Innehållsförteckning för December 2016 från Future Music

Filter The Future Of Music Richie Hawtin introduces the Model 1 The Techno icon has launched a high-end DJ mixer through his new PlayDifferently brand. We sat down with him at ADE to get the lowdown… Since FM last met up with Richie Hawtin back in January, much of his 2016 has been occupied with the launch of PlayDifferently, his new high-end DJ tech brand. The first fruit of the venture is the Model 1, a new all-analogue DJ mixer developed in conjunction with former Allen & Heath man Andy Rigby-Jones, best known for his work on the much-lauded Xone mixer series. FM caught up with Hawtin at this year’s ADE to find out more about the project. FM: How long has the project been in development? Richie…

LinnStrument becomes more affordable If you’ve been put off buying Roger Linn’s LinnStrument controller because you think it’s too big or (more likely) you can’t afford it, you might be intrigued by the LinnStrument 128. A smaller, cheaper version of the LinnStrument, this comes with 128 note pads (as opposed to 200 on the standard model), has a four-octave range and can only be powered over USB – but it is otherwise the same as the original. What’s more, it’s significantly cheaper – $999 as opposed to $1,499. That’s still a not-inconsiderable price, but should put the LinnStrument’s expressive control capabilities within reach of more people. In related news, version 2.0 of the LinnStrument software has just been released which, among other things, adds a polyphonic step sequencer option.…

CLASSIC ALBUM Cassius 1999 Virgin, 1999 Words by Roy Spencer As Cassius, Philippe Zdar and Hubert Blanc-Francard, aka Boom Bass, helped usher in a decade of Franco-Funk Breaks and Filtered Disco House onto the global Dance music scene. Along with outfits like Bob Sinclar, Daft Punk and Stardust, they helped reinvigorate the stale script that lazy producers were reading from. Bored with a straight-up four-to-the-floor approach to beatmaking, they dug deep into their collective influences of Hip-Hop, Detroit Techno, Minneapolis Funk, NY Electro, and Disco, and stuffed the lot into their restless samplers. Like their Gallic chums, Cassius were a breath of fresh air, and their debut album, 1999, was a joyous blast of loose licks that made most tracks doing the round seem rigid by comparison. But the immediacy…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH ALBUM REVIEWS Simian Mobile Disco Welcome To Sideways Delicacies Welcome To Sideways sees UK electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco take a shift in gear and move towards a more dancefloor-focused, Techno sound than we have seen before. Their fifth studio album to date and their first since 2014’s Whorl, Welcome To Sideways (a title that encompasses their natural proclivity for sounding radically different from album to album, yet maintaining a constant coherence) is an expressive and shimmering excursion into the more underground, bass-driven club music that has long been rumbling under the surface of SMD’s output. It seems a simpler studio set-up for the writing and recording of the album has fostered a more natural, flowing feel throughout the record. The duo tap into long and…

Working With Track Stacks Busy mixes can be revolutionised by Track Stacks, which assign a number of instruments to a single auxiliary We’re starting with quite a fully-formed production. You can see and hear that the track features several instrument types – multiple tracks of drums, strings, basses, atmospheres/pads etc – but as each track has been added intuitively, none of these instruments are grouped together or organised. There are huge advantages to grouping sounds into channel strips where they can be treated together. We can do this by creating a Track Stack for each group of sounds. Select all the tracks you want to put into a Stack, then Control-click and select Create Track Stack. We can then create similar Stacks for the other parts – Drums, Basses and…

PRODUCER POWER TIPS Bitwig Tips Bitwig Studio may be the new kid on the block, but it’s already very powerful. Let’s take a look... Cue it up Bitwig Studio’s Cue Markers are small flags that you place at the top of the arrangement window to mark out key sections of your song structure, in exactly the same way as Ableton Live’s Locators. First, go to View>Show Cue Markers to expose the top area above the timeline, then right-click in here to insert a new cue marker. These can be renamed, copied, pasted and muted. Mod-a-lot Bitwig Studio’s Mod devices allow you to funnel audio or MIDI signals from anywhere in a session and use them to modulate something else. For example, imagine you have a session set up with a…

Get The Most Out Of MixConsole The mixer offers plenty of cosmetic adjustments plus many ways of speeding up your workflow MixConsole scaling does have frustrations, especially the way icons sometimes go missing, and even the highest resolution screen might be hard-pushed to display everything in the channel Rack at once, but a bit of patience pays off. Cubase has three mixer windows that can all be adjusted separately. By default only one gets a key command, but adding keys to the other two means you can assign them all to a new window and move between them with ease. The Pre Rack features two of the most useful (and simple) mixing tools: the low and high-cut filters. Both have five selectable filter slopes (from the polite 6dB/octave to the…

