Innehållsförteckning för April 2017 från Future Music

Get Radiohead and Frank Ocean’s string sound with Spitfire SPITFIRE AUDIO’S LATEST sample library brings the sound of the much-lauded London Contemporary Orchestra into your DAW. Formed in 2008, the LCO are known for their modern cinematic approach to orchestral composition, which has seen them featured on recent albums by Radiohead, Justice and Frank Ocean, as well as a number of high-profile film scores. According to Spitfire, the London Contemporary Orchestra Strings offers an “exciting and experimental modern string library, allowing composers and producers the chance to take their work to the edge”. The pack contains multi-sampled violin, viola, cello and bass sections, each of which is dynamically controllable and, according to Spitfire, features “never-before-sampled articulations”. London Contemporary Orchestra Strings is available now for £299.…

Classic Album Track by track with Machinedrum “We didn’t get the album professionally mastered at the time. Eventually we did a repress with Shawn [Hatfield] from AudibleOddities mastering. He’s still my mastering engineer to this day. My sound has changed over time, but the thing that I’ve always liked about him is our history. He can go back and forth with me with revisions more than a stranger would. Also he has a great attention to dynamics. I’ve always loved his approach. He can make tracks sit next to other mastered tracks, and still have that loudness, without it becoming a wall of sound.” Machinedrum is currently touring his last epic album, Human Energy (with its mesmerising live A/V show). Further content and B-sides from the…

Technique Atmosphere & Ambience THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ATMOSPHERE & AMBIENCE Let’s celebrate all of the sounds we don’t immediately hear when we listen to our favourite tracks by focusing on all things ‘background’ Some elements of a mix are easily described. Melodies and vocals are ‘leads’. Basslines are basslines and drums are drums. You get the idea… But what word do we use to describe the sounds in our mixes which play a supporting role? These textures, washes and colours rarely get a chance to step to the front to claim our listeners’ attention and yet, without them, our mixes often lack depth and richness. So, for this feature, we’re going to turn the tables on the mix elements which usually command the biggest parts of our imaginations to…

Technique Atmosphere & Ambience Don’t read the manual! There are some truly bonkers plug-ins out there. We’ve all encountered certain effects whose sounds have baffled and amazed us and, even though we know we should read the manual to work out what exactly lies behind the utter sonic chaos, we’ve kind of dipped in and tried but it’s still not making any sense. These are often the instruments and collections we overlook but that’s partly because they make us feel baffled and guilty; neither of which are positive feelings when you’re in the process of trying to exert some control over your mixes. But try reframing your relationship with those dust-collecting instruments and sample packs by accepting that you might never get to the bottom of what they do. Instead,…

The Reversed Reverb Trick One of the most effective textural elements you can add is also a classic: the reversed reverb. Here’s how to make it… Reversed reverbs are created by making a copy of a dry audio file and reversing it. Then, if you send this sound to an auxiliary, it stands to reason that the reverb generated will sound ‘backwards’ too. If you then isolate the reverb – so that it’s solo’d – and capture it as a new audio file, you’ll have a ‘reverb only’ file which is the wrong way around. Reverse this next and you’ll hear that the ghostly source sound is now preceded by reverb, rather than the traditional way around of the reverb being generated by a ‘forwards playing’ file. You can even…

Producer’s Guide To Ambient Synths The Main Ingredients Cooking up Ambient/atmospheric sounds takes a little more thought than standard synth fodder, requiring some deeper digging under the hood of your synth. Ideally you’re looking to create something that sounds very organic, often with slow attacks and long releases (which give more of an airy, spacious feel). Creating Ambient music generally requires a good understanding of the mechanics of synthesis, so make sure you are as well-acquainted as possible with your synth’s wave characteristics and modulation options (including LFOs, envelopes, hold function, noise, ring-mod, cross-mod and FX). In terms of the best synths to use, ideally use a polyphonic synth (six voices minimum) with comprehensive hands-on control, comprehensive modulation options (ie two LFOs for movement, full filter/amp ADSRs for tone…

Producer’s Guide To Ambient Synths How to make an Ambient pad from scratch Pads are a staple of Ambient music – it would be criminal not to make one from scratch! Here’s how… 01 > Start from an initialised patch. Choose a triangle on osc1 and a square on osc2. Add a little detune and filter down using a low-pass filter for a darker sound. Tweak the amp and filter envelopes for a soft attack and long release. 02 > Balance the filter cutoff, resonance and envelope settings together. Add in an airy-sounding digital/PCM wave and add some long release on the amp/filter envelopes to flatter the analogue layer. Tweak the volume between the analogue/digital layers to taste. Add white noise for some gritty texture. 03 > Add another…

