Innehållsförteckning för November 2016 från Future Music

Classic Album Track by track with The All Seeing I “I laughed out loud when a reviewer accused us of ripping off George Michael’s Faith” DJP: “We didn’t fit into the accepted idea of Dance music in the ’90s. You wouldn’t find us gurning at American DJs in super clubs. We liked sweaty cellar parties with small groups of friends. We literally made bedroom music: the studio was in Dean’s bedroom! He was a collector of analogue gear and into ’70s/early ’80s electronics. Jason is younger than us and didn’t have the same baggage. He liked a lot of Indie stuff/experimental Dance music, and would always be scrounging round charity shops for cheap keyboards and stuff.” Walk like a Panther (featuring Tony Christie) DJ Parrot: “The Beat Goes On was…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH ALBUM REVIEWS Romare Love Songs: Part Two Ninja Tune Under his Romare pseudonym, Archie Fairhurst has built a reputation as a wildly creative and highly innovative producer over just a small number of releases. His second LP, Love Songs: Part Two, charts his artistic development in an even more expansive and varied declaration than we have seen from him before. His sound has developed on from the sample-heavy, sound collage approach of his debut LP Projects and moved into a more organic direction that involves much more of his own instrumentation. That spirit of sampling still influences this record, but the ideas are more stretched out and expanded upon with the use of Fairhurst’s own bass, piano, guitar and synth parts. He expertly weaves together elements…

Eight great affordable delays Delay comes in a multitude of formats and flavours, from analogue hardware to modern multi-mode plug-ins. Here are eight impressive options to bolster your studio toolkit without breaking the bank Korg Monotron Delay £40 The Monotron Delay combines a basic single oscillator synth complete with filter and LFO with a simple two-knob delay effect. A quarter-inch audio input means the Delay is capable of processing external audio, making it a great budget-friendly device for FX. Waves H-Delay $179 First released in 2009, H-Delay is a bit of an old hand now, but like most Waves plug-ins it’s got surprising longevity. Taking its cues from classic Lexicon hardware, the H-Delay boasts flexible modulation, filters and Lo-Fi and Analog modes for classic-sounding delay. Valhalla ÜberMod $50 Like all…

Romare His new LP, Love Songs: Part Two, connects the dots between Detroit House, British Folk, Hip-Hop and Blues. Si Truss goes on a sonic adventure with Romare… © Joseph Branston For some artists sampling is just a means to an end – a quick way to capture certain sounds and textures. For other musicians though, the process of sourcing, capturing and blending samples is an art form unto itself. Much like label-bosses Coldcut before him, Ninja Tune’s latest crate digger Romare is an artist who falls firmly into the latter category. Following a debut EP that explored the sonic and thematic links between West African rhythms, Jazz, Blues and Afro-American culture, Romare’s musical output to date has seen him joining the dots between Psychedelic Rock, British Folk, Detroit House…

Interview Trentemøller Denmark’s premier purveyor of brooding electronica, Anders Trentemøller, hones his songwriting craft to perfection on excellent new album, Fixion. Hamish Mackintosh finds out the facts © Tina Korhonen Some people never change whereas others have an inner drive to constantly change, reinvent and explore new avenues. Anders Trentemøller definitely falls into the latter category. Having cut his musical teeth in the world of Indie Rock, Trentemøller had something of an electronic epiphany that resulted (thankfully) in his influential 2006 debut album, The Last Resort, which saw his star rise. His follow up albums, Into The Great Wide Yonder and 2013’s Lost, have since seen Anders cement his reputation for his distinctive production sound, inventive remixes, immersive live shows and, perhaps most importantly, as a damn fine songwriter. Fixion,…

Improve Your Sound With Everyday Objects It’s easy to use inexpensive high street items/household objects to reduce unwanted rattling or shaking caused by bass frequencies Eliminating rattling or shaking in your room caused by bass frequencies will make your monitoring instantly sound clearer, aiding in getting a more precise and well-balanced mix. A good tip is to use a basic sine wave oscillator in any synth and play some low notes to get a better idea of what’s shaking in your room without any mid or high frequencies masking the rattles. Once you’ve found the cause of the shaking, getting creative with everyday objects can help to improve matters. Let’s run through some solutions for eliminating rattles and shakes using either unwanted stuff you’d probably throw away or some general…

