Innehållsförteckning för July 2016 från Future Music

Enhance your ears with iZotope Learning technical production skills and theory is, of course, important if you want to get the most out of your hardware and software, but you’ll struggle to produce the music of your dreams if you don’t have some core ‘audio skills’ as well. Enter iZotope’s new Pro Audio Essentials course – a free web-based educational tool, that combines a mix of audio games, ear training and instructional videos to teach subjects including compression, EQ and the basics of digital audio. The course is presented as a series of ‘gamified’ challenges that encourage you to keep practising and develop skills that will help when you’re recording, mixing and mastering. You can start working through the course on the iZotope Pro Audio Essentials website: https://pae.izotope.com. Naturally, for…

In The Studio With… Blame “The studio was at our engineer Simon Donohue’s house. His main workhorse was the Casio FZ-1 sampler. He had Cubase on the Atari ST; a Roland Juno-106, which I ended up buying; then there were Yamaha NS10 monitors, an Ensoniq DP/4 FX unit, and a Soundcraft desk and a Roland R-8 drum machine. The FZ-1 was everything. Every single sound on that album went through that. You’d have to sample things in at a really high speed, but it gave you a real vintage sound. Everything had to be saved to floppy disks, too, which was a nightmare. Any time you came to mix a track down it would be like, ‘Oh. Disk error.’ I do not miss muting desks live, either. It separated the…

Space Dimension Controller Orange Melamine Ninja Tune Having released his debut album in 2013, Space Dimension Controller now unveils the first album he ever made, Orange Melamine. Made in his Belfast bedroom aged 18 in 2008, the record is a lovingly produced and deeply personal work from the now acclaimed producer, real name, Jack Hamill. Delightfully lo-definition, the entire album has a crunchy and tattered aesthetic that creates intimate and engaging warmth throughout. Drenched in reverb, hiss and distorted synths, Orange Melamine is a wonderfully creative slice of retro-futurist Electronica. Hamill’s hazy, ambient explorations are at once vivid and grainy, conjuring a nostalgic feeling. Warm, fuzzy and spacey, the record is rich in textures and densely layered. Built out of batch of battered cassette tapes, Orange Melamine has that captivating…

Passing Notes And Enriched Chords It’s easier than you think to extend and enrich the harmonic language of a track. Sometimes you just need notes ‘outside’ a chord Recording a chord progression is often a great way to start a track but we’re not all the most nimble keyboard players and, in our desire to make sure we hit the right notes in the right places, we often end up recording ‘block chords’ where the flow from one note to the next isn’t our first priority. That’s no problem, particularly if we go back to our recording and take a pair of scissors to it, chopping notes to create melodies and looking for ‘passing notes’, which help our chords blend more sinuously from one to the next. In the following…

The Magic Of Pivot Chords Stuck in a rut of reaching for the same chord progressions? With a little lateral thinking and some ‘pivot chords’, you can bust out of the norm > This chord progression couldn’t be more ‘standard’. It starts with a major chord (C), drops to A minor, drops again to F major and then resolves back to C. We’ve heard it a million times and it’s sounding a little tired. However, contained within each chord of this progression is the note ‘C’, as the root of the first chord, the third of the A minor and the fifth of the F chord. Let’s use this note as the key to unlocking a more interesting chord progression. > Let’s start by swapping the second chord for an…

Finishing Tracks By Performing Live Get music finished faster by setting up a ‘jam session’ – let’s look at how to apply this approach in Live… Our social media feeds are ever filling up with ‘synth jams’ featuring bedroom producers who spontaneously compose and perform entire records in just one take. This is an inspiring way to get music finished, as anyone who’s spent time setting up a jam-worthy set-up will testify: instead of pushing pixelated blocks around a computer screen, you’re interacting with your studio and instruments to encourage happy accidents and creative discoveries. You’re able to instantly respond to a particular musical direction within a few knob tweaks, and it’s easy to record your parts onto individual tracks in your DAW for chopping and editing later. In this…

