Innehållsförteckning för October 2024 från Computer Music

FREE SOFTWARE ik multimedia tape machine 80 / free software IK Multimedia are no strangers to quality hardware emulations. Their T-RackS framework plays host to a plethora of classics, ranging from compressors and EQs to delays and reverbs. It also includes a suite of four studio tape machine emulations and it’s one of these emulations, Tape Machine 80 (worth £84!) that we’re giving you this issue. Tape Machine 80 emulates Studer’s highly regarded 80 Series analogue recorders and like other T-RackS plugins uses IK’s DSM (Dynamic Saturation Modelling) and SCC (Sonic Character Cloning) technologies. In terms of features it includes a whole host of hardware options and software enhancements. These range from tape formulations and tape speed to bias, calibration and transport modelling. So, whether you’re trying to recreate the…

As we’ve seen, with any softsynth, it’s easy to get creative just by tweaking the signal flow as it moves through the system. We’ve detailed how this flow (usually) works already, and would encourage any novice (or even experienced) sound designer just to get in there and tweak. It truly constitutes the best way to learn how a softsynth works and simultaneously get to grips with designing sounds. However, where softsynths really start to come into their own is not so much by what each part of the synth does, but how they can interact with one another. We’ve already seen how an LFO (low-frequency oscillator) can ‘modulate’ other parameters on a synth and it’s this ‘modulation’ that really takes sound design up a layer. When you master this type…

Polyverse Supermodal $99 If you think going ‘off road’ with your filter use is switching to the band-pass option, then Supermodal might be a bit too much for you. There are 27 filter models based on everything from instruments (bells and pianos) to a ‘band-limited noise filter’, and as if there’s not enough in the choice department, there’s extensive modulation from six main source categories. If this sounds too outrageous, everything is kept in check, making Supermodal super useful. polyversemusic.com Arturia FX Collection 5 €499 Yes it’s a bundle of effects rather than a single title, so somewhat at an advantage, but as with V-Collection, FX Collection 5 can’t be ignored. It has 34 effects and some may not be ‘out-there’ enough if your designs are off-road – emulations of…

The vision of a future archive, staffed by soulless machines, tasked with curating and categorising the myriad fragmented memories of human emotions – and becoming baffled by the task – is an artistic conceit that resonates deeply in 2024. With the onrush of AI-fuelled plugins, DAWs and all-out generative music engines, a machine-led future, scrutinising human art and emotional expression in a way such as this, seems almost inevitable. For Stockholm-based artist Moonilena, this concept proved a fruitful starting point for her own creativity. On her new ambient album, Minnet, Moonilena – real name Marlena Salonen – harnessed a selection of tools across both hardware and software, to build a dark yet tantalising listening experience that wallowed in the space between signal processing theory, and human emotion.“I wanted to make…

Most of us first encounter frequency-specific dynamic processing in a de-esser, and this works by combining a compressor with a task-specific EQed side chain. However, there is another way of making threshold-based frequency changes and it’s called a dynamic EQ. A dynamic EQ is an EQ processor that includes threshold-dependent parameters to determine whether a particular band is boosted or cut. In practice, this means we can compress or expand specific frequencies, although the mechanism used isn’t the same as a typical compressor, so explaining it in this way can be slightly confusing. The reason this is so handy in a mix is that you only start processing the target frequencies when they reach your chosen level threshold. The rest of the time the signal is unchanged. What’s more, both…

Arturia’s Augmented Instruments are a growing series of software instruments that focus on a specific class or family of acoustic instrument, and do so in a way that favours musical performance and creativity over untrammelled sound design power. The latest addition to the series, Augmented Yangtze, is built around a collection of traditional Chinese instruments, blending meticulous, high-quality samples with modern tones, textures and synthesis techniques to deliver an achingly seductive suite of sounds that positively drip with far-eastern mystique. Macro control In keeping with the series as a whole, Augmented Yangtze’s main view is dominated by a set of eight macro controls that reach down into the parameters of the underlying sound generation engine. While the parameters controlled by the macros vary from patch to patch, each has a…

It surely won’t come as any huge surprise that any product branded with ‘Hollywood’, goes deep on the world of film and cinema. In true cinematic style, EastWest’s Hollywood Strings returns for a sequel, but does it live up to the reputation of the original blockbuster? EastWest Sounds has been providing composers and producers with a broad spectrum of sample libraries since 1988. From relatively humble beginnings, which saw the company creating drum samples, it has established a firm reputation for providing exceptional sound sources, which are ideal for soundtrack scoring, although many of its sounds will feel equally at home in a number of other production scenarios. From the impressive Stormdrum series, to full orchestras and choirs, EastWest has something for all of your needs and for every sonic…

Download all assets for this issue at bit.ly/cm338downloads Drops & Breakdowns It’s all about landing the perfect drop this month, alongside some dynamically audacious breakdowns “We’ve cooked up some superb tension and release samples this month for you to use when you’re building drops and breakdowns. We used our favourite software combo of Alchemy and Massive (V1 – we still love it here!) layered up to create some large chunky synth riffs for those all important drops. Over on the hardware side we got just a bit carried away when we started making some analogue noise sweeps and roped in the fab Korg ARP 2600. This has a rich noise source to send through its filter and spring reverb. We also used the Tiptop Audio Buchla 296t spectral processor, which…

