Innehållsförteckning för January 2022 från Computer Music

cm How did you get into music software? YV “I grew up in Washington DC, and we were lucky to have two amazing club nights in town. I started going to both and watched how the DJ controlled the room – I was absolutely fascinated. I picked up some turntables, started DJing and my love of music and software helped me to start Mixed In Key. I’ve always loved harmonic mixing – if you take two songs in the same key and mix them together, they sound perfect in a DJ set. My dad and I used to spend time together where I’d play a record, he’d play the piano for me, and I’d label the key. I moved away and couldn’t rely on my dad’s amazing ears anymore. I…

With the backing of BBC Radio 1 legends Annie Mac, Pete Tong and Danny Howard and producers like Solardo, Lee Foss, and Richy Ahmed, Manchester-born DJ and producer Mason Maynard is already – at just 21 years of age – one of the rising stars of dance music. He is, as he states, all about the kick, bass and vocal and while his style is mostly house driven with catchy vocals – just check out Make It Hot (featuring Gene Farris) – he has also produced more breaks-infused tracks like Memory. Here he explains what it takes to make a great Mason Maynard track and he also reveals his best five plugins and a growing (and expensive) obsession with all things hardware. 1 Tell us how you got into music…

Step by step 1. Making a Josh Wink-inspired patch 1 Before we can work with the stunning Roland TB-303 plugin, we need to open a DAW and load an instance of the plugin. We’re going to program a 16-step sequence within the plugin, so the DAW will service our other instruments and transport controls. 2 As we’re going to program both a sound and a sequence, we’ll need to start from an unused patch. Head to the Pattern and Patch selection menus and select an unused patch/pattern, from both sections. Save your patch and sequence as you go, by pressing the Write button. 3 The 303 is a simple beast, in terms of subtractive synthesis, and our patch begins with a simple sawtooth waveform. This is set via a basic…

Native Instruments Guitar Rig 6 Pro £179 Native’s modular designed beauty is, like AmpliTube, way more than a simple amp modeller. Developed using pioneering new AI processes, the circuit modelling used to build its 21 virtual amps has been painstaking, and the results speak for themselves. native-instruments.com IK Multimedia AmpliTube 5 £255 Not just an astonishing suite of peerlessly modelled amps and cabs, but an all-in-one guitar HQ loaded with effects, big-name, signature tones and much more besides. AmpliTube has been a world-class piece of guitar software since its inception, and version 5 cements its legacy, featuring an 8-track recorder and the integration of cutting edge VIR capture technology. ikmultimedia.com Positive Grid BIAS Amp 2 £130 For some, an amp/cab sim isn’t enough, and BIAS Amp 2 gives users the…

When I take on mixing work for clients, I want to give them my very best. Something I’ve had to accept, though, is that the sound quality of what is sent through to me is not always the best. I’m going to use a job that I took on last year as a case study to show the sorts of issues that can come up and the ways that a good engineer can go about handling them. I mixed a five-track EP for an electronic RnB artist last year. They had recorded their vocals in their bedroom for each of the five tracks, as lockdown meant that they were unable to get into a studio. They’d managed to do a pretty reasonable job of recording into Logic, given the restrictions.…

The producer’s latest studio album sees him continuing his exploration of new frontiers in sound design, blurring the boundaries between the acoustic and the electronic by using synthesis to model imagined instruments and processing guitars and vocals beyond recognition. Tobin talks us through the studio equipment and techniques he used to achieve the unique sound of his new record, and reflect on 25 years spent working at the forefront of electronic music… 1 This year marks the 25th since your debut release. Do you feel as if you’re still learning new things as you continue to progress as a musician? Amon Tobin: “It’s a bit like a feedback loop, where the things you make spawn new things that you make in perpetuity… a beautiful spiralling madness.” 2 What moment or…

During the 80s, sampling technology was becoming an indispensable part of music production. The only problem was, all the really elaborate samplers came with a caveat; did you buy a Fairlight CMI, or did you buy a house? For us mere mortals, this was an easy sell – after all, a Fairlight wasn’t great at keeping the rain off your head while you slept. But as sampling tech matured, so did the prices, thanks in part to the likes of E-mu, Akai and the fledgling Ensoniq. More than a Mirage! In 1985, this new company entered the sampling age with a debut release. The Ensoniq Mirage was a vaguely affordable sampling keyboard, produced by some of the team that had brought the infamous Commodore 64 home computer to the market.…

