Innehållsförteckning för July 2022 från Computer Music

cm How did you get into music software? AR “My parents bought me a keyboard at a very young age and supported me messing around and playing music. I’m still playing now, 30 years later! My dad has always been into technology, so we always had a computer in the house. He’d often come home from electronic markets with new gadgets and software, and he encouraged me to get involved, especially in various fields of creative software and programming. Getting hold of Cubase VST 5 was a massive turning point – going from just playing about on a keyboard to recording it into a DAW was mind blowing! After spending years dipping my toes into a bit of everything related to creative arts and technology, I wanted to bring it…

While many manufacturers and tech companies enthusiastically point to their AI-driven wares as an indicator of their cutting edge status, explorations into computer-assisted music-making have been developing since at least the 1950s. It should be made clear at the outset that the term ‘AI’ when applied to music-making encompasses a few rather different things. There’s the development of so-called ‘smart’ algorithms that we now commonly encounter in mixing or audio editing plugins. Many of these actually lean on a wealth of human experience to apply frequency-correction or normalisation presets. Elsewhere, there are those bona fide virtual brains, such as the ones driving Sonible’s stable of exemplary AI plugins, or mastering platform LANDR’s ‘Synapse’. These take a look at the specifics of your audio, and determine the best course of action,…

ILLIAC 1 1956 The unveiling of Lejaren Hiller’s Illiac Suite was a foundational moment in AI development. The computer that composed the piece – the ILLIAC 1 – was the very first ‘supercomputer’ to be used by an academic institution back in 1956. It composed the suite by organising an array of algorithmic choices, provided by Hiller. While baffling to many at the time, the work of this computer is now regarded as astonishingly innovative. DAVID BOWIE’S VERBASIZER 1995 An artist always ahead of the curve, David Bowie decided to modernise his ‘cut-up’ lyric writing technique in the 1990s. By 1995, many of Bowie’s lyrics were generated in tandem with this simple lyric-shuffling software. While not ‘smart’ per se, Bowie’s openness to creatively collaborating with technology while writing offered a…

Sonible Smart:EQ 3 Mac/PC £107 At the summit of Sonible’s respected Smart series, sits Smart: EQ 3. This perceptive software carefully considers a sound or full mix’s characteristics, and effectively EQs it to perfection. Its intelligent cross-channel processing allows it to understand how multiple channels are affecting each other. sonible.com Oeksound Soothe 2 Mac/PC £165 One of our favourite plugins of recent years, Soothe 2’s sharp mix detective work allows it to be considered within the bracket of ‘intelligent’ in our view. Scanning your mix, Soothe 2 isolates problematic resonances and gives them the boot, and saves time laboriously notching the EQ by hand. oeksound.com Mastering the Mix Mixroom Mac/PC £49 Sitting on the boundary between ‘meticulously programmed’ and ‘intelligent’, Mixroom takes a look at the picture of your sound…

Striking a balance between technical skill and inspired, creative flair is often a crucial aim when trying to launch a career as a composer. Too technical, and your work runs the risk of being perceived as soulless. But, if your music is too untethered from convention, loose, and pigeon-hole evading, then you’ll have a much harder time finding listeners. This is doubly true when it comes to the world of professional soundtracking. Very often, those working in the soundtracking domain are provided with a brief (or pitch to one). Typically, the required music needs to fit the right ‘feel’ that the project (be it film, TV, video game or advertisement) requires. This has been the norm for professional soundtrackers for decades. Now, with the startling rise of AI-based music platforms,…

Despite the numerous AI platforms which serve up routes to auto-generate functional music, many artists who have overtly worked with AI have approached the concept via more individual means. Take Holly Herndon, the Berlin-based composer and musicologist who recently created her own intelligent musical accomplice. Dubbed ‘Spawn’, this vocal-sample generator was taught by Herndon and partner Mat Dryhurst to reproduce a bank of vocal-types (including her own) via months of training its complex neural network. Spawn was able to organically add vocals to tracks presented to it. Though, as Herndon told Art in America, the process is still finding its feet: “AI is not that smart, it’s very low fidelity, it’s not real time, it’s very slow and unwieldy. Spawn can take more than 24 hours to process someone’s vocal…

