Innehållsförteckning för March 2017 från Computer Music

“Power up your riffing powers to pro level” Sometimes, the classic blend of epic cover feature, free plugin and killer sample pack all combine to form a triple-header that’s truly unmissable… and this is definitely one of those issues! First up, no matter what genre of music you make, it’s a track’s hook – the catchy riff, vocal, percussion loop, sample or any other focal element – that will turn an average production into something truly memorable. So, to power up your riffing powers to pro level, we’ve enlisted our top music theory and sound design experts to create the ultimate melody-writing course! Fastforward to p20 to get started. Once your hook-writing skills are well and truly sharpened, head to p54 and fire up our hot new MIDI assistant app,…

Tutorial videos High-quality videos to guide you through our tutorials. Wherever you see the icon on the left, there’s a video version to watch See this issue’s entire video content on the next pages Tutorial files A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials This digital content has been thoroughly scanned and tested at all stages of production, but as with all new software, we still recommend that you run a virus checker before use. We also recommend that you have an up-to-date backup of your hard drive before using the content. Future cannot accept responsibility for any disruption, damage and/or loss to your data or computer system that may occur while using this magazine’s programs and/or data. Consult your network…

BACK IN NAMM By the time you read this, the 20cm17 Winter NAMM Show will have taken place in Anaheim, California. It’s the traditional showcase for some of the year’s best new gear, so to find out what went down, you’ll find all the news on our sister site MusicRadar.com. FULL STREAM AHEAD They may have been criticised by certain artists for their royalty rates, but it looks like streaming services are starting to help the music industry turn a corner, with some record labels now seeing an upturn in their revenues. Throw in the vinyl revival and things are looking up. FESTIVE FREEBIES The likes of Arturia, Native Instruments and Soundtoys all offered free plugins in the run-up to Christmas, making it a boom time for those who like…

 Ask a hundred big-shot songwriters how they come up with their hooks, and you’ll get a hundred different answers. But when it comes to writing a solid, catchy earworm, two things remain consistent: first, often you just have to get lucky, and second, you’ll know it when you hear it – just like your audience. “From Beethoven to Beyoncé, the rule of simplicity holds true” Generating memorable hooks can be a challenge for even the most experienced tunesmith, and vast amounts of time have often been spent in pursuit of the ultimate hook. The challenge is to find something that’s completely unique, while at the same time fitting into the familiar musical landscape; memorable enough to be recalled, but not so infectious that it becomes annoying. So let’s run through…

ARTIST Lipps Inc TRACK Funky Town bit.ly/FnkyTn An oldie-but-goodie, this 1979 slice of disco/funk fusion is a masterclass in how to assemble multiple hooks into one smash hit 0:00 This tune’s rhythm track, from the word go, is a hook in itself, with rapid-fire, dual-tone cowbells clattering over a solid disco beat played on a live kit. At the same time, a beautiful round Moog synth bass kicks things off with an insistent eighth-note sequence of alternate octaves on C. 0:05 We’re straight in with the main synth hook: a bright, bleepy monophonic synth sound played in the mixolydian mode over the key of C major. This means that, although the song is in the key of C major at this point, the synth part has a Bb rather than…

To deliver some insights into the world of the professional hitmaker, we grabbed some downtime with one of the UK’s most versatile and prolific songwriters, Karen Poole. Beginning as one half of Brit and Ivor Novello-nominated, platinum-selling pop duo Alisha’s Attic, Karen has had over 25 Top 10 hits and has worked with artists including Kylie Minogue, Will Young, Sugababes, Annie Lennox, David Guetta, Lily Allen and many others. Her latest collaboration is the new Galantis single Rich Boy , out on January 27th. cm: Has your method / approach to songwriting changed over the last 15 years? KP: “Yes. I do more dance stuff than I’ve ever done, and we write just hooks a lot these days. I very rarely sit down with somebody on an…

Cockos Reaper cm224 » 8/10 » £225 “I love the ease of routing signals, sample rate conversion, and parameter modulation with synced LFOs, audio input, or even making one plugin control another! And then the openness of the company itself about bugs and updates.” www.reaper.fm DMG Audio Equilibrium: cm192 » 10/10 » £175 “I’ve been a friend of Dave Gamble since he worked at Focusrite when I tried to blag a Liquid Channel! I couldn’t live without DMG Audio plugins. Expurgate and Essence also appear on most of my channels at some point.” www.dmgaudio.com Slate Digital Virtual Mix Rack cm214 » 9/10 » $199 or $15/mo “I’m a beta tester for Slate. I started talking to Fabrice (Chief Coder) very early on about desk distortion while they were making VCC.…

