Innehållsförteckning för March 2021 från Future Music

CLASSIC ALBUM Goldie Timeless FFRR, 1995 Words by Roy Spencer © Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images This month we’ll talk about an opus of breakbeat science, soulful vocals, and super charged emotional soundscapes that would get into the charts, and then under the skin of an entire generation. It would be the blueprint for drum & bass, a soundtrack to the city, and an album that would go on to live up it its name, with every year that passed. The man responsible for creating this masterpiece was, of course, Goldie. He’d already lived enough lifetimes for a hundred people by this point, and definitely had something to say, but needed help saying it. “I went into the studio with an album already in my head,” he says. “But, as a person…

ALBUM REVIEWS © Dan Medhurst Bicep Isles Ninja Tune Three years on from their critically acclaimed debut album, Belfast-born, London-based duo, Bicep return with their emotionally charged, rave-laden follow up. Isles once again displays the duo’s expert craftmanship as they build a soundscape that channels old school, euphoric, rave vibes while also working in Bicep’s trademark melodic and synth-based sound. Full of emotional energy, soul and intense atmospheres, the record takes on a peak-time, druggy aesthetic that drives forward with momentum. ’90s breaks collide with deep, grumbling bass, shuffling rhythms, shimmering synths, warbling reverb, visceral grooves and spacey electronics to create a sound that is both nostalgic and modern. Moving between techno, house, postdubstep, electronica, ’90s UK bass and contemporary classical, Isles is beautifully rich. Drawing influences from their youth…

6 ways to get the most from your MPE controller From Roger Linn’s Linnstrument, to Roli’s Seaboards, to Expressive E’s Osmose and Haken Audio’s Continuum Fingerboard, these controllers unlock a wealth of polyphonic expressivity… 1 APPROACH One thing that really helps get the most from MPE controllers is to imagine you are playing a string on a violin or set of strings (on a guitar) via the keys/surface. So sliding, wobbling, vibrato and velocity are all appropriate techniques. 2 INTERACTION Don’t be afraid to really make wild/extreme gestures on whichever controller you are using. We are all used to controlling multiple things at once via our touchscreens on smartphones and touchscreens/tablets – MPE controllers can be interacted with in a very similar way. CHOOSE YOUR SOUNDS CAREFULLY With classic instruments…

CRISTIAN’S CHOICE KIT Symbolic Sound Kyma “My main instrument and the software environment for real-time audio programming I’ve been designing with since 2003. Pacarana is the custom-made computer that runs the code I develop in Kyma.” Orthogonal Devices ER-301 “Like a mini-Kyma for the modular setup, with a similarly unique design philosophy for doing real-time sound design. Its delay buffer effects are unsurpassed in Eurorack.” Calrec MiniMixer Mk2 “One of the best British broadcast analogue consoles at this size. Up there with SSL and Neve in terms of prestige and build quality and it’s wonderful to mix on.” Monome Teletype and Grid “I only recently discovered Monome open source systems and they’re absolutely cool. They’re clearly focussed on sustaining an innovative experience for the user during real-time sound creation on…

PRODUCER’S GUIDE Steinberg Cubase 11 As has become an annual tradition, Cubase’s latest significant update landed in the final weeks of 2020. Let’s explore how to work smarter in version 11 Cubase has been around longer than most DAWs, and like its competitors it’s grown in scope and power with each new version. As with other powerful software tools there will be functions that you may never use, and some you don’t even know about. Alongside this there may also be multiple ways of achieving the same thing, or quicker ways of getting there. Of course, a DAW should only ever be a tool for enabling your creativity, but as with any other cutting-edge technology it can sometimes be the unexpected consequences of taking an action that could unleash new…

What are VCA faders? While many people may be familiar with Group Channels (where audio from other channels can be routed for further processing or level control), VCA Fader Channels can appear odd. VCA Faders are control elements – the audio doesn’t pass through them – so it’s like having extra fingers for moving faders. If you have a great mix, say, and want to make all vocal elements louder, you could adjust each vocal track level individually (slow) or use the Channel Link function (fiddly to make adjustments to single tracks). Using VCA Faders gets around this. All they do is add or subtract a dB value to any linked channels: great for making broader level changes to a mix, and especially effective on automation, where the original channel…

Steinberg Cubase 11 Sampler Track: slicing loops, repurposing and sampler sounds 1 There are many ways to get audio into a sampler track (including drag and drop), but here we’ll create a new track from an existing audio event by selecting it and then choosing ‘Create Sampler Track’ from main Audio menu (via Ctrl/Cmd+Right-Click). 2 The loop can be played back by pressing Middle-C (C3/60), with other notes playing the loop slower or faster, and at a different pitch. AudioWarp mode can be used to keep the playback speed the same whatever the note/pitch. 3 For drum and percussion loops, the new Slice mode uses transient detection to separate each hit and then maps the results chromatically across the keyboard. The Threshold may need adjusting depending on the material, though…

