Innehållsförteckning för June 2022 från Computer Music

Regardless of your personal view on things like fate and destiny, sometimes small gestures of kindness can allow incredible journeys to occur. For EERA (Anna Lena Bruland) this moment happened around the age of 15 when a friend gave her a burned CD of Rated R by Queens Of The Stone Age. “I’d constantly listen to it on my Discman trying to not let it skip when I was walking. I absolutely loved it. Before this I was listening to more Norwegian singer/songwriter folk artists like Ane Brun and Thomas Dybdahl. When I got introduced to music from the States and the UK it completely changed my idea of what music could be. From there I moved onto Nirvana, diving deep into all the rock stuff and after Nirvana came…

01 ROLAND JP-8000 We begin our top 10 of the 90s with one of the most influential machines of the decade. The Roland JP-8000 was a virtual analogue synthesiser, employing digital waves and filters. By today’s standards, the filter could be regarded as harsh and whistly-sounding, but its status for providing Supersaws placed this new sound at the front of commercial music for the latter part of the decade. 02 THE PRODIGY The Prodigy were one of the most influential acts of the 90s. Predominantly under the musical direction of Liam Howlett, they produced three highly influential albums during the 90s, culminating in the exceptionally successful The Fat of the Land, which spawned tracks such as Firestarter. Not bad for a Roland W-30, TR-909, Akai Sampler and Korg Prophecy! 03…

Superwave P8 PC £Free The Superwave P8 draws its inspiration from the original JP-8000, providing supersaws through two oscillators per voice. With plenty of modulation potential through the use of four envelope generators and three flavours of filter, Superwave will provide plenty of 90s nostalgia via your Windows PC. superwavesynths.com Apple ES-1 Mac £FREE (Part of Logic Pro) While arguably the ES-1 is a bass synthesiser with leanings toward the Roland SH-101, it is far from a million miles away from the Novation Bass Station too. It’s a fantastic little synth, perfect for bass lines, with a very simple architecture which lends itself well to usage in the bottom register of your keyboard. Just add a ‘phatt’ compressor, for instant bass goodness. apple.com Roland JV-1080 Mac/PC $129 Continues to offer…

If there’s one sound that polyphonic and plugin synthesisers can do really well, it’s the pad. Originally intended as a facsimile of an orchestral string sound, the rise of the synth pad in commercial music goes back to the 70s, with the dominance of the string synthesisers that first appeared during this era. Before then, musicians were reliant on string sections, the history of which obviously stems back several hundred years, but the origins of the “swelling“ nature of the sound are found therein. Steeped in so much history, the synth pad can go far further than a conventional string section, however impressive a string section may sound. Synthesisers are particularly good at applying modulation, from one section of the synthesiser to another. A good example of this is vibrato,…

In mastering, compressors and limiters can be incredibly powerful when it comes to shaping the transient envelopes of percussive sounds, but there is an alternative. Rather than requiring you to set ratios, thresholds and attack and release times in order to squeeze the sounds into place, transient designers offer you control of the amount of attack and sustain. It can be a much easier way of achieving similar results, allowing the effect to do the hard work. The SPL Transient Designer is the most well-known transient-shaping hardware unit, but a plugin version is also available and a number of other companies make similar effects. It’s most commonly used on drum tracks, to manipulate the amplitude characteristics of hits, but transient shapers can be just as useful on other sounds with…

Sixty years ago, when the 60s were really swinging and music technology was in its infancy, an extraordinary instrument appeared. Providing the unthinkable, you could have an instrument in your lounge, which would not be out of place with your home furnishings, that was literally a band-in-a-box! The first sampler The much revered Mellotron is considered to be the first sampler, long before digitisation took effect. Sounds were recorded, and stored on large numbers of tapes, with each providing a set of sounds that could be selected and played at will. The most commonly referred to sound can be heard at the beginning of Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles. The haunting flutes, generated by the Mellotron, have become iconic, but the Mellotron was capable of far more than just…