The xx On Hold The xx have seamlessly integrated electronics into their live shows and recordings since the start, thanks to the genre-straddling presence of Jamie xx. On Hold begins in a sedate Time of my Life fashion, and then moves things up with old-school double-speed electro beats. bit.ly/XXonhold Venetian Snares Szamár Madár It’s Elgar’s Cello Concerto, but not as we know it. The Hungarian maestro has transformed the 90-year-old piece into a breakcore masterpiece, with barely a 4/4 rhythm in sight. Put simply, Elgar hasn’t been this cut up since you left that twenty-quid note in the washing machine. bit.ly/VSszamad Jack Ü Take Ü There It’s unsurprising, when you combine the assorted production flavours of Diplo and Skrillex, that you’ll end up with something both bombastic and genre-twisting. Take…

There are an increasing number of tracks making dramatic use of genre flipping to add interest. Breakdowns, builds and drops are certainly nothing new, but they’ve taken an increasingly different shape in recent years. Perhaps taking the approach of dubstep as a cue, but with the increasing influence of trap, it’s no surprise that the instant genre switch has found it’s way in to pop music. What is interesting is both the degree to which it is being used and also the manner – there are many tracks which now build the track through various stages, the emotional payoff being a switch to a stripped-down ‘drop’. This is perhaps best exemplified by a series of tracks on Skrillex and Diplo’s Jack Ü project. Whether you’re a fan of the duo…

The Reason rack has long been graced with tons of creative instruments and effects, but version 9 brings a new category of device to the virtual studio. Player Devices don’t create or process sound – instead, they handle note data, transforming shabby, uninteresting sequences of notes into inspiring, muscially satisfying results. You get three devices to take your piano roll exploits to the next level: Note Echo, Dual Arpeggio, and Scales & Chords. Each of the three is dropped into the rack, placed before an instrument device, where it intercepts the note data that would otherwise have arrived from Reason’s sequencer. Note Echo acts a lot like a standard audio delay unit, only with note information, so you can take a static, single-note input and build it up into layers…

Bounce in Place has been a long time coming in Reason. Sure, in previous versions you could take the long way round and export a loop as audio then re-import it, but this shortcut is the perfect way to start working better with audio and MIDI. It’s the 21st century, we want instant results, and now we have them via Reason’s right-click menu. Even better, the Bounce in Place functionality is perfectly complemented by the audio-to-MIDI capability that also arrived in version 9. To show just how versatile these two functions are, we’re going to take you on a circle in the tutorial on the right, starting with a MIDI file, converting it to audio, then taking the resulting captured audio and turning it back into MIDI information. It’s not…

Dave Clews In a studio career spanning almost 25 years, Dave has engineered, programmed and played keyboards on records for a string of artists including George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner and Estelle. These days, in between writing articles for and other magazines, he collaborates on occasional songs and videos with singer/songwriter Lucy Hirst, aka Polkadothaze. www.daveclews.com It’s an inescapable fact that if you want to become a better musician, learning scales is going to be a big help. Knowing your way around the major, minor and pentatonic scales works wonders when it comes to a bit of off-the-cuff soloing, and really helps to achieve more professional-sounding results when putting together tracks in your DAW. Unfortunately, an equally inescapable fact is that practicing those scales can be pretty dull, especially…

Repeater offers a rich variety of sonic flavours in the shape of a 23-strong library of core algorithms, each modelling a different type of vintage delay unit. The under-the-hood parameters affected by the Delay Model include filter calibration, feedback loop frequency response and the amount and quality of degradation introduced by the Analog mode. The line-up starts with a multitude of tape delays, from the crusty Tape Delay Ancient (a deck from the 40s), through the warmer, more coherent 60s and 70s Classic, Space Delay, Vintage and Plexy Echo models, to the “early 80s Japanese” Cassette Tape and luscious Tape Delay Modern. Representing the analogue electronic side of things, there are emulations of the Boss DM-2, Cooper Time Cube, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man and TelRay oilcan, amongst others; while the digital…

