Innehållsförteckning för November 2021 från Computer Music

cm How did you get into music software? UH “My degree is in industrial design, but I’ve been making music by programming computers and synths since I was teenager. The advent of VST coincided with my graduation, and programming plugins became my hobby. When Zebra 1.0 came out in 2003 I realised I could make a living, so I quit my day job and never looked back.” cm What is u-he’s philosophy? UH “We’re development driven as opposed to market driven. We design our plugins to satisfy our dreams instead of what we think will generate the most revenue. Most of our friends in the industry work this way – that’s why this industry rocks! If I had to pick why we excel, I’d say sustainability and ‘good enough is…

Described by The Guardian as “Israel’s most defiant star”, Noga Erez channels any issues that affect her through her music. She’s certainly not one to be afraid to take on all aspects of culture head on, and has done just that, covering everything from questioning government policies to the over-availability of prescription drugs in releases like her 2017 debut album Off the Radar and new album Kids. Yet, surprisingly, it’s a tactic that has, if anything, gained her more success than the serious mandates might suggest. And she certainly doesn’t describe herself as a political artist and nor is her music in any way ‘just’ a message. Her blend of alternative EDM and pop has won a huge audience the world over – not to mention her track Dance While…

Chip tune is a style of music that emerged in the 1980s, originally performed on home computers, and heavily influenced by game music, although it rapidly broke out beyond that hardware to represent a musical style or philosophy that used those types of sound, either in hardware or software. Think of the game soundtracks heard on the original Nintendo Game Boy – that’s 8-bit music (YouTube is full of examples, if you’re not sure what we mean). And then think of the Commodore 64 computer, and the sounds created by the onboard MOS6581 chip. We’re talking low-res sounds, limited polyphony and effects, and tedious-but-productive sequencing workflows. In the 21st century, we’ve seen hardware chip tune machines, some featuring remaining stocks of those original chips, one example being Elektron’s legendary Sidstation.…

It’s probably fair to say that The Weeknd isn’t planning to spend his entire career ‘doing the 80s’, and the same can be said for Dua Lipa, who seems to be more about sharing her enjoyment of different eras rather than sticking to one in particular. She’s ventured into early 2000s-style pop (that’s a thing now as well), but what we’re interested in here is her forays into the 80s, with songs such as Physical, Be The One, and Break My Heart. Each of these specifically references a well-known 1980s track, so that’s one way to go if you’re after the 80s vibe, as long as you (a) have a good lawyer, or (b) have the skills to get close, but not too close, to the original songs in question.…

Weaving huge themes with similarly huge sounds, multimedia visuals with massive, building and sweeping tunes, Public Service Broadcasting are on a mission to smash through genres and deliver an uncompromising live and recorded experience. Their winning approach involves matching sampled sounds and visuals with electronics, a full band feel and just about as many orchestral players that can fit on stage or in the studio. And just when you think the PSB experience couldn’t be any bigger, they wrap everything up around (quite literally) the biggest stories to tell through their music. The track Everest, for example, is a live favourite and tells the story of Peak 15, the highest mountain in the world. “Why should we climb it?”, the sampled commentary asks as PSB’s ear worm alt-electronic rock weaves…

What are macros? Many modern day software synths contain multiple assignable macro controls. These let you map one or more parameters to a single rotary knob or fader. Macros are extremely handy for keeping your project automation lanes tidier. For example, reverb and delay amounts could both be controlled using one macro automation lane. This is also useful in a live performance scenario. We only have two hands to work with, limiting how many controls we can manipulate at once. The simplest macro assignment is one destination. Great for mapping preset-specific parameters to a MIDI controller. You can build purposeful chains by mapping more than one parameter. This is what we’re going to be focussing on in today’s guide. Firstly, timbre macros. The goal of this macro is to transform…

Korg’s CMT standard is really used to full effect here to recreate the sounds of the original synths in exacting detail, but as good as that is, it’s the modern flourishes and additions that make Collection 3 a relevant set of synths for the modern producer. The plugin pedal effects on miniKORG, for example, really do add necessary dirt and dynamics, and the 2D top-down view plus three screen size options make it a welcome UI for contemporary softsynth users. With Triton Extreme, the modern twists are there for other reasons: to make this monster synth easy to deal with! You get an ‘Easy’ mode that just has the main parameters on screen, and the (literally) thousands of presets can be navigated by type or character (Bright, Dark, Acoustic, Electric…

