207_Computer Music_September_2014.pdf

FREE

FILTER

950 SAMPLES

35+ VIDEOS TUTORIAL

September 2014 / CM207

Sampling Make any sound your own – build a unique sample library with our guide

rip sounds

From vinyl, online, MP3… anywhere!

Pro SAMPLE PACK Over 800MB of exclusive hits & loops

pro editing

See how in hours of expert video

DUNE 2 RENOISE 3 ARTURIA SPARK 2

+ 20 more reviews!

MultisamplING Masterclass session with Cyclick Samples

70s SYNTH SOUNDS BITWIG FX music theory: MODES

+ more EXPERT GUIDEs

intro / computer music <

welcome HOW TO USE  download

Wherever you see this icon, there’s downloadable content such as videos, software, samples and tutorial files. See the Contents on the next page for how to download. Tutorials featuring this icon make use of our own Plugins.

Tutorial

Files

This icon means there are extra files to help you follow a tutorial feature.

There’s extra video content wherever you see this icon.

www.computermusic.co.uk [email protected] www.facebook.com/computer.music.mag

WWW

The use of samples has never been more widespread, but how many of us actually, well… sample? With the endless outpouring of high-quality sample packs (we’ve expanded our Mini Reviews section this month to keep up!) and proliferation of painstakingly detailed sampled instruments, it’s not surprising that most computer musicians focus their attentions on such aspects as synthesis and mixing instead. Of course, sampling can not only be used to recycle existing musical ideas in brilliant and creative new ways, but it’s a powerful sound design tool in itself. And then there’s multisampling: the act of recreating practically any instrument, real or electronic, using multiple samples. The thing is, there’s an art to it, and for the reasons I set out above, it’s becoming an increasingly lost one. And that would be a shame, is here with right? Not to fear, for The Art of Sampling, possibly our most ambitious, technique-packed tutorial ever, ranging from the basics right up to a full-on multisampling masterclass! And you can take it as a given that there’s expert video too because from now on, every tutorial in the mag has it! Enjoy the vids and…

Enjoy the issue

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Lee du-Caine Editor

Where to get Print

includes Dual-Layer DVD

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Newsstand

for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch

www.computermusic.co.uk/cmdigital

Zinio

Subscribe to Computer Music!

See p94

for PC, Android, iPad & more www.zinio.com

Google Play

for Android and Chrome play.google.com

Issue 207 SePTEMBER 2014

contents

Cover feature

Producer masterclass

53 F  UJIYA & MIYAGI

Sampling Editing, looping, recording, mapping, multisampling and loads more in this expansive feature, all backed up with 2+ hours of video. It kicks off on p34

See exactly how the Brighton threesome get their sound with our in-studio interview and video

Tutorial

BITWIG

57 B  ITWIG FX

Get real results from the new DAW’s effects modules, Container setups and Note FX

Tutorial

63 SYNTH SOUNDS of the 70s

Dial in classic analogue grit, drive and tone with these ten video techniques

Regulars 74

The A to Z of computer music: s (part 2)

76

the easy guide: modes

Feature

Interview

69 AUDIO INTERFACES

80 MATRIX & futurebound

Discover the tricks hiding in your box. Haven’t got one? Find out which is best for you

Reviews

Essentials

88

synapse audio dune 2

20

inbox

90

xln audio addictive drums 2

22

news

92

arturia spark 2

30

creative concepts

96

renoise 3

51

next issue

102 sinevibes hexonator

62

back issues

PLUS 21 MORE products reviewed!

110

Subscribe

4  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

What are the long-distance production duo are up to?

114

BLAST FROM THE PAST: korg wavestation

This issue’s exclusive free content from Computer Music

download valvefilter cm A simple-but-effective tone-shaper to add warmth and punch to any track. See how to use it on p10

Tutorial videos 37 high-quality videos to guide you through our tutorials. Wherever you see the below icon, there’s a video version to watch

S  AMPLES Don’t waste hours hunting old records. Get 950 WAVs with a sampled-vinyl feel on p12

Tutorial files

CM Plugins

A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials

Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on p16

Download Our fantastic software, samples, videos* and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access, head to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time to register new issues and download more content. Steve Lewis gives us a close look at Fujiya & Miyagi’s Acid To My Alkaline and Tetrahydrofolic Acid, p53

* The Producer Masterclass video is not currently available as a download, though a solution to this is being worked on. Apple Newsstand readers can still watch the video via built-in internet streaming – just hit the Play Video button on the page.

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  5

video

Download over 4 hours of video from vault.computermusic.co.uk THE ART OF

SAMPLING

Learn how to record, edit, loop and map samples like the professionals in these videos Read the full article on p34

1  Ripping samples with Audio Hijack Pro

2  Basic audio editing with Audacity

3  Making sampled loops cycle smoothly

4  Basic sampler functions

5  Sustaining a sample with looping

6  Tonal looping with XFadeLooper CM

7 

8  Removing noise from a sample with iZotope RX 3

9  Ripping a kick sample from a full track

10  Isolating & enhancing a sampled bass note

11  Giving clean sounds a ‘sampled’ vibe

Robbie Stamp of Cyclick Samples shares three crucial sampling tips and shows you how to multisample instruments

TIP 1  Sustained looping of multisamples

TIP 2  Consistent looping with TIP 3  Smoothly looping delay, reverb & compression musical phrases

1  Recording a multisampled instrument

2  Editing a multisample recording session

3  Mapping a multisample patch in Kontakt

Tuning a sample

TIP  Creative sample scanning

multisampling masterclass with cyclick

6  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

4  Mapping a multisample patch in Alchemy

video VALVEFILTER cm

Producer Masterclass*

Analogue-style low-pass filtering and drive from this issue’s vintage toneshaping plugin giveaway Read the full article on p10

AUDIO INTERFACES

EASY GUIDE: MODES

The guide to getting the most out of this indispensable studio gear

Get more out of musical scales without boggling your mind in the process

Read the full article on p69

Read the full article on p76

1  Adjusting latency for recording and mixing

FUjIyA & MIYAGI Steve Lewis gives us a peep inside the Brighton boys’ studio, showing how he put together two of their tracks Read the full article on p53

1  Reverb, Resonator Bank and Ladder

2  Bitwig Studio’s FX Containers

3  Advanced effects chains with Wet and FB Effects

4 

BITWIG FX Get a load of Bitwig Studio’s signal processing building blocks and how to piece them together 2  Using an audio interface’s monitoring software

download

Read the full article on p57

Our fantastic software, samples, videos and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access to this content, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few

simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time to register new issues and download more content. For more info, see our Vault FAQ: bit.ly/cmvaultfaq

Bitwig Studio’s Note FX

* Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault, though Apple Newsstand users can watch the video via built-in internet streaming.

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  7

video This issue includes over 37 high-quality videos. Download them to your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

SYNTH SOUNDS of THE SEVENTIeS Tone up with ten video tips to help you recreate the heavy heyday of the analogue synthesiser Read the full article on p63

download

1  Gentle detuning for a 70s analogue synth sound

2  Distorting basic synth patches for a 70s tone

3  Classic 70s gliding synths using portamento

4  Fake clavinet using 70s-style synthesis

5  Synthesising thick, warm 70s synth brass

6  Making a resonant 70s laser zap with Zebra CM

7  Classic 70s sync lead using Zebra CM

8  70s-style burbling sample-and-hold synth lines

9  EQing and filtering for a 70s-style synth tone

10  Mimicking the driven tape sound of 70s recording

Our fantastic software, samples, videos and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access to this content, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few

8  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time to register new issues and download more content. For more info, see our Vault FAQ: bit.ly/cmvaultfaq

>  download / audiothing valvefilter cm

>Exclusive full software

AudioThing

ValveFilter CM

download Get the plugin, video and Tutorial Files on PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

Our exclusive new PC/Mac Plugin offers combined analogue-style low-pass filtering with tasty valve drive Many of our Plugins are designed to offer loads of detailed and intricate features, aimed at achieving clean and surgically precise results; others are made to evoke the spirit of classic gear, with vintage sound, to-the-point functionality and an intuitive workflow. Our latest – ValveFilter CM, by AudioThing – falls into the second category. The plugin’s GUI is unmistakably vintage-inspired, with wooden side

INFO Click here to check out AudioThing on the web, Twitter and Facebook

panels, decidedly old-school metering and big Moog-style potentiometers. Operationally, ValveFilter CM is divided into two main stages: the Valve and the Filter. The valve drive stage is based upon the famous Telefunken ECC83 tube, and the large valve in the middle of the plugin lights up blue when it’s activated. The Filter section is based on Moog’s classic ladder filter design – a 24dB (fourpole) low-pass – with a Cutoff

METER A basic envelopefollowing output meter

frequency range of 42Hz to 16kHz, and a switch for kicking in 10dB of resonance. The Valve and Filter stages can be used in isolation or together, giving you the ability to add a touch (or a lot!) of crunch and grit to a sound, then smoothly filter the results. If ValveFilter CM’s combined drive and filter goodness have wet your analogue emulation whistle, then make sure you head to the AudioThing website and

RANDOM Click the die to randomise the plugin’s settings BYPASS Toggle the plugin’s processing on or off HELP A menu for accessing more info about the plugin

VALVE See the valve lamp light up blue when the valve stage is activated

VALVE DRIVE Increase this to push your signal into the valve stage and increase drive

take a look at the commercial version, ValveFilter VF-1. Priced €25, the full plugin’s Drive stage can be switched between Triode and Pentode modes, and it also features a Bias control for altering the tube stage’s behaviour. Its multimode filter is switchable between low-pass and high-pass modes, too, and there’s a variable resonance parameter ranging from 0-20dB. www.audiothing.net

FILTER CUTOFF Set the filter cutoff frequency between 42Hz and 16kHz

VALVE ON/OFF Click this switch to turn the valve stage on or off

10  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

RESONANCE ON/OFF Switch in a fixed 10dB resonance setting

audiothing valvefilter cm / download  < > Step by step Getting started with ValveFilter CM

Tutorial

Files

1

4

The ValveFilter CM installers can be found in the AudioThing ValveFilter CM folder. Depending on the platform you’re using, open the PC or Mac folder found inside. To install the plugin on your system, copy the relevant files to the appropriate plugins folder. More detailed installation instructions are found in the included text file.

ValveFilter CM’s main parameters are appropriately divided into two sections – Valve and Filter. The input signal travels through the initial Valve stage, then into the Filter section and on to the output. The filter (a Moog-style 24dB lowpass) is always active, so it will smoothly roll off frequencies above 16kHz even in its default state.

2

5

With the plugin is installed on your computer, let’s dive in and explore its features. Start a new 126bpm project in any DAW and drop DiscoLoop.wav onto an audio track. This track loop is made up of various elements taken from 206’s VIP Series pack by The Young Punx, and its full spread of frequencies makes it ideal for some filtering action. Load up a new instance of ValveFilter CM on this channel as an insert.

Sweep the Cutoff around to hear the smooth low-pass filtering over our loop. The Filter section’s On/Off switch activates a fixed resonance boost of 10dB around the cutoff point. Click it, then turn the Cutoff knob and hear the boosted peak sweep around with it. Unlike with classic ladder filters, however, this increase in resonance doesn’t lower the level of the signal.

3

6

Just like real hardware filters and drive effects, the plugin’s drive and filtering stages can create wild fluctuations in volume, especially with the Resonance active. To prevent any clipping or volume overload, load up a limiter plugin after ValveFilter CM in the insert chain. This will prevent any overshoots, but it’s still good practice to avoid overly high levels before the signal reaches the limiter anyway.

Reset the Cutoff to 16kHz and turn the resonance Off again. ValeFilter CM’s Valve stage is based on the classic Telefunken ECC83 tube. Turn it on by clicking once on the Valve On/Off switch to set it to On, and notice the lamp light up. Slowly raise the Drive knob to hear an increasing amount of analogue valve ‘crunch’ added to the signal. The lamp glows brighter as the level goes up.

POWER TIP

>Other applications

7

The Valve or Filter stages can each be used in isolation, but the real fun comes in combining the two. Try cranking up the Valve’s Drive parameter to distort the signal, then sweeping the Cutoff knob to filter the crunched-up loop. Above the valve lamp is an amplitude meter – just the thing for keeping an eye on output levels.

8

The Randomise button at the very top instantly randomises ValveFilter CM’s settings, while the far right green Bypass button nullifies the effect. Click the ? to find out more about the plugin and reveal a link to buy the full version, Valve Filter VF-1. The AudioThing logo at the top left takes you to the developer’s website, and Facebook and Twitter pages.

We’ve demonstrated Valve Filter CM’s capabilities using a loop containing several track elements, but the plugin’s valve drive and luscious low-pass filtering are ideal for many other mixing tasks, too. They can work wonders on a clean sine bass part, for example, bringing out new harmonic content that can then be filtered out, adding warm bass presence for audibility through smaller speakers. The plugin can also lend real analogue flavour to modern synths and samples – turn to p46 to learn how.

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  11

>  download  /  samples

Samples

Crate Diggers’ Delight

download Get this exclusive sample pack on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

Get your hands dirty with 950 vintage-tinged samples – horns, drums, guitars, bass loops, breakbeats and more For a true sample collector, nothing beats the feeling of crate digging. No, we don’t mean sampling endless YouTube videos or MP3s on your computer, but getting off your behind, hunting down a dusty record shop, wiping off an old, forgotten record, dropping the needle onto it and hearing a crackly old sound that could be the basis for a whole track. We didn’t have the budget to glue an entire record shop to the mag this month, but we’ve sent two sampling experts out to create some ready-made vintage-flavoured loops and hits.

Cyclick

Robbie Stamp of Cyclick fame can be classified as a real sampling expert (check out his samplemaking process in action on p48). This month, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. “This is a collection of bass, guitar, drum, percussion, synth, keyboard and orchestral loops given a sampled vinyl feel. The vinyl crackling and pops are real, taken off the gaps, lead-ins and run-outs of 7- and 12-inch records (33 and 45 rpm), also included in the collection as loops.

“In Kontakt, the vinyl loops were selected to accompany a particular instrumental loop. To get the requisite sonic imprint (I wasn’t just going to use a virtual vinyl plugin), the vinyl noise was used as a sidechain to a fast compressor strapped across the instrumental loop so that any pops and noise transients caused a minor dropout in the audio, just like on a real record. The instrument channel was also given a bit of EQ/filtering and compression to impart a more vinyl tone. “The result was sent to two processing chains: the first a GSSL buss compressor into a Lavry AD10 converter, which was set to its ‘complex’ analogue emulation (Digital Alias-Free Emulation), adding some characterful grit and front to the conversion; the second process chain consisted of a Boss DE-200 delay in ‘direct’ mode and overdriven feeding a Yamaha SPX1000. The former adds some lo-fi beans and the latter was used in its Aural Exciter mode, which in combination with its 16-bit conversion gives a more 80s or 90s sampler tone. This was then sent to that most 90s of compressors, the Alesis 3630, then converted through the Orion 32.