The second in their ‘stomp’ line of stompboxinspired plugins, stompFilter (VST/AU/AAX/ RTAS) sports the same brand of handsome photorealistic fascia as its stablemate, stompDelay (10/10, 232), and is built with modulation similarly at the top of the agenda. While said modulation in stompDelay’s case was of delay time, here it’s of filter cutoff, as well as volume. The modulation signals are generated by an LFO and an envelope follower, or a combination of the two, between them enabling highly controlled rhythmic frequency shaping. The stompbox angle, we suppose, comes from the single-screen interface, easy operation, and guitar pedal-style Bypass and Freeze buttons. With all of stompFilter’s knobs and switches so readily accessible and not a selection menu in sight, serious plugins don’t get much more user-friendly than this. Get moving…

Between them, VerbSuite Classic’s eight Fusion-IR libraries take in 40 years of digital reverbs, and although Slate don’t name any, the names and sounds give the game away. FG-250 is the EMT 250, the world’s first digital reverb, released in 1976. FG-480 is the Lexicon 480, famous for its beautiful modulation and still considered by many to be the greatest reverb ever made. FG-16X captures the versatile AMS Neve RMX-16 – instrumental in the sound of the 80s. FG-2016 brings the high-gloss Eventide SP2016 from 1982 to the modern DAW. FG-QRS is the rare and beautiful Quantec Room Simulator. Sony’s characterful DRE 2000 from 1981 is represented by FG-2000. FG-6000 is the spatially convincing TC Electronic TC6000. And last but… well, most, the BM7 does an incredible job of replicating…

Spark (AU, VST, AAX) is a new amp simulation from Russian developer Mercuriall. Building on their previous emulations such as Tube Amp Ultra 530, it combines amp and cabinet components with a single Stomp pedal slot (with four options), three simultaneous effects (Chorus, Reverb and Delay) and an input Noise Gate. The amps emulated are all Marshall, with a JMP Super Bass (Bass 67), JMP Super Lead (Lead 68), JCM800 (800), and AFD100 Slash Signature (AFD). In each case you get low and high level inputs (I and II), Master level, Gain and four tone controls (Presence, Bass, Middle and Treble). Much like the amps, AFD also includes a toggle switch (#34) for the JCM800 mod. For each amp, there’s a choice of preamp valves and power amp valves, and…

Mode Audio Fragment£15 330 acoustic, electronic and ‘found’ drum and percussion samples, foldered by instrument type (Kick, Snare, Shakers, etc) and rolled into 12 kits for Logic, Live and Reason. Fragment immediately nails its ‘tribal’ flag to the mast with the kicks, which are more rounded and resonant than the usual drum kit bass drums. The snares follow suit, toms are enormous, and even the hi-hats have more heft than expected. These are big, dense, intricately layered sounds that no producer in any genre could fail to have an absolute blast with. Essential. www.modeaudio.com 10/100 Zero-G Ethera Soul Edition £60 The follow-up to Ethera (9/10, 232) is a 1.4GB vocal Kontakt library packed with vocal phrases (“oohs”, “ahs”, etc) emotively and soulfully sung by Clara Sorace and featuring more in…

Step 1 On your PC or Mac, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk, then either register for a new Vault account, or log in if you already have one. Step 2 Click ‘add a magazine’ in the top bar, select the issue you want to add to your Vault (eg, this issue is 240), and answer a few simple security questions. Step 3 Go to ‘my vault’ to see all your mags – click a cover and use the links to download! You can download as much or as little as you like.…

HOW TO WRITE PERFECT HOOKS Make sure they can’t get your music out of their heads with these 21 video techniques for making your most ear-catching tunes yet Read the full article on p20 AUTOTONIC CM Keep your MIDI notes in scale with this free standalone software app for Mac and PC Read the full article on p54 DOM & ROLAND See Dom at work in his studio, divulging saintly DnB production tips as he goes Viewing instructions on p47 REASON 9 THE CM GUIDE We expose the updates to Propellerhead’s DAW Read the full article on p67 GENRE MASH-UP Make the right decisions with your stylistic collisions Read the full article on p59 cm/experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through…

“In issue 97, a little over eleven years ago, this column made its debut in Computer Music” In issue 97, eleven years ago, this column made its debut, hoping to introduce the world of trackers and the demoscene to new audiences. As the years have passed and technology has moved on, however, we feel this space will be better served by something more relevant to our readers in future editions. Don’t worry though – we’re still going to keep it niche! Without our sage guidance on the latest point-point-point updates, you can stilll stay in tune with the best in scene music with the BitJam podcast (bitfellas.org) and Nectarine Radio (scenemusic.net). For our final look into tracker music, this month we turn your attention to the latest Buzztunes podcast, which…