Step by step 1. Building responsive reverb with Adaptiverb 1 Adaptiverb is among the most impressive of AI plugins. Unlike other Reverb plugins, Adaptiverb isn’t designed to give you replications of spaces, but rather modify itself naturally to your track. 2 Taking a top down look at the plugin’s UI, we can see its main view is divided into several specific sections, with Input/ Output on the top left and right respectively, and a large X/Y grid in the centre of the view. 3 This X/Y panel lets you adjust two parameters of Adaptiverb at once, dragging the speck of light horizontally adjusts parameter 1, while vertical dragging affects parameter 2. 4 On one side of the X/Y panel we can see the Bionic Sustain Resynth, a new type of…

In the past decade, the 808 electronic percussion sample has seen a resurgence in many genres. Once upon a time the association was purely ’80s, because the samples get their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine, manufactured at that time. The drum sound is very distinctive – defiantly synthetic rather than realistic – and heavily associated with danceable music. The bass samples are equally recognisable. But more recently, 808s have been a staple of the mainstream 2010s hip-hop sound and taken on new associations. Oozy bass and sub-bass are a defining part of this overall sound. Other genres such as trap and drill have also used 808s extensively. In fact, these genres/sub-cultures are as synonymous with 808s as drum & bass is with breaks. As a consequence, it’s meant…

“There’s no substitute for taking your setup out there and playing some gigs; it’s the only way to truly get a handle on what works and what doesn’t. You could spend ten years tweaking your live rig in your bedroom, or on the living room floor, but just one gig will change the way you see and hear everything. This kind of revamp is part of the experience; nobody gets it right first time. These things can’t be done in a vacuum. And let’s not forget, artists are typically restless and inquisitive, and keen to move on to the next thing! There are always reasons to put off gigs as well – ‘I’m not ready, I don’t have the right gear’ – that kind of thing, but the bottom line…

Step by step 2. Recreating a Calvin Harris square bass sound 1 Plug ZebraCM into a channel within your DAW. Initialise the patch by going to the drop-down menu display and selecting Init from the bottom of the menu. Then go to the master Volume control, on the bottom right, and reduce it to the 12 o’clock position. 2 The main timbral source for the sound is a square wave, so click and hold on the waveform display, and drag the mouse upwards until you see a square wave. In the case of a square wave, this will be a value of 2. 3 We are going to use Osc2 in a slightly different capacity, but we still need to set it to a square wave. Drag the waveform until…

For any composer, musician or producer already ensconced in the UA hierarchy, there may be little need for persuasion when it comes to describing the qualities of their plugins. Even the most basic of compressors, such as the 1176 and LA-2A plugins, have become indispensable within many productions. The problem is, they sound so good that many of us feel that nobody else has quite hit the mark so far! But here is the UA conundrum; by UA’s own admission, their non-native UAD plugins have always been considered plugins for post-production work. That’s all very well, but the reality is that with the current way that most of us work, we write music and plug in effects as we go. The danger with UA’s non-native plugins is that the more…

Since Arturia’s launch in 1999, the Grenoble-based synth crafters have been regularly delivering refreshingly innovative products, expanding far beyond formerly conventional ideas of synthesis. While remarkably accurate software versions of classic hardware synths can be found in the company’s robust libraries, such as the bursting-at-the-seams V Collection, Arturia’s central aim – to broaden the horizons of music makers – has also seen them producing a slew of vibrant sound manipulating tools. Releases have included versatile compressors, filters and delays, such as the expansive Delay Eternity, and most importantly, their electrifying wavetable synth wonderland, Pigments. It’s in this same spirit of creative sound design, that the company presents Efx Fragments, a granular reshaper which allows users to extract new playing fields of sound via the power of granular processing. “The immediate…