We’ve created almost a thousand dusty, crackly samples to use freely in your tunes

12  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

950 EXCLUSIVE SAMPLES 49 bass loops 177 drum loops/beats 80 guitar loops 25 synth loops 57 percussive loops 30 keys loops 233 vinyl noises and loops 132 drum hits 113 stabs 53 other vinyl snippets

“Once the audio made its way through these chains, it was a (not inconsiderable) case of choosing which sound suited which loop.” Raise any pressing issues with Robbie via Twitter: @CyclickBob.

Groove Criminals

Oli Bell of Groove Criminals is a dusty, crusty crate-digging connoisseur, expertly trained in the art of making things sound sampled. “All the vinyl noise, crackle and tape noise was taken directly from our TEAC reel-to-reel or the beginning grooves of a stack of old charity shop records (our own crates of vinyl are slightly better looked after). We spent some time getting a good mix of really loud dirt and crackles as well as some more subtle vinyl flavour to layer behind beats, loops or whatever. Try using a high pass filter over the crackle to reduce any hum or low end if it gets in the way. “All the breaks and percussion loops are either programmed, played or taken from our own stash of drum sessions (occasionally a bit of all three). Dirt, crackle, stabs etc were all added during the process, and we’ve made the decision to make sure they had bags of dusty, grimy character. “Other stuff of note includes our 1969 Hammond drawbar organ on the organ stabs, a few hits taken from some very uncool 80s drum machines and the vinyl snippets; some were faked and others heavily processed samples from some unloved wax.” Commend Oli on his needlework via Twitter: @GrooveCriminals.

>  download /

plugins

plugINS

INSTRUMENTS Our exclusive collection of instruments and effects is included with every issue of Computer Music – it’s all you need to make great music now! The Plugins collection is a suite of complete, limitation-free instrument and effects plugins. It’s an incredible resource, boasting 35+ pro-quality plugins that you won’t find anywhere else, all for PC and Mac, in VST and AU formats. All of the included software is created exclusively for us by respected commercial developers such as LinPlug, Sugar Bytes, Ohm Force, KV331 Audio, u-he, Cableguys, eaReckon, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen, Synapse Audio and MeldaProduction.

frequently asked questions What is Plugins? Is it just freeware? No, and neither are the plugins limited or ‘crippled’. It’s a set of virtual instruments and effects created by some of the best developers in the business just for us – you won’t find this set of plugins anywhere else!

How do I install Plugins? You’ll find installation instructions for each plugin in the How To Install file in the CM Plugins folder. What do I need to use them? A PC or Mac and a music program (aka DAW) to host them (ie, ‘plug in’ to). You need a DAW that can host VST or AU plugins, such as Ableton Live, Reaper, FL Studio (PC), Cubase, Logic (Mac) Garageband (Mac), or Sonar (PC). Which of the plugins have a 64-bit version? Over half of the plugins have 64-bit versions, which you’ll need if you’re using a 64-bit DAW that does not have its own ‘bit bridge’ (eg, Logic Pro X, Ableton Live 9). If you’d still like to use 32-bit plugins in such a DAW, try a third-party bridge like jBridge (for VST) or 32 Lives (for AU). Still got questions? See the full FAQ at bit.ly/cmpluginsfaq

Where do I get Plugins? As a download from our Vault (see p5 for instructions on how to access) or on the DVD that comes with the print edition of the magazine. 16  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

HYBRID SYNTHS

HYBRID SYNTHS (continued)

Cableguys Curve 2 CM

KV331 Audio SynthMaster CM

• Design-your-own waveforms synth • Phat 16-voice Unison mode • Four Macro knobs • Based on Cableguys Curve 2 • AU/VST/RTAS • 32-/64-bit www.cableguys.de

• Dual wavescanning oscillators • Multimode filter and built-in effects • Customisable waveshaping distortion • FM/AM synthesis modes • Extensive modulation capabilities • Based on SynthMaster 2.5 • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.kv331audio.com

Synapse Audio Dune CM • VA and wavetable oscillators • Powerful per-voice modulation • 12-slot modulation matrix • Based on the full version of Dune • AU/VST • 32-bit www.synapse-audio.com

Enzyme CM • Scanned synthesis sound generation • Straightforward preset-based setup • Assign presets’ parameters to controls • Based on the full Enzyme synth • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.humanoidsoundsystems.com

FM SYNTHS u-he Zebra CM • Blendable oscillator waveforms • Super-programmable step LFOs • Slick delay, reverb and chorus/phaser • Original synth designed just for CM • AU/VST • 32-bit www.u-he.com

BigTick Rhino CM • Feature-packed FM synth • Large, flexible envelopes • Modulation matrix & macro controls • Built-in effects • Based on the full Rhino synth • AU/VST • 32-bit www.bigtickaudio.com

plugins / download  <

download Get these instruments on your PC or Mac right now at vault.computermusic.co.uk

VIRTUAL ANALOGUE SYNTHS

DRUM MACHINES

SAMPLERS

PRESET-BASED

Expert Sleepers XFadeLooper CM

• 200 awesome ready-to-play patches • Loads SFZ patches – often included in our own sample collections! • Based on the full Alchemy synth • AU/VST/RTAS • 32-/64-bit www.camelaudio.com

Camel Audio Alchemy Player CM

LinPlug Alpha CM • Dual oscillators with blendable waves • Easy operation • Modulation matrix • Slick chorus effect • Polyphonic glide • Based on the commercial Alpha synth • AU/VST • 32-bit www.linplug.com

AudioRealism ADM CM • Old-school-style drum machine • Emulates Roland’s legendary TR-606 • Also contains custom samples • Based on the full ADM • AU/VST • 32-bit www.audiorealism.se

XILS-lab PolyKB II CM

LinPlug CM-505

• Models the sound of the ultra-rare PolyKobol hardware synthesiser • Packed with mix-ready preset variants • Knobs assignable to main parameters • Based on XILS-lab’s PolyKB II • AU/VST/RTAS • 32-/64-bit www.xils-lab.com

• Analogue-style drum synth • 12 different drum sounds • Distortion and bitcrushing effects • AU/VST • 32-bit www.linplug.com

• Creative crossfade-looping sampler • Hard sync mode • Modulation • Blendable multimode filter • Saturation section • Flexible looping • Based on Crossfade Loop Synth v3 • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.expert-sleepers.co.uk

Loomer Cumulus • Granular sampler • Scenes function for sequencing slices • Not based on an existing plugin • AU/VST 32-/64-bit • RTAS/Standalone 32-bit www.loomer.co.uk

REAL INSTRUMENTS

Synapse Audio Plucked String • Synthesises plucked string sounds • Stereo mode mimics double-tracking • Three-voice mode for extra phatness, • Five selectable modes: Noise, String, Gourmet, Nylon and Acoustic • AU/VST • 32-bit www.synapse-audio.com

Madrona Labs Aalto CM • Unique and powerful monosynth • Unusual oscillators with FM • Waveguide delay section • Intuitively patchable modulation • Onboard reverb • Step sequencing • Based on the full Aalto synth • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.madronalabs.com

Rob Papen RG-Muted CM • Creates realistic funky guitar grooves • Onboard sequencer • Effects and modulation options • Based on Rob Papen RG • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.robpapen.com

video guides To watch expert videos Plugins showing the in action and explaining their features, head to:

bit.ly/CMPlugsJun14 September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  17

>  download /

plugINS

EQ/FILTERS

plugins

EFFECTS EQ/FILTERS (continued)

DYNAMICS (continued)

DELAY/ REVERB

OverTone DSP Program EQ CM

DDMF CM EQ Pack • Two superb equalisers • IIEQ Pro CM: 19 filter types • LP10 CM: Linear phase mastering EQ • Based on commercial DDMF plugins • PC VST 32-/64-bit • Mac AU/VST 32-bit www.ddmf.eu

• Pultec-style vintage EQ emulation • Dual low-frequency boost/attenuate controls; high-mid boost; high shelf cut • Tube amplifier circuit-only option • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.overtonedsp.co.uk

ANALYSIS

KResearch KR-Delay CM Edition ToneBoosters Barricade CM • Intelligent, mastering-grade limiter • Dynamic response controls • Stereo options and versatile metering • Based on the full Barricade • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.toneboosters.com

• Powerful stereo delay • Ping-pong setting and stereo filtering • Clear visual feedback • Syncable delay/pre-delay times • Not based on an existing plugin • AU/VST • 32-bit www.kresearch.com

Blue Cat Audio FreqAnalyst CM eaReackon CM-EQUA 87 • Smooth three-band EQ • Adjustable low-cut filter • Switchable high/low shelves • Analyser, EQ tips, limiter and more • Based on eaReckon’s PR-EQUA 87 • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.eareckon.com

• Pro-quality, feature-packed analyser • Numerous customisation options • Based on Blue Cat’s full FreqAnalyst • PC VST/RTAS 32-/64-bit • Mac AU/VST/RTAS 32-bit www.bluecataudio.com

LiquidSonics Reverberate CM SKnote Snap • Boost or tame transient brightness • Brighten or dull a sound’s sustain • Uses two intelligently linked filters • Not based on any existing plugin • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.sknote.it

KResearch KR-Reverb CM Edition

Photosounder Spiral CM Vengeance Sound Philta CM • Dual high- and low-pass filter • Four slope settings: 12/24/48/96dB • Resonance and width controls • Link function and notch mode • Based on Vengeance’s Philta XL • AU/VST • 32-bit www.vengeance-sound.com

• Musical, note-based spectral analysis • Useful for figuring out notes in audio • Based on the full Spiral plugin • AU/VST/AAX • 32-/64-bit www.photosounder.com

DYNAMICS

• Convolution reverb • A selection of real-world presets • Import your own impulse response • Based on the full Reverberate plugin • AU/VST • 32-bit www.liquidsonics.com

eaReckon CM-COMP 87 • Slick, punchy compressor • Mix knob for parallel compression • Limiter to keep the output in check • Clear VU- and LED-style metering • Based on eaReckon’s SD-COMP 87 • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.eareckon.com

• Based on KResearch’s KR-Reverb • Adds pre-delay and damping controls • From tiny rooms to epic plates • AU/VST • 32-bit www.kresearch.com

Acon Digital CM Verb

HoRNet Fat-FET Ohm Force Ohmygod! • Resonant comb filter • Distortion section • LFO with sync • Output filter • AU/VST/RTAS • 32-/64-bit www.ohmforce.com

• FET-style compressor • Similar to classic 1176LN Peak Limiter • Ultra-fast attack as low as 0.02ms. • Based on HoRNet MultiComp • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.hor-net.com

18  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

LVC-Audio Transector CM • Transient tweaking and saturation • Define and process envelope stages • Useful metering/display functions • Mix control for parallel processing • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.lvcaudio.com

• Simple-but-versatile operation • Five modes: hall, plate, studio, etc • Buil-in high- and low-pass filters • Based on Acon Digital’s Verberate • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.acondigital.com

plugins / download  <

download Get all of these effects on your PC or Mac right now at vault.computermusic.co.uk

DISTORTION

DiSTORTION (continued) MULTIEFFECTS

Sonimus Satson CM

Rop Papen RP-Distort CM

• Classic mixer channel emulation • Subtle warming saturation • Gentle, musical high/low filters • Based on Sonimus’ full Satson • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit dsp.sonimus.com

• Five crunchy distortion algorithms • EQ, dynamics, widener + modulation • Filter and parallel processing controls • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.robpapen.com

Subsonics Labs Wolfram CM • Pitchshifting, distortion, phaseshifting, panning, delay and filter • Flexible modulation • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.subsoniclabs.com

PITCH Sugar Bytes Artillery2 CM Edition Kuassa Amplifikation CM • Twin-channel guitar amp sim • Channel 1: Clear, chiming cleans • Channel 2: Down ’n’ dirty distortion • Based on Amplifikation Vermilion • AU/VST • 32-bit www.kuassa.com

Kuassa PreMix CM • Subtle saturation to screaming drive • Three-band Baxandall sweetening EQ • A/B comparison function • Not based on an existing plugin • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.kuassa.com

MeldaProduction MHarmonizer CM • Multivoice harmoniser • Create lush harmonies from one part • Based on MMultiBandHarmonizer • PC VST 32-/64-bit • Mac AU/VST 32-bit www.meldaproduction.com

• MIDI-triggerable “effects keyboard” • Amplitude modulation, 8-stage phaser, resonant filter delay and more • AU/VST • 32-bit www.sugar-bytes.de

Inear Display Eurydice CM • Buffer override/repeat, delay, bitcrusher and filter with modulation • Custom signal routing • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.ineardisplay.com

Cableguys Waveshaper CM • Graphically editable distortion curves • Design curves by dragging nodes • Syncable input vs output oscilloscope • Not based on an existing plugin • AU/VST • 32-/64-bit www.cableguys.de

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  19

>  reader emails

Send us your letters and technical queries! Email us at [email protected]

Message of the month I am currently looking for a drum machine/ ROMpler, so I was pleased when the Special 66: Make Better Beats came out, because this compared the 14 best ones out there. However, there is one feature I need that I cannot find in any of the products. I want to have lots of control over the snare, and I also need access to lots of different snares. I recently bought a physical snare to do some testing – I found that one snare can make hundreds of different sounds. You can tighten or loosen the membrane, you can damp it, you can adjust the amount of snare, or no snare at all. What also matters is where you hit the snare – in the middle or more on the sides – and of course how hard you hit it. With the ROMplers, I have tried, you can control lots of things, like bleed, where the mics are, how hard you hit it, etc, but not

where you hit the snare, and you can also not control the amount of snare. Is this correct? Is there a ROMpler out there that can do this? Tom van der Wegen You’re right: most software does not offer this level of control over the snare. Many drum ROMplers give access to multiple greatsounding recorded snares, but it sounds like you need synthesis/physical modelling of real-sounding acoustic drums, and here your options are more limited. Native Instruments’ Drum Synths is probably the best we’ve heard, but it’s only available within their Maschine hardware/software hybrid. Other ones to try would be Image-Line’s Drumaxx and AAS Tassman, both of which are capable of some quasi-realistic drum sounds. LdC

Soft touch

Looking for punch-packing hits that won’t take your ears off? Get 200 for our free Goldbaby pack!

The

poll

We asked our Facebook fans: Do you prefer channel strip plugins or individual processors when mixing? A All-in-one channel strip plugins B Separate compressors, EQs, etc C I like using both

20  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

I’ve noticed my drums always come across as really harsh. I use a lot of sampled one-shots and am constantly turning down velocity. My drums are too punchy – I think they could put a hole in a wall, but that’s not what I’m going for. Most tips I find are for punch and clarity; are there any tips for less harshness? Sean Clayton Great question, Sean. First off, try different sounds! Perhaps that harsh quality is just in the nature of the samples you’re using. Try those from, say, Goldbaby or Sample

A: 9% B: 47% C: 44%

The writer of our Message of the Month will receive FabFilter’s fabulous Creative Bundle suite of plugins for Mac and PC, worth £279!

www.fabfilter.com

Magic for a more ‘analogue’ tone. You can also increase the attack time in your sampler, or apply tiny fade-ins to the samples themselves to dull over-sharp attacks, or try gently rolling off their treble with a filter or high shelf. Look into analogue-style tape saturators, vintage compressors, etc – these plugins can help take off that harsh, ‘digital’ edge. Lastly, look at your master bus processing – if you’re boosting the treble to brighten your mix, consider that perhaps you only need to boost the treble on, say, your synths, leaving the drums as they are. LdC

Ricky McBride

Hayden Jones

“C. You can’t limit yourself. Be honest about the sound.”