“We also asked if there would ever be a new type of synthesis” Many users might remember it about as fondly as a bout of gastroenteritis, but we were pretty psyched about Windows Vista back in 2007. That said, our ten-page feature – dubiously entitled Vista Bliss – actually closed with the words “For now, you’ll probably want to stick with XP”, which sort of says it all, really. In more computing news, we reported on the arrival of a mighty 32GB flash-based laptop drive, noting that such hardware was “expected to supersede traditional disks by the turn of the decade.” Last time we checked, you could still buy laptops with old-school drives in them. We also asked if there would ever be a new type of synthesis (if plugin…

Phil Day “Semitone intervals. The catchiest melodies have key motifs that contain notes a semitone apart. All scales have them – the harmonic minor is an extreme example of how the brain loves that final semitone interval. Find them and accentuate them!” Joseph McCarty “Keep it simple – less is more.” Yev Brosky “I write a hook before bedtime. If I remember it the next day, it’s catchy.” Richard E Stuart “Universally force-download your music to everyone on the planet’s iOS device without the means to remove it.” Maxime Vercruyssen “Work on it at home a few hours and check if your significant other hums it without asking.” Klaus Angus “For tech house, create a nice groove (16 bars) to make people nod their heads – at least – and…

Riffs & melodies Whether it’s a synth, guitar or vocal line, a kickass melody or repeated riff that no one’s ever heard before can make a hugely effective hook, and also give you plenty of fodder to spin out the rest of a track. Classic examples include Sweet Child O’ Mine (bit.ly/GnRsweet) and Stayin’ Alive (bit.ly/BGstayin), both hugely recognisable and repeatable. A good modern example of this is Jonas Blue’s recent hit By Your Side (bit.ly/JBbyYS), which builds itself up to a highly infectious chorus melody. Rhythm A rhythmic hook could be a drum or percussion pattern, such as the contentious one in Thicke and Pharrel’s Blurred Lines, or Justin Timberlake’s Like I Love You. In the case of the JT example (bit.ly/JTlily), the sparse backing track lets a loose…

Tons of current pop songs feature vocal samples played in a melodic fashion, often alongside traditional sung vocals. Even a cursory browse of today’s hottest hits will turn up countless examples, but try Major Lazer & DJ Snake feat. MØ’s Lean On (bit.ly/MLDSlean) for a textbook one. The squeaky, high-pitched vocal solo beginning at 2:12 is constructed from vocal notes played back in a sampler. Right at the end of the song, you can hear a brief acapella from MØ that is likely part of the source material. (And by the way, sample-spotters: the “eh-ehohh” hook at 0:49 is actually a one-shot from the Vengeance Essential House 3 sample pack!) Hooks created in this way have a hummable, singalong catchiness. To make your own, source a sustained vocal note, load…

HEADERS These display the preset scale assigned to each black key MIDI I/O Configures AutoTonic CM’s MIDI input and output settings TONIC MODIFIER Displays the root note of the currently active scale INPUT KEYBOARD Displays incoming MIDI note data in real time POWER BUTTON Turns AutoTonic CM on and off. When off, MIDI data is passed through unaltered OUTPUT KEYBOARD Displays outgoing transposed MIDI note data in real time ACTIVE SCALE The currently active scale is indicated by an illuminated yellow header OUTPUT NOTES Available notes that AutoTonic passes on to your DAW are shown in yellow SCALE MODIFIER Displays the intervals present in the currently active scale CENTRAL DISPLAY Allows access to general information, MIDI settings and online manual This month’s fab free software giveaway is a tad unusual…

Before we look at some practical examples of genre-merging, let’s look at exactly why you’d want to try and combine dissimilar musical styles in your productions. After all, many producers find success by carving out a specific niche within a certain genre… so why break a formula that already works? Well firstly, at its most basic, borrowing ideas and motifs from genres you don’t usually produce can inject an uninspiring studio session with creativity and focus, as well as help broaden your scope as a respectable musician and artist. For example, if your main remit is minimal techno, but those percussive grooves and repetitive effects are sounding a bit too monotonous, then the incorporation of reggae-style chord skanks and dubbed-out tape delay washes may fuel your creative fire and give…

01 CHAIN THEM TOGETHER OK, this is the most obvious tip out there, but player devices are made to be piped into each other. Chords & Scales into Dual Arpeggio is the most logical combination, but anything goes, including multiple versions of the same device at different points. Multiple uses should become even more clear once we’ve shown you a few more of these tips, so read on… 02 NOTE ECHO’S HIDDEN TALENTS You may just be using it as a simple note repeater, but Note Echo is a far more flexible device than you might first think. Mastering it is a case of knowing two things: first, you can deactivate any echo in the sequence by switching off the light below it, including the first light – the input…

