus. Live gigs followed including headline shows and support slots for Telefon Tel Aviv, Jessy Lanza and Holly Herndon. Such is life, though, and just as you’re breaking through, a certain pandemic comes along and puts a halt to proceedings. But no matter. James has used the enforced lockdown to produce her finest album yet. Reflection is just that, a personal and honest journey produced “in a world that suddenly stopped moving”. It veers from an intriguing “Beach-Boys-in-space weightlessness” to tracks with just about any…

Picture the scene: you’re at the apex of the most important gig you’ve ever attended in your life – a real soul-altering, profound experience. At the crescendo of the encore, you and your friends, caught in a euphoric wave, move from your front row vantage point, clamber up on to the stage with your very favourite artist. Standing side-by-side with them, you sing your heart out, facing the thousands of rapturous faces all around you, all of whom are sharing in this dream-like, transcendent moment. The show ends, and within seconds, you’re back home on your sofa. Sound like a preposterous dream? Well, it actually isn’t – a similar experience is achievable right now thanks to the increasingly impressive development of virtual reality gig technology. Yes, the intensity of a…

Music is an incredibly powerful tap into the emotions. As an experiment, try watching the most emotional scene from any movie you can think of with the sound turned off. Without music, the emotional impact of the scene will be hugely reduced. So when it comes to conveying raw emotion, such as soaring joy or devastating heartbreak, there are various tools composers can use in a soundtrack to heighten all of these emotions in the viewer. The same sort of thing can be put to good use in your songwriting. If you’re starting out to write a sad song, the lyrical content is only the half of it. You’re also going to want to use a musical backdrop that reinforces the despair of an intense breakup, a forlorn memory of…

Warlock uses the same type of synthesis architecture as used in other Tone2 synths like Gladiator. Harmonic Content Morphing (HCM) synthesis delivers a sound “not possible with subtractive, additive or FM synthesis alone”. It essentially uses different waveforms as the core ingredients but allows them to morph and change the harmonic content over time. The architecture comprises 84 Spectrum Tables (and, yes, you can think of as wavetables) each with up to 256 snapshots, each of these the equivalent of a traditional single oscillator waveform. The Spectrum Tables can be modified with 25 different algorithms These include names like Shrink (for a warmer sound), Multi 1 (for thicker sounds) and Multi Hyper (multiple noisy waves playing simultaneously). You also get two further modes, Loopmode and Loopspeed that define how the…

Whether it’s moodily swelling, emotively plucking or chordally washing into our ears, cinematic guitar is a mainstay across the modern soundtracking world. Though this playing style is also prevalent in ambient music, it’s really in the generation of score-ready textures for working composers that Audiomodern pitch Opacity II – a highly manipulable guitar sample player, loaded up with some exquisitely well-recorded axe work. Comprising 14 sessions delicately performed by Washington-based Terre Grande guitarist Justin Hodges, Opacity II’s recording quality is the first thing that hits us after loading up the software within Kontakt. Sumptuous arpeggios, gloomy swells and echo-sodden notes abound as we cycle through these preset Sessions. Each of the 14 tempo and key-defined Sessions contains four groups of looped performances, comprising elements such as Chords, Phrases, Sequences and…

Formerly the domain of dedicated enthusiasts, chiptune music is typically made via the use of trackers. Making 8-bit music was originally a delicate procedure, though there are now many software trackers to choose from, many of which float around the web as freeware and, if you’re curious about delving further, you should certainly take for a spin. The most noticeable difference to a traditional DAW being that the track lanes are vertically aligned. Shared characteristics among multiple trackers are the ability to modify samples, notes, effects, patterns and orders. Notable artists in the 8-bit genre include 8bitpeoples label founder Nullsleep and renowned soundtracker Jake Kaufman (aka Virt). 8-Bit Synth presents a way into this world previously restricted by the need to adjust your process to the upside-down approach, demanded by…