“C. Every song is different, and tracks need different processing techniques”

Conchúr Ó Maonaigh

Daniel Barata

“B. I feel like I have a lot more control of my signal flow and how I’m changing the sound.”

“B. Cooking the elements requires as much freedom as you can get”

Miguel Oliveira “B. There are some really good channel strips although they are too demanding on the CPU.”

Leon Adams “A. Channel strip plugins. It gives me a sense of crafting a mix like a sound engineer or wannabe sound engineer.”

issue 207 September 2014 Future Publishing Ltd. 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW Tel: 01225 442244 Fax: 01225 732275 Email: [email protected] Web: www.computermusic.co.uk

Reader reviews

EDITORIAL Editor: Lee du-Caine, [email protected] Art Editor: Mark White, [email protected] Features Editor: Joe Rossitter, [email protected] Production Editor: James Russell, [email protected] CONTRIBUTORS Alex Williams, Ben Rogerson, Caity Foster, Danny Scott, Dave Clews, David Newman, Jon Musgrave, Owen Palmer, Robbie Stamp, Ronan Macdonald, Scot Solida, Tim Cant, Zac Citron Illustration: Jake Photography: iStockphoto, Getty Images

We asked our Facebook fans to rate…

Group Senior Editor: Julie Taylor Senior Art Editor: Rodney Dive Creative Director: Robin Abbott Editorial Director: Jim Douglas

Kontakt 5 Tom Mac – 8/10 “Highly useful, incredibly expandable.” Rob Brautigam – 10/10 “Could not live without it.”

ADVERTISING Ad Director: Clare Coleman-Straw, [email protected] Ad Sales Manager: Lara Jaggon, [email protected] Senior Sales Executive: Leon Stephens, [email protected]

Joey Schmidt – 8/10 “Only having the player makes me want the full thing as even the player is indispensable.”

Tom Wies – 10/10 “The Swiss Army knife for sound design and scoring with unlimited possibilities.”

Eddie Macarthur – 8/10 “The sampler has great editing facilities, but the endless scrolling of the GUI is a weak point, and they should redesign it.”

Paweł Potocki – 6/10 “Good sample player, but the not-so-good user interface makes sound design cumbersome.”

Brian Measles – 10/10 “Always the first thing I fire up in a new composition of any kind – I couldn’t work without it.”

Alexandros Mouratchanidis – 10/10 “NI created Kontakt before God created the world.”

Leon Bailey – 9/10 “Essential tool for any electronic music producer!”

Valerio Orlandini – 10/10 “The virtual instrument I would take to a desert island.”

Engel Julian – 9/10 “Super powerful, superb factory library, and plenty of awesome third-party packs.”

Ramesh Krishnanj – 9/10 “It’s a common platform where everyone can make use of it.”

Andrew Ward – 9/10 “It’s kolossal and it keeps me kontent.”

Our rating: 9/10,

Antonio Sosa – 10/10 “Nearly perfect. And the value for money – wow!” Jesse Green – 8/10 “Great libraries; a powerful sample tool but a bit cumbersome to use.” Jedrzej Krawczyk – 10/10 “I just like the package. Maybe the design. Or perhaps… Everything about it.” Daniel Barnes – 10/10 “Every possible sound in the world.”

MARKETING Group Marketing Manager: Laura Driffield, [email protected] Marketing Executive: Richard Stephens, [email protected] CIRCULATION Trade Marketing Manager: Matt Cooper, [email protected] PRINT & PRODUCTION Production Controller: Frances Twentyman, [email protected] Production Manager: Mark Constance, [email protected] LICENSING Head of International Licensing: Regina Erak, [email protected] Tel: + 44 (0)1225 732359 If you would like to purchase the images featured in this publication, please visit www.futuremediastore.com or email [email protected] FUTURE PUBLISHING LIMITED Head of Music: Rob Last, [email protected] UK Chief Executive: Zillah Byng-Maddick SUBSCRIPTIONS Phone our UK hotline on: 0844 848 2852 Overseas: (+44) (0) 1604 251 045 Subscribe online at: www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk NEXT ISSUE ON SALE: 13th August Printed in the UK by William Gibbons on behalf of Future. Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT. Tel: 0207 429 4000

Average score from 66 reviews…

8.9

out of 10 170

Selector We’ve been listening to

You’ve been listening to

R. Kelly, Boney M, The War on Drugs, Kano, Aural Imbalance, Nik Kershaw, Soothsayers, 3rd Bass, Roots Manuva, Chvrches, MGMT, Jungle, Super Furry Animals, Jack White, Apocrypha, Frank Black, Antony and the Johnsons

Triptykon, Sven Väth, Giggs, Tonedeff, Gym Class Heroes, Sream Theater, Daemonia, Aphex Twin, Burial, Four Tet, Mr Oizo, Meshuggah, Jimi Hendrix, Brad Paisley, D Ramirez, Apocalyze, Ben Frost, Jeff Beck, Jon Hopkins, UltraVox, Lenzman

Get involved at www.facebook.com/computer.music.mag

Print 8,625 Digital 4,295 The ABC combined print, digital and digital publication circulation for Jan—Dec 2013 is

12,920

A member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations

Future produces high-quality multimedia products which reach our audiences online, on mobile and in print. Future attracts over 50 million consumers to its brands every month across five core sectors: Technology, Entertainment, Music, Creative and Sports & Auto. We export and license our publications. Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR). www.futureplc.com

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© Future Publishing Limited 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. The registered office of Future Publishing Limited is at Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this magazine. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Future a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world. Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage.

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>  news

New releases • comment • industry happenings

Tone2 Electra2 Do-it-all synth updated with new look and extra sound-sculpting tools Tone2’s ElectraX is a great synth that covers a huge amount of sonic ground, so we’re pleased to report that a successor, Electra2, has been announced. It may have lost an X, but it’s gained a fistful of new features. Like the original, the new version of this synthesiser workstation promises to bring “a high quality sound engine, multilayer support and a large range of music production features” including a “comfortable patch browser.” And to make absolutely sure you get your breath back, it’s downward compatible with ElectraX. Electra’s sounds start from three oscillators or samples, which can be mixed and combined in a variety of ways, and you can have up to four layers of this threeoscillator goodness. Versatility is the name of the game, and a specific use Tone2 are keen to push is its deployment as a vocoder, by way of processing a vocal (or any other) sample and combining it with other layers. Version 2 sees updated graphics, over 200 new waveforms, physical modelling synthesis, five additional filter types, 16 new

Korg/littleBits Synth Kit USB/MIDI/CV modules

Korg and littleBits’ DIY modular Synth Kit is great fun, but it certainly has its limitations. While you can build your own synth modules to customised perfection, integrating your creations into your existing system and connecting them to your other kit has been problematic. That’s set to change with three recently announced new modules. The MIDI module will enable you to control the Synth Kit from your DAW or any suitable MIDI hardware, and facilitate creation of a MIDI controller (or utility, presumably) from littleBits modules. There’s also a CV module so you can integrate it with other analogue synths, while the USB I/O module is set to let you record directly into your DAW from the Synth Kit or send audio from your DAW to the Synth Kit for processing. With this new level of integration, we’ll be 22  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

Electra2 handles even more synthesis jobs than ElectraX – find out if it’s a master of them when we review it

effects and editing of samples, among other additions. There are 700 new patches included, and every factory sound has apparently been reworked. Electra2 is out now, for both Mac and PC

in 32- and 64-bit versions for £130. For those who can wait, we’ll be reviewing it in an upcoming issue of as soon as we’ve put it through its paces.

keeping an eye on whether littleBits gains traction as a serious part of the musical world. The new modules are due later this year.

synthesis and strings it up, using physically modeled strings in place of typical synth oscillators, the properties (damping, decay, inharmonicity, etc) of which can be modified, put into action via an exciter module. The results are then sent through Filter and Body modules which act like the body of a real string instrument. New technical features in version 2 include an enhanced factory library, 64-bit capability, backward compatibility and Scala tuning file support. On a creative tip, String Studio now handles dynamics and frequency with compression and equalisation, a limiter, and across-the-board improvements to its existing effects modules. It’s out now for PC/Mac in VST, AU, AAX and standalone formats, and it’ll cost $200 as standard. www.applied-acoustics.com

www.littlebits.cc

AAS String Studio VS-2

A total rebuild has been carried out on Applied Acoustics Systems’ stringmodelling synthesiser. String Studio takes the concept of

Applied Acoustics Systems have updated their physical modelling string gadget to version 2

tone2.com

news <

App watch

Mac-lovers Sinevibes have released two new products. Flow, shown here, takes care of sequenced flanging

Sinevibes Flow

Sinevibes have two new AU sequencer plugins – one update, one brand new – taking on distortion and flanging. Flow features an envelope sequencer to modulate the flanger rhythmically. There are different flanger ‘characters’ with positive or negative feedback, advanced sync and timing features, plus a host of automation and randomisation options. Turbulence v2 is billed as a “wave transformer”, and it’s said to be capable of crafting new synthetic textures from even the most basic waveforms. $29 each. www.sinevibes.com

Special: Make Better Bass!

Today’s cutting-edge dance and electronic tracks are more upfront and high-impact than any that have come before, so making sure your basslines are tight, punchy and stylistically relevant is hugely important. With Computer Music Special 67: Make Better Bass!, we aim to give you all the technical knowledge you need to make your best basses yet. By following our step-bystep tutorials (and watching the videos that accompany eight of them), you’ll learn how to design, sequence and mix bass parts for a range of genres.

Make Better Beats! gives you access to over 500MB of sampled bass loops by soundware label Dance Midi Samples. It’s on sale 9 July in print and digital formats.

www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk

brunsandspork Grooove

This drum machine is the first product from newcomers brunsandspork, promising to let you create “vibrant and dynamic drum kits” using two samples per sound. In contrast to some other plugins, which offer multiple velocity layers per sound, Grooove is a leaner beast that automatically calculates velocities in between user-set per-sample velocity thresholds.” It’s €34.50 and runs standalone or as a VST/AU plugin for PC and Mac.

www.brunsandspork.com

Check out Grooove for velocity-conscious beats

Nuendo 6.5 & WaveLab 8.5

Special 67 will help you pump up the bass with its tutorials and included soundware

OK, they’re not apps themselves, but IK Multimedia have expanded their mobile-musician-friendly reputation with some new companions for your app-laden device. iKlip Xpand is a tablet stand with adjustable brackets to hold units from 7” to 12.1”; and iKlip Xpand Mini (top) provides the same for devices of 3.5 to 6 inches. £40 and £30. With iRig Voice (right) coming in five not-ungarish colours and marketed as “fun”, this one looks like a stab at the karaoke-andpyjamas market rather than serious mobile producers. Still, at just £30, it’s a little cheaper than iRig Mic and iRig Mic HD, at least. www.ikmultimedia.com

Steinberg have clearly been busy with updates over the last couple of months. WaveLab mostly sees tinkering with formats, now allowing the ability to render different formats at once and to A/B codecs before you do so. 8.5 also sees AAC encoding, and better integration with your OS’s folders. Workflow-tastic! It’s out now, €549 on its own, or €50 to upgrade from v8. Nuendo, meanwhile, is due to pump up its post-production credentials. Newly installed loudness and metering facilities will sit alongside workflow enhancements (“workflow evolution”, so they say) and a few new plugins, including Magneto 2, and Bass Manager, for those who can’t keep their bottom end under control. Coming soon.

www.steinberg.net

It’ll never sound like a realistic lead singer, but Mod Phon’s new Voxen app can produce unashamedly digital vocal-type sounds using its synthesis engine. To be clear, this isn’t an app that accepts lyrics and then sings them back to you; it acoustically simulates a human glottis and vocal tract, providing you real-time control over the resulting sound. Gross! There are three banks of knobs for control over the voice, voice envelope and formants, and three X/Y touchpads. MIDI and Audiobus support is said to be in the pipeline. £5.49 www.modphon.com Klevgrand Audio’s SquashIt comes as both an App and a (free) AU plugin, providing multiband distortion using intuitive tap-anddrag controls to set level and crossovers over three bands. The only other controls are Input and Output, allowing you to push as much distortion as you like into your multiband setup. It does its thing via InterApp Audio. SquashIt is simple but sweet, and it knows it, coming in at the unpretentious price of $0.99. www.klevgrand.se

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  23

>  news

Get with the programmers We hit the QWERTY keys for a text-based chat with one of the minds behind the king of trackers Why use a tracker? What are the advantages to the computer musician? BN “To describe the tracker advantage in a few short words, I’d highlight the direct feel of writing music with a ‘keyboard-driven interface’. Yes, of course you can use your hardware controller too, but personally, I look to my trusty PC keyboard – not the MIDI one – when I really need to get something done. And ‘sample-mangling’, of course, is a huge part of the tracker experience. Diving into those samples and really making them your own has always been my favourite part of the song-writing process. “Renoise combines these old-school tracker virtues with a more new-school ‘modulate everything and experiment with sound’ type of approach. And it’s really customisable. You can make it your own by tweaking everything from the colour scheme to how the program itself works. Our community has consistently been putting out new ‘Renoise tools’: scripts that expand the functionality of the program in various ways.”

Renoise

Bjørn Næsby

Which feature of Renoise are you most proud of and why? BN “That would be a particular feature called Autoseek. It’s a feature that you can enable on a per-sample basis, which will basically match the sample playback with your song’s playback position. While this might sound trivial to anyone familiar with a DAW, the difference is that you can program the sample with tracker effect commands – pitch slide, sample offset, reverse/forward playback, retrigger, etc – and still maintain accurate sync at all times. For me, this is a good example of an ‘old-schoolmeets-new-school’ paradigm.” Is track-based audio recording/editing on the cards for being added to Renoise? NB “Of course, you had to ask, and I guess a lot of people would be very happy to know this. I’d love to give you an answer, but right here and now, everyone who wants to work with long recordings in Renoise can use Autoseek or Rewire (to synchronise playback position/audio with any Rewire-capable host). As for what the future holds, that’s hard to say. We have a roadmap but usually plan ahead only a few steps at a time.” What can you tell us about the upcoming Redux plugin? Why not go the whole hog and make ‘Renoise in a plugin’? What have you got coming up that you can tell us about? BN “We realise that using Renoise as the main DAW isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, so creating Redux seemed like a logical step to take. Essentially, it’s the instrument/sampler part of Renoise, refined into its own form. You can load Renoise instruments into Redux (and vice versa) and they are completely compatible. But it also helps us to focus development on something which is smaller and more manageable than the beast which is Renoise. “Also, we’re currently making inroads into the idea of sharing songs, instruments and presets between users by setting up a server that can host Renoise-related files free of charge. Already, a lot of people are dedicated to sharing their creations, so we’re convinced this will go down well with the community.”