Stem mastering is an inherently fiddly process, but WaveLab has always done a decent job of simplifying the procedure as much as possible, and the new Track Lanes feature makes things that bit easier still. Montage tracks can be split into up to eight individual lanes, each of which can host its own independent playlist of clips. Clips that reside on lanes can have clip plugins and envelopes applied to them, just like any other montage clip, and a new Auto Grouping option makes it easy to lock the lane clips together for editing. In a similar vein, Steinberg have improved WaveLab’s handling of multichannel interleaved audio files, now supporting up to 22.2 surround channels, as well as the Ambisonics files used in VR. Once opened in WaveLab you can…

Over the last ten years, Spain’s Wavesfactory has been fuelled by a quest to deliver ever more acute methods of creative audio manipulation. The innovative Trackspacer and Spectre use their intelligent algorithms to achieve spacious mix clean-up and laser-focused parametric EQ-ing respectively. Their latest plugin, Quantum, again harnesses the capabilities of artificial intelligence, this time in service of fluid transient shaping. This under-the-hood mecha-brain scans for impactful transients in your audio signal, surgically dividing attack and sustain parts into two distinct audio paths, which can then be individually treated via a gamut of on-board DSP effects, before being re-combined. It might sound very iZotope-esque, but the finesse of Quantum’s dial-able on-board algorithm – cleanly discerning the millisecond-level foundations of a transient – is like nothing we’ve seen before, particularly when…

Paragon’s flexible architecture reduces the need for a large impulse response library and to that end it comes with 19 individual impulse responses (Reverb Models). This may seem a bit limited, but the models cover plenty of ground. Types include traditional spaces such as Church, Theatre and Chamber, as well as more unusual spaces such as Cave Mouth, Stairwell and Summer Forest. You can change the Reverb Model in the IR page and when you do this, all other settings for the preset remain the same, which is handy. Having said that, the Reverb Time readout on the Main tab will update to reflect the newly loaded Reverb Model. One thing you can’t do is import your own impulses, which although understandable given the re-synthesis system used, is also a…

Try Live… for free We’re pretty chuffed with this exclusive offer as Ableton Live Lite is usually bundled with hardware or sold separately but now you can get it – for a very limited time – for free next issue. And make a track from scratch with two tutorials and bumper extra track builder samples! PLUS! More samples! Double the samples with genre-based track builder packs Reviews Top tests! Eventide Split EQ, Arturia Minifuse, Kilohearts Convolver Interviews Martina Topley-Bird plus 15 Questions with Cinthie…

Can you handle all this free stuff? There’s a lot of free software on the way for Christmas… You’d be forgiven for thinking that everything – and we mean everything – is just about to treble in price, and if you want a turkey for Christmas then just forget it. Lorry drivers, Brexit, Mrs Brown’s Boys… whoever. Whatever. They are all to blame for increased prices across the board and the resulting lack of variation in cheeses for your Christmas lunch. But not so the music software world. We don’t need lorry drivers because we use the internet! And that means there’s a whole load of bargains still to be had. And not just any old bargains either; ultimate bargains. Free bargains!* Not strictly ‘bargains’ then, yes we know* Yes,…

To those who know, the TB-303 is more than just an electronic instrument in a small silver box. It’s an era-defining synthesiser and sequencer, which at the point of release in 1981/82, came equipped with a fashionable vinyl carry case; a must for all fashionistas! Why equip a little silver box with such a faux carry case? That has everything to do with the market for which it was designed to cater. The 303, as it is colloquially known to its friends, was offered as a solution for the discerning gigging guitarist, who didn’t have any bass-playing friends to jam with. Acquiring a 303 for a mere £200 or so, you could plug up to a suitable amp, and hey-presto; bass magic! Thanks to its onboard sequencer, you could store…

Step by step 2.Exploring the 303’s modulating envelope 1 Just as we did before, load up the 303 in your DAW, and select an unused Pattern and Patch from the drop-down menus. Because the sequencer is empty, you will have to trigger your sound from your keyboard, to audition your sound, at least for the moment! 2 As we’re looking to keep with something classic, we’re going to stick with the marginally richer sound of a sawtooth. Do feel free to experiment with the Square, but for our purposes, the Saw will be more appropriate. 3 With this patch, we’re going to drive the filter a little harder; set the Cutoff to around the 1 o’clock mark, but this time set the Resonance to the absolute maximum. This should result…