THE TRACK Roosevelt Wait Up Greco-Roman, 2016 © Joby Sessions INCLUDES VIDEO VAULT.FUTUREMUSIC.CO.UK Since his debut on the ultra-trendy Greco-Roman in 2012 Roosevelt (aka Marius Lauber) has released a swathe of groovy, Funk-infused Synthpop singles and EPs, culminating in the launch of his eponymous debut album in the summer of last year. He’s also remixed a variety of acts including Glass Animals and Coma. FM caught up with Marius at his studio in Germany’s cultural hotbed Cologne to find out he created the ’70s-influenced sounds of album opener Wait Up. What’s the idea behind Wait Up ? “The track is the intro for my album; what I wanted to achieve with it was a broader sound. It was really suited to being the first track…

Tutorial Modular Monthly Building beats with Entity and Gatestorm With all that Entity offers for drum synthesis and audio processing let’s create some custom sounds 01 > We’ll start by exploring the wide range of sounds on offer. Patch in a trigger and take the output straight to your mixer or soundcard. Manually move through the controls and switch between linear, logarithmic and exponential envelope shapes to start building your own tones. 02 > Let’s add some expression by creating an accented sound. Patch modulation (try a gate or an LFO) into the Fall, FM and Sat CV to create slightly longer, more pitch-modulated and more saturated notes which will jump out as accents against your static hits. 03 > Patch your favourite noise source (white, pink, or metallic…

Reviews Korg Volca Kick Korg Volca Kick £125 The latest Volca strips things back with just a single channel of analogue kicks. Si Truss finds out if, in this case, less is more… At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the latest addition to Korg’s Volca range is a touch limited. Given that previous iterations have condensed polysynths, a drum machine and a multi-channel sampler into the familiar Volca format, an instrument that deals in just a single channel of synthesized kick drums might seem like a downgrade. Yet the Kick’s beefy analogue synth engine is capable of a broader range of sonic results than its name would suggest. The Kick is a derivative of the MS-20 filter section. Its sound engine is based around the original low-pass…

Reviews Waldorf DVCA1 Dual VCA Module Waldorf DVCA1 Dual VCA Module £260 Philip Wise finds out if a dual VCA could double his Eurorack possibilities The VCAs themselves are very clean and detailed and sound great The DVCA1 joins Waldorf’s Oscillator, Compressor and Modulation modules to complete the company’s Eurorack synth voice: which fits neatly into their KB37 Case & Controller Keyboard. Following recent trends in Eurorack, this is a dual VCA; each VCA circuit can be used separately, together through a separate mixed output or for processing in stereo including panning effects. Each side features separate inputs for AC (usually audio) and DC (usually CV), the AC input features what Waldorf call a ‘Colour control’. What this means in practice is a 2 pole OTA filter. Fully left the…

Reviews Audio-Technica E Series In-Ear Monitors Audio-Technica ATH-E70 £329 At the top of Audio-Technica’s IEM pile is the ATH-E70, a multi-driver system for the pro. Robbie Stamp gets intra-aural No amount of jumping dislodged them once I had the right eartips size fitted The constraints of the IEM format have meant that fidelity has lagged behind that of traditional headphones. Audio-Technica have taken this as a challenge and with their flagship E70 model deliver a triple driver (low/mid/ high) earpiece, weighing in at just 9g. The E70s fit snugly in the outer ear, while the flexible ‘memory’ cables mould around the ear to hold them in place. Once acclimatised it’s easy to forget you’re wearing them. No amount of jumping about dislodged them once I’d gotten the right eartips size…

Elektron Rytm gets all synthy ELEKTRON HAVE UNVEILED a new soundpack for the Analog Rytm drum machine, called Synthetics, which is made up entirely of sounds from the synth engine, with not a sample in sight. The aim of the soundpack, according to Elektron, is to push the boundaries of what Rytm can do. As such, alongside the expected collection of synthesized drum sounds, Synthetics also comes with a host of melodic synth sounds. All in all you get 128 patches featuring drums, synths and sfx for £8.00. The pack is available to download directly now from the Elektron website.…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Push Button Objects Unauthorized EP 1998 four-tracker from Edgar Farinas. Cool in itself, but more notable for the Gescom remix’s tempo flipping, which was a huge influence on Machinedrum tracks like Are I . ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Non-Existant, Downtown, Non-Existant (Keyed In By Gescom), Babushka Boards Of Canada Music Has The Right To Children Epic LP, and a Machinedrum personal favourite. The Scottish electronic duo’s rich textures influence heavily on Now You Know’s sonic landscape. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: An Eagle In Your Mind, Pete Standing Alone, Rue The Whirl, Turquoise Hexagon Sun Prefuse 73 Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives The Warp singing’s futuristic reimagining of Hip-Hop, and vocal chopping, evolved in tandem with Machinedrum’s. ADD…