“We realise that using Renoise as the main DAW isn’t everybody’s cup of tea”

www.renoise.com 24  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

Free ‘plug-out’ SH-101 for Roland’s Aira System-1

The new SH-101 Plug-Out synth is the first additional instrument to be compatible with Roland’s Aira System-1 device. Plug-Out technology is said to marry the best elements of hardware and software. You can use the SH-101 as a plugin instrument in your Mac or PC DAW using the System-1 as a controller, running as many plugins as your system can handle, but you can also send the entire model (and any of your presets) to the System-1 hardware so that you can play it anywhere. The virtual SH-101 is based on Roland’s Analog Circuit Behaviour (ACB) technology and promises to faithfully recreate not only the original synth’s sound but also the behaviour of its oscillators, filters and more. Some additional features – new effects, for example – have been added too.

www.roland.com

Sugar Bytes Egoist

This one takes any audio file and eats it up, using onboard tweakables to slice it before spitting it out with a beat, bassline and Effectrix-style stuttered effects, all controllable by the user. If you’re hungry for some new rhythmic inspiration or a, er, groove sandwich, this could be the one to satisfy you. A review is penned in for a forthcoming issue. As for formats, it’s VST/ AU/RTAS/AAX and will set you back €99.

www.sugar-bytes.de

MeterPlugs Perception

MeterPlugs have been working with mastering engineer Ian Shepherd to create their new plugin. Perception taps into both the start and the end of your mastering signal chain, and the idea is for it to aid in before-and-after comparison. Since the plugins at this stage each contribute an element of loudness, Perception aims to compensate this, so you can truly hear what your mastering tweaks are doing to the sound, bypassing and A/Bing with like-for-like volume levels. It’s out now for $149, for AU/VST/AAX systems, in 32- and 64-bit.

www.meterplugs.com

STW-Audio REFLEX+

This new, delay-based ‘ambience generator’ may provide a fresh atmosphere for those looking for a different sonic headspace. REFLEX+ is actually a take on the freeware Windows VST REFLEXfree, but updated for all major formats and bit-depths. Like a reverb, it gathers multiple delay lines to create a sense of space – Size and Decay controls help dial it in. But less like a traditional reverb, a multimode LFO, two filters and some flexible routing allow more creative applications such as flanging, phasing, chorus and the like. It’s out now for €29.

www.stw-audio.com

news <

Trackers & Demoscene

Soundware news Drum Drops’ Folk Rock Drops is a pack of 16 drum tracks (or mixed/ unmixed stems) influenced by folk classics and recorded using old gear. Options include £8.50 per track or £65 for all 16. www.drumdrops.com

After blowing us away with Metamorph and UltraLoop in past months (both 10/10), Twisted Tools return with Darkmorph, a library of sci-fi sounds/instruments with twisted auditory torture (of a good kind) in mind. $69 www.twistedtools.com

“A 590MB homage to the genre’s 90s roots” is what you’ll get in Garage House. It’s loop-heavy, but one-shots are not forgotten. £16.90. www.samplemagic.com

fave returns Another with Thermionic Solid State Drums, sourced from “11 analogue drum machines and six synths.” Over 5000 24-bit WAVs for $49 makes this a veritable bonanza. www.goldbaby.co.nz

Say hello to the “futuristic mega-slam SFX creation machine” that you never knew you needed. Impact Designer: Cinematic Slam Creator comes for Kontakt, for £61, from Zero-G. Boom! www.timespace.com

“Inspired by a disco infused feel-good vibe,” Mainroom Funk’s summertime ethos packs in 2.4GB of audio, MIDI, Massive presets and FX for £12.99. The bulk of it is drum hits and synth loops, but it shouldn’t disappoint in the other areas. sounds.beatport.com

Ins & outs Cross DJ & SoundCloud Last month, it was Algoriddim adding Spotify support to their djay app, and now Mixvibes have integrated SoundCloud support into their Cross DJ software. What’s more, you don’t need a premium account to use the feature.

YouTube vs Indies In a surprise move, it was reported that YouTube is planning to block music videos from independent labels because they’ve refused to sign up to the site’s terms. Who knows how this will end, but we can’t help feeling that no one really stands to benefit.

Count the plays A previously announced plan to include plays on services such as Spotify, Deezer and Napster in the UK Singles Chart kicked off in July. YouTube views aren’t included, though, so if you were planning on making a provocative video and breaking the Top 40, think again.

Did you miss out? In what has to be one of the best software freebies ever, Eventide chose to give away UltraChannel, their channel strip plugin, to coincide with its VST/AU release. If you didn’t see it, you missed out on getting a $249 plugin for nothing. Ouch.

Diet drums? Not got room for a real drum kit? Try Aerodrums, the new ‘air drum kit’ that uses optical motion capture technology. All you need (other than your computer) is the appropriate camera, and it can even send MIDI to your DAW.

Stephen Howell, RIP We were saddened to hear of the passing of Stephen Howell, founder of soundware producer Hollow Sun. He created some fabulous products – his Kontakt instruments are among our favourite weird noise machines – and will be sadly missed.

All we hear is radio tracker this month, as we scan the demoscene’s airwaves SceneSat have long been broadcasting great demoscene radio shows. While some internet radio stations are content to deliver endless random playlists, SceneSat have real DJs having actual discussions about the composers and pieces they play, and they pride themselves on their discerning selection. So with that in mind, they’ve just released their third ‘best of’

“SceneSat have real DJs having actual discussions about the composers and pieces they play” compilation, The Sound of SceneSat Volume 3, with no less than six CDs’ worth of music from the cream of game and demoscene musicians. Head to scenesat.com for the free download links. Nectarine, another favourite internet radio station of ours, have just announced their ‘Style Copy Compo’, where you must create a fresh piece of music emulating the style of someone else. Trying to emulate the methods of other artists by creating pastiches is a great way to learn new writing techniques, so get involved at scenemusic.net. demo of the month Hugi #38 - Gravity Shot OK, this isn’t actually a demo but a diskmag. In pre-internet times, hot-off-the-press demoscene news was difficult to come by. If you knew the right BBS to log into, you might find bits and pieces, but the rest of us just waited for a new diskmag to come along. Lovingly assembled into a properly edited package with numerous articles, punctuated with graphics and sound, Hugi have a long history of producing quality diskmags, and #38 is no exception, packed with interviews, behind-the-scenes articles and party reports. There’s also a choice of nine great pieces of music to listen to, from the likes of tracker legends Xerxes, Mantronix and Hoffman. bit.ly/Hugi38

Hugi issue 38 dispenses quality demoscene reportage

September 2014 /  Computer Music  /  25

>  news

freeware news This month ushers in a new host for your Audio Units, an updated classic, a chilled-out vocoder effect and a newly liberated bass synth

Ju-X Hosting AU A surprisingly handy ‘micro-DAW’ designed for loading, playing and recording Audio Units in real-time Desktop producers are spoilt for choice when it comes to complex, feature-laden audio and MIDI sequencers, but what about when we need to just load up a few plugins and pour out our inspiration in a flash? Enter Hosting AU, a lightweight, small-footprint host into which you can load a handful of Audio Units instruments, run them through a few effects each and record the lot with only a few clicks of the mouse. Hosting AU can also record external input and features a master output buss, into which another three effects can be inserted. Audio and MIDI interfaces will be recognised, though you can play your

Get your Audio Units instruments and effects up and running in the blink of an eye with Hosting AU

instruments even without an external MIDI controller thanks to the LazyKey function, which uses your QWERTY keyboard for note input, as well as adjustment of octave, velocity and MIDI channel, application of modulation and pitchbend, and more. Additionally, there’s a test sequence associated with each of Hosting AU’s three

instrument channels, for triggering a bit of arpeggiation and enabling you to instantly hear what you’re getting. We imagine that live performers in particular will appreciate Hosting AU’s instant load time, but it should make a brilliant sketchpad, too.

ju-x.com

Bitsonic Cannabis Vocoder

Ichiro Toda Synth1 (AU version)

SonicXTC B-Line 303

A “funny plugin” that’s sure rob your tracks of all ambition. There are two versions of this one: mono and poly. The former works as an effect, while the latter is a polyphonic vocoder instrument. It gives control over pitch and dynamics, and has a ‘groove mode’ setting for using it with percussive sounds. As is so often the case with freeware, it’s Windows 32-bit only. Go on, just to say you’ve tried it. www.bitsonic.eu

Some unexpected great news: Ichiro Toda’s classic Synth1 has just been updated to run in 64-bit hosts under Windows and – are you ready? – as an Audio Units plugin on Mac! This diminutive Nord Lead knock-off is one of the tastiest pieces of music freeware ever made, so if you’ve been dreaming of using it in a previously incompatible host, waste no time in grabbing the most recent beta. www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/

Another cool commercial plugin has been set free by its developer this month. B-Line 303 is a bass synth with a Pattern Control Filter (basically a sequenced filter module), ideal for creating acid-style basslines like those made popular by Roland’s silver classic. It would’ve set you back $15 in the past, but now it’s completely free. www.vstplugin-sonicxtc.com

CLASSIC FREE SOFTWARE RGC Audio Triangle II Back in the earliest days of the VST plugin, there were a few sanctified names among synthesiser developers. One of those names was René Ceballos, formally of RGC Audio, whose talents (and catalogue) were eventually snapped up by Cakewalk. Triangle II was RGC’s monosynth, and it was a beauty – such a beauty, in fact, that it’s still

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available on Cakewalk’s website. It’s got two oscillators, a gnarly sub-oscillator and a noise generator, plus an over-the-top multimode filter section and a generous offering of effects, including chorus, delay and reverb among others. Sorry Mac users, this one’s Windows-only. www.cakewalk.com

years back

What’s on your hard drive?

77 gave its pages over to formats, devices, and a new update in the world of DAWs Ableton Live 4 graced the cover 77 in September 2004, and we of chatted to Ableton CEO Gerhard Behles about his new release. “Live occupies its own product category,” was one of the things he told us. Not any more, Gerhard – fast-forward a decade, and DAWs are increasingly trying to tread on the software’s real-time music-making toes.

“We asked: how have sample CDs changed?” Elsewhere, we asked: how have sample CDs changed? Well, they were still shiny and round back then, but new formats had been springing up. These days, the big change is that physical sample CDs have all but been made obsolete by their readily downloadable equivalents. Elsewhere, we discussed the potential future of compressed audio files, one of the contenders being MP3PRO. Sadly for creators Thomson Multimedia and the Fraunhofer Institute, this turned out to be their ‘difficult second album’, and the new standard never gained traction. One digital music player that endured for a while was the iPod, but as the new version was released, we moaned that what we really wanted was one “with a colour screen that works as a phone, stores movies and can teleport you anywhere in the world”. Three out of four ain’t bad– roll on iPhone 6 and iTeleport!

Worthy The co-founder of Dirtybird sure likes one thing: dirty bass. He reveals his top tools for getting it... LennarDigital Sylenth1 “It’s my go-to for everything from amazingsounding chords to fat bass or weird FX. It’s so vast in terms of capabilities: every time I use it, I learn new tricks and ways to manipulate sounds, whether I’m playing with the dual oscillators or with the built-in effects and the smooth filter. It never disappoints me.” Rob Papen SubBoomBass “The bass on this VST truly lives up to its name: it BOOMS. I use this whenever I have to add sub bass to a track. The tones it gives out are so warm, and they resonate perfectly in that 40Hz range that really shakes the subs in the club. The sub hits always complement the high-range bass sounds perfectly, too.” Sugar Bytes Turnado “You can really let a sound play out and get some weird, otherworldly sounds going on. I love this for adding dynamic elements to my music and letting sounds build up and tweak out.”

Issue 77 heralded the arrival of virtual instruments in Live 4 – what had we all been doing for three versions?

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Native Instruments Razor “The sounds it delivers are amazingly crisp and have so much depth to them – you can really shape them using the dual filters and reverb. It also has a great visual representation of the sounds you’re playing – it looks like it’s out of a sci-fi movie!”

“The tones it gives out are so warm, and they resonate perfectly” Sugar Bytes Cyclop “This is a bit of a bass monster and leans more towards the EDM crowd with its sounds, but I’ve been finding bits and pieces of bass and FX sounds that I’ve used as accents in my tracks. There are also some nice old-school drum ’n’ bass sounds in here, too, and lots of fun knobs and switches to mess around with when I want to geek out.”

Worthy’s debut album, Disbehave, is out now on Anabatic Records www.facebook.com/worthySF

Zencha’s Zencha’s

creative

concepts

Only the theory you need Zencha cuts out the dead weight and tells you how to score 80% of the results with just 20% of music theory Zencha After years of studying the creative process, multigenre producer Zencha has mastered the art of taking a track from start to finish. Here he brings us his ‘beyond-technical’ approach to music making, casting the spotlight on workflow, arrangement and the creative mindset. www.zenchamusic.com

Music theory is a surprisingly polarising topic. I know a lot of people who say things like, “Music theory ruins creativity, man!” And I know a lot of people who claim that music theory is mandatory for musicians. “How else will you be able to perform common-tone modulation?” For a long time, I was an advocate of never taking lessons, never reading a book on chords, and not learning any theory whatsoever. I spent three years learning guitar without knowing the common major/minor chords because I was stubborn. It was only after getting into electronic music production that I found myself very interested in chord progressions and how music theory fits in. I actually attended a music production school to learn these things – pretty contrary to my previous ideals. As a result, though, I’ve landed in a happy middle ground between abstaining from theory and utilising it effectively. This middle ground is what I consider the 20% of music theory that will provide you 80% of the results.

Notes

c# D# c

D

E

So what are the three aspects of music theory you have to know? First off, you have to learn what the notes are. They’re on the keyboard to the left. You may have heard of notes that are ‘flat’, and maybe you’re F# G# A# wondering why I haven’t listed them. Practically speaking, all sharp notes can be called flat F G A B c notes too, but with a different letter accompanying them. For # instance, A can be referred to as Bb. Mathematically, they are the same frequency in Hertz and make the same exact tone. The naming difference is only relevant if you want to dive deeper into music theory.

“Music theory is a tool. It’s not meant to be the creative be-all and end-all”

Modes

Modes are musical scales, and there are seven, each containing a different scale of seven notes. You can find out how to play each one on p76! The important thing about the modes is that

each of these different scales creates its own ‘feeling’. Some are major modes: Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian; and some are minor modes: Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian, and Locrian. Major modes tend to be ‘lighter’ or ‘happier’. Ionian, a major mode, comes across as smiley (the song Happy Birthday is in Ionian — yeah, the one you sing to your friends on their birthday). On the other hand, minor modes tend to be ‘darker’ or ‘sadder’. Aeolian, the standard minor mode, is often used in emotional pop music.