Creating A Reverb Template Setting up a reusable effect send configuration is a real time-saver. Here we configure three different reverbs for use in a wide range of projects Sometimes applying reverb can be an afterthought, with the main considerations being how much and on what. If a VSTi has built-in reverb, then it may even be a case of leaving it alone. However a more connected approach to applying reverb can help the sound of any mix, and thankfully Cubase has two particularly solid performers in the reverb department. REVerence, being based around real-world impulse responses, is perfect for authentic-sounding spaces. It only has basic editing possibilities, and therefore requires more in the way of preset clicking. REVelation on the other hand is an algorithmic reverb that offers a…

Alternate Uses For Live’s Audio Effects Although we love all-singing, all-dancing third-party effects plug-ins, Ableton Live’s stock Audio Effects are often the best options when you want to process signals in a flash. They’re versatile, CPU-efficient, visually compact, and get the job done with minimum fuss. They’re also good to use when you know you’ll be sharing and transferring projects for collaboration with others. We’d suggest reading the excellent Live manual to get to grips with each device – but many of them can also be abused and misused for unusual, creative gains. Here we’ll take a look at three Audio Effects, and how they can be used outside their intended purposes. Live’s Glue Compressor’s Soft Clip stage can be used as a flavoursome transient tamer, even with no compression.…

On Stage With Octave One Octave One Si Truss sits down with Lenny and Lawrence Burden to talk about the hardware behind their incendiary Octave One live shows and new album Love By Machine © Joseph Branston Detroit-born Techno outfit Octave One is very much a family affair, formed around the core duo of brothers Lenny and Lawrence Burden, and joined in the studio by siblings Lynell, Lorne and Lance. The Burden brothers have been making music together since the late ’80s, both as Octave One and as Random Noise Generation, releasing music for labels including Tresor and Transmat, as well as their own 430 West imprint. As Octave One, they’re arguably best known for their hardware-driven, heavily improvised live shows, which have seen Lenny and Lawrence stun…

In The Studio With Dusky Dusky Known for producing some of the biggest House anthems in recent years, Dusky broaden their horizons with a much-anticipated second album featuring collabs with Gary Numan and Wiley. Danny Turner rummages through the duo’s London-based studio © George Fairbairn Initially known as Solarity, the last five years have been plain sailing for Alfie Granger-Howell and Nick Harriman since rebranding themselves as Dusky. Their debut album, Stick by This (2011), was endorsed by superstar DJ Pete Tong and the duo were voted Best British Producers by DJ Mag in 2013 following the No 1 Beatport tune Careless. Alfie and Nick have continued dropping stellar tracks, carving a niche within the House world and asserting themselves on the underground club scene. New album Outer sees…

In The Studio With AFFKT AFFKT One of the best producers to emerge from Spain in recent years, Marc Nadal (aka AFFKT) is also a mixing and mastering engineer for numerous Dance labels including his own Sincopat. Danny Turner picks up some tips © Vincent Vandries Valencia-based Marc Nadal moved into production as one half of Drum ’n’ Bass outfit Malsum and the hypnotic Techno project Renace before releasing Punto 0 in 2012 under the pseudonym AFFKT. On his second AFFKT album, Son Of A Thousand Sounds, Nadal balances his love for the dancefloor with a moody yet uplifting Electronic Pop aesthetic. With his yearning for technical perfection, aside from his solo work Nadal found mixing and mastering for other artists a natural progression. Initially working with his Sincopat…

THE ALTERNATIVES Roland TR-8 £409 Arguably more sonically flexible and featuring audio over USB and MIDI parameter control, but lacking the analogue charm and some of the creative sequencing of the DrumBrute. www.roland.com EMX Korg 2 Electribe £366 The Electribe features much more automation and a larger sonic range, but can’t match the DrumBrute’s sequencer and gritty edge. www.korg.com MFB Tanzmaus £422 The Tanzmaus covers a similar analogue sound palette and is arguably better-sounding in some respects, but the DrumBrute sequencer leaves it in the dust. www.mfberlin.de…

THE ALTERNATIVES Novation Bass Station II £315 A bit pricier than the Monologue, and with DCOs (not VCOs), but laden with better envelopes, more filters and a potentially wider sound palette. uk.novationmusic.com Arturia MicroBrute £229 Single VCO, though it has multiple, mixable waveshapes and a distinctive filter plus patchable modulation matrix and built-in sequencer. www.arturia.com Moog Sub 37 £1,400 Over four times the price, and still only monophonic, but with an excellent pedigree and great user interface. Sounds and feels great. www.moogmusic.com…