Moog Minimoog Model D £3,249 A legendary analogue synth resurrected circuit by circuit. JoE Silva pinches himself to make sure he’s not dreaming… The keyboard action is responsive and refined, unlike the stiff and inorganic response of the original Released in 1971, the Minimoog was the essential Prog keyboard, the world-beating bass sound behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller and the Disco revolution that preceded it, and later, the synthesizer of choice during the rise of ’90s French House and Post-Rock. Lost in the shuffle from digital synths to software, there was a period in the late-’80s/early ’90s when a vintage Model D could be yours for a few hundred dollars. Now an original unit can set you back well over £5,000. The Model D’s original brief was to give keyboard players…

Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 £294.99 Focusrite’s Scarlett 18i8 has reached its second generation. Jono Buchanan discovers that life looks good in red… Recording quality is very good, with a clear, open sound offered via the onboard preamps The portable Scarlett 18i8 is the latest of Focusrite’s range of audio interfaces to benefit from an overhaul. So what, you might reasonably ask, is new in this second incarnation of the 18i8? Well, a whole range of things. Firstly, support for recordings of sample rates up to 192kHz is now provided, while the preamp design has been modified too for higher-quality recordings featuring lower noise and increased gain. This is also true of the instrument inputs which, Focusrite ensure, can now cope with even the loudest guitar recordings. Perhaps most significantly, there is…

SYMPHONY ESSENTIALS NI have made a concerted effort to reach out to music for picture and media composers in recent years and the fruits of their efforts are clear here; indeed, composers will be among the groups most enticed by Komplete Ultimate 11. This is in part due to the Symphony Essentials collections, which are stripped-down versions of the Symphony Series libraries NI have developed with Soundiron in the past couple of years. The Essentials collections offer fewer articulations and less flexibility when it comes to microphone placement but they offer a good sound and will prove a real bonus for composers.…

samplemagic.com SM100 Sample Magic celebrates a decade of inspirational sounds and music making tools with our biggest pack to date. Since launching over 10 years ago, Sample Magic has become the world’s leader in copyright free sounds and samples. We are proud to announce our commemorative 100th release featuring all new samples. £34.90 FUTURE SOUL A fusion of maximalist beats, epic evolving melodics and hook-laden vocal chops. This 1.4GB+ collection takes its cues from hardcore-digital production as well as vintage funk and soul vibes to devastating effect. £34.90 FESTIVAL TRAP Euphoric, in-your-face and hard hitting – 100% guaranteed to get your production blazing dancefloors. Jammed with sub blasting grooves, hyper leads, glo-fi melodic synths and cone-rupturing 808 boom. £34.90 TROPICAL SESSIONS Celebrate the end of summer with a selection of…

SSE Iucleus returns Solid State Logic have announced a new version of their highly acclaimed Nucleus DAW controller and audio interface, the Nucleus². Alongside its new finish, the Nucleus² also features a brand new 2+2 Dante audio card, completely replacing the audio interface from the previous version. Nucleus² is a compact, portable desktop unit that SSL hopes can create a “comfortable, efficient, hands-on operating environment for DAW-based music and film/TV post production”. The controller offers up switching between three DAWs with the press of a single button, plus two banks of eight channel controls and centre section controls. Nucleus² will be shipping from November and will be priced at £3,399 plus VAT.…

LTO’s essential production advice Art before science “I find producing music involves a delicate balance of right brain creative processes and left brain technical ones. From collaborating with and watching other producers at work I feel that they often let the technical brain take over too early on in the production process. This immediately stunts the creative flow. For example, you’re fucking around with some unconventional FX plug-in getting some mad sounds with no idea how you got there. Instead of loading up an audio track to record that stuff into ASAP before you lose it forever, you put your logical head on and say to yourself, ‘Oh I better check these parameters are within suitable ranges before I commit to recording,’ and then lose the magic.” Read the full…

In The Studio With… Dean Honer “The main sampler was an Akai S3000XL, and we were sequencing with an Atari ST running Cubase, then, once we got our advance, I bought a Mac. “We started by putting vocals on a Fostex R8 ¼-inch eight-track tape machine. Later we had an ADAT, using a Korg 1212 card. “I had a great Allen & Heath System 8 desk, but upgraded to a Mackie. We hated the sound of it, and the knobs were really small. So we then bought a Soundcraft Spirit, which looked more like a big toy, but fit our aesthetic. “Then we had Tannoy NFM monitors, a Yamaha SPX-900, a Boss DM-100 analogue delay, and a Zoom 1201, which at £50 was a box of magic. “We used a…