Harmonisation and ADT Pitch Edit mode, in conjunction with Bounce in Place, gives you a new method to add extra layers to sounds. Duplicate a MIDI part and render it to audio via Bounce in Place, and in Pitch Edit mode, you can repitch in thirds, fifths and octaves while tweaking Preserve to make convincing harmonies. For an automatic double-tracking (ADT) effect, tweak the copy very slightly – change vibrato, transition times and fine-tuning pitch to add thickness. Involve the Player Devices Rendering an audio line to MIDI means you can get another one of Reason 9’s new features involved – the Player Devices! Throw a couple of player devices over your new MIDI file, and experiment with both instruments and Player Device combinations. Presets are a great idea when…

Ilpo Kärkkäinen Ilpo – aka Resound – is a veteran drum ’n’ bass producer who’s worked with many of the scene’s biggest labels. As well as being an in-demand game soundtrack artist and mixing and mastering engineer, he runs a popular production blog focused on productivity. After 20 years in the game, Ilpo still has a passion for pushing the boundaries of production. www.resoundsound.com How organised are you with your music making? For some people, being meticulously detailed seems to be in the blood. By nature, I’ve always been the polar opposite of that – I do broad strokes. My entire workflow used to be quite a mess for a long time. Tons of ideas and sketches happening within a single project, slowly and painfully forming into something with a…

Our promise We bring you honest, unbiased appraisals of the latest computer music products. Our experts apply the same stringent testing methods to all gear, no matter how much hype or expectation surrounds it. What the ratings mean 1-4 A seriously flawed product that should be avoided 5 This product’s problems outweigh its merits 6 A decent product that’s only held back by a few flaws 7 .Solid. Well worth considering 8 Very good. A well-conceived and executed product 9 . Excellent. First-rate and among the best you can buy 10 . Exceptional. It just doesn’t get any better than this! See and hear the latest software in action in our ‘2 Minutes With…’ videos! Wherever you see the icon, head straight to your DVD, the Vault download area, or…

LAYERS AND EDITOR TABS Switch between the main Layers view and the Expansion Editor PREVIEW BUTTON Audition your loop with this button, which lights up green when active LAYER MIXER Every layer has pan, level, mute, solo, mono/stereo, Lock and output controls SETTINGS Adjust MIDI triggering behaviour and more EXPANSION KIT Assign Layer regions and external samples to 16 MIDI-triggered pads LAYERS SLIDER Increase the default four Layers to five or six ACTIVITY Choose one of three levels of source material ‘busyness’ SPLIT Apply timestretching, Layer number increases, Annotations and other edits ANNOTATION TOOL Activate to mark out regions on Layers to be moved to other Layers EQ The only real-time processor available to each Layer Taking the machine learning source separation technology deployed so effectively in Drumatom (9/10, 206)…

The actual filter at the heart of stompFilter sounds fantastic – although that shouldn’t be a surprise, given the number of top notch EQ plugins in PSP’s catalogue. A resonant model, it offers 12dB and 24dB/octave roll-off slopes, and the Type knob morphs the response seamlessly from low-pass through band-pass to high-pass. The cutoff frequency is swept (from 20Hz to 20kHz) using the Frequency knob or the slider above the Envelope controls, the scale of which can be switched between frequency in Hertz and note pitch, from A0 to A9. Weirdly, you can’t jump the slider to a specific frequency by clicking without holding the Alt key first. The precise current frequency is shown in the faux LED display, which also shows the LFO speed or tempo when the LFO…

Heavyocity’s sample-based virtual instruments often benefit from one knob processors such as Twist and Punish, and the latter, which combines saturation, distortion and compression, has now been reworked into a fully fledged and fully tweakable plugin. Punish (VST, AU, AAX) has five key processors – Compressor, Saturation, Transients, Equalizer and Limiter – and aside from the global Input, Output and Mix controls at the bottom, all knobs can be assigned to the rather artistic macro-style Punish Knob in the middle. Punish includes three distinct compression types including both Class A (Console) and FET (Classic), three types of saturation including valve (Tube) and classic preamp overload (Vintage), a flexible Transient shaper with both attack level (Attack) and attack time (Hold), and flexible control of the output Limiter onset (Soft). The signal…