Reviews Korg ARP Odyssey Module Korg ARP Odyssey Module £519 Korg’s ARP recreation returns in a stripped-down desktop form. Si Truss goes on an abbreviated odyssey The Odyssey is at its best hooked up to a sequencer or MIDI input anyway Given the near unanimous praise for Korg’s 2014 ARP Odyssey reissue, along with the well-received desktop version of their own MS-20, a keyboard-less variant of Korg’s Odyssey was inevitable. And, beyond the removal of the keyboard, there’s basically no difference here between the first reissue and module version. On a technical level, the only addition is the ability to receive pitchbend info over MIDI or USB. Aesthetically, the Odyssey Module is available in the Rev1 (pictured) and Rev3 (black and orange) designs, but not the Rev2 variation. Beyond…

Reviews Korg microKorg S Korg microKorg S £411 Korg bring back their vocoding mini synth with some added extras. Simon Arblaster asks if this little noise-maker can keep up with the times… Korg have spent a lot of time catching up with some old classics over the past few years, with some releases more surprising than others. So when the Japanese manufacturer announced they were updating their diminutive vocoding synthesizer, the microKorg, it didn’t quite have that same feeling of excitement that we got from the likes of, say, the ARP Odyssey or the MS-20 reissues. Still, we’re not ones to let that sort of thing dampen the spirit and decided to explore this new S version a little closer. First things first, that ‘S’ we’re presuming stands for…

Advice Rockschool PART 3: LET’S GET VOCAL! Rockschool course tutors Hannah V and Sam Vasanth take us through their graded Production Syllabus Recording vocals is one of the main responsibilities of a producer. It is a very rewarding skill that can be honed with practice and experience. Both of us spend most of our days in the studio recording artists and we love it! At Grade 3, Rockschool delves into this subject, discussing audio recording, editing and processing. There are technical aspects to consider when recording vocalists – can they hear themselves clearly over the track? Do they need more/less reverb? Is the audio clipping at your end? There is also an emotional aspect to consider – artists tend to perform at their best when they are comfortable with…

PlayDifferently Model 1: The essential info The Model 1 is an eight-channel, all-analogue DJ mixer. Its six main channels each feature contouring low- and high-pass filters along with a precision sculpting EQ. The EQs have an asymmetric cut/boost limited to +8dB boost but with a cut extended to -20dB. They also feature a wide Q and a frequency range covering almost seven octaves. Model 1 has two stereo sends and two return channels with input drive and metering feedback. Every channel features an analogue drive circuit. It also boasts two independent cue systems along with custom TDK 60mm channel faders, plus a three-band master EQ, master high-pass and resonant low-pass filtering and a two-channel booth EQ. It is available to order now at £2,550 including worldwide shipping.…

Classic Album Filter Track by track with Philippe Zdar "We wanted that funky, live groove you get with drum breaks; not that rigid 4/4 programming" “The new album is Ibifornia. It’s our fourth. It has less Breakbeat, and more Afrobeat and Disco, and it’s more song-based because we are obsessed with Pop music and singers. It features a lot of guests who are friends now, like Cat Power, Mike D and Pharrell. It’s probably a less crazy album. It’s a mix of what we feel now, and it’s an antidote to the cynicism of EDM, where you get a lot of money to make shit music, but you don’t care. We wanted to show that there is another way.” Cassius 1999 “This one started out as a homage to…

Five Secret Live Features With Options.txt Let’s look at an interesting hack that can be used to activate extra hidden features within Live Create a plain text file named Options.txt and place it in the same folder as Live’s Preferences.cfg file – /Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live x.x.x on Mac, or \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live x.x.x\Preferences\ on Windows. Find out more info at http://bit.ly/2fi6BlF . Now, by adding specific lines of code within this text file, you can unlock hidden features – let’s look at five of the best. 1 Close Live, open Options.txt text file, add the line -ShowDeviceSlots=1 then save. Reopen Live and a new Show/Hide Device Slots button is to the right of the Session View, sitting between the I/O and R buttons. Toggle this, and each channel’s list of loaded…

THE TRACK Swindle Connecta feat. Ricardo China Butterz 2016 © Joby Sessions “If you’re the king of something that lasts for two years, once that two years is up you’ve got to change. I don’t want to start in room three every few years! I don’t want to be reliant on any kind of scene. As long as I can communicate with people via music, then I’m happy.” Combining everything from Jazz and World music to Grime and Dubstep, Swindle, aka Cameron Palmer, has an enviable CV with releases on Planet Mu and Deep Medi, remixes for Roni Size and Joker, and collaborations with Ghetts and JME. We caught up with Cameron at Airmiles Studio, deep in the Kent countryside, to find out how he made the Brazilian-inspired Connecta…