Triads

A triad is defined as three notes being played together – a three-note chord – and these are the basic building blocks of chord theory. but how do we know which notes to pick? Once you know what mode you’re in, you know what notes you have available. These notes will automatically ‘go with’ your song, but even then, you can’t just pick three at random to create a good-sounding triad. Here’s the formula: Start with one note – your ‘root’ note – then move up two notes in the scale/mode to find the ‘third’. Move up another two notes to reach the fifth, and you have the three notes for your triad: the root, third and fifth. This means that within any mode you have seven basic triads to work with – there’s one starting on each note. So how do you use notes, triads, and modes while composing and producing music? The first way is to lock yourself into a mode at the start of writing. In doing this, you instantly give yourself a framework to create the rest of your piece in, instantly providing constraints and context for yourself and thus, starting your track and developing it will be much easier. The second approach is to use all this information as a map. If you get stuck, or don’t know where to go next, look at your map. Figure out what mode you’re in based on the notes you’re playing, and with that information, you can experiment with where to go next. Music theory is a tool. It’s not meant to be the creative be-all and end-all of your composition; it’s there to be used, to assist you when you want it to – another paintbrush that you can use to paint a more beautiful picture.

80/20 vision The ‘Pareto Principle’ is named after an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. Similarly, many businesses find that 20% of the customers provide 80% of the revenue; perhaps 80% of your calls/text

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messages are to 20% of the people in your contact list. It’s not always literally 80/20, of course, but the idea is that a small portion of a large one is the most valuable. In music, you’ll find this concept showing up in many areas. The final 20% of time you spend working on a song may account for

80% of the polish/finished piece. Or you may find that 20% of your songs account for 80% of your listens on SoundCloud or Bandcamp. Keep your eyes open for that 20% in all that you do, and focus on that rather than the less effective 80% – the return is huge.

NEXT MONTH Zencha’s thoughts on ‘the perfect mix’ are revealed

/ burning question

DMGAudio

“It depends who configures the automation. Most engineers have a regular workflow they bring to a project, and best practice can, to a degree, be codified. After all, compressors are automated loudness controls. “Making music is a quintessentially human experience. Surely the real point of mixing and

mastering is having another human shape your sound.” – Dave Gamble

iZotope

“Automated mixing and mastering tools are nothing new, especially in the live sound/broadcast industries. One thing is for certain: there’s no definitive answer to this, or indeed any question concerning potentially

MixGenius (developers of LANDR)

“What constitutes a ‘good job’ in mixing and mastering is highly subjective. A trained audiophile might not agree with common people’s choices, but in real-world double-blind tests, LANDR already rivals the work of human [mastering] engineers. “Our system is designed to give people what they want psychoacoustically, remodelling based on the opinions of engineers as well as the power of big data from user choices.

“We can’t yet replicate the nuanced process of a skilled human, but we believe that in the long run, artificial intelligence will get there… and beyond!” – Thomas Sontag

FabFilter

“We think an automated service could definitely do some standard things for mastering a track: make it loud, balance it… But will it be able to creatively work on a track like a great mastering engineer? Of course not. So if you want to go beyond standard adjustments and limiting, an automated service won’t cut it, in our opinion.” – Frederik Slijkerman

Voxengo

“Making a sound track follow some basic ‘rules’ automatically (like equal loudness contour) is doable, but mastering is about balancing the sound in the dimension of artistic perception, which only an experienced human can do.” – Aleksey Vaneev

Illustration by Jake

Could a computer ever mix and master as well as a human engineer?

subjective aesthetic choices. “Though mastering was originally born of practical necessity, it’s grown to become an artform combining both technical and aesthetic adjustments. When aesthetics are concerned, one must question what constitutes ‘as good’. “Could automated tools impart sonic changes to your audio? Yes. Would these changes sound different? Yes. But beauty will always be entirely subjective.” – Matt Hines

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling

Sampling It’s one of the most versatile and powerful techniques available to the computer musician – master both the art and science of sampling with our deep expert guide While the vast majority of contemporary music recording and production occurs in the digital domain, it hasn’t always been this way. Back in the 60s and 70s, when the first prehistoric digital recordings were made, they were named after they way they worked – ‘sampling’ an analogue input thousands of times a second to build up a series of discrete digital values that could be stored and played back in a potentially much more versatile manner than analogue tape was capable of. Nowadays, with practically all our recording done digitally, sampling doesn’t seem like quite such a clever trick, but its still a technique that has an astonishing amount of creative potential. Sadly, sampling has developed something of a bad reputation for itself and has become a byword for any kind of lazy appropriation of musical ideas. Of course, only a true naïve would suggest that all musical theft is a bad thing. As Jean-Luc Godard said, “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.” Sampling has demonstrated the validity of this statement time and time again. When samplers became relatively affordable in

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the late 1980s, they enabled musicians not only to mutate the music of the past into exciting new forms (inventing entirely new genres like ambient house and jungle as they did), but also to turn everyday sounds into fantastical new textures that were simultaneously familiar and alien. When sampling is done creatively by artists such as Burial or RJD2, it results in unique, evocative music that couldn’t have been created any other way. Sampling has also been crucial to the availability of realistic instrument sounds, from the simple “samples & synthesis” workstations of the 1980s through to the sophisticated samplebased ROMplers and software sampler instruments available today. In this guide, we’ll show you the secrets of sampling from first principles, from capturing audio with your computer and editing it, all the way through to creating sophisticated instrument multisamples with veteran engineer, producer and sound designer Robbie Stamp from Cyclick Samples. Along the way, we’ll take a look at the rich history of this misunderstood art form, and give you some tips on getting the most from whatever sampling software you use.

download Get the videos and tutorial files on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

the art of sampling  /  make music now  <

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  35

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling

Sampling through the ages Though digital sampling has been in existence since the 1960s, the first commercially available models were Harry Mendell’s Computer Music Melodian and Fairlight’s CMI (Computer Musical Instrument). It was the latter which really caught on, and though primitive by today’s standards, it was truly revolutionary for the time, offering the ability to sample at 24kHz and edit waveforms with a built-in lightpen. The drawback was the device’s $18,000 price tag – equivalent to more than $58,000 in today’s money! Naturally, this meant it was only accessible to established artists, and early adopters included Peter Gabriel, Thomas Dolby and Kate Bush.

Musical exploration

Thanks to digital technology’s decreasing manufacturing costs, the first relatively cheap samplers began to appear in the mid-to-late 80s. Classic hardware like the E-mu SP-1200 and Akai S950 made sampling available to studios that didn’t have astronomical budgets, and hiphop was the first genre to explore the sampler’s ability to recycle musical ideas and put them into entirely new contexts. Hip-hop had been founded on the instrumental breaks of funk and rock tracks since the 70s, and pre-sampling records like The Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight and West Street Mob’s Break Dance utilised session musicians replaying famous grooves or turntablists cutting up breaks. Now producers could simply sample their favourite parts of

“Hip-hop was the first genre to explore the sampler’s ability to recycle musical ideas”

The Emu SP-1200 was one of the first pieces of hardware to bring sampling to the masses

songs and cut them up in exciting new ways. A genre that couldn’t have existed before the advent of the sampler is hardcore rave, which combined sped-up hip-hop beats with sampled techno stabs and house vocals to create a new style of hi-tech music. Affordable, all-in-one sequencers and samplers like Roland’s W-30 workstation keyboard would allow musicians like The Prodigy’s Liam Howlett to practice an early form of ‘in-the-box’ production, putting together beats, basslines and leads within a single piece of hardware. Howlett and contemporaries like Joey Beltram would pioneer resampling by recording sounds from synths and using their samplers’ editing and modulation to twist them into exciting new sounds, resulting in revolutionary tunes like The Prodigy’s Charly and Second Phase’s Mentasm.

Call the lawyers

This approach to making music was new to everyone in the late 80s and early 90s, and the thorny issue of copyright infringement quickly appeared. One of the most high-profile cases is that of Black Box’s sampling of a Loleatta

Holloway acapella for their international megahit Ride On Time. The record very obviously used snatches of the diva’s Love Sensation to create the stuttered vocal hook used prolifically throughout the record. What’s more, the video featured a model miming along to the vocal, and even though Black Box had cleared the sample by organising a licensing agreement with the label that released Love Sensation originally, they faced a legal challenge from Holloway’s lawyers for not crediting the vocal. Clearly, the legal situation can be complex. To cut a long story short, if you publish music that samples another’s work without permission, you could theoretically face a legal challenge from the copyright owner, no matter how short or (un) recognisable the sample. In practice, a huge amount of music does feature uncleared samples – lawyers most often come knocking if you’re using immediately recognisable samples and making a bit of money. You can read more about the legalities of sampling in 202’s How to Release a Track and 180’s Keep it Legal.

Stock in trade

While many producers have got away with using unlicensed samples – famous ‘breakbeats’ such as the drum solos from The Winstons’ Amen, Brother and Lyn Collins’ Think (about it) have been used on thousands of unlicensed tracks from underground releases to chart hits – there was a growing demand for samples that could be used without fear of legal consequences. Early sample CDs often featured unlicensed, copyright-infringing content, but the mid-90s saw a shift to material that had – ostensibly, at least – been created from scratch. Most sample libraries now include a license that states the party that has purchased the library can use the audio material in musical works without having to pay royalties, and many artists have scored big hits with material from sample libraries.

Five classic samples

ESG UFO

bit.ly/ESGUFO A weird slice of sci-fi-inspired psychedelia, the spooky flying saucer sounds of ESG’s UFO have been sampled on dozens of records including hip-hop jams like Stezo’s It’s My Turn and Notorious B.I.G.’s Party And Bullshit. They also crop up in DnB tracks such as Calyx & Teebee feat. Kemo’s Pure Gold and Aquasky’s Ghost.

Pryda Miami To Atlanta

bit.ly/PrydaSnare A modern-day sampling phenomenon, the huge snare heard in Eric Prydz’ track has found its way into dozens of big room house tracks including Martin Garrix’s Animals and Swedish House Mafia vs Knife Party’s Antidote. Characterised by its weighty feel and epic reverb, the ‘Pryda snare’ is now an EDM staple.

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Run DMC Here We Go (Live at the Funhouse)

bit.ly/RunDMCSample Here We Go’s catchy “Ah yeah!” and “How y’all feel out there?” vocal snatches were mainstays of the 80s and 90s. Time hasn’t diminished their appeal, and recently they’ve been heard on Knife Party’s remix of Nero’s Crush on You and Action Bronson & The Alchemist’s Mike Vick.

Led Zeppelin When the Levee Breaks

bit.ly/LeveeSample While breaks like Amen, Hotpants, Think and Apache have found popularity in a wide variety of dance music styles, the distinctive, chunky When the Levee Breaks beat seems to have found its niche in pop music. It can be heard in Enigma’s Return to Innocence and Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover by Sophie B. Hawkins.

Beside, Change the Beat (Female Version)

bit.ly/BesideBieber The vocoded “This stuff is real fresh!” vocal snippet makes this the most sampled record of all time according to whosampled.com. It’s the go-to sample for scratching thanks to its familiarity and fullfrequency sound, and it’s been used in tracks by everyone from Herbie Hancock (Rockit) to Justin Bieber (Right Here).

the art of sampling  /  make music now  <

Sampling the web

A flourishing online samples trade has seen companies like Loopmasters become a go-to for loops, beats and more

Sourcing samples The easiest way to get your hands on samples is to buy them from the many, many companies who sell soundware products comprising samples, instrument patches or both. Samples usually come in the form of loops and/or hits, and sometimes libraries will also include software sampler patches for multisampled instrument sounds or drum kits. Check out sites like loopmasters.com, timespace.com, samplemagic.com and many more to hear product demos and download free samples, and see our Mini Reviews (p106) every month for pointers on the best packs around. It’s also worth remembering that each and every issue of comes with a fresh new sample library – see this month’s Crate Diggers’ Delight on p12. Using a professionally created sample library can be more convenient because it doesn’t require recording, ripping or editing. Often, sounds will be provided with variations in effects, tempo, key and more, and they’ll fit into projects more easily. Pro libraries usually include a license allowing you to use the samples in any musical context without needing to pay any royalties or clear the samples first. If you were to have a huge hit based around a sample sourced from a library – just as Steve Angello did with Knas, which is based around a melody loop from Vengeance Future House Vol. 2 – you wouldn’t have to clear the sample or share your royalties. Early soundware products sometimes did include copyright material. Legally, the copyright holder is able to pursue a claim against anyone using copyright-infringing material without permission, so you’d have been potentially liable for using a snippet of a Mariah Carey acapella, even if you’d got it from a supposedly legitimate sample library. These days, publishers are more cautious, and the material in contemporary sample libraries is, by and large, created entirely from the ground up. Certain classic sounds still crop up from time to time – processed versions of the Think and Amen breaks, say – but the use of these sounds classically goes unchallenged. Another place to source samples created by

others is the web. Freesound.org allows you to search for particular types of samples – field recordings and synthesised noises are featured heavily – and most of the material on the site can be used royalty-free in commercial work if you credit its creator. With all these legitimate sources, why do people bother sampling others’ musical works at all? Usually because it’s not always possible to get an exact sound without sampling an existing recording. So far, no soundware producer has managed to recreate the sound of a James Brown drum break such as Cold Sweat, Hotpants or Funky Drummer, so we still hear these again and again in today’s tracks. Another reason is convenience – why scour library after library for the perfect EDM snare when you’ve got Pryda’s Miami to Atlanta in your music library, ready to go? Perhaps even more important is the fact that people enjoy familiarity, and the sounds that have been recycled over and over again have become musical memes, capable of very quickly creating a particular vibe in your tracks. Nevertheless, for some, ‘crate digging’ exciting new samples or ‘flipping’ old samples in new ways is an artform in itself. A big part of the appeal of artists such as DJ Shadow and the late, great J Dilla is their ability to make music with an atmosphere that would’ve been practically impossible to create without sampling. While Vengeance Sound libraries have been responsible for more than their fair share of dancefloor smashes, it’s hard to imagine a synth loop having the cultural impact of something like Bob James’ lush Nautilus, a piece of music that’s contributed beats, basslines, organ licks, electric piano flourishes and more to a veritable Who’s Who of hip-hop, including Eric B and Rakim, Run DMC, Ghostface Killah, and even Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. When you find a sound that good, nothing else will do – even if it means the hassle of having to try and clear the sample, or simply risking unauthorised usage.