The concept of the pad has arguably been around for hundreds of years. However, something of a revolution occurred in the 70s, as synthesisers and string machines provided greater sophistication and ease in polyphonic operation, and hence the synth pad was born. Consequently, it feels as though the pad has never left us, occupying a relatively central position in the production of electronic music, as well as ambient and soundtrack composition. Any product which brings a different shine to this arena is very welcome, and even more so if it bears the capacity to add interest to the concept. Where Habitat scores highly, is with its ability to blend two very different layers together. On the one hand, there is a vast supply of very high quality acoustic samples; recorded…

It takes your breath away to think just how far music technology has come in the last 40-or-so years. While its many evolutions – from 8-track mixers to DAWs say, or hardware synths to soft synths – have proven beneficial for most musicians (particularly those wanting to reduce clutter!). But, there are still those who look back misty-eyed at the era when manual input machines were all the home music-maker had to work with. It’s likely that this type of nostalgist would find the algorithm-driven likes of Playbeat 3 an affront to their sensibilities. Audiomodern’s updated virtual groovebox relies on multiple intelligent algorithms which can instantly take the lead, and if you so choose it to, they generate fresh beats instantaneously. While this pattern-shuffling randomiser has been the USP of…

The Plugin Suite is a collection of complete, limitation-free instruments and effects. It’s an incredible resource, boasting more than 80 pro-quality Mac and PC plugins that, in most cases, you won’t find anywhere else, all in VST and AU formats. The included software is created exclusively for us by respected commercial developers such as D16 Group, u-he, AudioRealism, KV331 Audio, Cableguys, XILS-lab, AudioThing, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen, zplane and more. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Enough talking! Where do I get these plugins? You can grab them all from FileSilo (see p81 for instructions on how to access). There is a simple text file there with WeTransfer links for a faster download too. How do I install Plugins? It depends on the plugin. Some have dedicated installers, while others just drop into your…

Download this month’s videos: filesilo.co.uk/computermusic cm/experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist fields every month PRODUCTION PERFECT YOUR SIDECHAIN SYNTH MASTERCLASS PADDING OUT YOUR PADS THE CM PLUGIN SUITE V2.0 16 videos on using some of the best plugins from our rebooted suite Get to know Bazille CM’s wave options Step sequencing with Thorn CM Instant fun with Macros in Curve 2 CM MIDI triggering effects in Flux Mini CM Advanced modulation in Fathom CM Using the One-shot feature in Dune CM 60 YEARS OF THE SYNTH: THE 90S How to recreate famous synth sounds from that most synthetic of decades…

Artificial Intelligence! ONSALE WED 18 MAY After noticing yet more AI plugins being released all the time, we’re dedicating a huge feature to the subject to ask the big questions: is AI just a phrase bandied about without meaning? Is it a great way to make cash by doing minimal work? Is it really the end of music production as we know it? Are humans even needed any more? PLUS! Free plugin! We don’t actually know what it is yet but it will be great Reviews Arturia. BLEASS, Sinevibes and more in a bumper reviews section More How-Tos Our 60 Years Of The Synth journey takes us into the 00s!…

cm How did you get into music software? RT “It was thanks to my passion for music production. My main inspiration was Basshunter (who is still active) who used FL Studio. That became my DAW and from the moment I first used it, I was sure this was what I wanted to do. One day, I recorded a vocal sample pack with my friend just for fun. I reached out to ProducerLoops.com and they accepted it, and it was quite popular. I quit my side job to focus on sound design and as the brand grew, I started looking for plugin creators. It was a hell of a ride and I love it and am grateful every day. The community is amazing, and I’m proud to be a part of…

If you ever want your music to be a global phenomenon – and, let’s face it, who wouldn’t want a slice of that – then you could do better than taking a leaf out of Sigala’s notebook. Luckily, we have several leaves of it right here as he gives some of the best answers to our 15 Questions ever. Sigala got his first breakthrough when he grabbed a Jackson 5 sample and made a worldwide smash out of it with Easy Love in 2015. Since then it’s been punch after punch in the chart hit stakes, with his debut album Brighter Days spawning no fewer than 10 singles, eight of which hit the UK top 10, not to mention the many collaborations with artists including John Newman, Paloma Faith, KATO,…