INCLUDES VIDEO Making The Most Of Wavetables There’s one word we need to remember to make the most of wavetables… modulation To make the most of any wavetable we need a way to animate the sound. We do this by using modulation. Whether that comes from envelope generators, LFOs or random sources, there’s no doubt you need modulation to make the sounds really feel alive. But wide voltage ranges that we get from something like an LFO will morph through such a huge range of tones within the E350 that the end result might not be that great. As with many modules, attenuation is the key. Make sure you have plenty of attenuators around for the morph inputs as you’ll want to scale back wide-ranging voltages so you can morph…

THE ALTERNATIVES Roland System-500 Complete Set £1,699 With an undeniable heritage, this new modular system from Roland is alluring in both retro looks and features. www.roland.com Doepfer A-100 BS1 Complete System £1,589 Lots of modules to get you started and with many options for expansion. Doepfer systems represent very good value for money. www.doepfer.de Dreadbox Erebus £389 There are many semi-modular synth systems, including this one from Dreadbox themselves, that provide a cheaper and more self-contained way of experimenting with synthesizer patching. www.dreadbox-fx.com…

Hercules P32 Advanced DJ Controller £200 Alex Blanco lifts the lid on this Herculean hardware/software hybrid box of DJing tricks. Easier done than said! The last time I got my hands on a bit of Hercules kit it was their Control Steel in 2009. A lot has changed in DJing since then. CDs have all but disappeared (with vinyl coming back), syncing has become almost as ubiquitous as it is reviled, NI’s Stems are trying to gain enough, ahem, ‘Traktion’ to become an industry standard, but most importantly the shift has very much gone from simply playing two tracks together to finally delivering those bona fide ‘performance’ sets that our booking agents have been (mostly) bullshitting promoters about since the ’90s. And it’s this market the P32 DJ is designed…

Icons Emotions With Intellect Modern Urban Jazz, 1996 Rewind back to the mid-’90s and Drum ’n’ Bass is at an all-time creative high. Producers shun mainstream sounds, and sharpen each other’s steel as they compete on each new release to see who can chop up the fiercest drum breaks. Amongst this new wave of precision beatmakers are the duo of Blame and Justice. Under the wonderfully self-assured moniker of Icons they stand on this knife edge, fusing genres, slicing drums, and creating music for an album they would go on to simply call Emotions With Intellect. Made in 1994, but not released until 1996, the album still managed to sound five years ahead of the pack. Tracks like Electric Soul, with its mix of sampled pads and tricky drums, oozed…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Joan Bibiloni Born Sundrenched Mediterranean futureboogie from Blame’s favourite Spanish guitarist. Just one of the unusual artists the Icons liked to sample. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: El Sur, Born, Ballad For An Empty Street Caveman Positive Reaction This early ’90s UK Rap pioneer loved his breaks. His chopping and choices had a real influence on Blame and Justices’ own arrangements. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Fry You Like Fish (Jazz Remix), Positive Reaction, I’m Ready Bob James Three Cracking third album from the iconic Jazz pianist, and sample source. Hit play on Westchester Lady and loop up heavy chunks of it. The Icons did. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Westchester Lady, Storm King, Jamaica Farewell Various Supa Rock Down This is…

Cassy Donna Aus Music Now in their tenth year, Will Saul and Fink’s discerning imprint Aus Music continue to push standout, left of centre House. As they near their 100th release, they now unveil the wonderfully offbeat debut album from UK stalwart, Cassy. Donna finds Cassy delving into deep and moody atmospheres. There is a brooding, melancholic aesthetic throughout, giving the album an open, honest and personal feel. Laying her vulnerabilities bare, she settles into a stripped-back approach where individual sounds are given space to breathe and then roll out and evolve into surging song structures. Merging minimal Techno with Soul-speckled House and deep, driving bass, the album finds a tight and focused palette. With plenty of vocals and tingling melodies wafting in throughout, the LP creates a heady soundscape…

The DNA of inspiration Where does inspiration come from? In one way, of course, that’s an unanswerable question, as we’re all different, so it stands to reason that sources of inspiration – the ‘bright light ideas’ which prompt us to make music – will stem from different sources. That said, as it’s music which has proved our calling, as opposed to photography, film-making, animation or any of the other artistic pursuits to which we could devote our time, there’s more than a reasonable chance that music itself provided that initial spark of creativity. It’s rare to find anyone who doesn’t like listening to music of one kind or another but of course the number of people who, inspired by what they’ve heard, pick up instruments or technology to start making…