DIY (And More Flexible) Tape Hiss Effects Gentle hiss is evocative of tape’s warmth and depth and, like vinyl crackle, it’s a popular textural layer to add in some musical genres… Not all backgrounds and atmospheres have to be dramatic! Sometimes even the smallest sounds can make a difference, as we’re going to see through the following steps. We’re going to create an artificial ‘tape hiss’ sound using a white-noise generator and then blend this in with a collection of programmed beats, to give them a slightly ‘retro’ quality. As we’ll see, only a tiny amount of volume is required for this trick to make its presence felt, so it’s definitely one of those where if you can hear it clearly, you’re probably using too much of it. In the…

QUICK TIPS Handy atmospheric considerations > DO: Use any ‘randomising’ feature in synths or effects plug-ins to help you seek out new, unpredictable sounds to be used as textural and atmospheric layers. You’ll still need to shape these as required, but using randomly generated sound as a springboard can be inspiring. > DON’T: Rely on factory presets for your textural sounds. There are so many ways to create your own, either by processing, recording or editing, that this is one sonic area you should be using to be as original as possible. > DO: Layer several sounds and explore their stereo width. Create three textural layers and leave one in the middle and either autopan the other two to switch sides, or set their pan positions so that they work…

Technique Atmosphere & Ambience Build Evocative Textures From One Sound Source Here we’re taking a haunting piano line and creating a textural background for it entirely from an audio file generated by the original MIDI part We’re starting with the main Muted Piano from Spitfire Audio’s Olafur Arnalds Toolkit sample library, with no additional processing added. While beautiful in its own right, it also sets the imagination racing in terms of how much further the sound could go to become reframed in a new context. We bounce the piano part as an audio file and import this onto a new audio track. Then, we chop the file into two-bar chunks and reverse each. We can’t reverse the whole file as the harmony would get messed up. By chopping each…

What’s the central focus of your studio and recording methods right now? “The centre point is actually one big open room because we have the luxury of space. I found this collection of abandoned buildings a while back in a really good part of town. It’s actually right across from the 9:30 Club, which would be like having a studio across the road from the Camden Roundhouse. It’s a loft space where we can have parties of 200 people or work on a computer inside. To the side of it we have a modest-sized sound room and a small 10 x 10 isolation room for recording vocals or drums and stuff. It’s not the most elaborate studio; I think the space itself is more impressive.”…

Drone Creation Tips Drones underpin and set the tone of your track but how do you make them interesting and keep them evolving? A good drone helps set and underpin the mood of your track, while allowing harmony to move freely above it. Drones are generally characterised by a long sustaining single note or chord (often on the root note of the track) and technically speaking (in musical terms) a drone is a ‘pedal note’. Of course, if your drone is just a single oscillator with no movement/modulation it’ll soon get boring, so in these next steps let’s use a few tools to inject some movement into our drone. Note: 12dB (2-pole) filters are usually good for drones as they have a solid low-end but still let some high-frequency harmonics/energy…

Interview Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Inventive producer Cristiano Crisci combines African rhythms with electronic music for his unique musical style. Tom Jones digs into his infectious love of music of all kinds to find out where the Clap! Clap! sound was forged Charismatic Italian producer Clap! Clap! has fast garnered a reputation as a distinctive and innovative force on the electronic music scene. Fusing disparate influences that focus on traditional African rhythms with a modern, dancefloor aesthetic, the highly inventive producer has found an energetic sound that bristles with a bright array of colours and cultures that form a fun and hedonistic melting pot. His debut album Tayi Bebba and his new follow-up A Thousand Skies have consistently challenged the current discourse on electronic music, even leading to him producing…