The 90s: rave culture, Britpop and a cultural move from the right to the left, all of which had an effect on the music industry at large. But as we cast our minds all the way back to 1990, the decade began with a period that felt like something of a wilderness for synthesisers. The late 1980s’ dominance of the Yamaha DX series of synthesisers created a desire for ever cleaner and more digital sounds. Manufacturers, including Yamaha, were scrambling to find the next big thing. One of the earliest of the new breed was released in 1990 from Korg. The Wavestation synth was a five-octave keyboard-based synth. Apart from an expanded polyphony of 32 notes, it also provided 16-part multitimbrility, making it an ideal companion for your software-based computer…

Step by step 1. Recreate Air’s Sexy Boy with Zebra CM 1 Start by opening your DAW, and loading an instance of our fantastic Zebra CM plugin. Head for the menu/ display at the top, click and hold, and select Init from the bottom of the menu. This will initialise the plugin, making it ready for us to create a patch. 2 The source for the sound that we want to create needs to be relatively rich in harmonic content. The default waveform on Osc1 should be a sawtooth. It’s always worth checking that this is correct at this stage, but you can expect to see this waveform already in place. 3 The recognisable vowel effect is created using a formant filter. Thankfully ZebraCM is equipped with such a filter…

Let’s start with the basics: compression squashes the loudest parts of an audio signal and boosts the quietest parts, ie reduces the overall dynamic range. Ideally, you should let a song breathe, meaning it should have some dynamics. But compression is a very useful tool used lightly. Sidechain compression is essentially when the level of one instrument causes a compressor to activate on another instrument. In this tutorial I’ll be using Logic Pro X to show you how to use sidechain compression on instruments that are competing for space in the same frequency range. There’s no better example I can think of than bass and your kick drum, but you’ll find this battle happening in other areas of the frequency spectrum too – such as your vocal sweet spot vs…

This month, every Computer Music reader can download a free sample pack worth $24.90! Yes this 3GB pack of samples and synth presets can be yours for absolutely nothing! Here’s how to claim it… When the world is going mad around you, you need to chill out and maybe make some calming music. Well, Electric Chill could well be the set of samples you need to kick-start that composition. It’s a huge pack of samples, loops and synth presets from W.A. Production. Here’s what they say about it… “We’ve been getting a lot of requests for tools suitable for more relaxed musical styles, so we were inspired to create Electric Chill for you all! So settle in and enjoy what it has to offer. “Soft keys, airy pads, and smooth…

If there is one thing you can say about this plugin, it’s that it is inspiring, in a weirdly nostalgic sense. While the lead sounds are unique and could certainly be regarded as being eerie in certain settings, the accompaniment and rhythm sections are a blend of musical, classy, cheesy and hilarious, and all in equal measure. They form part of the time capsule element of this plugin and the M-Tron is all the better for it. There have been many pieces of music that adopt the samples as a backbone; Caro Emerald’s album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor places many of these samples front and centre of not just the production, but the composition too. It has also managed to infiltrate the wider world; you’ll hear one…

Cubase is one of the longest running and most successful DAWs available. In recent times it’s successfully streamlined its performance, and through a succession of regular version updates added new and requested features. Big news In Cubase 11 we saw both new and improved plugins, enhanced content and many operational refinements. To some extent it’s the same story in Cubase 12 and we look at some of these below. However, first some big news. Cubase has finally moved away from dongle protection to a new user-based system – Steinberg Licensing. We found the transition straightforward. The new system currently only applies to new versions of softwares, so you’ll now find your Steinberg account includes two separate product categories, one for Steinberg Licensing and one for existing eLicensors. Once we’d done…

While Playbeat comes loaded with a nice bundle of free presets, it’s worth noting that three sumptuous and flavoursome packs can be downloaded for free. There’s the dark techno of Refract, and the snarling compendium of loops found within Fuse and Fuse 2. The characterful packaging of these tailored beats might inspire you to create your own, which you can with ease. Drop any folder from your computer into Playbeat, and then slide across individual samples into any of your eight slots to build personalised kits. You can then save both samples and patterns and export with your own artwork and titling. It’s easy to do and is a hell of a lot of fun. Before you know it, those loops and hits are given a new lease of life…