The CM Plugin Suite – reloaded! We’ve been busy auditing and overhauling our world-famous Plugin Suite, and now we’re ready to serve up the fruits of our endeavours. New synths, instruments, effects and more join our 2024-proofed software arsenal. You don’t want to miss it! PLUS! Katie Tavini The award-winning mastering engineer reveals her secrets Free samples Some hard-hitting impacts and we throw a tropical house party! On test GForce VSM IV, iZotope RX 11 and much more……

news NEW RELEASES • COMMENT • INDUSTRY HAPPENINGS Promising a sound “as full and robust” as that of a Minimoog and “as aggressive and snarling” as what you’d expect from a Korg MS-20, GForce has released its plugin emulation of the Oberheim OB-1. And it comes with a warning that “it’s angry and ready to bite”. Originally launched in 1978, the original OB-1 was the world’s first programmable monophonic synthesizer (it enabled you to create and store your own sounds), but, even in these days of retro revivalism, has remained somewhat under the radar. That could be about to change, though; GForce’s software reboot was developed in collaboration with Oberheim and adds a number of new ingredients to the original recipe. Promising an authentic sound, the GForce OB-1 also offers…

You own a million samples, and that new softsynth you just bought has a gazillion presets, so why on earth would you want to bother designing any sounds these days? As far as effects go, you’ve surely got a hugely powerful multieffect in your chain. Simply hit Random, and, hey presto, it’s automatically ‘designed’ some sounds for you, right? And let’s not even start with AI – that has surely already been revolutionising the intelligent design of all-new sounds, hasn’t it? So there’s no point in creating your own sounds, period. Wrong! Here’s why sound design should be at the top of your music production process… First, saying ‘Why bother with sound design when I can use someone else’s preset?’ is a bit like saying, ‘Why bother creating a tune…

Newfangled Audio/Eventide Pendulate Sound design can demand the weird and wonderful and Pendulate certainly delivers both. Billed as a monosynth, it’s not like other synths due to what NFA calls a ‘double-pendulum oscillator’. Modulation is also key with a looping envelope generator, among several sources operating on Pendulate’s three modules for wild, gritty, often unpredictable sounds. Probably the best freebie for sound design out there. eventide.com Valhalla Supermassive It hopefully tells you how much we love this plugin that it gets included in this roundup alongside other entries – our own included – that contain tens of plugins. A decent reverb/delay is an essential tool on any sound designer’s hard drive and with 20 modes to choose from, with names like ‘Great Annihilator’ and ‘Large Magellanic Cloud’ it will give…

The Prodigy dominated the 1990s with controversial tracks like the UK top 10 hit Smack My B***h Up and the child-scaring number 1, Firestarter. But before these, they were releasing more rave-inspired tracks like No Good (Start The Dance). This came from the 1994 double-platinum Prodigy album, Music for the Jilted Generation, which also featured classic tracks like Their Law (co-written with Pop Will Eat Itself), Voodoo People and Poison. The album was the perfect bridge between The Prodigy’s ultra rave tracks like their debut single Charly, and their late 1990’s big beat sound. We’re focussing on No Good (Start The Dance) this month as it is (incredibly) celebrating three decades since its release this month in 1994, and features some classic Prodigy tropes. There are rave stabs, hi-saw strings,…

“I didn’t know that it was something that you could do – I didn’t discover my pathway to it until I got to college” explains engineer and producer Jess Camilleri. Nominated for the Rising Star accolade at the MPG awards earlier this year, Camilleri currently works as a freelance engineer and producer out of a range of studios, having previously been a full-time part of the Strongroom team and working to immaculately capture the likes of MIA, Rudimental and Kaiser Chiefs. We caught up with Jess to learn more about how she found herself under the spotlight of acclaim in this highly competitive industry. “[When I was younger] I’d seen inside studios, but I grew up in the countryside, so I thought that it probably [wouldn’t] be accessible for me.…

Tracktion’s Waveform has been quietly becoming one of the best cross-platform DAWs on the market, all thanks to a series of updates in recent years that have added just about every feature the modern DAW use could ask for. Waveform’s panel-based UI is not exactly unique, but it has a brilliant way of customising what you see so you can tailor your music production to your workflow. Recent updates have seen this UI redesigned, the engine upgraded, a slew of instruments and effects added, and lots of modulation and MIDI extras that both Bitwig and Ableton would be proud of. But this latest v13 update is the DAW’s most significant as it adds clip launching and a decent wavetable synth to the Waveform arsenal. Best of all In many ways,…

The SSL UC1 was originally released in 2021. It is a very solid software controller that came bundled with, and was designed to be specifically used for, SSL’s fantastic 4KB, Channel Strip 2 and Bus Compressor 2 plugins. With a knob-per-function design, and part of the controller’s surface dedicated to each plugin, it was and still is a great way to bring a kind of SSL hardware console feel, and certainly a mix sound to your DAW. So why are we looking at it in 2024? Well, close to £600 is a lot of money by anyone’s definition to control three plugins, so SSL listened to the feedback and has now developed a new 360 Link plugin to be used with UC1. The clue is in the name, because Link…