“It’s not always possible to get an exact sound without sampling an existing recording”

There are tons of ways to get samples into your projects, whether it’s dragging songs from iTunes into a DAW, or recording a tape player through your audio interface. Much of the media we consume these days is streamed online, but it’s possible to record it with the right software… YouTube audio can be ripped using listentoyoutube.com. Simply enter the video’s URL, and this site will give you a download link to as high-quality a version of the audio file as it can rip. For other streaming sources such as Netflix or Spotify, dedicated ripping software such as Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack Pro for Mac or DDMF Virtual Audio Recorder for Windows is the easiest solution. These allow you to record audio from a specific application and save it out as a file that can then be used however you see fit. Once you’ve recorded a sample, you can load it straight up onto an audio track or into a sampler, but sometimes it makes sense to edit it with an audio editor such as the useful Audacity, free from audacity.sourceforge.net. This makes sense if you intend to use a small portion of a recording in multiple projects and don’t want to have to locate and trim the desired material each time. For instance, by locating and neatly editing the different drum breaks from Lyn Collins’ Think (about it), you can audition them in your projects much more quickly than by locating them manually from the full track. As well as basic cutting, you may find that some other general editing (fading, reversing, volume adjusting, etc) can be applied at this stage to help make the sounds quicker and easier to work with.

Streamed audio can’t avoid the prying ears of your DAW – see how to rip it above

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  37

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling > Step by step 1. Ripping with Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack Pro

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Begin by loading up Audio Hijack Pro, a demo version of which can be downloaded from rogueamoeba.com. In the Input section at the top of the main panel, set the left-hand dropdown menu to Application, then click the Select dropdown menu on the right and pick the application you want to record from.

When ready, play the audio you want to record. Bring Audio Hijack Pro’s interface back up, and you’ll see its level meters are active because the application is receiving audio input. Once the audio you want to capture has finished, click the Record button again to stop recording.

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WAV vs MP3 Much of the digital audio we consume has undergone what’s known as “lossy” compression, which means that sophisticated algorithms have been used to strip away unnecessary data that – in theory – the human ear won’t miss. The advantage is drastic reduction in file size. Even a highquality 320kbps MP3 file will be a fraction of the size of the original, uncompressed WAV, helping streaming services like Spotify and YouTube to deliver content without too much buffering. The downside of this process is that it can have an undesirable impact on audio quality, and while most high quality compression algorithms sound very good indeed, not all of them are perfect. You might notice that some high sounds like hi-hats seem quite different when streamed over Spotify compared to an uncompressed WAV purchased from Beatport. Of course, it’s possible to re-encode MP3 or AAC files as WAVs, so it can be hard to tell if a sample you’ve sourced online has been subject to earlier lossy compression. Tell-tale signs can include a sudden, steep drop-off in the upper frequencies when viewed on a spectral analyser, or when the ‘side’ signal is solo’ed using a mid/side splitter plugin, noticeable garbling artifacts. Compressed/streamed audio is best avoided for core musical sounds like beats and bass, but for spoken-word/vocal lines, it can be an invaluable source.

We’re opting for our web browser, which will allow us to record from Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and other webbased streaming services. Copyright law still applies when sampling in this way, of course. Now click the Record button. If the application is already running, Audio Hijack Pro will ask if you want to Quit and Relaunch it.

The audio is exported automatically, and you’ll find the resulting file in the Music/Audio Hijack/ folder. You’ll likely want to edit this down to the specific region you’re interested in, and an easy way to do this is to use the freeware audio editor Audacity, downloadable from audacity.sourceforge.net.

> Step by step 2. Basic audio editing with Audacity

1

Let’s take a look at how to chop out a section of audio to use as a sample. We’ll use the audio ripped in our previous tutorial. Load up Audacity and drag the audio file onto its interface. Drag over the area before the desired sound occurs, and press Ctrl/Cmd-X to delete it. Be careful to leave a short gap before the start of the sound – if your editing is overzealous, press Ctrl/Cmd-Z to undo and try again.

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2

To zoom in to the start of the sound, click on that section of the waveform and press Ctrl/Cmd-1 repeatedly. Once you can see individual cycles of the waveform, select the silence before the start of the sound and delete it. Press Ctrl/ Cmd-3 to zoom out, or Ctrl/Cmd-2 to unzoom totally. Now perform the same process at the end of the sound, and your sample is edited!

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If it’s too quiet, consider normalising the wave, making it as loud as possible without clipping. Select All with Ctrl/ Cmd-A and choose Effect » Normalize. Click the OK button. If the audio starts or ends very abruptly, it might benefit from a fade-in or fade-out, performed by dragging a region of audio and selecting Fade In or Fade Out from the Effects menu. Use File » Export to save the edited sampled.

the art of sampling  /  make music now  < > Step by step 3. Making sampled loops cycle smoothly

Tutorial

Files

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5

197 carried a full guide to creating your own loops and getting them running properly

Loops from commercial sample packs cycle neatly, but if you’ve sampled a loop yourself, it can be tricky to sync up, especially if it’s a ‘live’ source. 1. DryLoop. wav is a loop that sounds like it’s been sampled from an old record. Drop it onto a new audio track in any DAW. Turn off any automatic warping or timestretching – we won’t need those here – so you’re working with the loop in its original form.

Our audio file now makes musical and rhythmic sense as a loop, so let’s determine its tempo. A handy way to do this is by altering your project’s BPM value (after disabling timestretching) until the region fits into a two-bar section (ours runs from bar 5 to 7). Listen to the cycling region with your DAW’s metronome activated to confirm the loop is in time – for our loop, it fits best at 94bpm.

Our editing has left an obvious gap in the loop. To patch this up, we chop out a small isolated section of vinyl crackle from the beginning of our audio file, placing it in the gap we created. Clicks and pops may be heard at non-zero crossing points, so small fades at the beginning and end of each ‘chop’ will remedy this. See 205’s 20 Problems Solved feature for an in-depth explanation of this concept.

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Looping the loop

We want our musical phrase to cycle consistently, but when we loop it, we can hear overlapping edges where the sample starts and ends. Zoom in to the beginning and end points and trim these away, so we’re left with a perfect two-bar loop. Most DAWs can apply loop markers around the selected region, which can help ensure your loop markers don’t encompass any unnecessary silence.

A loop is a rhythmic or melodic phrase that repeats over and over, forming a repetitive groove within a track. Modern loops from sample libraries (including sample packs) are generally royalty-free and are designed to be dropped into your DAW and looped up with minimum fuss – they’re neatly trimmed so they cycle around perfectly and are often named with their key and BPM in the filename so you can see which might work best within your current composition. It’s relatively straightforward to work with loops like these. Basic timestretching and/or pitchshifting is usually all you need to get a loop cycling up neatly. For further reading, check out 197’s Loop Lab feature, where we explored methods of working with and creating your own audio loops. Such pre-prepared loops emerged relatively recently, but electronic artists have been sampling their own loops – from other tracks, movies or vinyl collections – ever since sampling technology has allowed. This type of loop sampling is a little more involved; initially, you’ll hunt down a suitable looping phrase from any medium, ‘sample’ it (ie, record the audio) into your DAW or sampler, trim the loop down to cycle around neatly, determine its BPM and/or key, then clean up or correct any imperfections. You’ll end up with a personal collection of loops you’ve hunted down and compiled yourself in modern ‘crate digging’ style. If you’re less-inclined to do all of that, but you’re still hankering for some homemade vintage-themed delights, check out this issue’s sample pack giveaway on p12.

It’s clear that the second bass note of the second bar isn’t quite in time with our metronome, so we turn off our DAW’s quantise and use its slicing/scissor functions to chop out this single note. We nudge this note ever so slightly earlier on the timeline until our loop’s overall timing sounds more ‘correct’.

We’ve used our loop’s ‘crackly’ nature to patch up a gap. To ‘doctor’ a cleaner loop, you can try slight timestretching to lengthen or shorten individual notes until they fill the gap. Also, try timestretching only the tail of a note, leaving the transient intact. Now we can render out our edited loop, ensuring we include its newly discovered BPM value in the filename for future reference.

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>  make music now  /  the art of sampling

Introducing the sampler There are two main ways you can work with samples in your host software: by dropping an audio file directly onto an audio track or by loading it up in a sampler plugin. The latter is an instrument that allows you to load a snippet of audio (ie, a sample) into its memory, and that sample can then be retriggered at different musical pitches via a MIDI keyboard, piano roll or sequencer. Think of the sampler as a subtractive synthesiser, and any audio file on your hard drive can be its oscillator. You have similar synth-like controls over pitch/tuning, amplitude envelope, filtering, modulation, etc. In your sampler, the Start point determines where in the wave the audio will play back from when a note is played. Similarly, the End point is the location at which the audio will stop playing back – useful for curtailing one-shot sounds that you don’t want to last too long. These points will

Ableton’s Simpler is a typical, no-nonsense sampler

be set either with offset controls, or by adjusting start/end markers on the sample waveform. Loop start and end points can also be set, so when you hold down a note, instead of reaching the end and stopping, the sample will play normally and then loop around these two points points until the note is released. You can use this to neatly loop a sample’s sustain section to create a longer, more consistent note. Playback modes can allow you to change how this looped section is played back, eg, some allow the loop

to play forwards and backwards alternately, known as ping-pong looping. One distinct advantage of using a sampler is the precise control it gives you over a sample’s Tuning. While DAWs offer their own pitchshifting methods, it’s far more practical to load audio into a sampler and select its Key mapping properties. This involves telling the sampler at what note the original sample sounds, after which you can play it back via MIDI in the correct key (though its character may be skewed at far-removed notes). Alternatively, for more experimental purposes, you can play the sample back at the same note while automating the Tune, Transpose or Detune dials. Finally, it’s unlikely you’ll run into a sampler without a few onboard effects. The usual soundshaping filters, envelopes and LFOs may serve alongside some other dedicated modules.

> Step by step 4. Basic sampler functions

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Let’s explore a sampler. We’re using Native Instruments’ Kontakt 5 loaded in Ableton Live 9, but any other standard sampler plugin (your DAW may include one) will likely contain similar features. To load a sample, we can either use the sampler’s inbuilt browser on the left, or drag and drop a file onto the main window. Load up Piano Note G.wav – from the Tutorial Files folder – into the sampler.

Untoggle the Mapping Editor header. At the bottom of the Instrument Edit screen, we find familiar amplitude envelope controls to shape the sample’s volume response. Raise the Attack slightly to around 0.75ms to remove the sample’s unwanted initial click, then pull the Sustain knob down to minimum and Decay down to around 230 ms to give us more of a short, plucking sound.

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Now the sample is loaded, we can use a MIDI keyboard or the piano roll to play it at different pitches across the keyboard. The number of Voices that can play back at once can be changed. Setting it to 1 makes the patch monophonic, and setting it higher allows the sampler to play multiple notes at once (ie, chords) using the same sample, with the polyphony limit determined by the Voices value.

Samplers usually feature onboard filters, and Kontakt 5 is no exception. In the Group Insert FX section, we can apply a wide range of different filters. In the first FX slot, we click the + symbol and navigate to Filters » LowPass » Daft LP. We raise the Resonance to about 50% and set the Cutoff to around 230 Hz.

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Click on the spanner in the instrument header to open up Instrument Edit mode, then open the Mapping Editor by toggling its tab. The yellow area denotes the range of MIDI keys that can trigger the sample. However, currently, when we play a C note, we hear a G. We need to tell the sampler the sound’s correct root pitch. Drag the yellow C3 key to the G2 note. The problem should be rectified.

Click on the small Mod tab on the left side of the DftLP filter section. By clicking the Add Modulator dropdown menu, we can select a modulator to affect a filter parameter – select LFOs » Sine. The central slider controls the modulation amount, and the right dropdown selects the destination. The LFO’s parameters can be adjusted at the bottom of the interface under the amplitude envelope.

the art of sampling  /  make music now  < Ample samplers As you’d expect with such an important electronic instrument, most DAWs now include their own native sampler straight off the shelf. Logic’s EXS24, Live 9’s Simpler (and Sampler for Suite owners), Reason’s NN-XT, Sonar’s DropZone, Studio One’s Presence, Reaper’s ReaSamplOmatic 5000… The list goes on. One notable exception is Steinberg’s Cubase, featuring only its drum sampler (Groove Agent One/SE) and the ROMpler-style HALion Sonic SE 2. To take your sampling to the next level, consider purchasing a more powerful sampler plugin. The king of commercial thirdparty samplers is undoubtedly Native Instruments’ Kontakt. Currently in its fifth incarnation, this powerhouse plugin offers a ton of features – filters, envelopes, modulation, detailed sample editing, timestretch modes, slicing, looping, effects and more – all combined within a semimodular structure. Other worthy commercial samplers include MOTU’s MachFive 3, Steinberg’s HALion 5, Camel Audio’s Alchemy, and New Sonic Arts’ Nuance. Great sampling tools needn’t cost you cash, mind. Check out Expert Sleepers’ XFadeLooper CM and Loomer’s Cumulus. Both are included with our Plugins suite, which you can download at vault.computermusic.co.uk (or find on the DVD with the print edition). If you like XFadeLooper CM, be sure to check out its even more powerful parent plugin, Crossfade Loop Synth v3.

> Step by step 5. Sustaining a sample with looping

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Load up Synth C2.wav from the Tutorial Files folder into your sampler of choice. In Live’s sampler, when we play and hold a MIDI note, our sample plays from start to finish. We can’t currently play longer sustained notes, as we’re simply playing back the sound in its original form, and it only lasts a short time.

For a more natural loop, we can make the sampler play the initial attack when a note is pressed, but then loop around another section while the note is held down. Set the Loop Start value to a later position – about 14200 samples. Bring the Crossfade parameter up to around 4500 samples, adding fades at the loop’s start and end points, removing potential clicks at the loop edges.

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We can make our sampler sustain and loop around a section of the sample. Hit the double-arrow icon in the Sustain Mode section to activate looping, then pull the Loop End amount back to roughly 27000 samples. Hear how the sampler repeats – between our Loop Start and Loop End values – when a note is held.

Hitting the opposing arrows symbol in the Sustain Mode section causes the loop to play once forwards then once in reverse, over and over. We also have several Release Modes, so we can make the sampler release the loop and play the tail – or even loop a second stage – when longer release settings are applied in the sampler’s amplitude envelope.

> Step by step 6. Tonal looping with XFadeLooper CM

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Expert Sleepers’ XFadeLooper CM is a sampler with some clever looping tricks, and it’s available free with Computer Music as part of our Plugins collection. Load a fresh instance of the plugin on a new instrument track in any DAW, then hit the Load Sample button and load up Warning.wav from the Tutorial Files folder.

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Loop a C3 MIDI note on its track. We can see and hear that XFadeLooper CM is looping the vocal sample over and over. Turning up the Sync knob activates fast tonal repeating at the sample’s start point. Turn it to 1 and see the playback effect on the wave display. Drag the green Sample Start arrow through the waveform to scan this effect through the vocal.

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Lower values introduce more complexity and harmonics to the looping effect, until the repeating becomes noticeable. Sweep Sync around to hear the tonal looping effect more clearly. The Detune knob modulates the playback pitch for a distinctive beating timbre. Check out the Quick Guide PDF in XFadeLooper CM’s install folder for an in-depth exploration of the plugin.