In the first part of this feature we looked at some of the many options available to non guitarists after a quick guitar fix sound, all by way of software and samples. For this next instalment, we’re focussing on the actual sound of the instrument and how it can be shaped in many different ways. Achieving a powerful and entirely distinct guitar tone is now well within reach for home guitarists, while those looking to add some six-string garnish to their sparkling soundtracks have a plethora of options to choose from. A guitar tone has traditionally been the multihued result of amplification and effect variations, a signal path that is now entirely virtually available in software form (but just don’t tell the unconvinced, old-school guitar-heads that). As the field is…

Mads Brauer’s Copenhagen home isn’t far from the beach. Even in the middle of this busy, 21st century city with its 10 million tourists, he likes the idea that there is still a small connection with nature. “Something as simple as the smell of the sea can make that connection for me,” explains ‘electronics’ chief Brauer. “The salty air… the strong breeze. Without it, I think the music of Efterklang would suffer.” Along with Casper Clausen and Rasmus Stolberg, Brauer is part of the core trio that has existed at the heart of Efterklang for 20 years. The experimental soundscapers have been friends since school, growing up in a pre-internet rural Denmark that was dominated by the Top 40 and daytime radio. “When you think back, it’s amazing how limited…

Sidechain compression is the process of using an external signal to trigger the threshold of a compressor. The rise in the popularity of French house in the noughties thrust the technique into the spotlight, and you can clearly hear the effect being used in tracks such as Eric Prydz’s classic track Call On Me: the music and vocal drop in volume when the keying signal (in Prydz’s case, the kick drum) plays, creating a pumping effect that not only gives the kick more room to be heard but psychoacoustically tricks us into thinking it’s louder than it actually is. Sidechain compression is actually quite an old sound engineering technique, and one that’s not generally used to quite such extreme effect as in Call On Me. For example, it’s frequently used…

Roland’s Jupiter series is often held aloft as one of the most important synthesiser lines of all time. There’s good reason for that, of course, with 1981’s state-of-the-art Jupiter-8 igniting the potential of keyboard analogue synths as slick and cool sound-crafters to many for the first time. Its kinetic stew of sounds informed the development of synth pop, new wave and bombastic rock, continuing to be used all the way into the dance music decades. With a veritable who’s who of artists pulling futuristic sounds from within its tantalisingly colourful veneer on Top of the Pops, many Vince Clarke wannabes hankered for this tomorrow-proof instrument. While a far more affordable version – the Jupiter-6 – was released shortly after, what many didn’t realise was that the Jupiter-line’s arrival was heralded…

We always applaud Arturia for coming up with a unique take on an old classic, and arguably the SQ80 needs more help than most to bring it kicking into the modern age. The modulation routings are comprehensive with this synth, albeit via the use of some relatively small ‘amount’ dials, but the two elements which bring something old but fresh to the SQ are the arpeggiator and the effects. The original SQ did boast a multi-mode sequencer, but by replacing the data entry fader with an arpeggiator section, Arturia have brought an immediacy to its consumption. Seven Arpeggiator patterns are available over the space of four octaves, coupled with sync’ing and latch modes, so you can get lost in those digitised waves for hours. The addition of a very flexible…

Ken Lewis is a Grammy-nominated producer and mixer who has also developed numerous educational resources via his Audio School Online and, more recently, his Mixing Night live streams. GreenHAAS is a new plugin available via the Mixing Night Audio website that takes a number of Ken’s favourite processes and bundles them into a fun and easy-to-use processor. However, it’s fair to say GreenHAAS is not your typical artist-endorsed plugin. Indeed, Ken’s name is nowhere to be seen. So, what does the plugin actually do? GreenHAAS is a saturation and stereo enhancement plugin. The interface is divided into three sections with the saturation on the left and Haas delay and modulation on the right. Each section has an individual bypass and there’s a global bypass as well. There are three saturation…

Focusrite Clarett+ 2Pre £440 Web focusrite.com Gear 10-in/4out USB interface Chip shortages seem to be the order of the day these days – they have even hit the car industry in the news of late, and the music technology world is not immune. Focusrite’s chip shortage came by way of a fire at the factory that supplied them, so the company have decided to re-engineer their Clarett interfaces and added a ‘+’ to let the world know. While the basics are the same, specs have improved, so these already premium-quality Mac and PC USB audio interfaces have stepped up a gear. This mainly comes by way of new converters which deliver a greater dynamic range and lower the noise floor, and means that you should be able to capture…