Noise is a curious thing! Ever since the digitisation of audio, at least from the moment the concept went mainstream, it didn’t take very long for musicians and the public at large to complain that digital audio just sounded too… digital! To be fair, in those early days, much of this was down to the presence of early digital to analogue convertors, which vastly improved in latter years. Lest we forget, the CD format was locked off at a mere 44.kHz and 16 bits. Things have moved on, and while it’s accepted that any half-decent audio interface will sound sublime, there has been a sizeable calling for noise and ambience to find its way back into music. This could be as simple as a humming guitar amp, or hiss from…

If there’s one aspect of track-crafting that producers prattle incessantly about (aside from countless other things) it’s vocals. Wildly variable from one track to the next, processing and treating vocals is a distinct art, tangential to the fundamentals of music production. With auto-tuning and vocoding software now cycling back into vogue, software like Waves OVox and Antares AutoTune Vocodist gift modern producers simple, all-in-one methods of achieving the skewered, robotic vocal edge that so many pop-pickers go giddy for these days. But, when it comes to conventional vocal polishing, the numerous compression, gating and reverb choices may seem perplexing to those ill-at-ease with human voice-shaping. Enter Leapwing Audio, they of innovative dynamics compressor DynOne, soundstage widener StageOne and the inspiring, Al Schmitt – that incredible, preset bottled-assortment of the sublime…

John Newman’s career is already full of number one hits and million-selling albums, but his ethos has always been to move on to the next thing, and with his latest releases he’s certainly doing just that. After starting out in music while studying in Leeds, Newman moved to London and ended up singing with Rudimental on their number one Feel The Love which kick-started a hugely successful solo career. He enjoyed four huge hit singles from the platinum and chart-topping album, Tribute, while its follow-up, Revolve, strayed further into dance, house and disco genres. After taking a break from the industry, Newman is now back with what he describes as ‘v2.0’ and a completely new dance-orientated direction. It’s a risk, but really a continuation of how he started out… “I…

One of the principal benefits of AI in the compositional domain is its ability to conjure up new ideas beyond the staid ruts we all find ourselves getting into as the years go by. The imperative to shake up standard creative pathways – exemplified by chord-sequence suggesting software like Amadeus Code and the intricate arrangement-shaping of Orb Composer – long predates the advent of AI. Way back in the early 1950s, experimental composer John Cage created his extraordinary Music of Changes by marking passages from the ancient numerical generator, the I Ching, and applying its complex symbol system to musical elements like tempo, sound density, dynamics and a whole lot more. Skip forward to the 1970s, and ambient titan Brian Eno used the much more to-the-point ‘Oblique Strategy’ cards, each…

Now well into the 2020s, we’re awash with ways to make release-quality music at home, via user-friendly DAWs, expansive sample libraries and fine-tuning mix plugins. But, despite access to tools that enhance audio and tackle the mixing and mastering process solo, these disciplines still call for some hefty prerequisite knowledge. While learning the intricacies of music production is something we’re always keen to promote in this mag, companies like Zynaptiq and iZotope noticed that for the many time-devouring processes, the application of AI could not only provide footbridges over the numerous pitfalls of production, but also solve issues that human beings found a challenge. “The terms ‘AI’ and ‘Smart’ are really primarily used for marketing purposes, which is useful as the terms convey the product idea very clearly on a…

“I’ve yet to hear a piece of AI-generated music that is either breathtakingly beautiful, or very surprising,” says composer Robert Laidlow, in an interview with Science Line. Though Laidlow admits to using AI assistive software himself, the notion of AI one day fully supplanting human composers is one that even the developers of these existing platforms dispute. “I think what AI is going to excel at is creating soundtracks for use cases [that] human labour cannot scale,” says Pierre Barreau, the CEO of Aiva. In an interview with Globant, Pierre continues, “for example, video games have hundreds of hours of gameplay, and yet only two hours of music, which means that the same tunes loop over 50 times in the ears of the gamers”. While human composers – with all…