We have something a little different for you this issue, and hopefully the first of many free plugins we give away on the Melda MSoundFactory plugin platform. What MSoundFactory allows you to do – as well as playing sounds from many Melda and third-party plugins – is create your own bespoke instruments and effects using the modular process we detail from p38. Melda have created CM Pluck for us which we’re giving you this issue, but by the end of this tutorial you will not only get MSoundFactory Player  to use it with, but a bundle of free Melda effects – some 40 in total! First, you’ll need to install the free MSoundFactory Player to play CM Pluck – think of that as like Kontakt Player – but it’s easy…

This month, we’re bringing you three classic sample collections to complement our two new breaks packs. We have Bespoke Breaks from issue 261 and Crate Diggers Delite and Relite (both from our 21st birthday issue). Each contains breakbeats and vinyl-inspired goodies to underpin any music style. First up, it’s Bespoke Breaks… Robbie from Cyclick Samples said: “Nothing livens up a basic electronic beat like a break. Whether it’s splattered across the mix, bleeding across the other instruments or lightly tapping away in the background, filtered into a polite state, the breakbeat gets things moving and grooving in a way that usually only a tambourine can (break+tambourine=dancing feet). To this end, here are 286 beat loops, all freshly chopped out from the Cyclick Samples archive, processed and blended to taste.” “Processing…

It’s going to be busy over the next few months in the DAW calendar. We’ve got major releases from Bitwig and Reason to check out, but don’t expect the big releases to end there. First up, Reason Studios Reason 12 has just been announced, although it won’t be released properly until September. That said, subscribers of the new(ish) Reason+ will get the new features and extras as they become available, although no release dates have been confirmed as of yet. New additions include high definition for all of Reason’s devices meaning that, according to the RS blog, “all your favourite devices will feel like you’re seeing them for the first time. You can zoom Reason to fit your setup, and all third party Rack Extensions will be hi-res ready on…

How did you get into music software? BC “I’ve been a musician since age five and in the recording business for 20+ years. I even have a couple of Czech Grammies and a Mercury Prize as an artist/singer/producer. I was always a technical person and went from collecting gear to designing software effects.” How did you become successful? BC “Are we successful? Well, unity is power. We had a long term relationship with Vojtech Meluzin (of Melda), Jason (JMG Sound) and FireSonic. We all had ideas, but starting a company for one plugin is too difficult so we thought it’d be best to create UnitedPlugins to deal with things the developers don’t want to do (marketing, accounting, distribution etc.) so we can focus on designing as many musical plugins as…

Like Reaktor, Max by Cycling ’74 is a visual programming tool but, unlike Reaktor, it is not in-and-of-itself dedicated to creating audio processors, and has capabilities that extend into many different fields: image and video processing, hardware control, and more. So, in reality, Max is more like a combination of an IDE (Interactive Development Environment – a software suite that assists with code development) and a runtime environment in which programs created with Max – referred to as “patchers” – can run. This allows Max to be exceptionally open-ended, because new packages of functionality, known in the coding world as “libraries”, can be created by anybody who feels so inclined. And because Max objects can be coded in a number of languages, including the widely used JavaScript, you don’t need…

Fun factory MSoundFactory is the new kid on the plugin creation block, although it’s been around for a couple of years now. The easiest way to describe it is with the cover-all title of ‘modular instrument’ which features everything from sampling to synthesis, and that offers everything from individual building blocks right up to complete plugins. The thinking behind MSF, Melda say, is that this will be the company’s last plugin because literally everything they develop now, will come from it. You will, they say, need just one plugin to rule them all, and this is it. “A single instrument that does it all,” they say, in a slightly Tolkien-esque way. Melda are also hoping more third-party companies will join the MSoundFactory party, and the plugin currently comes in three…