Mercuriall is a collaboration between software programmer Vladimir Titov and audio engineer Vjacheslav Tikhonov. Their key focus is designing highly realistic guitar amp simulations. In this quest, they took the decision to avoid traditional waveshaping or tone-matching systems, instead pursuing hardware component modelling. The downside of trying to achieve this in real-time is the big CPU hit, so they turned to a technique called artificial neural networks (ANN). This allows them to ‘learn’ a particular input/output behaviour, and once the ‘training’ process is complete, algorithms can be used to deliver a more CPU-efficient but still accurate plugin. Needless to say, they’re not only pretty proud of their achievements but also keen to spread the word, and to that end, you can download their early plugins for free and also check…

Can you feel it in the air, readers? So can we: a change is coming. As economies falter, institutions crumble and hatred divides the world, many think we’re heading into World War III. And while we wait under our beds for a huge white noise swoosh and an equally massive impact, let’s spare a few moments to consider how life imitates art. Transitioning between sections of a song is at its most effective when you give your listeners an indication, and with this huge free sample pack, you can rain disaster down onto the established order and push your track into a new direction. Build up a wall of atonal noise, scorch the musical earth with big booming one-shots, and establish a new musical order on the rubble of the…

FEATURED PLUGIN Spiral CM This exclusive plugin from Photosounder spins the frequency spectrum into a circular display labelled with the 12 musical notes. Bass energy appears in red in the centre, with higher frequencies spiralling out towards the edges. Use Spiral CM to analyse tonal content, recreate sounds, or just let it sit there lookin’ mighty fine. www.photosounder.com EQ/ FILTERS Acustica Audio Pink CM • Analogue-modelled API-alike EQ • Four EQ bands, two with shelf toggle • Output adjusts to match Input Trim • Cut from the full Pink channel strip • AU/VST/AAX www.acustica-audio.com DDMF CM EQ Pack • Two superb equalisers • IIEQ Pro CM: 19 filter types • LP10 CM: Linear phase mastering EQ • Based on commercial DDMF plugins • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.ddmf.eu eaReackon CM-EQUA 87 •…

AUTOTONIC CM Be completely in key all the time with this month’s software giveaway – see how you can get the best out of it on p54 Sample packs TRANSITION TOOLS 500 whooshes, falls, drops and more; royalty-free and in WAV format – grab them on p106 LOOPMASTERS CM240 This issue’s stack of premium-quality samples, compiled from a handful of the soundware kings’ biggest and best packs, p107 CM Plugins Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on pcm108…

Our fantastic software, samples, videos and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access to this content, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time Um cumquam rem to register new issues and download t more content. For more info, see our Vault FAQ: bit.ly/cmvaultfaq * Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault, but is made available via internet streaming. See page 47 for details.…

“We see the world as a collection of sound sources” CM How did Accusonus get started, and how would you describe the company’s philosophy? AT “Accusonus was founded by Elias Kokkinis [left] and myself. As undergraduate students in Electrical and Computer Engineering, we were both passionate about music and music technology. After graduating, we pursued PhDs in Audio Signal Processing and ended up in the same lab. We founded Accusonus right after, with the vision to use science to improve the everyday lives of musicians, producers and sound engineers. “There are three principles that define the Accusonus culture. First, we build artificial intelligence tools to empower music makers, not to replace them. Second, music has many complex dimensions and music technology has to take them all into account. Most consoles…

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty by taking a look at a few real examples of hooks from recent years. The Millennial Whoop, as it’s come to be known, was identified as ‘a thing’ recently, after cropping up over and over again in the last few years (bit.ly/millWhoop). Basically, the ‘whoop’ is an element of a vocal hook that involves a shift in the melody from the fifth note in the scale to the third note and back to the fifth once more. For instance, if your song is in the key of C major and your melody swings from a G note (the fifth note of the C major scale) down to an E (the third note of the C major scale) and back up again, there you…

8. Tonal perc Club-destined underground genres such as tech-house and techno usually forfeit obvious lead melodies, full-blown vocals and instrumentation; instead, simple percussion riffs and atonal ‘call-and-answer’ sounds are sequenced to create raw, rugged, driving drops. For a popular minimal house trick, start with a tuned electronic percussion hit such as a clave or 808 cowbell – this can either be a drum sample loaded into a sampler, or synthesised using any synth – then lay down a hyper-basic, hypnotic riff that works nicely over a simple beat-and-bass groove, forming the core melodic focus of the drop in the absence of a traditional hook. To make the perc lead’s pitch rise or fall during key sections of an arrangement, assign the sample’s pitch to a MIDI knob, then record in…