When we look back at the sounds used in music production over the last 30 years or so, there are certain seminal elements that seem to keep coming around, continuing to offer a contemporary angle on production, despite the fact that their origin harks back many years. One such sound is the patch which is often referred to as the Tong organ. So called, because of its organistic qualities, the Tong patch emphasises the harmonic from the series that reproduces the 5th above the note being played. It’s the principle on which Hammond organ drawbars operate, hence the association with the organ. However, it is entirely possible to create a similar sound using a subtractive synth, and that is our guiding principle today, using ZebraCM. Some iterations of this form…

soothe2 £169 “This is a dynamic EQ plugin, but it’s much more than that, it can be used quite creatively. I used it for the lead line of Terrain (see Further Listening), where there’s a synth sound that’s almost like a vocal line. It sounded too harsh coming out directly from the synth, so I applied soothe2, fiddled with the settings, and it did, something – I don’t know how to describe it, something quite strange to the sound of it. It was almost as if the sound inverted itself somehow.” oeksound.com PaulStretch (£free) “This is one of my favourite plugins – it’s a really beautiful extreme stretch algorithm. You get this stunning cathedral-like effect. Everything sounds haunting and maybe a little bit religious. And I kind of like the…

While we could regard the 1990s as the decade when the computer earned its stripes for the first time, at least in terms of music technology, what was to follow would see the computer adopt a central role for just about every element of music production: from instruments and effects, to mastering and mixing. I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC! Since the dawn of Apple and the appearance of Microsoft Windows, the battle for computer supremacy at the start of the century was longstanding and at times, quite bitter. The Macintosh computer had largely taken over the mantle from the Atari ST, as the predominant force for music production in the professional arena. The PC, with its varying internal architecture, meant that some users experienced problems, with reports of…

01 RISE OF THE DAW While digital audio workstation software existed pre-’00s, its rise has exponentially contributed to the democratisation of music production. While the plugin VST came to fruition in the ’90s, it was the ’00s when we started to see third-party companies producing software synthesisers that would rival hardware. Now hardly a track is produced without plugins, infiltrating all aspects of the production, from sound creation to mixing and mastering. 02 MINIMOOG VOYAGER Bob Moog’s Voyager was first launched in 2002, remaining in production for 13 years. It adopted the classic architecture of the original Minimoog, but included new elements of control via MIDI, as well as the addition of LFO, meaning that you could apply for vibrato, while using all three oscillators as a sound source. Many…

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2 Mac/PC £316.00 Possibly the most prolific plugin of the last 10 years, Spectrasonics continue to strive to keep it relevant by adding additional content on a regular basis. Its multi-timbral format, with an extraordinary level of control through hardware integration from a host of synthesisers, Omnisphere recently entered a new era with its ability to host the new Sonic Extensions libraries. Stunning sounds in an exceptional format. spectrasonics.net Native Instruments Komplete 13 Mac/ PC £539.00 NI’s Komplete, now in its v13 format, exemplifies the variety available in the plugin arena. With all the included content reputed to cost in excess of £6,000, Komplete represents exceptional value, while providing a plethora of content from audio and production plugins, to synths and acoustically-derived instruments. Highlights include sample suite Kontakt,…

French plugin developers BLEASS started the year with the launch of Omega, an easy-to-use four-operator FM synth. Working on Omega gave the company the opportunity to embark on a deep exploration of FM, which led to an interesting idea: using FM as the sound-processing engine in an effects processor. That idea is now realised in the form of Phase Mutant, a new effect plugin for Mac, PC and iOS. FM FX “Working on Omega gave the company the chance to embark on a deep exploration of FM” The notion of using FM techniques in an effect processor isn’t entirely original – see Logic Pro’s Phase Distortion effect and Kilohearts’ Phase Distortion plugin, both of which allow an audio signal to modulate itself. Phase Mutant can do this too, but it…

