Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från Computer Music

cover feature / techno From the foundational DIY sounds of its Detroit-based origin story to today’s slickly produced floorfillers, techno is one of the most pivotal genres within the electronic music sphere, defined by stable four-to-the-floor rhythms, squealing leads and throbbing, impactful bass. Within the following pages we’re going to explore modern techno and highlight how you can get your footing in this most colorful of genres. To grasp techno’s centrality to the modern scene, it’s important to get a little context on the genre’s birth. The genre was invented by The Belleville Three – Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, and ’80s Detroit culture had a profound influence on these three innovators, whose early compositions may have been influenced by a fascination with futuristic ideas and machines. Juan…

Delay lines form the basis of quite a few effects, and each individual technique is worthy of its own masterclass. This month we’re looking at how we can use short delays. When we mention delay as an effect it usually conjures up images of long repeating style echoes, or even spins (which we covered back in Masterclass #2). But much shorter delays can also be very handy. As we discovered when looking at adding width (in our first Mix Masterclass), when we combine delayed and original signals, if the delay is very short (less than about 30ms) it’s impossible to differentiate the two signals (the Haas effect). Here, we’ll be looking at delays that are a little bit longer than that from around 40ms to 100ms, but are still shorter…

Mastering can be a complicated business, especially for anyone working within the confines of their home studio, so having all of your mastering tools available in a single plugin has to be enticing? Music Hack’s latest plugin hopes to provide just that. Its stated aim is to reside on the backend of your DAW’s output, soaking up a number of mastering processes in a single instance. All the mastering components are presented in a simple format, which could change the way that you approach mastering in the DAW. Musik Hack encourages you to remove any additional plugins from the master bus, before activating Master Plan. Once you load the plugin, it is pretty easy to see why that is; in spite of its relatively small and petite working area, there…

> Free software > This month we’re very excited to bring you a new addition to the CM Suite. Beat Slammer is a new beats-and-drum-focused compression plugin from developer Baby Audio, and is yours for free with this issue. Baby Audio is a developer with an increasingly significant portfolio that includes excellent creative processors such as Smooth Operator intelligent signal balancer, Crystalline reverb, BA-1 analogue modelled synth and TAIP, the AI-powered tape simulator. They also have a decent selection of one-knob-style freebies, if you want to just try them for size. Anyone who likes parallel compression will have spotted their original I Heart NY plugin and its latest version, IHNY-2, takes simple, powerful parallel compression to the next level. It’s IHNY-2 that forms the basis for Beat Slammer, and although…

Make AI work for you to improve your mixes Next month we go against the doomsayers and emphasise how the new generation of AI-based plugins and software can aid you to become a better producer and enhance your mixes. Instead of replacing humanity, this is how to make AI work for you! PLUS! INFEKT The dubstep devil on his love of Bitwig and crafting drops Free samples Go back in time with an all-new pack of retro 8-bit samples On test UVI Opal, Sound Particles SkyDust 3D, SSL Subgen + more!…

Love, peace and Harmonia The latest addition to Cherry Audio’s ever-swelling arsenal, Harmonia cribs from wavetable synths of yesteryear… Cherry Audio has unveiled an all-new wavetable synth plugin – Harmonia has been inspired by the classic vector and wave sequencing synths of the ’80s and ’90s, building on these foundational techniques via a modern architecture that incorporates additive synthesis. The resulting sound, as the company describe it, is “lush, evolving and polyphonic”. Harmonia is equipped with two sample-based oscillators, each of which can generate up to eight pitches using waveforms in the plugin’s library. These pitches, or harmonics, can then be tuned individually to create harmonically complex timbres. The volume of each of these harmonics can also be tweaked individually, adjusted collectively through a handy slider, or even modulated to…

Pendle Poucher is the musical and creative force behind Sound Dust. As a successful media composer, in his own right, his music embraces tradition and quirkiness in equal measure, which might explain the stance of many of his software instruments. They call him the Wanderer The basic concept of Plankton Drummer begins with a bunch of superbly captured drum samples, drawn from acoustic and electronic sources. These even include a couple of drum machines owned by Orbital. The samples are then organised into a fairly traditional triggering layout: on a keyboard, C is the kick, E is the snare, and so on. These traditional instrument names don’t put in an appearance though, in favour of onomatopoeic interpretations, so kicks are described as ‘Boom’ and snares as ‘Smack’. The drum sound…

Classic Techno To accompany our feature, we asked Oli from Groove Criminals to ressurect techno’s year zero. Over to him… “We’ve been influenced by the classic techno sounds of Detroit and Berlin this month and lent towards the more rhythmic elements. Beats-wise, we gave the RD-9 a good run out including using the individual outputs to process different drum sounds through various effects. “Our faithful TR-8 has the 707/727 expansion so we also included some beats based around those sounds to reflect those machines’ influence in early techno. We’ve included plenty of drum hits to let you build your own beats and some tasty percussive synth loops to layer up. “Synth-wise, we’ve leaned into some FM tones for that metallic edge using both Dexed and the Volca FM and also…

Interface : Hi Nuno, can you give our readers a short overview of SkyDust 3D, what it brings to the table for spatial audio-composers? Nuno Fonseca: “SkyDust 3D is a modern and powerful synth, but what makes it unique is the fact that it has a 3D sound engine fully integrated inside the synth. This means that anything (MIDI, EGs, LFOs, Sequencer, etc) can control 3D panning. For instance, imagine that you want a note to start at the back, attacks to the centre, sustains on the side, and releases above your head. Or having eight oscillators per-note, where each oscillator plays at a random position around you (1 note = 8 ‘objects’ in space). Or using an LFO to make sound jump around you. Or using the modulation wheel…

Nothing conjures up the vintage sound more than analogue tape. While the days of huge reel-to-reel multitracks have become the preserve of a few choice studios, ‘real’ tape delays are enjoying a renaissance, both hardware and software forms. The popularity of sounds from vintage machines, like the tape-based Mellotron, continue to be exploited in a number of production circles. This beast of a machine was an early form of sampler, before sampling went digital. Playing a note on the Mellotron’s keyboard would activate a tape-rolling mechanism, where the recording of a chosen instrument would be replayed, in real-time, by tape! But even in contemporary live settings, there have been attempts by artists such as Nine Inch Nails to use cheap and cheery cassette-based 4-tracks, to replay pre-recorded chords, using the…

ua electra 88 vintage keyboard studio Universal Audio work with some of the biggest classic music gear brands to produce component-level software emulations of the highest calibre. Until earlier this year you needed UA hardware to run them, but in February UA announced three plugin bundles that ran natively in any DAW – no hardware required. Select plugins were also made available natively to buy individually and this list has been growing ever since. This all-new Electra 88 is a brand new UA instrument, and an emulation of a 1974 Rhodes Eighty Eight Suitcase Mark 1 electric piano. It also runs natively in any Mac and PC DAW, and you can buy it for £$299 or as part of a UAD Spark subscription ($19/month or $149/year) this gets you Electra…

Despite its initial focus having been more directed towards developing apps and AUv3 plugins for iOS devices, French developer BLEASS has now firmly established itself in the desktop arena too, with all of its wares available for both desktop – and iOS – based users. A new addition to this burgeoning collection is BLEASS Voices, which is a powerful and flexible 12-voice harmoniser. Intelligent transposition As a harmoniser, Voices is of course heavily geared towards use with vocals, but its ability to generate up to 12 independent harmonies from a single monophonic input, and to even output each harmony line through its own mix bus, ensures the plugin is useful in many other scenarios and contexts. The inclusion of a super low-latency Real Time processing mode adds to this flexibility,…