MODULAR MONTHLY Creative sequencing with the DU-SEQ The DU-SEQ offers CV and gate sequencing plus ways to manipulate it Detroit Underground are a record label with plenty of releases under their belt. Visit www.detund.com to check out their extensive catalogue and new modular ventures. They came into the world of Eurorack with their first module the DU-RDT. It’s a linear feedback shift register or LFSR that generates, manipulates and delays rhythms. They then brought the DU-KRPLS module to life (a collaboration with Meng Qi) which is a circuit bent waveguide module giving us Karplus-Strong synthesis and circuit bent sounds. Detroit Underground are injecting creative ideas and avoiding the more obvious paths of synthesis. The DU-SEQ is an 8-step all-analogue step sequencer with CV and gate sequencing along with step repeats,…

Arturia DrumBrute | Reviews Arturia DrumBrute £399 The French brand add an all-analogue drum machine to their well-regarded Brute range. Si Truss takes it for a spin… Arturia are, it seems, a company who like to keep us on our toes. While we’re still waiting expectantly for the arrival of their mammoth MatrixBrute synth, which was announced back at NAMM but is yet to hit shelves, the French brand have served up something of a curveball with the arrival of the DrumBrute, an all-analogue drum machine announced out of the blue in early October and due to arrive in shops barely a month later. Housed in a chassis that mimics the size and design of the company’s MiniBrute synth, the DrumBrute features 12 synth tracks offering a total of 17…

Reviews | Korg Monologue Korg Monologue £299 Korg drop a new monophonic synth partner to this year’s well-regarded Minilogue. Bruce Aisher gets twiddling Notes and parameters can be automated with ease, and Korg go to town with their Motion Sequencing Korg’s approach over the last few years has taken in recreations of original hardware alongside budget-priced Volca boxes, ultimately arriving at the Minilogue, a newly designed polyphonic analogue design. The Minilogue tipped a nod to specific older gear, but was very much a 21st century take on things. Korg’s latest synth is the Monologue, and as you would expect it’s monophonic. However, it’s not just a Minilogue trimmed of three voices. There is a family resemblance – a real wood back panel, mini keys and the same set of inputs…

Reviews Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro £430 A studio classic gets upgraded with Tesla 2.0 driver technology. Robbie Stamp takes off his DT 770s to have a listen Mixing the low-end on DT 1770s is a pleasure, and efficient too Beyerdynamic’s Tesla driver technology has evolved into its second (2.0) iteration, which now upgrades the classic DT 770 into the new DT 1770 Pro. So what’s changed? First off, the price; you can buy nearly three pairs of DT 770s for one pair of DT 1770s. The rest is performance, from frequency/dynamic response to power handling and distortion. The single-sided cable is detachable (at last!) with the package including coiled and straight types. The carry case houses a set of leatherette earpads in addition to the…

THE ALTERNATIVES Roland JD-Xi £409 Vocoder, minikeys… it’s all there with the addition of an analogue voice alongside Roland’s SuperNatural engine. It’s not as nice looking as the microKorg though. www.roland.com Novation MiniNova £279 The MiniNova is the cheapest option by far in the vocoder/ synth stakes and even comes as a Giorgio Moroder-fied special edition too, which is still cheaper than the Korg at £320, despite the limited numbers made. global.novationmusic.com Korg Minilogue £499 Okay, so there’s no vocoder here, but we’re in analogue territory and for just under £90 extra, it will prove more versatile in the long run. www.korg.com…

Drawbar settings for Soul/Funk? I play Soul and Funk – could you recommend a few general drawbar settings that I could utilise? For drawbars on Hammond organs or Hammond clones it’s easiest to look at them like a graphic EQ – the lowest bars are for bass, middle for mids and highs for highs! There are a few go-to settings you can use as the basis for sounds for Soul and Funk, which you can add to as you wish. Having said that, we tend to use just one basic setting and build from there, adding more grit, whistle or fullness. If you have a clone, it’s worth setting up several presets for quickly flipping between. Here are a few of my favourite settings… This setting is our go-to ‘bread…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Stevie Wonder Innervisions Stevie’s 16th(!) studio album was a great source of inspiration for Zdar, with Too High even becoming a template for jams like Cassius 1999 . ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Too High, Living for the City, Higher Ground Various Artists Paris Is Sleeping – Respect Is Burning In the late ’90s Paris bboys were tearing up House club dancefloors! This is the soundtrack, and it’s well pre-Cassius. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Motorbass – Neptune (EDC Edit), Etienne De Crecy – New York New York, Catalan FC – Respect Is Burning Curtis Mayfield There’s No Place Like America Today Just one of the dope Curtis albums that Zdar keeps on heavy rotation. He’s the best to…