Creating width with delay One of the most common uses for delay applications is the generation of artificial stereo width in a mix. The Haas effect is a psychoacoustic phenomenon that dictates how we perceive the location of a source sound within an acoustic space. If two identical, hard-panned copies of a source sound play at the same time, we only hear a single source sound coming from the exact centre of the two speakers – the ‘phantom centre’. If one of these hard-panned signals is delayed by 1-20ms, we still only perceive one source sound, but this time it appears to emerge from the non-delayed side of the stereo image. Once the copied signal is delayed by more than 20ms, our brain and ears perceive the effect as two…

Delay Vs Reverb While artificial reverberation is undoubtedly useful, you might want to try a short stereo delay first. Let’s look closer… To continue with our exploration of delay as a useful ambience generator, we’re going to apply both a short reverb and a basic stereo delay effect to a dry vocal part. Both place the vocal in a small virtual room, but it’s clear upon listening that both effects create different characteristics. While reverbs are more tailored towards ambience customisation, the delay’s simplicity adds an upfront sense of space that’s proven to work well on vocals, guitars and synths. This is only one example, of course – you’ll need to experiment with both your favourite reverb and delay effects to find out which you prefer for a given situation…

Tonestar to the rescue! Whether a first synth, first module or extra voice, we’re loving the Tonestar SE (Studio Electronics) have been making high-quality synths since 1981, but in more recent years their Boomstar synths may have caught your eye, plus their modular range has expanded massively with a range of Boomstar-focused modules, new digital modules and the Tonestar. The Tonestar is a full semi-modular synth voice for Eurorack and it simply sounds stunning! It features an oscillator based on the Boomstar Oscillation module, their 2600 ARP filter clone (there’s some serious mojo here), two envelopes, a VCA, LFO, feedback circuit and mixer. With just a pitch CV and a gate you can get a wide range of tones from the internal ‘normalling’ (the internal pre-patched signal path), but you…

THE TRACK Jonas Blue Perfect Strangers ft.JP Cooper Virgin EMI Records, 2016 © Joe Branston “I finished Fast Car, it blew up, and the record label and my management said ‘What’s next?’. I was like, ‘Let’s just make some music’. I didn’t really think, ‘Fuck, Fast Car has done this and I’m never going to be able to match it’. It was just a case of carry on, and make something that feels good.” Jonas Blue burst into the public consciousness in 2015 with a Tropical House cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car with singer Dakota, which swiftly became an enormous mainstream success and established Jonas – real name Guy Robin – as one of the biggest new names in commercial Dance music. We caught up with Guy in his…

Monitor Placement & Calibration Achieving good results when producing or mixing music relies on a number of factors – including the sound we hear from our monitors. Many common issues that arise when tracking, producing or mixing, such as incorrect bass/treble levels or poor stereo imaging, can usually be traced to how we’re perceiving the sound that comes from the speakers. Bearing this in mind, it’s really important to make sure our monitoring is set up to deliver the most accurate sound possible… after all, it’s pointless having a great set-up and honed production skills without being able to hear what’s going on in the mix! While having a properly acoustically treated room can really help matters, a big improvement in accuracy can also be gained by taking time to…

QUICK TIPS 1 Foam wedges such as Mopads might seem like an easy way to isolate your monitors from the surface they are sat on, but can make matters worse by allowing your monitors more leeway to move around – while the foam will reduce transmission of bass resonances, the instability can negatively affect your stereo imaging. 2 Using too many egg-box style acoustic tiles can do more harm than good – not only do they not deal with the low frequencies, but they also dull the high frequencies, potentially leading to a mix with ear-bashing treble! 3 If your monitors kick out a lot of bass, place some heavy weights on top of them. This will reduce any subtle movement or cabinet vibration caused by low bass, giving a…

Nord Drum 3P £579 The third iteration of Nord Drum has spawned a new member. Simon Arblaster dusts off the sticks… The 3P offers the perfect tonic to the norm. That’s not to say you couldn’t whip up an 808 kick on it It can often be said that if you lust after something for a long time, when you finally get the chance to meet the object of your affection you’ll be sorely let down. This was my worry when the Nord Drum 3P came into the office for review. I hadn’t had much time with its previous incarnations, but the brief time I did have, I instantly loved their sound. So when the third iteration of Clavia’s beatbox made its debut at Musikmesse 2016, I knew I had…