Exploring some of the pack’s ready-made presets indicates how far down the rabbit hole you can go. Choosing from this enticing platter is a good starting point. The presets are divided into Efx Fragments’ central areas of sonic concern, and we can switch between Delay, Filter, Modulation, Pitch, Reverb and Other ready-made preset menus. You can also search by instrument type, production technique and a lot more, or you can make your own presets. While these ready-made tasters are wildly different, from the ethereal silky swells of Lush Planet, to the computer breakdown of Data Repeater, a few seconds of manual tweaks suddenly lands our ears in very different territory indeed.…

From Output’s ‘reverse engine’ Rev, to Initial Audio’s invitingly simple Reverse to that ever-handy ‘Rev’ button in Ableton Live, playing our instruments backwards is a lot less of a big deal in 2022 than it used to be. Only a few decades ago, reversing recorded music (and re-engineering it to make it useful) would have called for the delicate hands of a tape operator, and precision sequencing. Today, we’re all but drowning in new ways to creatively reverse, treat and build up whole tracks around backwards-flowing audio. Appearing to be yet another of these straightforward tools to add to an ever-growing pile, Sinevibes Skew’s methods of not just reversing audio, but granting deeper wiggle room to manipulate the type of rhythmic effects we can extract from it, surprised us with…

Cyclick Futuristics As we tackle the heady subject of A.I. in our cover feature, there really is only one theme for our all-new sample packs: the future! Robbie from Cyclick Samples put together this first dystopian set… “Who knows what the future will hold, but there is one thing of which we can be certain: it will be futuristic. With this profound thought in mind let’s break down what’s in this sample pack. “AlienTech [One Shots] The source is a synth programmed in a non- musical way. A general umbrella under which an array of odd, non-earthly sounds gather. “Atmos [One Shots] A selection of non-looped atmospheric sounds, with no transients or distinct elements. “NewWorldAtmos [Loops] Looped sounds originating from the process started with the Atmos samples. Any oscillators are…

If your parents are old skool ravers and insist on dragging you on family trips to Glastonbury every year, there’s a good chance that music is either in your blood or so much part of your life that you will end up making it. And that’s the case with Emily Nash, although, as we’ll see below, it was more a case of not being able to do maths that forced her into music full time. Either way she must be pleased with her chosen vocation as it’s already led her debut singles to be highlighted on Radio 1 and Kiss, led to high profile remixes of Little Mix and Navos and a deal with none other than Ministry Of Sound. Her first release on the label, the excellent Haunting, came…

Aye, aye Captains It’s an epic set of tools from the Captain’s table, and apt for this AI issue… With a large section of this very magazine dedicated to the terrifying prospect of artificial intelligence in music production – actually it’s not really that scary – it’s fitting that our lead story brings together some leading titles in the field into one Epic bundle. Captain Plugins Epic is its name and with it you get help with creating just about every part of your music, from basslines to leads, beats and more… Captain Plugins Epic has five ‘patented’ titles from the fantastically named Captains series, including Captains Chords, Melody, Deep, Beat and Play. There’s also a host of extra tools thrown into the bundle that you wouldn’t get buying the…

Had we been discussing artificial intelligence a decade or so ago, we’d have still been whispering in hushed tones, like the machines were listening, waiting to leap on us Terminator style, then rip us to shreds and take over the world, laughing in robotic Daft Punk-style voices. But that was a decade ago. Now A.I. seems to be part of our everyday lives, like the (irritating) phone systems we use when calling banks, the facial recognition software used on phones, the speech recognition used by Siri, plus endless other, frankly not that terrifying advances. Self-driving cars are probably not that far off, self-driving planes are already up there, and drones are developing minds of their own. And as scary as all this sounds when you type it like that, we…