As we near the end of a calamitous period of recent history, it’s certain that, for many millions of people, experiencing live music again will be among the most jubilant moments of post-lockdown life. Though throngs of gig-goers are readying themselves to once again get sweaty, get inspired and feel the connective power of music, we also anticipate that for many artists, a little reassuring guidance is needed to help get them back on their feet. Or, if you’re one of the thousands of computer musicians who have been tempering a hunger to finally get out there for the first time, then this feature is here to steer you in the right direction. Across the next few pages, we’ll detail the technical and performing factors you need to consider, as…

As the live music industry prepares for – or at least we all sincerely hope – a period of rejuvenation, it’s important to remember that even despite the host of modern challenges new performers face in the wake of Covid, managing and developing your career as a gigging musician has always been a demanding prospect for those who’d rather remain in the comfort of their home studio. Right now, of course, the problems facing not just artists, but everyone involved in the industry, are immense. The live music industry sustains tens of thousands of people around the world, from sound engineers, promoters, festival staff and more. With festivals losing over 90% of revenues in 2020 and grassroots music venues struggling to maintain their all-important weekly lifeblood after all shows and…

Live-tailored DAWs Vital environments for your computer-based live performing Apple MainStage £28.99 A piece of software that often flies under the radar, MainStage is able to morph your computer into a live-ready multi-instrument and effect processor, storing sounds in ‘concerts’ rather than projects. A straightforward visual interface allows you to edit keyboards, faders, knobs, buttons and pads, all controllable via your MIDI keyboard. apple.com Studio One Studio One 5 Artist £85 The most recent point update of PreSonus’s feature-packed hub introduced the Show Page, designed to allow users to fluidly navigate their live performance elements, as well as manage their gig overall. Studio One 5 allows you to have total control of the most important elements of your tracks and effects, while also allowing for spontaneity via some…

This month it’s time to design your own rising effects. Creating your own effects sounds gives you unprecedented control over their timbre and length. Simply changing the modulation rates and waveforms provides you with new variations so the effect remains interesting throughout your arrangement. For this tutorial we’ll design a dynamic FX riser that increases its intensity over time. This is achieved by using two LFOs, one of which is modulating the other’s rate. When it comes to waveforms, most can be a suitable choice for designing FX sounds. We deliberately chose a sawtooth for its rich harmonic structure for this feature, but it’s also available across multiple subtractive synthesisers. Our tool of choice is Arturia’s Pigments as it offers creative modulation options. These include the ability to modulate unison…

The Nordic or ‘wintery’ sound has, of course, become a thing in recent years thanks to a glut of Scandi-Noir TV dramas. Usually comprising (in equal parts) beautiful landscapes, gritty inner cities and plots so twisty you need a slinky to navigate them, they feature ‘cops on the edge of the law’, ultra violent murders and stunning, often low-key scores. These (the scores, that is, not the murders thankfully) have almost created a genre of music in themselves. Not particularly defined, they can be anything really – moody, terrifying, a whisper of pad here or orchestral tension there – as long as they ladle on the atmosphere and drama, and make you feel inadequate about living in a rain-soaked city in the UK. It was a bandwagon that even we…

Leapwing Audio Al Schmitt £139 10/10 cm296 One of a couple of multi-effects here that attempts to capture the sound of a legend, in this case the recently and sadly-departed producer to the stars, Al Schmitt. “Leapwing’s first foray into the world of signature plugins is a triumph. If you need a speedy route to polish your productions, and are OK to leave some decision making to a bona fide studio icon, it’s a great buy.” leapwingaudio.com Baby Audio Spaced Out $69 10/10 cm293 This updated Space Echo offers plenty of reverb, delay and modulation power for a multitude of madness. “Another cracking, great value, hi-spec tool from Baby Audio. Get in, tweak your X-Ys, add whatever you want and smile. It’s quite brilliant.” babyaud.io Apogee Clearmountain’s Domain $349 7/10…