MIDI, Audio And Sampling Beat Combinations From humble beat roots, grow something complex and unique. Here, MIDI programming, audio processing and sampling combine to do just that… > We’re going to start building a creative drum pattern from the humblest of roots. We’ve programmed kick and snare parts and split them to separate tracks. The pattern we’re looking to build is going to feature a combination of MIDI programming, audio manipulation and sample playback, all of which are possible in any DAW, so don’t be put off that we’re using Logic Pro. The next step is to render the two files together as an audio file. > We’re going to process this audio file in due course but, first, we also need to use it to create a new sampler…

Using ‘Pushed’ Chords Rhythm isn’t only defined by your beat patterns. It’s also defined by where chords, stabs and harmonic elements fall There’s no doubt that any drums or percussion in your projects will do most to define the ‘rhythm’ of your tracks but the position of chords and even melodic notes will play a crucial role too. As such, if your chord parts only fall on the down-beats of each bar, you may well find that the overall sense of rhythm your track has is diluted or made predictable. ‘Pushing’ chords so that they fall a little early or late can make a big difference, by keeping your listeners on their toes. Better still, as soon as you’re freed from the ‘curse of the bar line’, you have an…

Moderat As the Berlin trio complete their trilogy of albums, Hamish Mackintosh joins them on stage to find out why III truly is the magic number… © Will Ireland When the disparate electronic talents of Berlin’s Modeselektor (aka Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary) first combined with those of Apparat (Sascha Ring) 12 years ago, the protagonists might have been forgiven for not fully foreseeing the rich creative playground that Moderat would become. New album, Moderat III, is a tour de force of intricate electronic components and beautifully-crafted songs topped with Ring’s heartfelt vocals. FM travelled to Brighton recently to speak with the band ahead of their sell-out gig at the prestigious (and rather palatial) Dome and witnessed first-hand some of the fervour currently surrounding the band. From the sublime down…

Finishing Your Tracks INCLUDES VIDEO AND AUDIO VAULT.FUTUREMUSIC.CO.UK We’re overwhelmed with endless scope and choice in the modern studio environment. Simple tasks can be executed in a multitude of ways, unlimited sounds and instruments can be explored at the touch of a button, any imaginable piece of gear can be brought up in software form, and any musical idea – no matter how simple or complex – can be saved and recalled instantaneously. Thanks to all of these factors, the infamous ‘writer’s block’ is now the curse of the modern producer. Symptoms include overworking a simple musical idea into an overblown mess, abandoning projects that are 89-90% finished to start something new, or cold sweats and sleepless nights at the mere prospect of turning an eight-bar loop into…

QUICK TIPS 1 Are you more of a gear hoarder than an actual musician? Too much choice can be overwhelming, so get music finished faster by limiting your tools to the bare essentials. 2 Make the final arrangement your main goal when designing sounds. Don’t just create one static drum loop: instead, generate variations, evolutions and automated copies that can be stringed together and change throughout the track. 3 Many mixing and mastering engineers use professional records as a sonic benchmark when making processing decisions. Do the same when composing: analyse the layout of popular tracks and borrow ideas for your own. 4 Get tracks laid out by setting yourself a time limit. Got an evening spare in the studio? Set a three-hour timer and get to work!…

The Wizard of Os We chat with the father of the Disting, Andrew Ostler of British brand Expert Sleepers… © Michael Bearpark “I had this cool idea for the sockets, but had no module to put them in!” Expert Sleepers were originally known for making free and paid-for VST plug-in instruments and effects, but started getting known for hardware control due to their incredibly popular Silent Way software suite, which let compatible audio interfaces spit out and receive analogue CV. In recent years they’ve become hardware manufacturers too, with a range of Eurorack modules for dedicated interfacing with Silent Way, with the FH-1 (which connects USB controllers to Eurorack) and the multifunctional Disting, plus a range of glow in the dark patch cables! Who are Expert Sleepers and what’s the…