Reviews Bitwig Studio 2 Bitwig Studio 2 €379 The fledgling DAW hits version 2, bringing with it a cutting-edge modulation system. Si Truss gets modulating… First released in 2014, Bitwig Studio initially found it difficult to escape the shadow of Ableton Live. Much of Bitwig’s pre-release hype was built on the fact that it was created by a team largely formed of ex-Ableton developers, and when the newcomer DAW arrived there were a number of interface elements clearly inspired by Live. Still, the persistent comparisons were a little unfair, overshadowing the fact that, from day one, Bitwig was an impressive DAW with a lot to offer in its own right. Several ‘point’ updates over the years have seen it carve out more of a niche for itself, largely by focusing…

Reviews Arturia MiniLab MkII Arturia MiniLab MkII £89 Arturia’s original MiniLab packed a big punch in a small form-factor. Dan ‘JD73’ Goldman investigates MiniLab Mk2… Today’s market is flooded with compact MIDI controllers for producers on the go and you may wonder if we really need another one, but Arturia clearly think we do as they’ve released a Mk2 version of their MiniLab controller, originally launched in 2013. First let’s examine the hardware. It’s typically Arturia in style with their familiar white casing, a new less flowery logo and subtle labelling. The unit feels solid and built to last and it’s made entirely from textured plastic which seems pretty tough. In order to make the unit even more compact and portable (and unlike MiniLab Mk1), Arturia have moved the touchstrips…

ROLL AND REVERSE The Kick’s Beat Roll and Bend Reverse functions provide handy tools for adding variation to patterns. The former is a beat repeat-style effect that can insert on-the-fly trills in beat divisions of 1/4, 1/2, 1/1, 4/3,2/1 and 3/1. The latter, meanwhile, allows the direction of the filter’s pitch sweep to be reversed for selected sequencer steps. This is a handy tool for adding a bit of movement and variation when sequencing basslines. Particularly when coupled with Slide and some Motion Sequenced automation, it makes the Kick capable of some deceptively complex and creative patterns.…

SOUNDS & SAMPLES Spitfire Audio Swarms Collection £399 Spitfire Audio continue their pursuit of capturing unusual playing styles and instrumental configurations with Swarms. This is a collection of three libraries embracing the theme of massed tremolandi – the repetition of single notes played simultaneously on multiple instruments. Getting sections to play these repeating notes at different speeds results in a wash of sound, usable in a range of contexts. Split into Marimba, Harp and Mandolin sections, each has been recorded with multiple mics in the fantastic acoustic space of Air Studios. The hall is used extensively to shape the sound of these libraries, by placing performers in different positions throughout the space and then using the varying mic configurations to capture the result to tape. The different mic recordings are…

CLASSIC ALBUM Machinedrum Now You Know Merck, 2001 Words by Roy Spencer Travis Stewart conceived of the Machinedrum project while still in high school. He was experimenting with complex rhythms, underground Hip-Hop editing, and the Junglistic tempos and noise palettes favoured by the UK’s own Drill ’n’ Bass pioneers. The resulting hybrid caused a stir in the Electronic music scene, and swung a spotlight on the young virtuosic producer, in which he’s remained to this day. His debut album, Now You Know, is a riot of sound splicing and energising beat evolutions, anchored by a gift for soothing textures and melody. It’s the blueprint of what would become the Machinedrum sound – original, daring, cannibalistic, fresh, yet rich in a humour the early material liked to play with. “That was…

ALBUM REVIEWS ALBUM OF THE MONTH Orchestra Baobab Tribute To Ndiouga Dieng World Circuit Almost half a century after the band’s formation, Senegalese Afro-Pop stalwarts Orchestra Baobab make a long-awaited return with their masterful new album, Tribute To Ndiouga Dieng. Ten years on from their last record, Made in Dakar, and their third LP since the band’s 2001 reformation, Tribute To Ndiouga Dieng is dedicated to their long-serving vocalist and composer who passed away last November. Full of life, colour and passion, the record combines energetic Afro-Cuban rhythms and African tradition in the band’s trademark yet inimitable style. The whole record is sewn together with a warm-hearted and open spirit, creating a joyous concoction of vibrant percussion, lush melodies, velvet harmonies, shimmering guitars, passionate sax, soaring vocals and enchanting congas…