It feels like Baby Audio have come from nowhere to lead the field in plugin development. They have titles such as the incredible (10/10 scoring) Spaced Out reverbs (that reimagines the Space Echo), Parallel Aggressor (the definitive punch tool) and the all-new Taip which was announced last month. For this giveaway, we have the mighty I Heart NY parallel compressor which is simple but highly effective, recreating as it does the sound of New York compression with a very simple workflow. New York or parallel compression was made famous in that city in the 1990s and basically allows you to duplicate your audio to another bus, and as Baby Audio say, “crush it to death with expensive hardware, then blend it in with your dry track for a sound that…

Cyclick Three-03 It’s a 303 Special, so what else could we do?! We asked our sample gurus to come up with four sample packs – that’s double our usual count as we’re not restricted by DVD capacity from now on! Here’s Rob from Cyclick on the first of his packs… “The Roland TB-303 has been cloned many times, an early example being the Novation Bass Station in 1995. Though it’s not just a 303 clone, it traded partly on some factory presets that specifically mimic the 303. “For this sample pack, the Bass Station is used with these emulation presets, with MIDI control of the main tweaks used while recording lines and loops, including cutoff, resonance, env mod and decay. The lines were derived from straight-up keyboard parts and arpeggiator…

The original innovators Roland had been asked to reproduce the original TB-303 for many years, and they responded with the amazingly cool TB-03. Residing in their popular Boutique form, the original 303 form factor lends itself perfectly to the Boutique dimensions. It’s more or less the same, but now with added connectivity, like USB for audio and MIDI, a cool little kick stand, and an internal speaker, should you want to take it on the move. Roland also improved the sequencer programming, while maintaining a traditional sequencer mode for the original devotees. Finally, they added overdrive, making it sound incredibly familiar from source, along with a backend delay. The great news for us desktop-devotees is that this Boutique brilliance now establishes itself as part of the Roland Cloud, allowing access…

01 VOODOO RAY A GUY CALLED GERALD Released in 1988, Gerald Simpson’s influential release is widely acknowledged as one of the first successful acid house tracks, and an example of what could be achieved with minimal equipment. Recorded over two days at Moonraker Studios in Manchester, the combination of TB-303, Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer and Akai S-950 sampler confirmed how basic equipment could, with a little inspiration, result in a huge hit. The vocal, supplied by Nicola Collier was sampled and chopped, to become one of the song’s hooks, alongside the recognisable 303 sequence. 02 A HIGHER STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS JOSH WINK Harking back to the mid-90s, Higher State of Consciousness combined the relentless house-sound of the Roland TR-909 Rhythm Composer with two original, and totally unmodified 303s.…

Apple Logic Pro £174.99 Apple’s fairly priced DAW behemoth contains a veritable smorgasbord of virtual amps, cabs and pedals, all easily accessible via its slickly organised and user-friendly drag-and-drop UI. The ability to quickly conjure up a decent sounding rhythm section via the included Drummer can also prove a massive backing track boon for apprentice guitarists. apple.com Bitwig Bitwig Studio £399 A novel way to conjure exciting new chains and amp setups, Bitwig Studio’s unique series of plugins and effects presets can lead to all manner of original-sounding results. Though the DAW doesn’t really support take-comping, the touchscreen potential of the DAW allows for speedier interaction, especially when you’ve got a six-string axe round your neck. bitwig.com Reason Studios Reason £399 A mainstay of the electronic production world, the inclusion…

“There is a track on the new album called House On A Feather. It’s based on a simple sketch that I made on the OB-6. As you know, it’s an analogue synth and sometimes the tuning is not so perfect. Basically, you need to calibrate it… tune the oscillators. But in this case, I actually chose to keep it in this detuned state as it has a special atmosphere. It turned out to be quite a challenge to record the song because we had to tune everything else using Melodyne and by ear. The results were very surprising. I was fascinated by how the voice can so easily adapt to different tunings, whereas the piano and bass guitar weren’t so happy in this new setting. I really like the slightly…

If there’s one thing we have gleaned from this months , it’s that there is plenty of love for the Roland TB-303, with use that extends far and wide. One of the most bizarre considerations that we lay firmly at the 303’s door, is how it managed to garner its reputation as an eternal classic, with a vintage price tag to match, while offering such an incredibly simple signal path that could be trumped by so many other synths, old and new. With this consideration at the front of our minds, we’re going to create a classic 303 ‘aceed’ sound using our very own Zebra CM. Ironically, our in-house softsynth is capable of so much more than the basic 303 architecture, but the dressed-down process serves as a perfect entrée…