19. That bass There’s one kind of hook that’s guaranteed to screw up faces and unite a dancefloor: a fat, filthy synth bassline! In fact, genres like drum ’n’ bass, UK garage and bassline house almost entirely rely upon a simple-yet-catchy bassline doing its thing over a supporting beat. A prime example is DJ Hazard’s Bricks Don’t Roll (bit.ly/DJHbricks), a modern DnB anthem guaranteed to get a whole rave singing along. When bassline is the only main melodic element of a track, it has to work musically and rhythmically – spend plenty of time refining the timing and pitch of your notes to create a catchy bass hook that fits like a glove with the drums. One-sound riffs can get repetitive over time, so automate your basses’ synth/sampler parameters or…

INVITE AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION Anything that gets your listeners singing along qualifies as a hook, so don’t rule out catchiness for the sake of credibility. Love it or hate it, the “I get knocked down” chant from Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping ticks all the boxes when it comes to outright hookiness, cementing its status as a karaoke and wedding disco favourite pretty much for eternity. So if all-out world domination is your aim, don’t be afraid to set your sights a few notches down the coolness ladder if you need to! SUMMRISE THE SONG Get the idea behind your song across in just a few words, in combination with a melodic hook, and you’ll be well on the way to something memorable that will resonate with listeners. Try to…

“I was trying to make the album 3dB quieter than everyone else’s, but it didn’t turn out that way” Just the one of us A true DnB veteran, Dominic Angas has been making epic dancefloor anthems for more than two decades. Starting off on No U-Turn spinoff Saigon, he spent a lengthy portion of his career creating a slew of seminal tracks for the legendary Moving Shadow records, and has also had releases on Doc Scott’s 31 Records, Fierce’s Quarantine, Goldie’s Metalheadz, and his own Dom & Roland Productions. Shortly after the release of his seventh album, Last Refuge of a Scoundrel, we smuggled ourselves into Dom’s West London studio to get an exclusive look at an as-yet untitled work-in-progress track, and to ask him some important questions about his…

Today’s musical landscape is littered with multiple genres, and an increasing number of tracks that mix styles in ever more inventive ways. This cross-fertilisation is, in many respects, nothing new – the development of music over the centuries has constantly relied on new ideas and influences. In the globalised, networked, 21st-century world, things move even faster, and the speed of change means that some genres barely have time to develop before they’re subsumed by the pop production machinery or incorporated into the latest dance track. The modern take on the genre clash can perhaps be traced back to the dubplates and ‘versions’ of early reggae, though many of these also have their now origins in ska (and then reggae) cover versions of popular US R&B and soul tracks. The key…

One key way to define many dancefloor genres is by deterining their average tempo. Most styles have their own, relatively narrow BPM range – this means that one of the simplest ways of mixing genres is by speeding up or slowing down a beat from one genre to suit the new tempo of another. If everything in the track is triggered via MIDI or consists of one-shot audio samples, this can be as simple as adjusting your DAW’s master tempo; but if you employ drum loops or other longer audio elements such as vocal recordings, things get more complicated. Switching the relevant audio tracks in your DAW to some form of ‘flex’ mode will allow you to shift the tempo of the audio material quite easily, but (usually) not without…

The Reason environment has had some form of pitch-editing capability since the introduction of the Neptune Pitch Adjuster in version 1.5 of Record. Providing real-time tuning of notes in an Auto-Tune-style setup, Neptune was good enough for days gone by, when wacky, creative vocal effects were the name of the game. These days, though, clinical audio warping, editing and pitching is a standard in most DAWs, and Reason 9 has now caught up. The Pitch Edit mode is a solution for in-depth audio editing. Placed in the sequencer, it splays the notes of an audio track onto its piano roll interface, making re-timing, repitching and micro-editing of monophonic audio a familiar process. You can get to the Pitch Edit view by selecting any piece of audio…

NOW HERE’S THE THEME Night owls might want to take advantage of Reason’s new Dark Mode colour scheme, which is easier on the eyes in a dark environment. The Blue colour scheme, meanwhile, is a similar alternative for those who want something a little different. And we mean ‘a little different’. Each scheme can be accessed in Reason’s Preferences menu, and they require a restart of the program, for some reason… PULSAR DUAL LFO RACK EXTENSION Reason now comes with the Pulsar Rack Extension, which was previously a paid add-on for the DAW. Pulsar opens up the possibilities of the rack by adding modulation generators for use on anything that’ll accept them. Using Pulsar, you can connect one of the two LFO outputs to any input…