Reviews Modal Cobalt 8 £579 Another Modal release has arrived in the form of the virtual analogue Cobalt 8. Dan ‘JD73’ Goldman digs in! CONTACT WHO: Modal Electronics WEB: modalelectronics.com KEY FEATURES Fatar 37-note full-size keyboard. Channel aftertouch. MPE support. Modal app. Extended VA engine with 34 algorithms per oscillator group, morphable 4-pole filter, 3 FX units, assignable Joystick, eight mod slots, step/ real-time sequencer, multi-mode arpeggiator. DIMENSIONS: 555 x 300 x 100 mm WEIGHT: 5.60 kg I very much enjoyed reviewing the first of Modal’s new synth products – the Wavetablefocused Argon 8 – especially in these crazy times, it’s great to see another UK synth company go from strength to strength and launch another range; this time the very blue Cobalt series! Modal’s latest synth features a 37-key compact…

Reviews Apple M1 13-inch MacBook Pro from £1,299 Apple’s silicon Macs are here; Ben Rogerson investigates what that mean for music makers… CONTACT WHO: Apple WEB: apple.com KEY FEATURES Apple M1 chip with 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine. 8GB unified memory (upgradable to 16GB), 256GB SSD storage (upgradable to 1TB), 13-inch Retina display with True Tone, backlit Magic Keyboard, Touch Bar and Touch ID. Two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports Even the most cynical observers would concede that Apple transitioning away from putting Intel processors in its Macs to using its own ARM-powered silicon chips is kind of a big deal. On the surface, none of these computers looks any different to its Intel-powered predecessor. Inside, though, it’s a different story, with each Mac now containing Apple’s new M1 system…

IN THE ARCHIVE – UPDATED! FM’s Sample Archive gives you over 18GB of carefully-curated, royalty-free sounds to use in your music. Here’s what’s inside... AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.1 > ’90s Ambient (562 samples) > Ambient Dawn (490 samples) AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.2 > Majestic Bells & Mallets (444 samples) > Spring Reverb & Tape Delay (533 samples) ATMOSPHERES & BACKGROUNDS > Atmospheric Beds (369 samples) > Noise, Crackle & Hiss (512 samples) > Sounds of the City (371 samples) CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.1 > Analogue Polys (625 samples) > SH Collection (500 samples) CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.2 > Analogue Poly Chord Hits (342 samples) > Classic Synths: ’80s, ’90s, ’00s (678 samples) > Hardware Arps (511 samples) CREATIVE DRUMS > Cyborg Beats (514 samples) > Lo-Fi Sampling (555 samples) > Obscure Drum Machines (517…

TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS “Most people in the industry do not have the capability to listen to demos and hear the song hidden underneath the insecurities. Don’t let them misguide you, follow your gut feeling, trust your instinct and your bandmates. As Lionel Ritchie once said, ‘if I like what I’m doing, I’m sure many others are gonna like it too.’” Let songs rest “It’s never a bad idea to let a song rest. Take your time to work on other projects and then come back to it. Or what also helps, is to ask somebody in the room to listen to your tracks. One way or another you start to hear the song through the other person’s ear. It’s a good way to instantly hear what is wrong.” Don’t be…

Multi-dimensional music MULTI DIMENSIONAL MUSIC MPE comes of age MPE – an expressive, polyphonic take on MIDI control – started life as a niche new tool for keyboard players, but in 2021 it’s being added to some of the biggest DAWs and softsynths. This issue, let’s explore how, and why, you should be using MPE in your music making… What is MPE…? Depending on how religiously you keep up with news and developments in music technology, you may have first heard the term MPE some time around five or six years ago. Largely popularised by UK brand Roli, the initialism originally stood for Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression, although in recent years it’s become MIDI Polyphonic Expression after being officially adopted by the MIDI Association. Despite this name change and ‘going official’…

THE TRACK Victor Ruiz Love Story Drumcode, 2020 Berlin-based Brazillian bombshell Victor has established himself as one of techno’s rising stars with a slew of releases on labels such as Elevate, Electric Ballroom and Suara, and remixes of techno legends including Christian Smith, Dubfire and Boris Brejcha. For this installment of The Track we caught up with Victor to find out how he created the rolling, vocal-led Drumcode banger Love Story, and discuss his rock-influenced approach to making music. You were introduced to music by your brother through guitar-based genres. Has that influenced how you make techno? “I remember when I was listening to, let’s say, The Prodigy for the first time, for me that was rock ‘n’ roll. That was heavy metal almost. It’s not like electronic music for…