Matrix & Futurebound Despite burgeoning solo careers, Jamie Quinn and Brendan Collins accelerated their success by forming Matrix & Futurebound and became forerunners of the Drum ’n’ Bass scene. Danny Turner meets the duo in Quinn’s home studio As solo artists, Drum ’n’ Bass duo Jamie Quinn and Brendan Collins already had their own records labels, with Quinn (Matrix) starting Metro Recordings in the late ’90s as a vehicle for his own releases and others, and Collins (Futurebound) forming the Liverpool-based Viper Recordings with Jaquan in 2003. The pair decided to collaborate after performing respective DJ sets at a nightclub in Belgium, releasing the single Strength 2 Strength (2005) the same year. A flagship for the burgeoning genre, their debut album Universal Truth touched a nerve with Drum ’n’ Bass…

XILS-Lab StiX Virtual x0x Drum Machine €179 Having impressed us with their synths, XILS-Lab now enter the world of drum machines. Stuart Bruce steps in time The enormous polyrhythmic possibilities set StiX apart from many other step-based drum machines Drum machines haven’t changed much in the way they look since the 808, and with little introduction you can get straight into programming. But StiX has plenty more under the hood… There are plenty of presets to start with to get a feel for what you can do. The ten pads along the top access the controls for each sound and in the Easy section (as opposed to Advanced) you can manipulate the sounds via the Cutoff, Pitch, Res, Stretch and various velocity sensitivity options, as well as via two quite…

Aston Microphones Spirit £299 Aston Mics’ Spirit is big sister to the Origin, but is the acclaimed smooth sound genetic? Robbie Stamp checks the DNA The Spirit displays the same smooth mid range and high top as the Origin, but there is an additional brightness Aston Microphones may only have two mics, but their wave-shaped spring mesh and stainless steel casing mark them out. The Spirit moves on from the shorter Origin adding switchable polar patterns (cardioid, figure-8 and omnidirectional) and an extra 10dB of pad, on top of the 80Hz low-cut filter. The Spirit has a solid build that seems like it will survive the beating that work-a-day mics can receive. It’s not that heavy, but a counterweight can be necessary for safe boom stand extension. The built-in 5/8-inch…

THE ALTERNATIVES Native Instruments Kontrol S8 £999 A different league in price, build and performance potential but, in terms of basic functionality, the gap isn’t nearly as wide. www. native-instruments.com Numark NS7III £1,049 If the no jog wheel thing bothers you, this beast features proper phat turntable platters for Serato scratching. Version 3 comes equipped with performance pads too. www.serato.com Novation Launchpad Pro £275 If performance and live remixing are more your forte, this – with the included Live Lite –- offers a great package and a powerful intro-DAW. uk.novationmusic. com…

THE ALTERNATIVES Roland JD-Xi £359 Roland’s budget-friendly analogue/ digital hybrid features an impressive built-in vocoder and auto-pitch effect. www.roland.com Antares AVOX $399 This plug-in bundle from Antares – the creators of Auto-Tune – offers a whole host of impressive vocal processors, albeit in a more expensive and less convenient package. www.antarestech. com TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch 2 £265 A hardware vocal effects processor that combines ease of use with a decent range of onboard effects. www.tc-helicon. com/en…

SOUNDS & SAMPLES Sonokinetic Sotto €303 Sotto is the latest in Sonokinetic’s phrase-based orchestral library range, and embraces the less bombastic side of the orchestra. The installer offers 16 and 24-bit downloads, with the higher bit depth weighing in at 38GB (uncompressed). Rather than deeply sampling each note of every instrument, this approach embraces ready-composed musical motifs played in their entirety by different sections of the orchestra – in this case strings, brass and woodwinds. Each section has its own Kontakt instrument preset, within which you can load three simultaneously playable phrases. Each instrument has 54 possible phrases spread across Low, Mid and High note ranges, and allows the loading of four different (three-part) presets ready for real-time keys-switching – and with automatic chord recognition. A neat new feature is…

