Innehållsförteckning för July 2021 från Electronic Musician

It’s easy to understand why some instruments have achieved legendary stature. Sequential Circuits’ Prophet-5, for example, offered innovative features like polyphony and programmability in a classy package, and even a cursory play on a Minimoog leaves little doubt that it was a performer’s dream machine. Why, though, has Roland’s Juno-106 entered the synth pantheon? Surely not because it was in any way a comprehensive synthesizer, offering as it did only a single DCO for each of its six voices, an all-too-familiar (if satisfyingly squelchy) 24dB filter and a single four-stage envelope generator shared by filter and amplitude circuits. And the LFO? A laughable affair with a single waveshape. Performance features were similarly anaemic – no velocity functions or aftertouch here, just Roland’s favored horizontally-aligned ‘bender’ and mod wheel plus a…

Tokyo Dawn Molotok Previously available as the freeware Molot compressor, this tool has been adopted by Tokyo Dawn and given a facelift. Threshold, Ratio, Attack and Release are here, as well as a Knee control for smoothing out that transition around the threshold. You also get a sidechain high-pass, and a Dry Mix parameter for the ol’ New York effect. One unique feature is the Delta button, which lets you hear the gain reduction in isolation. There’s a separate Output Gain as well as Makeup, which is nice. The key feature behind Molotok is the 11 types of compression algorithm, moving from alpha to gamma, and getting progressively more characterful and heavy-handed as they do so. There’s just enough character to tailor your compression exactly how you like it. Attack…

Arturia Pigments gets souped-up with additive synthesis and extra analog emulations Arturia’s Pigments combines elements of the French brand’s impressive virtual analog technology with modern tools including wavetable, sample and granular synthesis, a sleek modulation system and a flexible multi-lane sequencer. Pigments’ real highlight though is it ability to house all of these features in a neatly designed and user-friendly interface, all of which makes it a strong contender for our favorite synth plugin on the market right now. Now version 3 has arrived, adding yet more functionality to the toolset. The headline addition here is the new Harmonic engine type, which adds additive synthesis alongside the existing wavetable, sample and virtual analog generators. The look and feel of this new section is fairly reminiscent of NI’s excellent Razor, but…

FREAK Frequency shifting, ring modulation and radio modulation techniques all in one. Three distinct effect modes – Radio, Oscillator and Sidechain – allow you to completely transform your sound. Emulate the noisy tones of AM radios, get classic modulation sounds using an internal sine oscillator, or use a sidechain input signal to create inharmonic ring modulation. REPLIKA SHIMMER This sparkling, pitch-shifting reverb is an amalgamation of Native Instruments’ other Replika delay models. Layer an ethereal reverb tail on top of your dry signal by adding Shimmer to your sound at pitch intervals from -12 to +12 semitones, and exercise tight control over Time and Feedback. Classic reverb controls such as Diffusion and Size are also included. FLAIR For vintage-style or futuristic flanging. Flair’s Voices mode uses multiple delay lines to…

Adding some vibrato to the end of a note or phrase is one of the most time-honored ways of adding expression to your playing. And for most of us that has meant reaching for the mod wheel to bring in some LFO-based modulation of pitch. After all, the mod wheel was first featured on the Minimoog (see Fig. 1), which came out in 1971. LFO modulation has existed since the beginning of synthesizer design, but it was the mod wheel that first offered a musically useful gestural controller to “play” the modulation. That said, it is acknowledged that LFOdriven modulation of pitch does not always sound natural, as it is a periodically repeating source that lacks nuance and variety (without your help!). If you look at all the real world…