Using the Key Editor Scale Assistant 1 The Scale Assistant in the Key Editor Inspector is great for matching new or previously-recorded note events to a musical scale. The scale is chosen in the editor or takes its queue from the Chord Track (blanked if the Chord Track is unused). 2 Unsure what to select? Highlighting notes and looking at the ‘Scale Suggestions’ drop-down will narrow down the options. Here the notes chosen make only one suggestion ‘C Blues 1’. We can now use this to determine further editing actions. 3 The various ‘Show’ and ‘Snap’ options help guide subsequent edits and MIDI input. To ‘correct’ existing notes, ‘Quantize Pitches’ will move selected notes to the current scale – also a useful tool for exploring alternative music ideas.…

THREE QUICK TIPS 1 Multiple mixer windows By default Cubase assigns the main mixer window to the F3 key, but you can access two additional MixConsole windows from the main Studio menu, and they can have their own shortcuts. You can also configure each to show different sets of tracks. 2 Customising Track Control Areas There are a host of customisation options in Cubase, but it’s easy to overlook the ability to tweak what’s shown on the Track Control Area in the Project window. You can alter this for each different track type and even save configuration presets for each one; a great way to streamline your setup or optimise it for your monitor. 3 Project Logical Editor The Project Logical Editor (PLE) is an expansion of the original Logical…

THE ALTERNATIVES Korg Prologue 16 £1399 One of my favourite polys, the P16 has 16 voices, analogue oscillators and filter, a digital engine and user oscillator/effects import too. Alas, no aftertouch or sequencer though. korg.com Novation Summit £1755 Another British beauty, the Summit also is a hybrid like the Super 6, having FPGA oscillators paired with an analogue filter and lovely digital effects. novationmusic.com Waldorf Quantum £3015 Waldorf’s flagship is a thing of beauty, not just with its exquisite panel but sonically too. It has powerful oscillators, a great-sounding analogue filter and can sample too! waldorfmusic.com…

THE ALTERNATIVES Korg Minilogue XD £535 The XD continues building on the success of the original Minilogue, adding a digital multi-engine (which can import third party oscs and effects), plus a powerful Prologue-level effects/filter and joystick. korg.com Modal Argon 8 £459 The Cobalt’s cousin has an entirely different morphing wavetable engine onboard. Features the same effects and interface and an analogue-style morphable filter. modalelectronics.com Roland JD-Xi £415 It may have mini-keys but the Xi packs in two fully-featured supernatural synth engines, a real monophonic analogue synth and a powerful drum machine/sequencer with effects. roland.com…

THE ALTERNATIVES Apple MacBook Air From £999 The latest gen MacBook Air boasts the same silicon chip as the Pro, and can be upgraded to the same level of memory as the Pro. The main difference is a lack of built-in fan, which could have performance implications for heavy use. apple.com Apple Mac Mini From £699 The Mac Mini remains a bit of a bargain in Apple terms. If you own your own monitor and keyboard, and can do without the portability, the Mini will offer you the most power, at the lowest cost. apple.com…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… 4hero Parallel Universe Goldie’s mentors took jungle into drum&bass on this highly influential 1994 album, setting the gold standard for all to follow. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Universal Love’, ‘Wrinkles In Time’, ‘Sounds From The Black Hole’ Nobukazu Takemura Child’s View The Japanese beatmaker’s 1994 downtempo classic was on heavy rotation as Goldie headed to the studio to make Timeless tracks like State Of Mind. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Phases Of The Moon’, ‘Time And Space’, ‘The Lake Of Winter’ Pat Metheny Group First Circle Space jazz fusion from 1984. The movement and the relationships between the players, heavily influenced the sound of Timeless. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Yolanda, You Learn’, ‘The First Circle’, ‘Más Allá (Beyond)’ Urban Cookie Collective High On A…

KNOW YOUR… CONTROLLERS As with MIDI controllers in general, MPE devices come in all shapes and sizes As is true of the whole MIDI controller market, there’s no one set form of MPE device. While they all, broadly, do the same thing – allow for multiple dimensions of polyphonic control – layouts and functionality can vary wildly. If you’re coming from a keyboard playing background, you’ll likely favour a classic keyboard layout, but there are controllers that mimic guitar fretboards, vintage synths and customisable designs you can shape around your own needs. Let’s see three examples... Roli Seaboard Probably the most recognisable form of MPE controller, Roli’s Seaboards (and the smaller Rise and Blocks variations) are based on the layout of a traditional keyboard. Their silicon-covered keys have no gaps…

