Innehållsförteckning för June 2024 från Computer Music

Free software It’s always exciting when we get to give away a synth, and this month’s offering is an absolute corker. Inphonik RYM2612 (VST, VST3, AU, AAX, Apple Silicon and Reason Rack) makes an excellent addition to your sonic toolkit and this £44 synth is yours absolutely free with this issue! Boutique developer Inphonik (inphonik.com) has a love for the obscure and RYM2612 is a perfect example. Based on the sound chip found inside a number of classic games consoles, and most notably the original Sega Mega Drive, RYM2612 is an FM synth with heaps of character. The OPN2 chip (YM2612) was designed by Yamaha to bring its own FM-operator-based synthesis system to a broader market, and to that end it’s essentially a self-contained 6-voice synthesis system with four operators…

vocal effects It might feel like a relatively new concept within the production psyche, but the process that we describe as ‘hard-tuning’ has been around for nearly 30 years. Back in 1997, audio software company Antares released a new piece of software which it called Auto-Tune. Its sole purpose was to analyse an incoming audio signal, before correcting any imperfections in its pitch in real time. Prior to this, it was not uncommon for studios to play vocal parts into samplers, and correct serious tuning anomalies using the production equivalent of keyhole surgery. It was a labour-intensive process, and one that Auto-Tune eradicated overnight. Moreover, the product name became an adjective, mistakenly applied whenever an artist used pitch correction software (much like the famous Hoover/vacuum cleaner paradigm). Rock-solid tuning It…

01 GET A MIC If there is one thing that you will need to get the most out of your electric vocal propositions, it’s a microphone. Strictly speaking, any microphone can do the job, but some microphones are better than others, and it doesn’t always mean that you have to spend a fortune. Vocoders take very kindly to dynamic microphones, whereas condenser microphones will be a better choice for recording into your DAW. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get impressive results. 02 OK COMPUTER For something completely different, consider using the text-to-voice feature on your computer to record and act as the modulatory signal for your vocoder. Bands such as Radiohead have been known to make use of this speech technology, but don’t use something that sounds…

The world of music in 1974 wasn’t prepared for an electronic music revolution, nor for that revolution to take place by way of a track that lasted for 22 minutes and 45 seconds… about a motorway. But that’s what happened. Up until ‘74, synth music had mostly been about Wendy Carlos’ take on Bach, early prog rock and noodling sequences from Berlin. With Autobahn – or at least an edited version of it – Kraftwerk took electronic music into the pop charts, and started a seismic journey for a band that would go on to influence many genres of music over the following five decades. Autobahn the track came from the album of the same name, which was Kraftwerk’s fourth release after three albums of psychedelic folk recordings. While not…

> Minimal Audio’s Current combines a powerful synth with a cloud-based ecosphere. You can upload samples, presets and wavetables into it from a constantly updated cloud via its Stream tab, and you also get access to Minimal Audio’s excellent roster of effects to help you shape the tones you already own. Whether this is a future model for all-in-one hub-type synths is to be decided, but it’s fair to say that the model that Minimal Audio originally intended – a subscription-only one – was not met with warm approval by the synth community. So, now you can buy Current outright for the not-inconsiderable $199 (which grants you access to the All Access cloud for a year) or you can still subscribe (see box right). Current flavour Current is, at heart,…

When Tom Oberheim launched his company in 1969, he probably didn’t realise the influence his designs would have. His initial products were based around effects processing, followed swiftly by one of the first digital sequencers. But it was the appearance of the Synthesizer Expander Module (SEM) in 1974 that captured the imagination of musicians and≈synthesists, which continues to this day. The one and OB The SEM was (and is) a monophonic synth voice, replete with two oscillators, variable-state filter, envelopes and LFOs. It was designed to act as a voice-partner for the Oberheim DS-2 sequencer, before Tom had the idea of placing two, four and even eight SEMs in a keyboard construct, creating the 2-voice, 4-voice and 8-voice synthesisers. After several years in the production wilderness, SEMs were brought back…