Sending Effects To Effects How often do you ‘link’ your effects treatments so one effect is triggered by another? Doing this can add unpredictability and depth to your mixes We’ve got a down-tempo groove playing, made up from a number of sampled sources. It’s the rim-shot sound on beat 2 we’re looking to process, taking the opportunity provided by it only playing a single hit per bar to fill in the space between hits. Here’s the groove without any processing. Next we set up a first reverb solution for the rim sample using FabFilter’s Pro-R Reverb. We choose a long decay time alongside a dark overall character. The Pro-R lets you clock pre-delay time to tempo, so we select an 1/8th note here. This reverb sounds a little predictable after…

Making Textures From Pads Pads are useful but frequently they can dominate tracks. Turning them into textural layers or atmospheres can be a powerful antidote to this problem Pads are an essential part of many genres of electronic music but they can fall flat. For all that they’re great at reinforcing the harmony and chords of a track, they can also suck the life out of a mix if they’re too static. Through the following steps, we’ll see how to convert a basic pad part into something more interesting and textural using just a single other mix element to turn a stock sound into something much more engaging. The benefits are obvious. Not only do we gain valuable mix space, but we’re also building more of a background layer which…

In The Studio With Thievery Corporation Thievery Corporation Washington DC-based Thievery Corporation have long been renowned for their sumptuous blend of Worldbeat and Downtempo-flavoured Dub. Danny Turner speaks to one half of the production duo, Eric Hilton, about the making of their latest album, The Temple Of I & I All pictures © John Shore Drawn together by their shared love of the Washington DC club scene and Jamaican and Brazilian cultures, which act as a constant source of creative manna, Thievery Corporation’s Eric Hilton and Rob Garza combined gear and released their debut album Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi in 1996 on the duo’s own Eighteenth Street Lounge Records. Over 20 years later, Hilton and Garza are still going strong. Fiercely independent, their sound is signified by a hypnotic…

PRODUCER’S GUIDE Ambient Synths Ambient sounds, synths and loop creation INCLUDES VIDEO AND AUDIO VAULT.FUTUREMUSIC.CO.UK Ambient music can be linked back to the launch of the first modular synths and synth experimentation/electro-acoustic music by composers and artists such as Brian Eno, Wendy Carlos and Jean-Michel Jarre and bands/collectives such as The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. In the ’90s/’00s artists including The Orb, Enigma, Enya, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Omni Trio, Autechre, Burial, Moby, Photek and the KLF fused minimalistic synths, lush FX, samples and textures with beat-driven styles such as House, Techno, Broken Beat, Downtempo and D ’n’ B but, rather than focusing on Pop chord progressions and short 3:30 forms, the resulting tracks were often more abstract/experimental, varied in length and focused on…

QUICK TIPS 1 Hold function: Allows your sound/arpeggiator to infinitely sustain and gives you two free hands to tweak away. Or use a sustain pedal. 2 Distortion/feedback/ Audio-Mod: These effects enhance your sounds adding grit, grain and breakup. Analogue distortion, running your synth back through its input (feedback) and FM/fast audio-rate LFOs are indispensable. 3 Using Shape-Mod and PWM: A single wave on its own can be boring but introduce some LFO or envelope-driven PWM/Shape-Mod and it will extend any wave’s mileage massively. 4 Try digital/hybrid synths for sonic versatility: Wavetable synths’ more complex waves are great for Ambient music (ie the Waldorf Blofeld), while Vector synths allow joystick-driven patch-morphing (Wavestation/ SY22). DSI’s Pro-2/ Prophet-12 feature wave-morphing. 5 Use high-quality hardware reverb: Examples are the Boss RV-3, Eventide Time Factor,…

Producer’s Guide To Ambient Synths Building an Ambient loop from scratch… Let’s put into practice a few of the ideas we’ve talked about and build an Ambient loop in Roland’s JD-XA 01 > Initialise a patch. Remove the oscillators from the mix and build a clicky sounding analogue hat using just filter resonance, sculpting the shape of the hats using the filter/amp envelopes. Record the hats across a 4-bar sequence at 75bpm, then hit play. 02 > Move to an airy sounding digital wave and record in a slow-paced chord sequence with open sounding chords so as not to lock down the tonality too much. Add some long release on the amp/filter envelopes and bring down the filter cutoff to taste. 03 > Copy across your hi-hat track from…

YOUTUBE MORE UNMISSABLE VIDEO FEATURES FROM FUTURE MUSIC Meet our line-up of exclusive YouTube goodness. Head online for all this and more! Top producers go in-depth on the sounds, ideas and techniques behind their latest releases. René LaVice, Richter Scale The Canadian Drum ’n’ Bass producer invites us into his studio to watch him break down his genre-bending and (literally) earth-shaking club banger, Richter Scale. DON’T MISS: Keeno, Enigma Bristol-based D ’n’ B producer Keeno invites us into his studio to see him break down his latest track, Enigma. Swindle, Connecta feat. Ricardo China We meet up with the UK producer in his studio to watch him break down his Brazilian-inspired track. Disciples, Daylight The UK trio talk us through the writing, recording and production process…