Back in the 80s, Roland had the good sense to do a really smart thing. The late 70s polysynth behemoths, which in many cases required hair of a similar magnitude, were big, bloated and expensive. This provoked a reaction from Roland to produce a more affordable polysynth, in part thanks to the shrinking of electronic components, that made a sensible price point more obtainable. And so the path was laid for the future classics from the Juno Series. With reference to Greek mythology, Juno was the wife of Jupiter, better known among mere synth-mortals as the flagship synthesisers in the Roland range. Anyway, Roland created the Juno 6; a six-note polyphonic synth, now recognised as a vintage classic. Within a matter of months, the Juno 60 appeared. In essence, this…

The Torso Electronics T-1 is a new sequencer that takes its place alongside the Arturia Beatstep, the Korg SQ-64, and others, proving beyond doubt: hardware sequencing is back! It features 16 banks, each containing 16 patterns, and each pattern has 16 polyphonic tracks, fair enough, but what makes it unique is the inclusion of Euclidean rhythms, which involve notes or other events automatically being distributed along a sequence’s steps. The box contains the T-1, a MIDI adapter, and a USB-C cable; go online for a manual, firmware updates, and the T-1 Config software. Being made out of aluminium, the T-1 is pleasantly chunky, at 850g, and features 23 backlit pads, 18 knobs, and at the back, 11 mini jacks relating to CV/gate/sync, three for MIDI (in/out/thru), and a USB-C port.…

Minimal Audio Emerge$ 49 Sumptuous sound designs abound in this weighty library of epic atmospheres, textures, impacts, and one-shot audio blasts. Not your run-of-the-mill, either. Well, unless you count the actual abandoned mill the team went in to record foley sounds. They certainly put the leg work in, spending half a year setting up field recording trips in weird and wonderful locations, before heading back to the lab to process and stack up the results. The 750+ files, also including plenty of mangled synthesised and digital soundscapes and tones, make for the perfect set if you need that extra layer of hyper-texturised audio goodness to add to your tracks. minimal.audio/products/emerge n10/100 Mode Audio Alteration – Prepared Piano Samples £11.20 Your boy John Cage (the dude that released that banging…

Here at Computer Music we’re very lucky to be able to provide, via our very own Software Suite, some awesome free software tools. A long-term component of the Suite is u-he’s Zebra CM and this month we’re super excited to be bringing you a rebooted version of this classic synth. In honour of this event we thought we’d rustle up a new tutorial to run through its best bits. It’s built around two highly flexible and morphable oscillators with 16 core waveforms. These are joined by a powerful noise generator with four flavours, a multimode filter, three LFOs, two expanded ADSR envelopes and three effects modules. The new version includes a major layout and graphics overhaul and Zebra CM now takes its visual lead from the very latest version of…

Cycle back to the 80s! Our sample masters were tasked to travel back in time four decades to pick up some soundware! Cyclick’s Robbie explains his choices… “The 80s may always be associated with mullet hairdos, marble wash jeans and gated reverbs, but as is always the case, there was much more going on… “No, this isn’t a set of samples based on the lead up to the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall or the siege at the Iranian embassy in London in 1980, but rather an accompaniment to the set which will be delivered by my brother in loops and Groove Criminal to the right. Knowing that he will no doubt cover the classics of drum machine and synth, I have opted to focus on the electric guitar…

As if to remind you it’s our 80s Special issue this month – and to enforce the fact that everything 80s does seem to be everything 2021 – we have yet more new/ old releases in the form of software emulations of classic gear that was released four decades ago (there or there abouts). It’s like we’ve always said, ‘you wait four decades for a decent 80s software instrument emulation and they all arrive just as our 80s issue comes out’.OK we did say that in a particularly weird dream/hallucination but it still counts… First up, who else but the mighty Roland, producers of so many machines that gave us synth pop and so many others that, intentionally or not, gave us dance music? The Japanese hardware company were once,…