Track by track with Blame & Justice Blame: “The album was actually recorded in 1994, but it doesn’t sound like a 1994 album. We didn’t get around to releasing it until 1996. We tried to punt it around to labels. People just didn’t get it. They thought it was too forward-thinking, if you can even be that.” Future Aspects Blame: “It was all about new and exciting ways to trigger breakbeats. We got thinking, ‘What would happen if we sampled the grace notes, or the shuffle?’ It was about the ghost notes. You’d start re-triggering them from all these different start points. “It was a case of, ‘How can I out-edit the competition?’… Photek, Wax Doctor, Danny Breaks. We wanted to make them wonder how we put the drums together.…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Bat For Lashes The Bride Parlophone Four years after The Haunted Man, British singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Natasha Khan drops her most ambitious Bat For Lashes record yet. Her fourth solo studio album, The Bride, follows an imaginative and enigmatic narrative where a bride is left alone at the altar following the groom’s fatal car crash on the way to the church. She takes away in the honeymoon car and sets off on a journey of self-discovery. Channelling the haunting, magic realism soundscapes that have marked her out as such an immersive artist since she first arrived in 2006, Bat For Lashes once again manages to create an intense and visceral world of her own. The record is a dark meditation on love, loss, grief and…

RECOMMENDED FunkinEven Fallen Apron Records London-based producer FunkinEven delivers a succinct snapshot of his timeless approach and infectious personality with his debut album, Fallen. The distinctive producer, real name Steven Julien, first appeared in 2009 and has released a succession of laidback, analogue-driven 12-inches since, working alongside the likes of Kyle Hall, Jay Daniel, Roisin Murphy and Fatima. Releasing his debut record on his own Apron Records, the Londoner takes us on an immersive journey that combines Detroit Techno with Jazz-Fusion, Soul, Chicago House, Acid and Breakbeat. Projected through his idiosyncratic, machine-spun woozy and vintage sheen, the entire record crackles with a warm and natural flow. Split into two distinct parts, the first half of the record is infused with a laidback sincerity, conjured through warm pads, dusty Soul and…

Moving Beyond Pastiche Most of us gain our first musical inspiration by learning to play a track we like. There’s nothing wrong with familiarising yourself with the creative process by copying something else, as it helps us understand many of the rudiments of music: chord progressions, melody, meter, tempo, groove and much more. However, copying or even pastiche-ing music (writing something which sounds like something else) doesn’t bring much that’s new to the creative process or to the world of music in general. Avoiding copying something relies on the fact that your musical understanding goes beyond the framework set by the track which inspired you. So, once you’ve got the chords for a specific track under your fingers, go and learn another song. And another, and another. And then try…

DOs & DON’Ts of Inspiration DO: > Take regular breaks. We all suffer from mental blocks when producing music and towards the end of a long day whether or not to include that new synth line can feel like a huge decision. Go for a walk, give it 30 mins, and go back. Suddenly, that decision will be easy. A fresh perspective is always helpful. DON’T: > Only write the starts of tracks. We’ve all been there, with 100 great track starts in our computers with no idea how to get a track finished. Developing an idea is harder than starting one and is a skill in itself. Don’t give up. DO: > Collaborate. Tired of your own ideas? Spend time with someone with alternative ones. It’s amazing how someone…

Embracing The Concept Of Random There are lots of musical benefits to unexpected things happening during the production process. Here’s just one approach to working with random Sometimes, we just want something unexpected to happen. And it’s not easy to manufacture such moments when we’re sitting in a studio all by ourselves; how can we create the unknown when we’re solely responsible for what happens in our tracks? One way is to engage with technology whose remit is to throw unpredictable ideas into the mix. NI’s Reaktor is a good example, as is Cycling 74’s Max/MSP. But if you’re looking for a freeware alternative, we’d advocate Sapling. It’s easy to use but its sounds are as unexpected as you could wish them to be and, in creating a texture, you…