Arturia KeyStep Controller £99 Arturia’s latest might look like a simple MIDI keyboard but, as Si Truss finds out, it has plenty of tricks up its sleeve It’s far from cumbersome and easy enough to squeeze onto even a small desk alongside a laptop Coming in the wake of last year’s excellent, multifaceted BeatStep Pro, Arturia’s latest controller – a simple-looking, 32-note mini keyboard – might look a little underwhelming at first glance. However, for a sub-£100 controller, the KeyStep packs in a surprising amount of functionality and an impressive number of well-designed features. As with the two ‘Steps’ that preceded it, the KeyStep features a range of different I/O formats. There’s a USB connection, for hooking the controller up to a computer, MIDI In and Out ports and CV…

NI Komplete 11 Ultimate £959 (upgrade: £319) Is Komplete 11 Ultimate the most fully-formed one-stop shop for composition and production today? Jono Buchanan konsiders… Native Instruments occupy a unique position within our industry. They provide not only a wide range of their own instruments and effects libraries but they’re also the central linchpin for the content of many a third-party developer, as numerous manufacturers are reliant on Kontakt for sample playback and manipulation. Every year new titles are added to NI’s roster of products and, periodically, these are bundled up to become a new iteration of Komplete. The latest generation of Komplete bundles is now available – as Komplete 11 – in three separate packages. For more modest needs, Komplete 11 Select offers an introductory collection of instruments and sounds.…

The All Seeing I Pickled Eggs & Sherbet London Records, 1999 Words by Roy Spencer The people of Sheffield have always marched to the beat of their own drum – a drum often played by a one-armed man (yes, Def Leppard). It’s the home to bleep factory, Warp, as well as comedy Yamaha-tinkler, John Shuttleworth. And over the years the weird and wonderful music emanating from the area has challenged the very notions of what it means to go ‘Pop’. Which brings us to the curious case of The All Seeing I. Comprising programming whiz Dean Honer, musician Jason Buckle, and all-round vibes controller DJ Parrot, this outfit were responsible for some of the most Steel City beats of their generation. Over the course of their only album, Pickled Eggs…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92 Self-confessed “Wannabe Aphex” Jason Buckle bloody loved this guy. This collection will give you the best reasons why. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: We Are the Music Makers, Xtal, Delphium Tony Christie Amarillo The I basically reanimated Christie (years before Peter Kay, mind). Check this dusty classic to see what they saw in him. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Is This The Way To Amarillo, I Did What I Did For Maria, Las Vegas I Monster These Are Our Children Dean Honer’s still fully-functioning collabo with Jarrod Gosling started here, a year before PE&S dropped. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Daydream In Blue, Danger At The Dial House Club, French Mods Can’t Drink Relaxed Muscle A…

Sync’d Vs Unsync’d Delay Clocking delay repeats to your host tempo is a quick and easy route to rhythmic conformity… but don’t we all want analogue-style imperfection? When working in the box, it’s all too easy to sync everything to your DAW’s master clock. Yet by doing this, you’re missing out on the subtle imperfections that make analogue music so captivating. Digital conformity is so ’80s, man! But instead of buying a wallet-crippling hardware delay unit that’s probably a bit knackered, you can always choose whether robotic, computerised delay times enhance your music – or simply reference and emulate the now-primitive methods of non-tempo-sync’d delay settings to inject old-school imperfection into even the most simplest of mix situations. Here, we’ll touch upon both the benefits and downfalls of mathematically-perfect delay…

Delay Sound Design It’s not all about simple repeats – try stacking up creative delay washes… This is a rather unorthodox sound design technique, but stick with us and you’ll see where we’re headed. First up, pile up a bunch of various sounds in your DAW – we’ve got a vocal chunk, a synth hit, a dirty bass ‘buzz’, a gritty lead, an old-school chord stab and another pitched vocal segment. Tune them all to the same musical key, and make sure they all play at once. Group this multitude of channels to a single buss channel or group, then pipe this group’s signal in parallel to a return track containing a well-equipped delay plug-in – we’re using Soundtoys’ EchoBoy. Fiddle around with the delay’s settings as you fire the…