Nuendo has always been an advancement of its stablemate, Cubase Pro, the only obvious visual difference being the program icon and name shown on window titlebars. This close relationship means that Nuendo 13 includes all of the updates and additions found in the recently released Cubase Pro 13... that’s a lot of updates. We aren’t going to be looking at those here, but you can find a full review on our sister site MusicRadar if you’re looking to find out about those very significant new features. Dealing with dialogue Much of the audio post production workflow for film projects centres around dialogue, and this is where many of Nuendo 13’s most significant updates are being focussed. The Detect Silence tool now allows the background noise between spans of dialogue (or…

Download all assets for this issue at bit.ly/cm334downloads The Dub Remix Toolkit With a handmade, DIY approach, Robbie has crafted some seriously hypnotic dub-based sounds for you this month… “Essentials to throw into a dub remix for a classic tone. Heavily filtered and phased tape delays and spring reverbs are slung on guitar chops, organ and piano lines, and drums. No bass – that joy is left to you. As well as choppy loops, all with plenty of decaying dotted 1/8ths and boinging springs, there are instrument chord hits (guitar and keys) and some sidestick/hi-hat one-shots, all doused with obligatory spring reverb and high/band-passed filters to keep the bottom end ready for all that dubby bass. The ‘dubs’, ie the delays, were all made by hand, muting the source and…

news NEW RELEASES • COMMENT • INDUSTRY HAPPENINGS Computer Music favourite GForce Software is back with another update to one of its existing synths, this time its version IV of VSM (aka Virtual String Machine), which GForce point to as being “the perfect solution for creating the sound bed of your next track”. This new update features sounds from 46 classic string machines, including models from the likes of Solina, Elka, Logan and Korg. That’s significantly more than the 17 that VSM started with in version 1. With this lush assortment of authentic-sounding synth string sounds, you can create hybrid patches thanks to VSM’s twin-layer architecture. You get in excess of 1,900 presets and 11.5GB-plus of sample data. Alongside the substantial content increase, there are new additions to the interface…

You may well be drawn to reading this feature based on the fact that you make a type of music that will benefit from one of these forms of vocal processing. The undeniable fact is that many of these processed elements have become intrinsically linked with certain styles of music. While also encouraging creativity, knowing where to use these effects is fairly vital – though rules are there to be broken! We are the robots We all love vocoders! What’s not to like about changing the nature of your voice so that it sounds like some form of futuristic robot? The problem here is that the sound has become heavily linked with exactly that; anyone familiar with Battlestar Galactica will know the sound of the Cylons, and that isn’t doing…

> It’s something that, at some point in our lives, we all must sadly face. The death of a loved one – particularly a parent – can be a life-defining, emotionally crippling moment. For Danish techno monolith Kölsch, the loss of his father, Patrick Reilly, some 20 years ago, still loomed large internally. On his latest record, I Talk To Water, Kölsch (aka, Rune Reilly Kølsch) took audio recordings of his father, a sometime musician and guitar player, and built new electronic arrangements around these starting points. We caught up with Rune to learn more about this intriguing process, and just what motivated the making of his fifth, and most arresting, record to date. “Well, from a broader point of view the album process started basically 20 years ago when…

Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at bit.ly/cm334downloads > Organs and pianos are two of the best loved sounds in dance music, and continue to remain popular in the music of today. Producers like MK, Marshall Jefferson, Liquid, Kerri Chandler, Todd Terry, Masters at Work and countless more created hits crafted with piano as a leading element. Contemporary artists like D.O.D., ESSEL, Huxley, Weiss, LP Giobbi and David Penn, also produce tracks focusing on the piano house sound. From underground house and techno records to award winning pop anthems, pianos and organs continue to be fundamental components of timeless tracks. A key factor in creating a successful piano track is the quality of the chords, and the production techniques used to process the sounds. Retro sounding piano and…

> Since digital became the norm for music production, there has been a persistent cry from analogue die-hards and audiophiles that digital just doesn’t cut the sonic mustard, with one adjective being mentioned more than any other: warmth. But what is warmth, and why is it such a big deal to your reputation if your recording isn’t deemed to have it? Ask ten different engineers, and you’ll get ten different answers, because it’s not an easy thing to quantify. But one thing is for sure: analogue signal paths add impurity and a level of distortion to the signal, which our brains broadly perceive as a nice ‘fuzziness’ around the sound we’re focussing on. In plugin terms, it’s become the pursuit of many audio software companies to effectively mimic that effect,…