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>  make music now  /  the art of sampling > Step by step 7. Tuning a sample

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The tuning of sampled musical tones and phrases can be slightly off, so it’s always a good idea to tune them before using them in a composition. Load 1. Synth Tone.wav – a crusty, vinyl-sampled synth note – into your sampler of choice, and loop up MIDI note C3 on its channel to replay it at its original pitch. We’re using NI Kontakt 5 here, but any sampler will do.

Load up a synth plugin with a raw sawtooth patch on a second channel, duplicate the MIDI region playing C3, then compare the sound of the raw synth patch with our sample. By increasing the Tune dial up to +9 semitones, we bring our sample up to C3. (Technically, this is C4 according to SPAN, but the octave numbering used in plugins and DAWs is not standardised!).

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Making a clean break Samples from sources such as vinyl or tape can contain pitch imperfections and noise artifacts imparted by the sound’s original recording medium, so knowing how to tune and clean up noisy samples means you can broaden your scope of sampling sources and find unique sounds for your productions. Tuning a sample is usually a straightforward affair – simply use a frequency analyser or synth plugin’s Init sawtooth patch to determine the sample’s root pitch, then use your sampler’s pitch dial or key mapping editor to tune the sound to the correct musical key. Cleaning up a sample can be more complex. Sometimes EQ is all you’ll need to remove unwanted rumble or lift up dull high-mids and treble. Other times you might want to remove pops, clicks, noise or crackle in a sound. We’re big fans of iZotope’s RX 3 for dedicated noise removal duties, but alternatives are available from Waves, Acon Digital, Sony and more. Depending on the genre of music you make, however, it’s important to know when not to go overboard. Often, the dusty, sampled character of samples can provide a track with a sense of charm and nostalgia, giving modern digital music a subtle analogue flavour. Always bypass any processing to make sure your plugins aren’t taking too much character away.

Load up the free Voxengo SPAN analyser (from voxengo.com) on the channel. If we hover our cursor over the synth tone’s fundamental frequency (lowest spike), we can see it’s currently at # D 3. This means we need to transpose the note by -3 (or +9) semitones inside the sampler to tune it to C.

The slight ‘beating’ of the two tones means our tuning is slightly off, so we hold Shift while dragging the Tune knob to fine-tune our sample’s pitch in cents. Other samplers will often feature a dedicated ‘fine-tune’ or ‘detune’ parameter for this. With an adjustment of +37 cents, the beating effect is minimised, and this means our sample is now locked in tune.

> Step by step 8. Removing noise from a sample with iZotope RX 3

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If you have a sample that contains a lot of background noise you want to remove, it may be worth investigating noise removal plugins. 1. Hey Noisy.wav is a noisy vocal line. Load it onto a new audio channel in your DAW. Here we’ll load up iZotope’s RX 3 Denoiser plugin as an insert on this audio channel.

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To begin, we set our DAW’s loop markers around a portion with only noise playing, found after the vocal in the audio file. By clicking Learn on RX 3, the plugin now analyses and stores the noise’s frequency characteristics. This snapshot is known as a ‘noise profile’. RX 3 can now attempt to reduce the noise while affecting the vocal minimally.

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Click Learn again to switch back to regular mode. Playing the track now shows us how RX 3 has suppressed the noise, leaving the vocal relatively untouched. Bypass the plugin to hear how effective it is, and adjust settings to reduce any artifacts if needed. We can set the plugin to the highest possible quality and render this result out as a new audio file.

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling Sample the lot!

In these walkthroughs, we isolate single sounds from finished mixes by using careful chopping, filtering, processing and layering techniques, but sometimes you might want to use an entire chunk of a finished track as the musical basis for your own tune. Genres such as hip-hop, pop and electronica have long relied upon the technique of stealing large samples from full tracks. It’s not a practice that everyone agrees with, but sampling entire track portions can be a creative skill in its own right. Ideally, you’ll want to loop up a track section that doesn’t contain overly complex drum parts, as you’ll probably add your own beat over the top later. Often, it’s a case of working with the frequencies and dynamics already present in the sample, then layering in choice samples to develop and enhance the sound. Chop the sample up and arrange segments onto different channels so you can isolate and process each element with careful EQ or filtering. If your sample contains prominent low bass you want to preserve, you can even try layering two copies of the same sample on separate channels – one high-passed and one low-passed – and treat each layer with its own plugin chain.

> Step by step 9. Ripping a kick sample from a full track

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We’re going to show you how to ‘steal’ the kick drum from a dance track – 1. Full Track.wav is an eight-bar excerpt of a house tune (created using Goldbaby samples in 200). Load it on a new audio channel in your host software, and make sure your DAW isn’t automatically warping or timestretching the audio file.

On this MIDI channel, draw a beat-long MIDI region with a note at C3, so we’re playing back the kick at its original pitch. Shortening the note to slightly less than half a beat removes the offbeat tom. We’re left with the kick, plus the ride and clap from the original track’s drum groove. We can now remove the treble elements using our sampler’s filter and envelope.

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Firstly, we’ll locate a suitable kick hit. We choose the first kick of bar three, to avoid the loop’s crash on bar one. After chopping it out, we’ll load it into a Sampler instrument. To do this in Live 9, we simply drag and drop this audio segment onto a new MIDI channel, and it’s automatically loaded into a new Simpler instrument.

Activate Simpler’s default LP12 filter, set the Freq to around 200Hz and Reso to a minimum 0.30. Turn the filter’s Env amount up to a maximum 72, then turn the Filter envelope section On. The low-pass filter is clamping down on the hit, leaving only a front-end attack on the kick sample. Adjust the filter envelope’s Decay time, Freq and Env amount to taste.

> Step by step 10. Isolating and enhancing a sampled bass note

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Load 1. Sampled Track.wav in your favourite sampler – we’re using NI’s Kontakt 5. Head into the Wave Editor and move the sampler’s Start point to the first bass note of the second bar, positioning the End point before the next note. This is so that when we play a sustained note, we won’t play back the entire loop – just the single note we want.

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It’s clear that this note has been sampled from a full mix, as we can hear the remnants of other higher musical parts over the top. To remove them, activate a low-pass filter and pull the Cutoff down to around 100Hz, filtering out other audio frequencies. We then modulate the filter’s Cutoff with a snappy envelope, bringing out the note’s initial pluck while isolating the bass tone.

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By inserting Voxengo’s SPAN on the bass track, we can hover over the note’s fundamental frequency to determine that it’s an E. To add more weight to the note, we layer a very basic low sine wave tone from a synth, also playing an E. We export the sample and sub layer as a single audio file, labelling the note as E in the filename.

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling > Step by step 11. Giving clean sounds a ‘sampled’ vibe

You can dial in a retro sampler sound with a bitcrushing plugin like D16 Group’s Decimort

Grunging up clean samples We’ve looked at how to remove unwanted noise and imperfections from samples, but often it’s that dusty, crackly vibe that gives your tracks an authentic ‘sampled’ sound. The process of taking a shiny modern sound and grunging it up is rewarding and fun – and it’s a lot easier than you think. Start by adding processing that emulates the characteristics of your desired source medium – for instance, in the tutorial to the right, we emulate the dull sound of analogue tape using software tape saturation and low-pass filtering to remove harsh, “digital” treble. Next, we replicate a vinyl recording by layering crusty vinyl crackle on a separate channel. Finally, we use this crackle to trigger compression over the original loop, pulling its level down like on a real record. This is only one approach, however. Bit-depth reduction is a great way to emulate the crunch of old samplers, or even just to degrade a signal slightly. We’re big fans of D16’s Decimort, a featurepacked bitcrushing plugin with flexible filters and a handy Dry/Wet control to blend clean with crunch. Software tape, valve and tube saturation plugins offer another plugin path towards grit and grunge, and can be driven to varying degrees for more analogue-like sampled tones. Remember that older signals were often mono – including any reverb – so try basic panning of mono sounds and/or ‘mono-ising’ your reverb tails. If you want to get even more creative on your hunt for fauxsampled sounds, consider sending your signal out of the computer to an old cassette deck or ancient outboard effects unit. Once you’ve recorded the degraded signal back into your DAW, you’ll have imparted some real-life graininess.

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Vinyl recordings usually feature noise, crackles and imperfections, evoking feelings of nostalgia associated with most early sample-based forms of music such as hip-hop, rave and electronica. Let’s take a clean, modern loop and ‘grunge’ it up so it sounds like it’s been lifted from a record. Load Undercover.wav onto a new audio track in any DAW – this is a loop taken from 203’s Undercover sample pack.

Running a signal through multiple analogue processes, not to mention repeated playback/dubbing of tape during a recording or mixing session, can cause high frequency loss. Our loop still sounds bright, and ValveFilter CM can see to this. The Cutoff is set at around 4 o’clock, reducing some highs. The loop is now dull, saturated and compressed, and it sounds more like it was recorded to vintage tape.

To make this month’s samples, Robbie Stamp of Cyclick used vinyl noise as a sidechain to trigger fast compression over the musical loop it’s been layered with, so the vinyl pops and transients cause tiny dropouts like on a real record (see page 12). Here we’re going to replicate this process for a similar effect. We load our DAW’s stock compressor on our music loop’s channel.

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Older records were often tracked and recorded onto analogue tape, adding warmth by gently reducing transients and harsh treble with a natural compressionlike gluing effect. To replicate tape sound, we load u-he’s Satin as an insert on our loop’s track. The Studio Mode » SE Vintage Master -18dB RMS preset coats some tape-style glue over our loop. Use the Bypass button to hear what it’s doing.

By layering authentic vinyl noise, pops and crackles (from RecordNoise.wav) on top, we can make the loop sound like a real record. Drop the file onto a new track, and make sure your DAW doesn’t automatically warp or timestretch it, then duplicate it for the duration of the first loop. In 207’s Crate Diggers’ Delight sample pack, you’ll find more vinyl noise loops to use like this.

After activating the compressor’s Sidechain section, the vinyl noise’s channel is selected as the sidechain input. We set a minimum 0.01ms Attack and 1.00ms Release, with a Ratio of 3.00:1. A Threshold setting of around -31dB applies compression to the loop, using the noise signal as a trigger. Compare the initial loop with this final faux-sampled loop to hear the difference for yourself.

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling

Multisampling masterclass



CYCLICK SAMPLES

Sampling supremo Robbie Stamp reveals the pro secrets and techniques used to create great multisampled instruments

Robbie Stamp has been making samples as Cyclick Samples since 2000, with his first commission for 120 samples coming from a fledgling Computer Music. Since then, he’s created over 145,000 samples (as well as thousands of MIDI files and sampler instrument patches), designing, editing, programming, naming and collating every single one of them – with the exception of the odd session player for instruments he’s not familiar with, he played the lot too! Robbie is part way through building the latest incarnation of his Sandpit Studio in

Bristol. The control room is a lick of paint away from completion, and the vintage mixing desk renovation is in its final stages. Robbie’s taken a break from the DIY to share some of his sampling wisdom and techniques from the Sandpit’s control room. In our exclusive video sessions, Robbie demonstrates the process of making a velocity-layered guitar multisample from scratch, from plucking strings to patching samples. Starting with the setup of the amp, guitar, mics and preamps, he explains the many factors that need to be addressed

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1. Recording What could be simpler than recording an electric guitar? Plug in, mic up and go… Except, that is, when you’re multisampling one. See the intricacies and decisions faced as the raw material of a multisample is captured!

when it comes to capturing an instrument note by note. Approaches to gain structure and noise reduction are explored – these are vital for mitigating the combined effects of many tiny artifacts that rarely bother a straight guitar recording session. These same techniques, processes and skills can be utilised when doing the same for other instruments, from synths to violins, and is essential viewing for any budding samplist. And of course, the finished Kontakt and SFZ patches, both DI’ed and amped, are included for you to use – totally royalty-free!

the art of sampling  /  make music now  <

2. Editing the recorded multisampling session Recording a triple velocity layer multisample is no quick task, and neither is the editing work that follows. Robbie swaps guitar for QWERTY keyboard and trackpad as the ensuing mixing and editing work is covered step by step. Using an example ‘riff’, the two mic channels are summed, mixed and rendered to a single file that forms the basis of the final multisample. Techniques are revealed for making this labourintensive process as efficient as possible, many of which can be applied to other areas of audio work. The final steps cover aspects of the everimportant, yet oft overlooked, subject of file naming and management – not as sexy as mix buss chains, but every bit as important.

3. Mapping for Kontakt

4. Mapping for Alchemy

The multisamples have been named and filed for the easiest transition into their final sampler destinations. Here, Robbie gets on with mapping the triple-velocity multisamples for use in NI’s Kontakt. The power of the clever Auto-map setup function is used to get the samples mapped in no time. Try the finished patch yourself – it’s in the Tutorial Files folder!

SFZ files can be played in Alchemy (also Alchemy CM, found in Plugins) and other compatible apps. In this video, Robbie moves on to creating SFZ files using text documents – who would have thought that basic word processing skills would come in this handy in the world of virtual instrument creation? Grab the finished SFZ patch from the Tutorial Files folder!

Three pro sampling techniques Years of sample creation leads to some very specific skills and workarounds. Here Robbie explains three tricks for batch-creating sustain points for multisamples, managing reverb/delay decays in loops and dealing with offset start times. See the videos for full detail!

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embedded sustain loops Setting up loop points for sustained notes in a sampler can be fiddly and time consuming, especially for multisamples. In this video, Robbie shows how BPM-based in-DAW editing, a sample data editor, and a batch processing approach saves time.

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reverb/delay decays Delay and reverb can take a little time to fill out the sound and can leave the starts of loops sounding naked when not present. With a little forethought, phrases and beats can be full and fruity, right from the off – Robbie shows you how!

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phrase looping Not all phrases start on ‘the one’, and many bleed across the downbeat of the next bar. This can make them tricky to loop satisfactorily, but one simple and essential editing trick can banish this problem forever – see how in the video.

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  49

>  make music now  /  the art of sampling

Sampling tips retro sauce Late 80s and early 90s hardware samplers would sample and process audio at low bit depths, giving sounds a distinctive ‘lo-fi’ characteristic. To achieve this retro ‘sampled’ tone over a cleaner sound source, simply apply careful bitcrushing to add that distinctive fuzz of an old-school hardware sampler to your sounds. You can even get dedicated sampler plugins, such as 112dB’s Morgana or Sonic Charge’s Cyclone, that go to great lengths to emulate the crusty oldschool flavour of vintage samplers.

Akai for all Speaking of retro samplers, the distinctive ‘cyclic’ timestretch algorithm from old-school Akai samplers is still a distinctive and soughtafter effect today. To replicate this rave-tastic stretching, head to akaizer.blogspot.co.uk and download Akaizer for PC or Mac. Now you can emulate the classic 90s metallic stretching effect for f-f-free-e-e-e-eeee!