Interface : Hi there Mattias. There were a whole host of new additions to Reason 13, including its new tagging system and browser, a major sequencer upgrade and the addition of the Polytone synth – not to mention the interface’s visual upgrades. How long has version 13 been in development? Mattias Häggström: “In terms of how long it’s been in development, that’s a question that depends on what you mean by ‘development’. There’s a lot of planning that goes into making a new version, there have been lots of ideas that have been brewing for a long time in a kind of conceptual approach. We’ve been working on things related to this update maybe for the last year or two. “We realised quite a while ago that Reason is a…

One of the things that may have held back your sound design aspirations is just how complex softsynths can look. Sometimes this is done deliberately – developers want their creations to look feature-packed, so pack in more dials and sliders on that UI than are strictly necessary. And sometimes this is done because devs are basing the software on some classic hardware; they want to replicate that hardware down to the nearest button. However, when it comes down to it, most synths have pretty much identical – OK, very similar – sections and controls, and once you understand those sections, you’ll be amazed at just how easy it is to create new, complex sounds, just by tweaking a very few options. So if you want to get designing sounds with…

So far on our sound design journey, we’ve been focusing on the more tuneful side of synth sound design – albeit hopefully pushing our softsynths to the extreme with everything from the right tweaks to full-on modulation. When it comes to using effects, though, our sound design world can expand everywhere, and we’re not just limited to using those oscillators as source material. Effects, of course, can be used on any sound, not just a VA, wavetable or FM synth. This means that if your sound design ambitions lie, say, in the field of sound effects for film, TV or video games – and not just music – then this is where it gets fun. The other brilliant news for you is that the world of plugin effects has become…

01 DON’T BE SCARED TO CHEAT We’ve all done it: identified a preset, tweaked it a little and hit the Save button, calling it our own and slapping ourselves on the back as the greatest sound designer ever. Don’t feel guilty. Anything that gives you that extra pride is a good thing. But why not go further with the tweaks? Once you know what the controls do, take it in another direction. You can save as many times as you like. 02 RECORD EVERYTHING The oldest advice in the book when recording a vocalist is to hit record straight away and don’t press stop until the session is over. And those wise words can easily be applied to sound design. Every tweak you make on that synth, or every combination…

Dance pop is a genre that combines both pop and dance influences. Its song structures tend to be more similar to pop arrangements, and songs in this genre emphasise melody and catchy hooks. Due to their broad appeal they're created to be played in clubs and on mainstream radio. The genre has existed since the early 1980s and continues to gain more recognition globally. The Grammy Award for Best Dance Pop Record was presented for the first time at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards in 2024. The Recording Academy announced that the Dance Pop award goes to tracks and singles that feature up-tempo, danceable music that follow a pop arrangement, with strong rhythmic beats, electronic-based instruments, and an emphasis on the vocal performance, melody and hooks. In this month’s masterclass,…

Wow. 24 years. To think that there was a significant part of the world’s population worried about the world ending and the Millennium Bug as the new century dawned in 2000 – not us, we were too busy playing Deus X and saying that Kid A wasn’t as influential as everyone thought it was. But then all those fears washed away, like tears in rain, because Reason v1 arrived! To give you some idea of the impact of (then) Propellerhead Software’s first version of Reason, it pretty much invented the phrase ‘game changer’. At that point, software instruments were thin on the ground, and DAWs looked like spreadsheets or monochrome LEGO block builders. Reason changed all that, by mounting a stack of instruments – including the Subtractor synth, Redrum drum…

Tone2 has been plugging away at the synth market for many years, and has scored some great reviews with synths like the Electra workstation, the unique ‘HCM-synthesis’ Gladiator and Nemesis ‘NeoFM’ digital synth among many others. Yet these synths are not as high profile as perhaps they deserve to be, but all that could change with the latest update to Tone2’s flagship wavetable synth, Icarus. The biggest ever? Icarus is a three-oscillator wavetable synth at its core, but it’s been branching out well beyond that over previous iterations, and the latest (version 3) promises to be the most dramatic update to the synth yet. And that means ‘big’, as version 2 didn’t exactly hold back. That added a glitch sequencer, drum machine and MSEGs to bolster the synth’s modulation capabilities,…

Loopmasters Infinity Choir £29.95 Haunting, multiplex-filling, choral arrangements full of stacked vocal layers, angelic soundscapes, and richly recorded choir action. There are harmonies to lift the soul, and all the loops in this epic pack come dry and wet, and range in tempo from 60 to 80bpm. The sizeable 1.7GB of sounds covers all the vocal ranges you’ll be needing. Aside from the five full-choir kits, you get standalone alto, tenor, and baritone recordings to pick through – all captured on thousand quid mics, and mixed by pro engineers. Hallelujah! loopmasters.com 8/10 IQ Samples Flow – Guitar Vibes £29.95 Well-furnished library of tasty guitar playing, with plenty of styles to pull from, depending on your mood. The acoustics strum and twang merrily, like rom-com end credits, while others are electric…