MODULAR MONTHLY Expressive drums with SSF We dive into Entity from SSF to explore drum sound design Eurorack has a wide range of drum modules, from clones of classics, to ‘drum voices’ which offer all the necessary components to create a wide range of drum sounds. We’ll be looking at the latter with Entity from SSF (Steady State Fate). Entity calls itself a bass drum synthesizer, but that’s misleading as it can produce a range of drum tones. From Disco toms to thumping Techno basslines through bass drums to higher pitched ‘whoops’ and alien-like synth hits, Entity delivers through and through. The only thing missing is an onboard noise source which would give us snares, claps and cymbals. An interesting control on Entity we haven’t seen on other modules is…

REVIEWS Behringer DeepMind 12 £999 The much-anticipated Behringer polysynth is here. Bruce Aisher finds out if the DeepMind 12 is a wannabe or true contender Unison modes stack voices, from simple doubling to a monumental 12 voices After all the teasers, the first Behringer synth is here. The past five years have seen all kinds of musings about it being a Juno-style clone or an ARP monosynth. DeepMind 12 is neither of these, being far more feature-laden than a Juno-106 and polyphonic to the tune of 12 simultaneous voices. Also, with a metal case and wooden side panels, it looks like the real deal. Each voice consists of two oscillators and a noise source. The oscillators are digitally-controlled (DCOs) so, in theory, lack some of the wayward charm of their…

POLYSYNTH Bitwig’s main synth has undergone a few changes. Firstly, it’s had several of its modulation tools removed, which makes sense as the DAW’s overall modulation system effectively rendered these pointless. The oscillator mix section has been expanded too, now offering six modes dictating how the two oscillators interact. This makes it possible to achieve a variety of modulation synthesis effects. There are also controls for creating various audible filter modulation effects. Polysynth has gained a high-pass filter, feedback loop and improved unison capabilities too – in all a far more interesting synth than the vanilla subtractive instrument we saw with version 1!…

SETTING UP AND INCLUDED CONTENT To set up the MiniLab Mk2 for Mac/Windows, go to the Arturia website, set up a user account, enter your serial number and unlock the content. The only thing I found tricky was installing UVI Grand Piano Model D as the link to the software itself and sound banks were initially hard to find, plus it requires iLok authorisation. The quality of the included content is high. There’s Ableton Live Lite; then Arturia’s own Analog Lab Lite includes slimmed-down (but upgradable) versions of Arturia’s SEM, Wurli, Rhodes, B3, Modular, MiniMoog, Jupiter, Prophet and acoustic piano software instruments. The UVI piano sounds good (£79 on its own), though there are no drum instruments included.…

Reviews Soulsby Oscitron Soulsby Oscitron £260 inc Uni-Five expander Known for their 8-bit synths, Soulsby are now entering the Eurorack realm with the Oscitron. Philip Wise takes a look… With the sample rate shifted down the Oscitron becomes a filthy glitching monster Soulsby Synths have made their name with gritty 8-bit synths, having launched the monophonic desktop Atmegatron unit in 2014. Their latest unit brings the 8-bit flavour to Eurorack. The Oscitron is a wavetable synth with 32 waveforms, PWM, 15 filter types with CV over frequency and resonance, bitcrusher and phaser effects. Its look follows that of the Atmegatron with two prominent glowing encoders on a white panel, with wooden strips that cover the top and bottom mounting holes. I first took these for a sly styling wink at…

Mixes sound bad in mono! I’m checking my mixes in mono for vinyl/good translation on all systems but they lose power… The first likely cause is sounds that have been pushed too wide using stereo-widening plug-ins. Or it could be copying and pasting the identical part onto two DAW arrange channels, panning them wide but not treating them differently. Then there is overuse of super-wide modulation effects (phasers/flangers) which can sound great in stereo but lose focus in mono. If you keep kick, snare, lead vox and bass frequencies centred in mono, any other stereo elements will sound naturally wider. Be careful with any widening process! Instead of copying one part twice onto your arrange and panning left/right to fake stereo, record two distinct passes of the same instrument but…