HYBRID SYNTHS Our synths have been created by the best software developers in the world to bring you a suite of sound-making tools for all music production scenarios u-heZebraCM • Blendable oscillator waveforms • Super-programmable step LFOs • Slick delay, reverb and chorus • Recently updated • Original synth designed just for CM • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit u-he.com u-he Bazille CM • Patchable modular synthesiser • Sequencer and Mapping Generator • Audio-rate modulation, Fractalizer • Recently updated • AU/VST 32-/64-bit u-he.com Dmitry Sches Thorn CM • Dual spectral oscillators/analogue/harmonicfilters/spectral/real-time effects/glitch sequencer and arp • VST/VST3/AU/AAX, 32-/64-bit dmitrysches.com Synapse Audio Dune CM • VA and wavetable oscillators • Powerful per-voice modulation • 12-slot modulation matrix • Based on the full version of Dune • AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit synapse-audio.com Seaweed Audio Fathom CM •…

21st Century Monos Robbie from Cyclick has cooked up two packs of 21st century synths, dividing them neatly into monos and polys. Here’s what he has to say… “Previous decades have defining synth features, be it the self-contained analogue beasts of the 70s or the buzzy wavetable/PCM digitalia of the 90s, but the the 21st century has seen a mixture of new hardware workstations, the advent of the VST and softsynths, and a whole series of rediscoveries of synths of the past. With this in mind, these two packs cover a variety of these sounds and approaches across the only universal synthesis formats: monophonic and polyphonic. “For the monophonic pack, though most of the synths used are capable of polyphony, they’ve been employed here as monosynths, whether that’s one-voice or…

Volt to Spark: UA’s new electric avenue? Spark service doesn’t need UA hardware and includes new UA instruments! There was a time when Universal Audio plugins had to be purchased as companions to their (albeit fantastic) hardware. Then, with the release of their Volt interface a few months back, things changed. It was Universal audio hardware, without the software. Now with Spark, the trend continues. It’s UA software without the hardware! No. UA. Hardware. Required. And with UA instruments! And while Spark is a subscription service (which we are always in two minds about), this is still headline-grabbing news to us. But that’s probably just us… What about existing UA users? What of the future? Are UA entering the instrument market big time? Is this the end of UA accelerated…

Providing free content is very much part of our DNA here at Computer Music. Over the years we’ve tried our very best to bring you quality sounds and practical tools that you can use within your DAWbased music making. Nevertheless, many of the CM Suite plugins have been around for quite some time and although some have achieved classic status (Synapse Audio’s Dune CM and EaReckon’s CM-COMP87 to name just two), some no longer support current operating systems. This has been particularly problematic for Mac users, with the shift to 64-bit only, and authentication issues for the last couple of OS versions. Recently, we’ve been working hard with the developers to get problem plugins updated. This process has given us a chance to reevaluate the CM Suite and appreciate what’s…

Valhalla DSP Valhalla Delay “We used this a lot, mostly for making synth chords big and wide. We put a lot of synths through a Roland Chorus Echo, which came out in mono, so used this to make that echo more complex in stereo. It’s got a great tape emulation and a lot of the time we would just send stuff through it so you could just hear the tape saturation and warbling effect. The synth arpeggios in the middle section of Falling Between The Ice are an example; the same part is on two channels, one with a big swirly delay and another dry with lots of tape saturation.” valhalladsp.com TAL Software TAL-Chorus-LX ”A great free emulation of a Juno stereo chorus. We put it on a lot of…

One of the biggest ideals in music technology during the 80s had been the development of the protocol known as MIDI. The ability to connect one MIDI-equipped device to another was proving very popular, but the concept came of age in the 90s, through the release of a number of products, led by Roland. Steered by a Japanese tradition for entertainment like karaoke, the Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas adhered to the blossoming protocol known as General MIDI. To adopt the GM kitemark, products had to conform to certain capabilities. These included the ability to play 16 different sounds, with an additional eight percussion sounds, like a drum kit. It had to offer a standardised set of 128 sounds, from pianos to pop and even sound effects, coupled with the requirement…

Step by step 2. Recreating William Orbit’s supersaw 1 Load your DAW and the ZebraCM onto a spare instrument channel. We’ll need to initialise the patch. Go to the display and menu at the top of the plugin, and select Init. This will also be a very loud patch, so reduce the master Volume to a value of 20 immediately. 2 As part of the initialised default, you should see a sawtooth wave already deployed to Osc1. To supersaw this, press the number 11, which appears within the Osc1 section. This adds a total of 11 aliased waveforms to the overall sound, emanating from Osc1. 3 As we’re going to make this sound exceptionally thick, we are going to perform the same routine, with Osc2. Click on the number 11,…