One of the ‘safe bets’ in production software is surely Arturia’s V Collection. It’s always offered a lot of quality keyboard emulations for its price, and it’s regularly updated; great value when you consider its scale. However, it’s also a victim of its own success, with so many classic emulations included that there’s little more worth emulating. So how can future updates be as good? With the last (v9), Arturia got around the problem by introducing its Augmented range of instruments on top of a few vintage additions. Augmented Strings and Voices were the first two entries, and we suspected that this would be a future path for V Collection to take. V Collection X proves we were on the money. Add an X to Collection There are three new…

In the future, when our children will (or at least should) be taught synth history, the ‘ARP’ name will undoubtedly make at least one appearance. The Odyssey will definitely take its place as the 1970s alternative to the Minimoog, it’s a screaming Rolling Stone to the Minimoog’s calmer, more rounded Beatle. The 2600 also deserves a place – the much loved semi-modular as used by everyone from Depeche Mode to Stevie Wonder. But the ARP Axxe? Probably not. This was an oddity (sorry) in that it was basically a cut-down Odyssey, featuring one oscillator. In fact, it featured pretty much one of everything else – filter, LFO and envelope generator – so it could have been considered very much as the cheaper ARP. Not so much an Odyssey, then, more…

BHK Samples Premium: DnB & Jungle Breaks £29.95 For this one, real drummers play nothing but fast and furious funk breaks, only to chop and edit them up to make the punchiest, most authentic-sounding, old-school live jungle drums. Think back to those iconic ’70s beaks from the James Brown stable that producers dug for; each perfectly captured recording then runs through a high-end chain of processing effects to make a unique library of drums. It’s a fantastic toolkit of beats, perfect for adding that classic ‘vinyl-sampled drums’ style to your tracks. loopmasters.com 8/10 Blind Audio Game Room: 8-Bit Hip Hop £4.95 Bleeps and bloops from a bygone era, given a power-up for button-bashing beatmakers with a taste for the 8-bit sound. There are basslines with byte, retro melodies to make…

Interface cm: Hi guys, let’s start with your latest release, Time Oddity Chorus. Can you talk us through what your new chorus plugin brings to the table? Or: “Basically, it didn’t start as a chorus plugin, it started as a segment within another plugin. We developed EON-Arp which is an arpeggiator. It had a mini-synth with a fairly simple delay module. Eyal programmed this cool filter delay and we loved it. When we started getting into processing plugins, we wondered what we had already made that we like and could expand on. We ended up tweaking that delay so much and adding a bunch of features that it became this sort of modulation engine that can produce all kinds of different effects. We immediately were drawn to the whole chorus…

Vocoders and talkboxes are easily confused, not least of all because they sound incredibly similar. Because of their sonic similarities, you can arguably substitute one for the other, which, as we will discover, may not be such a bad idea – if you want to hang on to your teeth! Carrying vocoders Contrary to many people’s assumptions, the vocoder itself is not actually a synthesiser, although it is quite usual to find a synthesis element within a vocoder, especially in plugin form. The vocoder component joins together two elements, both of which are required to make the classic sound. Firstly, we need a carrier wave, which is most commonly some form of synthesiser or inbuilt synth circuit. In the software realm, this is usually included as part of the plugin,…

Antares Auto-Tune Access 10 Mac/PC £49 The Auto-Tune lineup has expanded to considerable proportions, with numerous versions of the plugin to satisfy every price point and user type. This is the most basic iteration of Auto-Tune, but there is nothing basic about its capability. This timeless plugin is reliable and dependable, and does exactly what it says on the tin! antarestech.com Softube Vocoder Mac/PC €99 Designed to offer a vintage sound, Softube’s vocoder plugin offers a passing nod to the Roland vocoders in both sound and aesthetic. It includes a basic but powerful on-board synthesiser, which will provide you with your carrier wave. It’s great for classic vocoder duties, especially for pushing drums in the vocoder’s direction. softube.com Zynaptiq Orange Vocoder IV Mac/PC €169 The Orange Vocoder is one of…

Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at bit.ly/cm334downloads > Before we get started this month, let’s just make sure that we are talking about the right kind of drone! We certainly aren’t talking about any form of flying machine or underwater sub, but we could certainly use this month’s patch to provide plenty of sub‑like action. One of the most powerful features, located at the bottom of BazilleCM’s interface, is the sequencer section. Its primary role is to provide a modulation source, but that modulation can be applied to any parameter that is patchable within the BazilleCM interface. If it were connected to the tuning input of OSC1, we could use it as a traditional sequencer, to play a series of notes in a prescribed order, in a…

Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at bit.ly/cm334downloads > Equalisation (EQ) is one of our most important mixing tools, but it’s important to use it in ways that improve our overall mix, and understanding its various forms can really help with this. In our first EQ mixing masterclass [issue CM318] we looked at some basic techniques that can help you establish the frequencies you want to EQ, including sweeping, filtering and frequency analysis. If you’ve not read that masterclass, take a few minutes to check it out. This time around, we move ahead and look at the EQs themselves and how their shapes and behaviours can assist us getting the results we want. Rather than discuss how to EQ specific instruments, we’ll focus on the underlying behaviours, which…

> Oeksound has become the developer to watch. It has big support for its small number of plugins, with their often dynamic and adaptive natures processing your signals as you go. Titles like Spiff control transients while the multi-award winner Soothe2 tackles resonance. The all-new Bloom on test here is also adaptive. It’s an EQ at heart, but one capable of increasing the good stuff while not increasing the bad. Allow to Bloom Bloom is what Oeksound calls ‘an adaptive tone shaper’ and the company has spent six years developing it, refining its DSP to increase warmth and presence, but in a way that doesn’t enhance some of the bad side effects that can come with this. Bloom essentially analyses your signal and improves it to give it these qualities,…

We’ve seen some very old software get updated recently, but this might well be the longest wait between versions that we’ve seen; the original Effectrix came out some 15 years ago. The concept was very innovative at the time: a bank of 14 effects within their own sequencer environment which you could sync to your DAW for glitchy, experimental fun. But is there still room for it in 2024? On the face of it, version 2 hasn’t really moved on that much over those 14 years, but dig a little deeper and you’ll see some bigger changes. The UI for the 32-step sequencer has been redesigned but is still simple to use. You simply choose which effect you want and then draw and drag where you want it to take…

It’s very rare for a trademarked product to enter the vocabulary, but that’s exactly what Antares managed, by accident or otherwise. As we’ve delved into in this issue’s cover feature, the mere mention of Auto-Tune will have even non-producers imagining a type of hard-tuned vocal quality. It’s an association far beyond the company’s remit of subtle pitch correction. Fast forward 27 years, and the Antares product range has significantly expanded, with echoes of the original product resonating throughout the lineup. Its latest plugin is an excellent case in point. Vocal Reverb does not provide pitch correction, but it does listen to your track and try to assist you with your reverb choices. Still, do we really want AI to tell us which reverbs to use on a vocal track? Tracking…

Download this month’s videos: bit.ly/cm334downloads INPHONIK RYM2612 Watch as we explain how to use this chiptune-style softsynth. Yours free this issue! Read the full article from p14 cm/ experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist field every month CM TOOLS MASTERCLASS SEQUENCER-BASED DRONE Read the full article on p44 DANCE MUSIC MASTERCLASS CLASSIC DANCE SOUNDS Read the full article on p52 MIX MASTERCLASS UNDERSTANDING EQ Read the full article on p56…

How to manipulate and bend time… In our next issue we’re going to show you how to craft and deploy time-based effects such as stutter, reverse, half-time playback, pitchbending and beyond, simply and effectively. We’ll also arm you with a very cool gift to aid you in your time-traversing trip! PLUS! Kasbo The DJ and producer on his creative and technical ethos Free samples Time to get epic with some sci-fi-leaning samples plus strings! On test Korg Gadget 3, Arturia Pigments 5 and more……