Track-finishing: symptoms and cures To understand why writer’s block is so prevalent amongst computer musicians, it’s important to be aware that the act of making music was once a completely different process. Multiple professionals would each focus upon one specific role: one expert would channel all of their efforts into writing the song, another would be responsible for tracking, someone else would mix the separate tracks together, and a final person would master the record and deliver the finished product. Each individual could fully concentrate on their assigned task without deviation, whether it be creative or technical. Fast-forward to today and these separate roles now merge into one. Solitary individuals try to tackle each part of the music making process within the same studio session, jumping from creative processes such…

Gold Panda For his third LP, UK producer Gold Panda returned to Japan, his one time home, to soak up the environmental surroundings and source field samples. Danny Turner finds him in his current studio space in the far less exotic surroundings of Chelmsford © Joby Sessions Self-confessed video game geek and producer Gold Panda’s music is a product of his environment, whether trawling local car boot sales seeking vinyl samples or absorbing the cultural influences and field recordings of stints living in Tokyo and Berlin. Before his rise to prominence as a producer, Gold Panda taught English while living in Japan and returned to the country last year on a photography expedition. Inadvertently collating a travelogue of audio samples, upon his return those captured sounds unwittingly became the bedrock…

Dreadbox Modular G-System $2,795 Never one to resist the allure of a patch cable, Bruce Aisher gets stuck into the new modular system from Dreadbox FM readers will need no introduction to modular synthesis. What started as a way of formalising the connectivity and interfacing of separate audio generators and processors over five decades ago, has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. This has gone hand in hand with a new wave of boutique hardware developers offering their take on older designs, or new ideas bundled into a modular format. The allure of a new module has, to some, become an addiction – and modules bought on their own can be relatively cheap. Things get a little trickier, and more expensive, if you are making your first steps…

THE ALTERNATIVES 2 Arturia €169 Spark An analogue modelling/sampling hybrid. The one to consider if samples are more your thing but you still want the feel of a drum machine. www.arturia.com NI Maschine £439 With its excellent hardware controller, this is an incredibly powerful beat production system with a huge sample library plus multiple drum synth options. www. native-instruments.com Ultrabeat Logic Included in Logic X A great hybrid with plenty of sound manipulation possibilities. It may not reach the levels of sophistication of StiX or others, but it is very powerful and comes with Logic X. www.apple.com…

Moog Model 15 App £22.99 The company that first popularised the modular synth redefines it yet again with a powerful iOS app. Scot Solida plugs in Modular analogue synthesis is bigger than ever with a multitude of boutique and big name manufacturers getting in on the action. Moog recently joined in with limited reissues of its Model 15, 35, and 55 systems, albeit at prices only a few can afford – the smallest system, the Model 15, comes in at $10,000. Moog’s latest product brings that same Model 15 to iOS devices for the considerably lower price of £22.99. Moog’s software engineers have pulled out all the stops to recreate both the sound and appearance of the real deal, drawing upon Apple’s Metal graphics acceleration technology to ensure the interface’s…

iZotope VocalSynth Plug-In £139 A source of classic vocal synthesis and effects sounds in an easy-to-use bundle? Si Truss goes full Kraftwerk… VocalSynth, is a four-part vocal synthesizer and multi-effect processor which combines a range of corrective and creative tools within a single package. It is built around a quartet of modules each offering a different flavour of vocal synthesis effect: Vocoder, Talkbox, Polyvox – a vocal harmoniser and formant shifter – and Compuvox, which creates digitised speech synthesis sounds. These modules have been built with simplicity in mind. Each offers just three parameter rotaries plus a mode switch and preset drop-down in the case of everything except Polyvox. These four re-synthesis devices are fed by a global pitch/scale section controlled via the top part of the UI. VocalSynth has…

Stereo-fying monosynths What’s the most effective way to make monosynths sound wider without plug-ins? While running synths in mono is generally the way forward for bass sounds (in order to keep the low-end punchy and mono compatible on club systems/vinyl/mono speakers), it’s always worth trying to have leads, pads and more mid-to-high range sounds in stereo to add interest and a more lifelike image in this very important frequency area. The obvious way to make monosynths stereo is to just throw on a stereo-widening plug-in; but there are other tricks to try that can provide altogether more musically exciting results… Option 1: Direct Double Tracking. There are a couple of ways to do this. Record two mono passes (direct) of the same sound and pan them left and right; the…