What we think of as ‘industrial music’ has been around since at least the 1970s, but by the end of the 1980s and into the 90s its influence was felt everywhere - the pioneering work of bands like Throbbing Gristle and Einstürnzen Neubaten was incorporated into the sounds of more mainstream acts like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. Industrial music also made a difference to dance styles as well as invigorating a tired rock scene; as a genre it’s hard to define, but you know it when you hear it! It draws on sounds from nature and man-made sources, as well as taking a philosophical cue from artists working in other media. We’re looking on industrial music as a genre based on low-tech sampling, machine noises, hard drum machines,…

DRUMS THEN There are a few choices here, but we’re going for the LinnDrum, which was the more ‘affordable’ version of the LM-1 which preceded it. The LinnDrum is all over 80s pop, embraced by artists such as Prince (the one we always think of first), Madonna, and Tears For Fears. NOW Ableton Live includes the LD Core Kit, and Logic Pro X’s Drum Machine Designer includes a kit called, er, Linn Drum. Linn Drum Samples are easy to find free online, so you can assemble your own kit if necessary. BASS THEN Back then it was all about headless bass guitars – the prime examples being Steinberger and Status, both instruments with very clean modern sounds and design philosophies some distance away from a Fender Precision! The most popular…

Over the past three records, collaborating with other musicians has become more of a regular experience for J. Willgoose, Esq. and this is the case again with Bright Magic. How does the process work for the band? “For Blue Heaven the demo is quite close to the end result but in terms of the melody Andreya Casablanca [from Berlin indie band Gurr] just very quietly and politely shelved what I’d done and came up with something way cooler. The thing I’ve noticed over time is there’s no point collaborating with someone if all you’re saying is ‘here’s a thing, can you do that?’” “The point of a collaboration is to take a track somewhere you wouldn’t on your own, so you should be inviting that creative disagreement in some respects.…

At a time when presets on synths were in somewhat short supply, 80s bands such as Japan would spend many hours preparing and programming sounds, during the preproduction phase of their album preparation. One of their main instruments was the legendary and immensely popular Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, which offered a signal architecture and signal flow which is not dissimilar to our very own Zebra CM virtual instrument. One of Japan’s most celebrated songs was called Ghosts; its sparse synth bass was punctuated by a variety of sounds which exploited the Prophet’s Poly-Mod cross modulation parameter, while David Sylvian’s voice glided elegantly above interjecting marimbas, and the pad-like lead which we are going to recreate here. The sound is filtered to create a texture which is soft in timbre, while one…

SEQUENCE STYLED MACRO AUTOMATION Break away from the typical automation curves in your DAW. Try drawing stepped automation that is locked to the grid for one or more of your macros. This can lead to very interesting analogue-style sequencing for your macros. FILTER AND BIT CRUSHER MACRO Bitcrusher can get quite harsh on top of an open synth sound. First assign a low-pass filter to your macro and then bit crusher amount. This filters the dry, unaffected sound before it’s bit crushed, resulting in a more pleasing effect.…

“Last weekend I did my first Blancmange show in two years in Belgium,” Neil explains, clearly excited to be back ‘out there’ after the enforced Covid break. “We had to jump through hoops but we did it; there were three of us playing to 4,500 people. There was a power cut and it rained on stage but we still got through it and it was amazing!” And that gig will hopefully be the first of many, as Neil is preparing for a full Blancmange tour as we speak, although he will be wrestling with an on-stage Akaibased hardware rig, he says. ‘Why not just go down the laptop route?’ we helpfully (we think) suggest… “I don’t want to do that anymore. We had always used laptops for the bass part…

Creating drums sounds for cinematic textures requires great drum samples, with a heavy layer of signal processing. This is where Spitfire’s latest product could take the hard work out of your next project, with these unique hits and loops, driven to brutal distraction. Sawing Nails! Charlie Clouser is a Hollywood composer best known for the angsty scores which accompany the Saw film franchise. He started musical life as a drummer, before becoming a keyboard player and programmer with the band Nine Inch Nails. Also known for their processed and dark musical tendencies, his simmering pot of stylistic percussion-based sound design led Spitfire Audio to his door, with a view to creating a software instrument to host percussion sounds for the current and next generation of cinematic composers. “Clouser’s simmering pot…