In The Studio With | Cristian Vogel Cristian Vogel Lockdown re-evaluated Cristian Vogel’s approach to his latest album The Rebirth of Wonky. Danny Turner explores the innovative producer’s workflow and use of the Kyma software environment Born in Chile, raised in the UK and now situated in Copenhagen, Cristian Vogel immediately took an avant-garde approach to music production, as reflected in his debut techno album Beginning to Understand (1994). Having developed an innovative career in stage and club culture spanning three decades, Vogel’s innate curiosity for experimentation has now begun to move deftly beyond those confines. An award-winning and highly experienced studio engineer, Vogel is a leading expert in the software environment Kyma – widely considered the Holy Grail of sound design. With his latest album, The Rebirth of Wonky,…

Frequency 2 as Channel EQ alternative 1 Frequency, a Cubase EQ plugin (independent of its built-in Channel EQ) has recently seen some tweaks which make it far more versatile. By default you will find controls for its eight bands spread across boxes in the lower portion of the interface. 2 For more detail, switch to the single-band view. Here we’ve engaged Mid-Side mode and applied some high boost to the Side-only signal to add width and space, while cutting the Middle signal of the same band in the low-mid. 3 Linear Phase mode is recommended for Mid-Side processing, but also when a less overtly coloured sound is needed (as in mastering applications). But where only subtle EQ changes are made, the difference can be very subtle. 4 Frequency 2 now…

Making the most of the SuperVision analyser plugin 1 Cubase lets you tweak the channel meters in its Preference settings, has a well-specified level metering section accessible via the Control Room or Project/Mixer Right Zone areas and includes decent frequency analysis in the Channel EQ. 2 Then you have the new SuperVision plugin in C11: a customisable audio analyser, with 18 modules across six sub-categories; from level and loudness, spectral and spatial domains, phase and waveform analysis to timecode. 3 Each analyser element is split horizontally or vertically to add a new one. Clicking on the Cog icon opens the settings for the chosen analyser. The Speedometer icon optimises each module for performance vs sample accuracy. 4 With so many modules to choose from (and with some overlaps in what…

Using job management features in Audio Export Mixdown window 1 Cubase 11 added some new tools that make exporting multiple audio files more straightforward. The Export Queue allows you to select and add different sets of tracks, which can then be automatically exported one after the other. 2 Head to the Channel Selection area and press Multiple. You can now click on the chain icon which means Sync Selection to Channel/Track Selection is enabled. Now, any track selection in the project window shows in the export section box. 3 The Effects drop-down lets you specify the processing path used by the selected tracks when exported. This can extend from fully dry, to everything (including channel/insert effects, EQ, FX channels (sends), Group and the Master bus. 4 Once you’ve made your…

SEQUENCER, ARP, EFFECTS Like its cousin the Argon, the Cobalt 8 features the same real-time polyphonic sequencer which holds up to 512 notes over 16 steps (four bars) and also four animation (modulation) lanes into which you record parameter tweaks. You can record modulation/knob tweak data into the sequencer and sequences can be independent or linked to patches. Again, you’ll find Sequence Loop (where you can highlight a particular area in a sequence to loop), or Sequence Hold (basically an instant ‘beat repeat’ effect). The 32-step monophonic arp is also fully programmable/transposable with several modes, time divisions and swing too. Finally, there are three effect slots onboard with 11 modulatable effect types available including reverb, delays, lofi, et al.…

USING ROSETTA AND iOS APPS The Rosetta user experience is seamless: once installed on your Mac, software that requires it is automatically translated. It’s also worth mentioning that M1 Macs can run iOS apps, too, though we noticed that a lot of our favourite music-making apps aren’t available on the Mac App Store. What’s more, using these touch-optimised apps isn’t a very satisfying experience – you can’t resize the windows, say – so it’s all slightly underwhelming. As of the time of writing, the first major app to take the cross-platform plunge is Moog’s Model 15 synth. The latest update here lets owners of the iOS version use it as an AUv3s plugin in the desktop versions of Logic Pro and GarageBand. More of this please!…

Reviews Roli Equator 2 £199 The MPE-centric sound engine comes of age as a fully-rounded power synth. Si Truss expresses himself CONTACT WHO: Roli WEB: roli.com KEY FEATURES Multi-mode software synth with wavetable, sample, granular, virtual analogue and noise engines. CONTENT DATA SIZE: 6.7GB. 1400+ presets. 579 MPE presets and 896 standard presets. FORMATS: Standalone, AU, VST3 Equator started life as a mostly sample-focused sound engine for use with UK brand Roli’s distinctive Seaboard MPE controllers – modern, silicon-topped keyboard controllers designed for nuanced polyphonic modulation of pitch and timbre. Across subsequent updates though, Equator has evolved into a powerful softsynth in its own right. However, while version one of Equator was impressive, this second iteration is a noticeable step-up. Described as able to “go head-to-head with the best sound engines…