Ronan Macdonald Having previously served as Editor of drummer’s bible Rhythm as well as Computer Music, Ronan is clearly the right man for this particular gig. He’s been playing drums for over 30 years and making music with computers since the 90s. When designing your own drum kits for electronic music, it doesn’t get any more ‘from-scratch’ than building them on one-shots you’ve recorded yourself using found sounds – kitchen utensils, urban noise, industrial machinery… you get the idea. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you just how effective the technique can be by throwing together a drum ’n’ bass beat using nothing but recordings of a variety of household objects, including a box of pencils, a sofa, a large cardboard box, an even larger wooden box, a pair…

“After holding out for a few years, Steinberg have now joined the 64-bit-only crowd” MIXER UNDO/REDO Step back and forth through changes to the mix PAGE SELECTOR Toggle between faders, inserts and sends, and show or hide the MixConsole toolbar LOWER ZONE Access a truncated MixConsole and various editors from the main window SAMPLERTRACK A powerful built-in sampler offering tight project integration MIXCONSOLE! Make quick adjustment to faders, sends, etc MARKER TRACKS Up to ten tracks for storing markers and information TRANSPORT The cumbersome floating bar can now be tucked away in the lower zone forever ZONE CONTROL Reveal and hide the Left, Right and Lower Zones MEDIABAY Drag audio directly from the MediaBay into the Sampler Control Editor You can’t stop progress at the forefront of technology, and as…

“Every control in the interface is link/unlinkable, making the system supremely flexible” INPUT LEVEL Overdrive the clipping saturation circuit by up to +12dB PING PONG Route the feedback from channel to channel in Ping Pong mode DELAY TIME Set the L and R delay times, or click them in with the Tap tempo button ANALOG MODE Degrade the feedback signal with each pass SPREAD Widen the stereo image with two levels of phase offset LINK BUTTONS Every L/R parameter pairing can be run linked or unlinked FEEDACK Adjust the feedback for each channel individually COLOR Alter the tonal characteristics of the saturation circuit FILTERS Separate low- and high-pass filters are onboard for each channel MIX AND PAN Pan each channel and set its wet/dry balance With so many high-quality vintage-style…

Slate seem to be on a ‘partnering’ drive at the moment – as well as collaborating (to an unspecified extent) with D16 on Repeater, reviewed on p94, they’ve also recently joined forces with LiquidSonics to create VerbSuite Classics (VST/AU/AAX). Coincidentally, like Repeater, this also aims to emulate a range of legendary hardware effects – reverbs, this time, rather than delays. It can be bought outright, or – the vastly preferable option, in our opinion – as part of Slate’s ever-expanding Everything Bundle for a $14.99/month or $149.99/year subscription. Suite as VerbSuite Classics works its reverberant magic using LiquidSonics extremely impressive Fusion-IR technology (first seen in Reverberate 2, 9/10, cm227), which employs multisampled impulse responses to generate far more detailed early reflections and tails than are possible with static IRs. Crucial to successful…

The three saturation modes deliver surprisingly different effects, and in all cases the combination of Drive and Threshold allows you to push things to audibly buzzy levels without impacting the gain structure elsewhere, which is very handy. Subjectively, Vintage produces the most harmonics and is the most forward sounding, while Tube produces the least and is quite restrained. Modern mode sits somewhere between the two. On the analyser, both Vintage and Tube produce prominent odd and even harmonics, but the tail-off is very different. Tube mode is dominated by the first few harmonics then sees a sudden drop off, while Vintage mode has a more gradual tail-off with many harmonic distortions. Modern mode is dominated by odd harmonics, and at higher drive levels delivers plenty more while always remaining less…

The Plugins collection is a suite of complete, limitation-free instrument and effects plugins. It’s an incredible resource, boasting more than 65 pro-quality plugins that you won’t find anywhere else, all for PC and Mac, in VST and AU formats. All of the included software is created exclusively for us by respected commercial developers such as D16 Group, AudioRealism, Ohm Force, KV331 Audio, u-he, Cableguys, AudioThing, XILS-lab, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen, zplane and more. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is Plugins? Is it just freeware from the internet? No, and neither are the plugins limited or ‘crippled’. It’s a set of virtual instruments and effects created by some of the best developers in the business just for us – you won’t find this set of plugins anywhere else! Where do I get Plugins?…