One oddity with Softube softsynths is the lack of stand-alone operation. It’s sometimes quite nice to load up a synth on-screen and get lost in playing, rather than getting bogged down with the DAW. However, Softube have made the process of assigning a MIDI CC to a plugin fader very easy, so much so, it invites the user to get extremely hands on with a suitable hardware controller. You could also employ one of the many assignable MIDI controllers for iPads/ tablets, building a template with the relevant MIDI CCs, for a more Juno-istic experience. Of course, this moves immediately into focus when hooked in with your DAW, as is Softube’s intention, where the ability to control all elements in realtime bring the Model 84 to life. It’s so easy…

Rift (AU, VST, VST3) is a new distortion plugin from Minimal Audio and alongside Rift Filter Lite (based on the filter section from Rift) forms the first pair of plugins released by this fledgling developer. We’ve seen plenty of distortion plugins before and these range from classic hardware emulations to more complex multiple stage affairs. Rift falls into the latter category, and its main distortion section is supplemented by various other modules including filter, feedback/delay, and modulation. Nevertheless, although its hybrid topology is important, where Rift moves into slightly different territory is within the distortion module itself. Here you get control over the intensity of the effect via Drive and a choice of distortion stages (between 1 and 6), and significantly you also get independent control over both the Positive…

Alexey Nechaev is an award-winning video game composer who has worked on many high profile games including Inmost, Swag and Sorcery and, most recently, Unbound: Worlds Apart. This has been a recent hit on Nintendo Switch, Mac and PC and is described as ‘a challenging, atmospheric and hand-drawn puzzleplatformer set in a universe where all worlds are connected by portals’. Here Alexey details the various challenges faced with composing for the game, his favourite hardware and software, and has some sage words of advice should you wish to follow his path into video game composition… Computer Music: What advice do you have for anyone wanting to get into game music? AN: “Strange as it may sound, listen to more game music! I believe that listener experience is the best teacher.…

Recording in the 1980s was all about tape – although more than one type of tape was involved. Reel to reel was the pro choice for studio recording (with the finished products released on vinyl or cassette, although CD rose to prominence as the 90s approached), while the typical home recording setup was based on cassette multitrack recorders like the legendary Fostex X-15. This was a 4-track machine which could record onto two tracks at once, and could be run from mains power, or batteries in a pinch. Limited EQ was offered per track – a bass knob and a treble knob! Spartan though it was, the X-15 introduced multitrack recording to bedrooms and garages worldwide. More sophisticated machines followed, and the DIY recording revolution was in full effect, with…

In the 90s the 80s were reviled – which is actually quite normal as new generations are always keen to move on into the new decade in terms of fashion. But eventually there was a comeback, which has stuck around for quite a while! The biggest part of this has involved music. The 1980s provide a rich seam of material, whether it involves the songwriting styles, the instrumentation, or the production techniques. Tears For Fears, Madonna, New Order, Cyndi Lauper… Sometimes it’s the full package, and the resulting records sound like they could have been made then, while others integrate the sounds and styles into more modern techniques. You can purchase some of the original gear on your favourite auction site, or source plugins that’ll get you the same sounds…

We hope this retro adventure has taught you some new things, or reminded you of some old things. You can view the 1980s as a museum or theme park, where the aim is to create a perfect replica of a bygone age, and perhaps camp it up a bit. Or take it dead seriously, absorbing the sounds and techniques from that decade and incorporating them into your modern productions; another sonic palette to include – it’s about texture – using a bit of 80s magic when a mix needs something different. The 1980s started as a decade where post-punk and classic rock were still going strong, and the punk DIY ethic was starting to apply itself to electronic music. Hip-hop, for example, was driven by that DIY/make-do spirit, using the…