Working With Producer Drum Kits Want to turn a Drummer region into a fully flexible multi-track acoustic drum project? Then follow these three simple steps Setting up a drum session in a recording studio is a thoroughly worthwhile, yet highly time-consuming business. As well as what kit to use, tuning and so on, you’ll need to give careful consideration to your microphone rig. Well-spec’d studios will provide multiple microphone options both for individual drums, alongside overheads and room microphones, as well as a carefully crafted DAW project ready to record all of those channels to separate tracks. Producers want a great sound in the room but also flexibility at the mix stage, so an audio interface with multiple recording channels is also a must. Logic Pro X has a number…

PRODUCER POWER TIPS FL Studio Tips Get the most out of Image-Line’s much-loved DAW with these essential tips Shortcuts to success As with any DAW, you can save yourself bags of time if you memorise the most useful keyboard shortcuts. Our favourites are the F keys for navigating around vital project areas: Toggle Playlist (F5), Toggle Step Sequencer (F6), Toggle Piano Roll (F7), Show/Hide Sample Browser (F8) and Show/Hide Mixer (F9). Layers Stacking two or more sounds is an essential production technique and FL Studio 12 makes this process easy. Simply add a Layer track, open its interface, click the Channel Selector of the multiple channels you want to layer to select them, then click ‘Set children’ in the Layer screen’s window. Now play MIDI on the Layer channel, and…

The Project Window It’s where most of the action begins, so tweaking it for your own needs can save time and aid your creative flow Cubase has a main window that provides an overview of the whole project. The only downside is that there are features, tabs and icons here that you may only use occasionally – or even not at all. The solution is take advantage of the many ways of streamlining what you see. Unfortunately, these are littered throughout this window and elsewhere. Check out the main Preferences (in the main File menu) to adjust some of the many global interface colour and display settings. These are dotted throughout its numerous subsections so make sure you store the current settings before you tweak (they can be saved as…

QUICK TIPS 1 Cubase Plug-ins… Don’t think that third-party plug-ins are always better. Retrologue, Padshop, Quadrafuzz and many others are excellent. 2 Render In Place… A great way of turning heavily processed audio tracks or instruments into audio. It can save on processing and make arranging tracks easier. Sometimes it’s good to commit to what sounds good. 3 Direct Outs… A useful way of creating parallel stem mixes, or routing tracks to external devices (samplers etc), without disrupting the overall mix. 4 Naming Projects… Give your projects a proper, recognisable name and save each one in its own folder. Add an incrementing number to the saved name for each session/ day you’ve worked on it, and letters after this for different saves within a single session.…

MONOLOGUE MOTION SEQUENCING The Monologue includes Korg’s Motion Sequencing technology which allows both notes and parameter values to be recorded and played back. The 16-step sequencer is similar to those of Korg’s Volcas, with the 16 front-panel LEDs being used for menu item selection and step on/off status. Notes can be recorded in real or step-time modes, and up to four lanes of parameter automation can be added on top. Unlike the Volcas, the screen means this aspect of the sequencer is a more visual experience. An arpeggiator option, with motion sequencing, would have been the icing on the cake.…

Reviews Lewitt LCT 640 TS Lewitt LCT 640 TS £879 Mics aren’t typical targets for innovation, but, as Jon Musgrave discovers, Lewitt Audio would like to change all that… It is bright though not overhyped in the high frequencies, with solid though not woolly low mids Although visually similar to Lewitt Audio’s LCT 640, their new LCT 640 TS sports a twin diaphragm capsule and incorporates Lewitt’s integrated capsule matching system. The TS stands for Twin System: it works either in regular multipattern mic mode, or in dual mode, providing independent access to both diaphragm outputs. This allows adjustment of the pickup pattern after recording and also opens up some stereo recording options. On body options include low cut filter (40 and 80Hz at 12dB/octave or 160Hz at 6dB/octave),…

2+1 Speaker System The big change to the new S version is the addition of a three-speaker system. Much like your average 2.1 system, the microKorg S features a stereo pair of 3.5cm drivers kicking out 0.5 Watts each and a 4cm subwoofer with 3 Watts of power. Quite cleverly, the stereo pair are located underneath the keybed and the subwoofer is mounted within a box. The driver is roughly located underneath the two centre edit dials. The subwoofer and its enclosure are designed to add tactile feedback associated with the feel when playing acoustic instruments.…