$232 spitfireaudio.com Strengths + Novel, speedy approach to scoring + Incredible-sounding evolving textures + Simple GUI Limitations - Occasional lag when loading larger patches - Pros may consider it a cheat With the majority of modern television, cinema and trailer scores, epic bombast and size has been supplanted by subtler arrangements. These more delicate undercurrents weave throughout the drama, enhancing tension, underscoring emotional upheaval and keeping our focus squarely on the screen. This amorphous sound that organically shifts in tandem with the visual action is increasingly in vogue. Spitfire Audio has had its fingers on the pulse of the ebb and flow of the scoring world for 14 years, with founders Christian Henson and Paul Thomson both reeling in awards for their respective compositions. The company’s releases have provided deep…

It’s time to open the lunchbox on a tasty collection of mixing effects, direct from Italy. MixBox is a custom channel strip plugin that lets you build up a rack of effects from a single plugin screen, pulling from ranks of compressors, EQs, distortions and loads more creative effects to come up with your own custom chain. Many channel strip plugins concentrate on a standard combination of EQ and compression, with some preamp units added for good measure. Thanks to IK Multimedia’s heritage in modelling more music gear, you also get studio effects such as delay, reverb and modulation, as well as guitar amp elements such as cabinets. All of this makes MixBox a versatile, creative effect-hosting unit that will appeal to musicians as well as just producers and mixing…

“This is definitely up there with some of the longest scores in history, it’s been intense,” explains an excited Tom Holkenborg (widely known as Junkie XL). Tom is delighted that the long-anticipated Zack Snyder cut of Justice League is finally seeing the light of day. This substantial re-edit of 2017’s superhero extravaganza Justice League is a labor of love sprung from a relationship Tom has had with director Zack Snyder since 2013’s 300: Rise of an Empire. “Zack and I have been talking about bringing this out for years,” the Dutch polymath tells us. “It’s really thanks to the power of the fans that this happened. They have not only been harassing Warner Brothers for the movie, but also to release the score. So, we really owe it to them…

$205 gforcesoftware.com Strengths + Faithful emulation + All eight SEMs on one screen + Sounds amazing particularly in Unison + Enhanced yet retro-style sequencer + Resizable window/SEM zoom options + Excellent set of 600 factory presets Limitations - No PC version as yet Back in the day and before polysynths became a thing, Oberheim upscaled its SEM (Synthesizer Expander Module) monosynth into a number of multi module designs. The most ambitious (EVS-1) used eight SEMs and was better known as the 8-Voice. This delivered 8-note polyphony where each voice was basically a different synth and could therefore create rich polytonal sounds. But things moved on and Oberheim developed a synth (the OB-X) that achieved polyphony in a more efficient fashion. Thankfully software developer (and proud 8-Voice owner) GForce has finally…

$349/subscription plugin-alliance.com Strengths + Choice of three EQ modules + Choice of two compression modules + Analog saturation on either Channel or Buss plugin + Handy Unity gain compensation option on both plugins + Subtle channel to channel variations using Brainworx’s TMT Limitations - Original features omitted Over time, channel strip plugins have developed to accurately emulate more subtle aspects of the analog signal flow including saturation, noise and even stereo image. Plugin Alliance offerings from both Lindell/LSR and Brainworx combine excellent modeling and Brainworx's Tolerance Modeling Technology (TMT) to deliver awesome results. Lindell Audio 50 Series (AAX, VST, VST3, AU, Audiosuite) is the latest offering from the Lindell Plugins/LSR Audio collaboration and we've found that it follows a similar path to the Neve-style 80 Series. Modular Inspired by API’s…

Auckland-based multi-instrumentalist Daniel McBride broke through with his debut album Egospect in 2013 at the age of just 17. Combining influences from pop, rock, R&B and electronics, it won him acclaim in his native New Zealand and beyond. He now returns with his long-awaited second album, Two Minds, a reflection on a period of mental illness and physical pain that temporarily halted his creative output. We caught up with McBride to find out more about his creative process. When did you start making music? I first started writing my own music when I was 16. The band I’d been drumming in, an extremely fun, bratty punk thing called Bandicoot, had just broken up and I felt like I had a whole lot of ideas swimming around that didn’t fit the…