Toontrack can offer you something for pretty much every occasion. The beauty of their catalogue lies in its expansion capabilities; you begin with their basic packages, such as EZDrummer 2 and EZBass, and build your library through their extensive line of expansion packs, celebrating a wealth of musical styles. The latest genre to get the Toontrack makeover is Gospel. Firstly, we’ll need to point out that these are expansion packs, so you’ll need to have a copy of EZBass and EZDrummer 2 installed, in order to proceed. Superior Drummer 3 users can also import the Gospel EZX drum expansion pack, without the requirement to cross-grade to EZDrummer. Where the Gospel EZX fixes aim, is with content leaning firmly in the direction of celebratory and worship music, which arguably ties into…

It takes all sorts to make music, and they are all in this issue of Computer Music! With rising star Loraine James on p44, we saw how one laptop and a small bunch of mostly freeware plugins can suffice. Now it’s time to visit a studio where the only software is used as a recorder, and it’s based on a remote farm in Norway. Yet it’s a studio and project that has attracted some star names. Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen is the founder of bands including I Was A King, Heroes & Zeros and The No Ones with R.E.M. members Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck. His new Rural Tapes solo project features those collaborators plus Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti) and saxophonist Terry Edwards (PJ Harvey, Tom Waits).…

Reaktor is a visual programming environment dedicated to creating audio processors, tools and instruments. It can run standalone or as a plugin, with practically no functional differences between the two modes. Many of Native Instruments’ synths, effects and sound expansions are built on Reaktor technology, and there’s also a free Reaktor Player that allows you to build modular synths using Reaktor Blocks, and to load synths and effects created by NI and their development partners. Wrappers Ensembles are the top level entity in Reaktor. They are the outer wrapper for all of the different modules and connections that comprise an effect or instrument, and an instance of Reaktor can host only one ensemble at a time. There are a number of other wrapper modules available too, the most important being…

1. Making a Max For Live synth 1 The drum synth we’re about to create will have multiple voices, with each voice being an instance of the same mini synth. Create a new Live set and drag a new Max Instrument to a MIDI track. Locate the new device in the track’s device list then click on its Edit button to open the device for editing in Max. 2 Max has created a default MIDI input, “midiin”, and a default audio output, “plugout~”. The tilde “~” indicates this is a MSP object, and designed to handle audio signals rather than events or messages. Delete the comment objects that are labelling things and drag plugout~ down to the bottom of the screen. Click the “i” button to open the Inspector sidebar.…

1. Installation process 1 Go to the MeldaProduction website (meldaproduction.com) and hit the Downloads Tab. If you haven’t got it already, you’ll need to download Audio Plugins. 2 This is the Melda Universal Installer that makes downloading and paying for their vast range of plugins a breeze. And it is a vast range, as we shall see… 3 Next you get to choose MSoundFactory and we’d also suggest downloading the excellent MFree FX bundle. Melda do a subscription of €49 a month for the lot – fair given the number. 4 Now open up MSoundFactory in your DAW as you would any other plugin. Before you get up and running you’ll need to install some factory content. (Note the red tab, top right ‘install Factory data’.) 5 Click that red…

We’ve lost count of the number of artists who cite the live experience as the highlight of their careers. Though the music-making process is profoundly rewarding, its magic pales when pitted against the euphoric highs of playing your tracks to a mass of enthusiastic and appreciative spectators. However, with the last year-and-a-bit spent mainly locked behind closed doors, and venues heartbreakingly closing around the world, the magic of the gig-sphere has been tantalisingly out of reach. As we see restrictions lift, it’s understandable that many artists are itching to get back out there, and even more budding performers are gearing up for their first ever shows. The pandemic aside, making the leap from bedroom producer to attention-seizing live performer has long been a daunting venture. But it needn’t be. In…

It was during his 16th year, while playing in bands and working at Guitar Center, loading the gear in and out at a club in Portland for $50, that Chris Bergstrom got hooked to working in the live arena. He quickly moved into live mixing, cutting his teeth with a Mexican events band, before getting a couple of in-house club gigs and then an internship at Horne Audio, the company he now runs. Following a short spell mixing the audio at a church in Portland and running his own sound company, Bergstrom left his hometown and moved to Nashville. When a good friend went on tour for two-and-a-half years with OK Go, Chris agreed to help him out for a month on a prearranged leg with The Dandy Warhols, a…