DOs & DON’Ts Of Using Delay DO EQ your delay signal Your delay signals need to be tonally separated from (or tucked into) the other parts to create the optimum mix balance. Plus, delay tails can build up with inaudible sub frequencies, easily muddying up the mix’s low-frequency balance to swamp your kick and bass. Load up your delay effect on a return track, then place an EQ plug-in after the delay to filter away unwanted low or high frequencies. DON’T Keep delays static Modern productions are all about subtle change and movement – and an easy way to induce life and depth is by subtly (or not so subtly) automating delay parameters over the course of a song. You might want to gently push up the feedback on your…

Monitor Placement: An Expert’s View With so many things to consider when setting your monitoring up correctly, we decided to ask speaker design guru Derek Alexander Wilson of Custom Install Audio for his thoughts on the subject. So, over to you, Derek… FM: What would you say are the main benefits of setting your monitoring up correctly? Derek Alexander Wilson: “The chief benefit is consistency of sound – if you follow the correct method each time, you minimise the variables, allowing greater focus on the mixing/ mastering changes you’re making rather than room interaction or listening distance variables. Also, if you always work with the monitors correctly set up in the same position, your ears will become tuned to the sound produced, making it easier to detect spatial and frequency…

Nearfield monitor positioning in a project studio Positioning your nearfield monitors correctly is a great way to improve the sound from your speakers 01 > When setting up nearfield monitoring, it always pays to spend some time making sure that your speakers are positioned correctly. In this project studio, the monitors are sat on the desk either side of the computer – hardly ideal. 02 > In their current position, the monitors are too close together – this’ll give issues with stereo width when mixing as the sound will naturally be too narrow, as well as there being lots of unwanted reflections and vibrations from the table top. Let’s move them onto some speaker stands. 03 > First up, we’ll use our speaker stands to isolate the speakers from the…

Interview patten Experimental duo patten create their own frontiers, disintegrating genres through the use of abstract, sample-based soundscapes. As Danny Turner discovers, linear questioning on gear and technique often hits a dead end © Joseph Branston Following the release of two limited CDRs, patten first came to attention in 2011 with GLAQJO XACSSCO – a fittingly obscure title for an album forged from a combination of chaotic, industrial-sounding rhythms. Warp Records seemed a natural fit. Known simply as ‘D’ and ‘A’, the duo’s desire for anonymity is intended to encourage their audience to ignore them and focus on every part of each project’s umbrella arc, if not actually become it. Based on the Greek letter Ψ (Psi), patten’s third album continues their malleable approach to live and studio-based work, which…

Nord Beat 2 App Nord’s iPad-only sequencer is free and opens up the 3P to be more than just a performance tool. Nord Beat 2 features a six-channel, 16-step sequencer and while it’s designed for the Nord Drum it also can be used to control any external MIDI source, or other apps using the virtual MIDI connection. Three different and scalable velocities are available per step and are intuitive: swipe up for a lower velocity and swipe down for a greater velocity. Each of the three velocity options can be tweaked via the slider controls. The ‘song mode’ allows you to chain up to eight sequences and each one can be repeated up to a maximum of eight times.…

CHORD MODE The KeyStep’s Chord Mode feature allows users to define a chord and then trigger that shape transposed across the keyboard. This is done by hitting Shift and holding down the Hold/Chord button. Up to 16 notes can then be inputted consecutively, which will form the saved chord shape. The lowest note entered acts as the chord’s root note, by which the chord is transposed across the keyboard. These chords can be sequenced, although doing so reduces the maximum chord size from 16 notes to the sequencer’s per-step capacity of eight notes. Used alongside the arp, Chord mode makes it very easy to create single-finger arpeggiations.…

Playing more funkily! I can play very straight rhythms but how can I funk up my playing? Sometimes rhythmically straight chords are called for in a track so as not to distract too much but they can also become boring quickly. More syncopated bouncy/funky rhythms can inject excitement and groove into your music. One of the best ways to practise is using a click or audio/visual metronome as a grid reference and get a rhythm going alternately between your hands on MIDI/drum pads or a keyboard. Then you can pick some chord shapes and start experimenting with rhythms you’ve practised. Here are some tips… > First, concentrate on your right hand. Pick an open-sounding funky chord shape such as this guitar-style one for C7 (Bflat, D, G) and lock your…