While throughout these pages, we’re determined to emphasise the good that AI and smart algorithms can bring to the table, there are still many who baulk at the idea of a future wherein a multitude of mechanical minds sculpt and pen our tracks. While those music-generating platforms face considerable contempt from some, others direct their ire at the automation of smart algorithms. Mastering platforms come under particular fire. While the continual advancement of the algorithmically-driven platforms such as LANDR and eMastered leads them to get smarter, the companies themselves offer an olive branch to traditional jobbing mastering engineers. As eMastered’s Colin McLoughlin told The Verge in an interview, “For the absolute best mastering, a traditional mastering engineer will always be the ultimate option.”…

Accusonus ERA Bundle Mac/PC From £7.45 per month An acclaimed collection of uniformly smart tools that are designed to handle such processes as noise removal, voice deepening, auto-EQing, reverb removal and de-clipping. Accusonus’ swiss army knife of sonic sculptors provide a perfect control centre for audio repair, with the Audio Clean-Up Assistant granting a top-down view of its wares. accusonus.com iZotope RX9 Mac/PC From £95 Perhaps the closest to being the ultimate example of AI-as-audio engineer. RX9 is well-equipped to both judge and fix even the muddiest, messiest and most low-res audio. With a whole armada of smart plugins in its stable, the Repair Assistant is continually on hand to give instant feedback on what’s been detected, and action needed. It’s not been stumped yet. izotope.com Adobe Audition CC Mac/PC…

iZotope Ozone 9 Mac/PC From £95 One of the modern mastering engineer’s most trusted tools, Ozone 9 can automatically create EQs that match the frequency spectrum of your project, as well as intelligently handle loudness levels on the fly. Aside from its advanced brain, Ozone 9 also provides a huge array of fine-tuning options for the skilled engineer. izotope.com Zynaptiq Master Bundle Mac/PC £479 A suite of three high-powered AI mastering plugins from the innovators at Zynaptiq. The three plugins – Unfilter, Intensity and Unmix: Drums – rectify EQ, beef up the loudness and clarity as well as underline your drums respectively. Manual control is available too, but you’ll be impressed by the suite’s ‘auto-magic’ abilities. zynaptiq.com Leapwing DynOne Mac/PC £179 With its intelligent and very discerning attack and release…

Orb Producer Suite 3 Mac/PC From £127 A multi-faceted, AI-driven toolkit for composers. Orb Producer Suite provides a raft of chordal, melodic, instrumental and structural suggestions with which you can further build out and create your own track. Designed to assist rather than take over matters completely, it invites you to work alongside an AI creative collaborator. orb-composer.com Soundraw.io From £12 per month In a similar way to Ecrett, Soundraw takes a few directions before crafting up to 15 tracks based on your input, ready for you to cycle through and select for your project. The platform even has a Google Chrome extension so that you can create, edit and download without leaving your browser. soundraw.io Ecrett Music From £3.74 per track With its AI equipped to deliver royalty-free background…

It doesn’t take much to put together your own music production setup now, and it doesn’t even need a dedicated room, maybe not even a whole table! We’ve all heard the stories about successful artists who thrive on simple home set-ups. What’s even better is that the small production set-up can become the live rig as well. Even video, which used to be complicated and expensive, has become more democratic and accessible, as projects become ever cheaper, more reliable, and more portable. In fact, most venues have a projector now, and it’s usually just a matter of checking ahead regarding cables and adaptors for your computer. Halina Rice is an outstanding example of an artist who endeavours to bring an immersive experience to venues where it might not otherwise happen,…

Step by step 1. Mimicking Bruno Mars’ ’00s take on the ’90s 1 Open your DAW and place an instance of the Model 84 plugin into an instrument channel. There is no easy way to initialise a patch on the Model 84, so we’re going to start with a patch which is close to the sound we want. Load patch A11 Brass, from the patch browser. 2 At this stage, it’s probably a very good idea to save our patch under a new name. Click on the drop-down menu at the top left of the plugin, and select ‘Add Preset’. This will then open a text field and allow you to name your patch. We’re using the patch name 18k. 3 We’re going to add some sub-oscillator to the main…