Reverb – it’s an essential tool most people will be familiar with. It can add space, power, even emotion to vocals. You’d be hard pressed to find a modern pop song without it. Usually when new music makers come to adding reverb, there’s a sound that they imagine in their head. But then… there’s a completely different result that they get. A common mistake made by my new students, and even clients who send me a rough mix or their DAW sessions to mix and master, is to go crazy with plugins on every single channel. If there’s a main vocal track and say two or three vocal backing tracks plus adlibs, there might be a reverb plugin on every single one of them! Not only is this taking up…

It’s our 80s Special issue and you’ll note quite a few emulations of some classic synths from that era in this month’s reviews section. An update to Korg’s mighty Collection, filled as it is with emulations of the company’s classic synths, might well have been the best way to open this festival of 80s goodness. However, as 80s-based as the core of the Collection is, this latest v3 update adds three Korg synths from the 70s, 90s and 2000s – anything but the 80s then! Before we get into the new (old) three additions, just a quick recap. Collection is actually an update to one of the oldest sets of softsynths ever, the Korg Legacy Collection, released back in 2004, then comprising the Korg MS-20, Polysix and Wavestation. We heaped…

Building a real-time drum groove can be a tricky business for anyone who doesn’t have an understanding of how grooves can support thematic or harmonic material. It’s one of the reasons that loop libraries can be so appealing and useful, not to mention time saving. Building up a complete groove using Hammers is a very desirable and enjoyable musical pursuit, but it can take time to get something coherent and believable, if building your own rhythmic passages. Hammers arguably takes the hard work out of the process, thanks to the looped content, which can be nicely mixed and matched, to suit your purposes. If you’re trying to create a sense of build and progression using Hammers, the real-time control elements are invaluable. The ability to close-off the filter, limiting Hammers…

Sibelius is something of a strange beast; while many DAW aficionados will be unaware of its credentials, others use it on a daily basis. The notation package makes light work of producing pro scores, extracting parts or even providing a compositional sketch-book for professionals or students. It’s important to stress that what it does well, it does really well, but what it doesn’t do is provide a studio or production solution. That’s where Sibelius’ owners, Avid, will happily direct you to one of their partner products, such as Pro Tools. Going mobile Given that the more static graphic environment of Sibelius doesn’t require quite the same level of CPU grunt that other, more common DAWs would, it’s a perfect product for porting to a tablet-based format. In this case, Sibelius…

Karaoke is something of a national pastime in Japan, and while other parts of the world may not share the fascination for public vocal humiliation to the same degree (although X-Factor comes close) it never prevented Roland from trying to bring a little bit of that magic into a domestic setting. Enter one such device, which harks back to the mid-80s. The MKS-7, also branded the Super Quartet, was a desktop and rack-mounted band-in-a-box, designed to bring karaoke to a living room near you. Preset classics The MKS-7 was a preset device, split into four sections providing bass, chords (synth), melody (lead) and drums. As it was preset, editing was severely limited. This was a colossal shame as the synth engine was borrowed from the Juno 106, while the drum…

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 place Get started 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,…

Though they first made a name for themselves back in 2018 with the release of the mixtape 33:33, Alex and Yerosha have since worked with a cadre of experimental artists, all operating at the intersection between electronic music, hip-hop and grime, including Gaika, Mykki Blanco and Kojey Radical. Evidently natural collaborators, they’ve enlisted the talents of some equally visionary producers and instrumentalists (Laraaji, Lucinda Chua, Maxwell Sterling) for their latest record, which takes a stylistic turn towards ambient, new age and modern classical domains. Due out September 10th, Pantheon is a visual album that’s described by BON as a “ritual to the goddesses” – each of the record’s 16 tracks is named after a goddess, celebrating and embodying these archetypes in sound through their own sonic pantheon. The music itself…

Get an amazing guitar sound! There’s no need to be a virtuoso guitarist to get a great guitar sound in your music. Now you can do everything, including getting a great tone, selecting effects and even putting a pedal rack together… all in-the-box. We reveal all next issue! PLUS! Free plugin! Fathom CM 2. Another classic synth updated! Back to basics The pro producer’s guide to compression. All you need to know! Interviews Efterklang, Shane Codd, and Batavia Collective…