Though it lacked the pitch bend wheel that its bigger brother, the Jupiter-8 would later sport, the original Jupiter-4 included a small joystick bender control on a horizontal axis that allowed some rather rigid control of VCO pitch, VCF cutoff, VCA volume or how much LFO modification is applied to the VCO, VCF or the VCA. The Mercury-4 now allows your MIDI controller’s pitch bend wheel to serve the same function, albeit more fluidly and in a more performance-ready way. It’s nice to be able to jiggle around modifiers like this, developing evolving textures as modulation is introduced and removed musically. Couple this with the velocity-sensitive MPE support and the Mercury-4 offers a radically different experience than the one offered by the hardware’s original capabilities.…

Steinberg’s first serious foray into the world of audio came with 1995’s inaugural release of WaveLab. Largely the work of a single developer, Phillipe Goutier, what started life as a simple audio recording and editing package has evolved into a highly capable workstation geared towards sample editing, audio mastering and sound restoration. To this end, the program is packed with pro-grade processors, meters and features, all of which have received a significant boost with the release of WaveLab 11. As previously, this new version comes in both a cut-down Elements edition and a fully-featured Pro edition, (reviewed here). Both editions feature a new podcast publishing assistant, and this is at the heart of a new super-affordable Cast edition, ideal for Podcasters/YouTubers. “The most significant changes in WaveLab Pro 11 are…

The reverbs we use are usually built using either mathematical models (algorithmic) or from impulse responses of real spaces (convolution). Paragon ST (AAX, VST3, AU and AudioSuite) is a stereo-only version of Nugen Audio’s 3D convolution reverb and is now available in its own right. If you’re not familiar with Paragon, it couples a premium convolution engine with the editing flexibility of an algorithmic reverb. However, with typical editable parameters such as decay, size and brightness achieved using re-synthesis rather than time-stretching, it’s not susceptible to artefacts. What’s more, with so much onboard flexibility, Paragon ST has a much smaller IR library, which is more efficient and saves you disk space. “With a choice of 80 presets based on 19 IRs (Reverb Models), Paragon ST covers a lot of sonic…

SPACED OUT Spaced Out is probably our favourite reverb effect, combining sequenced delays, lush verbs and more. “How would we design a Space Echo today?” Baby Audio asked. PARALLEL AGGRESSOR Parallel Aggressor takes parallel processing up a notch from I Heart NY to result in a plugin that, “unashamedly colours your source sounds using compression and distortion… and then lets you blend it to taste. Magic!” And it was another 9/10 from us. SPACED OUT (more!) Pretty well as it turns out! Spaced Out combines a couple of big engines with intuitive mixing and control to get you some fabulous sounds. It was a 10/10 from us and we concluded, “another cracking, great value, hi-spec tool that packs more creative punch than anything out there”. TAIP Taip is the new…

Cyclick 90s Collection For our 90s special back in issue 282 we focussed on dance sounds that emerged via acid house and rave in that decade. Robbie from Cyclick runs through his classic collection here… Arps “A set of arp runs and single 16th-note filter sweeps all created with the Bass Station. The synth was run into the two Moogerfooger pedals, the XVive Memory delay and TC Hall Of Fame reverb pedal before hitting the dbx 166XL and JDK Audio R24 EQ. The pedals were tweaked for changes in tempo and source sound. The arps were created in MIDI in Nuendo and the sweeps controlled via automation sent to the Bass Station.” Bass “Bass Station all the way, mostly working from the Program 10 (12 and 13 too) TB-303 emulation…

A pillar of the UK electronic music scene, Matt Cutler is releasing his first album in five years, Always Inside Your Head, this October. In that time, he’s switched labels, moving over to London-via-Berlin collective Greco-Roman, and developed a new approach that weaves dream-pop vocals into richly textured electronica, taking inspiration from My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins. Cutler joins us to talk through his creative process and studio setup, giving us an insight into the ideas and instruments behind Always Inside Your Head. 1 When did you first get involved with music production? “Well it definitely goes back a pretty long way. I’d been messing around with some toy keyboards and tape recorders from the age of about nine, but I honestly don’t know if you could really class…