It was once cited, by a member of the infamous BBC Radiophonic Workshop, that whenever certain sounds were broadcast on radio or television, it was guaranteed to provoke a reaction from a public who were, back then, unused to such things. This would often result in the BBC switchboard lighting up like the proverbial Christmas tree: any sound that shared the characteristics of a human voice, but was in fact electronic, would get people going. While this would often relate to synthetic devices known as vocoders (which would rely heavily on the live input of a human voice) some synths came equipped with a form of filtering known as Formant filtering. Associated with a term used in speech science, the word formant refers directly to the resonance of the human…

Surely the big draw of the virtual synthesiser is that you are not limited by any physical restraints as you would be in the real world, just by how much grunt is delivered by your computer processor. You want dozens of filters and oscillators? No problem. Hybrid design? Yes please. A lime green GUI? Well, maybe. But then the ability to have unlimited features can have an adverse effect. Many software synths have become unwieldy, weighed down by their own bloated offerings, unable to focus on anything in particular, jacks of all trades and full of so many options that you become terrified of the choice and loading them up. A powerful, feature-packed synth with a smooth workflow is something of a dream, then, but that’s what Tone2 are attempting…

Orchestral Tools’ SINE player is a standalone or plugin ‘instrument’ although really a shell like Kontakt that allows you to manage your Orchestral Tools libraries. Once you purchase a library you can browse all of the instruments within it in their various articulations and room mic positions. You can then choose to download individual parts of an instrument, or the whole thing, which is a neat way of avoiding downloading chunks of content you’ll never use. Once downloaded, simply head to the Library tab and double click an instrument or articulation to play, which is then accessed via the Performance tab. As you load in more articulations, they appear in the Articulation List to the right hand side of the UI (see above) which can then be edited according to…

Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a boom in media aimed at scratching that 80s nostalgia itch, from Stranger Things’ infatuation with the era’s cinematic tropes (and a lush synth soundtrack), Wonder Woman’s recent colourful adventures in 1984 and the trend for the bleeps and bloops of classic, 8-bit video game soundtracks that pepper EDM and even creep their way into mainstream soundtracking. It seems that as long as there are sentimental memories to conjure, the past will never die. With that in mind, Paris-based UVI has painstakingly built what, at first glance, appears to be the ultimate retro sample library and performance instrument, specifically tailored for 8-bit music-makers. First bundled as part of their gleefully fun, humungous Toy Suite (2019), the 8-Bit Synth now stands on its own…

Re-thinking staid ways of working can lead us down unusual creative routes. The usual approach to shaping our softsynth sounds with modulation effects, say, involves stacking or chaining said effects, with occasional automation bringing in certain modulations at key points. While an established approach, JMG and United Plugins’ Orbitron plays with an entirely other dimension: sounds – and modulation effects – quite literally, orbit each other. Your audio track is visualised at the centre of the plugin’s UI, as a small white dot within a larger X/Y circle. This white dot moves in a circular motion between four different modulators, each of which can be assigned to 12 different in-built FX types. The result is a strikingly organic sound that can repeatedly transition between shimmering chorus, ear-teasing phaser, frequency-chewing chaos…

DUSTY BREAKS Dusty Breaks We gave you the Ultimate Bass collection last issue, and now it’s time for a break. Many breaks! Here’s what Robbie from Cyclick Samples says about his new breaks collection… “This sample set provides some semi-raw sources for use as breaks, chopped or otherwise. All the loops are two-bar phrases, though some were originally one-bar recordings doubled up. The drum kit used is listed below as are the mics and preamps used. I played for five to 10 minutes to a click at a given tempo and then edited out phrases I liked, or at least were in time. “Mics used: Coles and STC 4038 ribbons as overheads, Royer R121 outside the kick and the Beyer M88 inside, Beyer M201 and SM57 as snare top/bottom, Calrec…