Speak to any audio professional working within the realms of audio production or music composition, and the chances are they will have used Universal Audio plugins at some point. With an enormous catalogue, encompassing vintage and contemporary classics alike, it’s possible to emulate the sound of circuitry from the likes of Neve, SSL and Moog, with utterly alarming accuracy and detail, and all from within the software domain. UA’s audio units The ethos related to their extensive plugin platform, has always been to rely on their appropriately equipped hardware for plugin processing, thus relieving your computer’s CPU of the heavy lifting. Once upon a time, this was a sound option, but with the advent of faster computing, the necessity for an external device to take up the slack has seemingly…

Phase Mutant includes a number of synth-style parameter modulation options. These take the form of a pair of LFOs, an envelope generator and a step sequencer, each of which can be mapped to any two modulation destinations. The LFOs offer up a choice of six different waveforms, and they can run freely, or be synced to your DAW. The envelope is a simple AR affair, and is triggered by transients in the input audio. Most interesting is the step sequencer. This can have up to 16 steps, with step length adjustable from four bars all the way down to 1/64th note (a hemi-demi-semi quaver, to be precise). Each step can create and output a fixed value, or a slope between values, which makes this a perfect tool for creating grooving,…

There’s a degree of creative carnage bound up with any piece of equipment that feels like it belongs to a bygone age, and that’s the spirit of Noises, the new creation from AudioThing, in collaboration with electronic artist Hainbach. What’s that Noise? Noises is an audio instrument; that’s right, we said instrument! There have been many previous plugins that apply noise to a clean signal. These may include tape noise, saturation distortion, or even the sound of the needle on the record. But Noises is different, as it offers far more than a simple audio effect. “There have been many previous plugins that apply noise to a clean signal. But Noises offers far more” When you open the plugin for the first time, it looks beautiful! Some of us are…

Hyper UK Garage & 2 Step £30 [Lifts velvet rope]. You’ve been granted VIP access to some real tip-top 2-steppy goodness here. With all the dope drums and melodies on offer bound for so many reloads, you’re going to frazzle the motor in your 1210’s. Also along for the ride is an abundance of awesome bass loops and hits, some real groove-flipping percussion layers, and more than a handful of dance-igniting vocal phases to help you kick start your next rude and rolling UKG anthem. The mood inside this throwback set swings from sweet as chocolate and sincere, to super scrappy and hyper funky. And everything else in this 132bpm pack is built to add that classic bump and flex to your garage-ready productions. samplemarket.co.uk n9/100 Zenhiser Plush – Organic…

Outer Space We’ve gone out of this world with our new and classic sample packs this issue. Here are two classic packs from issue 290, produced by Cyclick and Groove Criminals. Robbie Stamp from Cyclick says of his set… “Space is the place with hits and loops to evoke the cold, eery vastness beyond our small planet. The sounds are very much in the sound design category but many will find a home as beds and incidental transition sounds in many music genres. Here’s what’s in those folders… Cosmic Oscillations – Arturia, ARP2600 and Moog Modular through distortion, reverbs, modulation and filtering. Event Horizon – The event horizon of a black hole. Needless to say that the Eventide Blackhole reverb was used. Heavy Atmos Loops – Dark, brooding noise and…

Get a great vocal (without a singer) ONSALE WED 15 JUNE It’s probably the most common problem we all face: we can’t sing, but want great vocals. Next issue, we’ll show you the answer to getting great vocals sans a singer. And it’s software! Of course it is (and a great set of samples – also supplied). So don’t worry about egotistical vocalists. You don’t need them anymore – just buy this issue! PLUS! Vocal samples! Our best vocal collection ever, 1500 vocal samples! Reviews The latest EZDrummer and Baby Audio’s Crystalline on test More how-tos Back to basics on metering and odd ways to make bass!…