One subject that seems to cause more confusion than any other among beginners and experienced engineers alike is the real difference between compression (in its many forms and plugins) and limiting. Here, we’ll build on your knowledge of compression to explain what these subtly different tools are, how they work and how they can help you. “The rule of thumb is that if the ratio is 10:1 or higher, then the unit is considered a limiter” Limiters, levelling amps and expanders The difference between a compressor and a limiter (sometimes known as a peak limiter) is essentially very small. Both operate in a similar way, reducing the volume of a signal when its level exceeds a given threshold. The usual rule of thumb is that if the ratio is 10:1…

Habitat is the culmination of a partnership between Orchestral Tools and polymath Dominik Eulberg; apart from his professional career as a producer working in electronic music, Eulberg is also a trained biologist, conservationist, artist and author. His working environment is heavily influenced by nature, being set in the heart of Germany’s Westerwald mountain range. Habitat operates within OT’s SINEplayer plugin format, providing layering between synthetic and electronic sounds, and orchestral instrumentation. The brief for this suite is to create interesting textures and pads, but with an earthiness and degree of control that allows the user to sculpt the musical form very easily. Analogue to orchestral The patches are organised into 11 different categories; the first 10 contain instrumental elements for creating pads and textures, while the 11th category is entirely…

With three pay-for versions and two free bundled options (Ai and LE) Cubase 12 offers many entry points, and this can cause confusion, particularly when new headline features arrive. Find out more about the bundled versions here: steinberg. net/cubase/ai. Elements, Artist and Pro are all built on the same platform with a 64-bit audio engine and up to 192kHz operation. Track counts are unlimited in Artist and Pro, with Elements offering a very reasonable 64 MIDI, 48 audio, and 24 VST instrument tracks. Meanwhile Elements is limited to 24 physical inputs/outputs, Artist 32 and Pro a whopping 256. There are, of course, differences in the number of included plugins, instruments and bundled content. Thankfully a number of Cubase 12’s headline features, including Audio to MIDI chords, the new MIDI Remote…

When it comes to sampling, one of the hardest sections to replicate is the brass section. Layered with articulation and breath control, trumpets and trombones are notoriously difficult to reproduce. The new section Enter Acoustic Samples, who arrive at the party with a wealth of experience in replicating acoustic instrumentation. This library has been in the works since 2012, when they first started recording players with this title in mind – an indication of how long it’s taken to get right. The section we have here is not to be confused with the set of French horns found at the back of many orchestras. This instrumentation relates to that found in jazz, pop and funk settings. Horn sections, more often than not, include saxes. This is not the case here,…

Zenhiser Didge – Didgeridoo £33 There aren’t nearly enough didgeridoo packs out there. But, hold on to your oversized hat: that stops today. The super classy crew at the Zen HQ have come back off their gap year, and laid down some sweet parps from the didge – and the results are corking. The throaty burbling coaxed from this traditional instrument is notoriously difficult to recreate, digitally. So, this collection is a godsend for any producers wanting to add its distinct, deep and hypnotic energy to their tracks. The playing runs through all the styles and phrasing you’d ever need, leaving you with the fun task of setting it to some throbbing club beats. G’day, indeed. zenhiser.com n9/100 Mode Audio Dispersion £18 More swirling, mood-enhancing soundscapes to fog up…

Soft as Snow take on our 15 Questions challenge, in what is fast becoming the ‘Berlin-based artist’ section of Computer Music. The Norwegian duo have been lured to the city of forward-thinking music thanks to their own uncompromising sound, which mixes digital sheen with organic imperfections and distinctive vocals from Oda Egjar Starheim. They don’t use a lot of software, mind… Oda Egjar Starheim and Øystein Monsen are the Norwegian born, Berlin-based duo behind Soft as Snow. Their music has been variously compared to Fever Ray, on the softer side, and Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire on the icier side – all great reference points in our book. But the truth is that Oda’s vocals set their music apart from pretty much anything else out there, as does their production…