Audition with effects Set up some wild modulation, effects or filtering in your sampler before using the browse buttons to scan through your samples. It’s likely you’ll stumble across an unusual sound or effect that you wouldn’t usually think to process or modulate in that way. You can even set up dedicated folders full of unusual samples ready for creative scanning!

be prepared A true crate digger is committed to the sampling cause, so be ready to sample anything and everything at the touch of a button. It’s a good idea to have your sample-ripping method of choice set up permanently, so you can capture that perfect movie quote or orchestral segment as soon as you hear it.

tune it up and down Transpose, transpose, transpose! A sampler makes it easy to pitch your sounds up and down, so it’s worth trying out samples at different keys. Drum hits can fit nicely in a track when pitched up or down by a few semitones. Don’t be afraid to pitch sounds by one or two octaves (or more) – you might create some crazy drones and special FX.

you want to use it in a minor context, play three notes up from the root note played by the bass to form a minor seventh chord.

explored in this feature. You can now play the sound across the keyboard! If possible, try modulating the sample start and loop points.

flip reverse it

the key to it all

What’s my name?

Most samplers offer a reverse function so you can play your sounds backwards. Try reversing all manner of sounds for great results – drums, pads, basses, synths, FX and even vocals can all sound great played back-to-front.

In 206’s Producer Masterclass video, DnB duo Ulterior Motive offered us up an expert sampling tip. When collecting samples, they run them through Mixed In Key, a DJ software program that labels sounds by their musical key. This makes life easier when searching for sounds in the same key as your current track.

Don’t forget to include the key of a sample in its file name, and BPM values in the names of loops. It’ll save time later when you want to quickly throw the sound into a track and get it working in the context of a composition.

major considerations In this feature, we’ve explored the basic tuning of sounds to a root key. However, often you’ll have a sampled chord you want to tune. If you have a sample of a major chord, and

get moving Modern samplers make it easy for you to modulate their parameters, and unique results can be generated this way, especially when a random, unpredictable element is involved. You could automate the parameters randomly in your DAW, or try hooking up your sampler’s start point to an LFO or envelope for some distinctive glitchiness.

Cumulus inspiration

Loomer’s Cumulus – free with Computer Music – can perform its own version of granular-style sampling

Loomer’s Cumulus is a creative granular sampler in our Plugins suite, but if you’d rather use another plugin, it’s easy to perform granular tricks using any sampler – simply set a short loop point around any sample until you get a distinctive buzzing tone, then tune this tone using tuning methods we’ve already

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Name your samples so you’ll be able to find them in future

next month  <

Next issue 208

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September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  51

Producer Masterclass

Fujiya & MiYAGI

We access the South Coast groovers’ studio and take a peek into two of their latest tracks

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  53

>  make music now  /  producer masterclass

With a refreshingly eclectic array of influences, from Neu! to Prince, Fujiya & Miyagi are hard to pigeonhole. Nevertheless, they’ve won praise from music critics and garnered a legion of fans all over the world. Their music has appeared across a multitude of media – most notably featuring in TV sensation Breaking Bad – and their latest album, Artificial Sweeteners, looks set to continue their unstoppable ascendancy. We caught up with the group’s Steve Lewis in their Hove studios to find out more about the band and how they create their unique fusion of styles. : So, who’s who in Fujiya & Miyagi? SL: “I do all the production, most of the keyboards; but we kind of mix it up. Dave is the guitarist, and he sings and makes up all the words. Matt’s the bass player, and he does a bit of backing vocals as well. Me and Dave basically write most of the music. When we started, we were gonna be really electronic. I was really into 90s electronic music like Carl Craig and Aphex Twin, and

“We’re kind of an electronic loop-based band, but we put guitars and songs over the top of it” Dave was really into Can and the 70s thing. He introduced me to that, and we thought, ‘Let’s try and put them together somehow.’ “We’re kind of an electronic loop-based band, but we put guitars and songs over the top of it. Dave whispers, as well. That’s quite unusual – he doesn’t really sing... I don’t know how to describe it, really! I think we fall into that thing that came about a few years ago with people like Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. They’re electronic, producertype people, but they play it live and add that element into it”

Video masterclass Steve shows how Fujiya & Miyagi created Acid To My Alkaline and Tetrahydrofolic Acid in Pro Tools ON THE DVD

Don’t miss…  4:22 Creating retro FX with drum machine 0 sounds and delay  9:49 Reverse reverb effects with 0 chopped audio

1 6:25 Layering multitrack whispers and backing vocals 2 7:03 Bringing acid sounds out in the mix with SoundToys Decapitator 54  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

Selected kit list Selected kit list HARDWARE Apple iMac Apogee Quartet Adam A7X monitors Akai MPC1000 Doepfer Dark Energy

Eventide PitchFactor Korg MS-20 Korg MS-03 Korg PolySix Moog Rogue Moog Sub Phatty

Nord Wave Nord Drum 2 Novation Bass Station Roland SH-101 Roland RE-201 Space Echo

SOFTWARE Avid Pro Tools Cockos Reaper SoundToys Decapitator Waves plugins

: What’s your songwriting process? SL: “Sometimes Dave will bring along a full song and I’ll be writing music around it. Acid To My Alkaline is a really good example – Dave comes along with the song, and he plays me the guitar riff. He uses Pro Tools but does a real sketch of a track, and there’s a lot of space; it’s really minimal. He often writes the basslines, so it’ll be my bass guitar and his vocals, and then I’m programming it and filling in the gaps. Whereas Tetrahydrofolic Acid came from just me fannying around and then Dave adding his bit on afterwards. Then there are ones where we work together in the same room, building the tracks up.”

the Family Stone… We’ve just taken those kind of things and put them in a different context. “With this record, we were really desperate not to repeat ourselves, so we did a lot of what I call fannying around. We did a lot of sessions where I just plugged Dave in, and we weren’t quite sure in the beginning what guitar sound we wanted. We wanted something new, so we’d get a guitar sound and I’d stick it through the Eventide or Space Echo, and I’d be manipulating it in real-time, just to come up with stuff that was a bit different and not so static. A lot of the songs were built up from me going through takes and taking bits that I thought were good and then editing them down.”

: Artificial Sweeteners seems to have a strong funk influence. SL: “We’ve always been into funk, even really early on – we just didn’t know how to do it very well! Dave’s really into Prince, Sly and

In this exclusive tutorial, Steve shows us how Fujiya & Miyagi made the tracks Acid To My Alkaline and Tetrahydrofolic Acid in Avid’s Pro Tools. Check out the video on the DVD or in our Apple Newsstand edition.

producer masterclass  /  make music now  < > Step by step Creating Acid To My Alkaline in Pro Tools

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The first element of the track to be added is a TR-606 drum loop, composed by Dave using the iPad app FunkBox. The loop is recorded into Pro Tools before being equalised with Waves Q10 and run through SoundToys Decapitator to get a trebly, distorted sound.

Acid To My Alkaline’s unique guitar tone is created by running Dave Best’s guitar part through Eventide PitchFactor in Guitar Synth mode. This is layered on top of the original guitar. “It’s a bit random – it doesn’t aways follow it very well, so I have to use pitch correction. With guitars, you don’t really get the sustain you get on synthesisers, so they sort of break up in a really nice way.”

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To beef up the beat, a kick and snare loop is sequenced in FunkBox and layered over the original. This is run through Waves Renaissance Vox to compress it. “It’s really simple and meant to be for vocals, but I like it for quickly squashing stuff,” Steve enthuses. “It just seems to do it really nicely. I might not use it if I was doing this mix myself, but it’s good for getting a sound when you’re working.”

The synth line is from a Moog Rogue synth, run through a Roland Space Echo. To create a pseudo reverse reverb effect, Steve copies an interesting section of the audio onto another track, then uses a long fade-in to bring its volume level up.

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Matt Hainsby’s bassline is tracked at a separate studio and used all the way through the track. “Matt is a pretty tight bass player, but sometimes he gets the groove better than others, so I do a lot of cutting and pasting,” reveals Steve. “I try and keep the performance because [although] we’re electronic, I like to have that balance between live elements, so it’s not just loops.”

To make the track’s huge electro chord, Steve stacks up two sounds recorded from a Moog Sub Phatty: one a lead with LFO-modulated filter cutoff, and the other a big fifth-interval pad. These are panned either side of the centre of the mix, for a much wider sound.

Hear more

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The vocals are also recorded at a different studio, then comped by Steve to get the best overall take. Dave’s vocal style is laidback, almost spoken, and Steven layers it with his own backing vocals – some of which are performed falsetto – to give the whole thing a fuller sound. Waves Renaissance Vox is again used for compression.

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Steve bounces the stems without effects, so that they can be mixed by his mix engineer, who returns a tweaked version of the track as a Reaper project. Steve then applies further edits to the mixed track, including replacing the guitar part and adding another synth line from a Doepfer Dark Energy.

Acid To My Alkaline: bit.ly/FMAcid Tetrahydrofolic Acid bit.ly/FMTetra

WWW

www.fujiya-miyagi.co.uk soundcloud.com/fujiya twitter.com/FujiyaAndMiyagi facebook.com/FujiyaMiyagi

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  55

BITWIG Get acquainted with Bitwig Studio’s lineup of exclusive effects and its unique processing framework When the first screenshots and details of Bitwig Studio came to light a couple of years ago, it was immediately apparent that the developers (several of whom once worked at Ableton, it must be said) had no qualms whatsoever about blatantly aping Ableton Live in as many areas as they felt necessary for the successful development of their upstart DAW. That included the design and certain specifics of its effects devices, from their consistent, flat, nonskeuomorphic GUIs to their obviously similar workings and feature sets in many areas. However, Bitwig’s roster of effects does actually bring quite a few original ideas and functional quirks of its own to the party, both in terms of the devices themselves and the environment in which they’re deployed. While there might not be anything in the lineup that stands out as truly exceptional on its own, as a group, they cover all the essential production

bases very well, and go beyond them with a number of well-executed notables such as Dynamics, Frequency Shifter, Blur and Resonator Bank. However, it’s not until you start using them within the powerful Container devices, and cooking up elaborate signal paths via the awesome Wet/Feedback FX system, that the true potential of Bitwig’s processing setup reveals itself. In this tutorial, we’re going to take you in-depth into both aspects of Bitwig Studio’s built-in effects: the actual modules (including the MIDI-manipulating Note FX) and the many ways in which they can be flowed into, out of and around each other. Everything we do in the next five pages will use only the effects that come bundled with Bitwig Studio, and we’ve included all the audio files used in the walkthroughs in the Tutorial Files folder, so you can follow along in the full or demo version of the DAW at your leisure.

download Get the videos and tutorial files on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  57

>  make music now  /  bitwig fx > Step by step 1. Processing drums with Bitwig Studio’s Reverb, Resonator Bank and Ladder

Tutorial

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The centrepiece of Bitwig’s Reverb is its graphical interface for adjusting the length of the late reflection (Tank) reverb for the lowest and highest of its three user-adjustable bands. We start a new Bitwig Studio project, import a drum loop (we’ve included 1. Drums dry.wav in the Tutorial Files folder) and insert a Reverb on Effect Track 1.

The rest of Reverb’s controls are straightforward enough. The Early section gives control over the room Size, Pre-Delay and Diffusion (build-up) of the early reflections, while the Late section governs the density of the tail (Buildup), Reverb Time and Early/Late reflection balance. Demonstration over, we switch the Reverb to the Hall One preset and lower the drums’ Send to -27dB.

Bitwig’s Ladder effect is a tasty multimode filter with three modulation options onboard, each with its own bipolar depth control for simultaneous application of all three. Its available modes include four low-pass slopes, four high-passes, two band-passes, peak, notch and three hybrid HP/LPs. Insert it on the drum track, select LP1 (low-pass) mode, then set the cutoff Freq to 376Hz and Reso to 30%.

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The main display gives access to the three adjustable bands, the widths of which are set by dragging the crossovers between the middle band and the high/ low bands. Dragging the tops of the outer two bands up and down – or twisting the Lo X and Hi X knobs – multiplies the reverb times within their frequency ranges anywhere between 0.56X and 1.78X.

Using Bitwig’s Resonator Bank, we can coax pitched sounds out of our drum loop to accompany or replace it. Resonator Bank is a set of six resonant band-pass filters, each adjustable in terms of Frequency, Q (resonance) and Gain. Load it onto another Effect Track 100% wet, call up the Macro Mysticord preset and Send the drums to it (-6dB) for a vocoderlike layer under our beat.

The Envelope Follower modulates the cutoff in response to the amplitude of the input signal. With the Attack at 0.25ms and Release at 3ms we get a nice, squelchy filter movement when we raise the Follow amount to 28.80. The LFO offers several waveshapes (we opt for Sine), and rates from 0.01 to 10Hz – bizarrely unsyncable! We set it to 1.84Hz (close to a 110bpm quarter-note) and set the LFO depth to +30.

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We set the drums’ Send level to the Effect Track to -14dB. By setting the Low and Hi bands as wide as possible, we can dial up a dark, low, cavernous sound by raising the Low band and lowering the Hi band, or a bright, shiny sound by raising Hi and lowering Low. Check out the extremes we’ve made in Audio 3a.wav to Audio 3d.wav.

We can offset all six frequency and resonance levels together using the Shift and Q knobs on the right, but more fun is triggering the frequency offset with a MIDI keyboard. We convert the Effect Track to a Hybrid Track so it can receive MIDI, set our keyboard as its input, activate monitoring, raise the Resonator Bank’s Keytrack knob and Play/Record! For portamento, raise the Glide.

Ladder’s ADSR Envelope requires MIDI input for triggering, so we create an Instrument track, move the Ladder to it from the drums track, set the drums track’s Output to the new Ladder track, copy the two Effect Send levels over and bring them both back to 0 on the drums track. Now we can record a MIDI pattern to trigger the envelope. Check it out in 9. Ladder ADSR.wav.

bitwig fx  /  make music now  < > Step by step 2. Bitwig Studio’s FX Containers

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Bitwig Studio’s Container devices give you various ways in which to combine and route effects. The most straightforward of them is FX Chain, into which you simply load a series of effects to be saved as a collective group and recalled as an FX Chain preset. The chain can be as simple or as complex as you like, and can, of course, contain further Containers, too.

Multiband FX-2 is a multiband splitter that divides the input signal into two frequency bands – High and Low – the crossover frequency set by the Split parameter. Let’s use it to separately process the kick and snare in a drum loop. We start by loading our loop and a Multiband FX-2 Container onto an audio track in a new project. You can get 4. Dry drums.wav from the Tutorial Files.

We need to give Replacer a sound with which to replace the snare, so we drag an E-Clap instrument into the Generator INST slot and load its Massive Clap preset. The snare is replaced by a handclap – Replacer detects the incoming audio signal and triggers E-Clap with a corresponding MIDI note. Setting Replacer’s Mix to 30% gives us a good blend of clap and snare as heard in 7. Snare replaced.wav.

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Mid-Side Split has Bitwig Studio users covered for mid/side processing (albeit without mute/solo functionality), decoding the input signal into mid and sides signals, each of which can be treated with its own effects chain. You can boost or lower the volume of each signal by up to 24dB each way. 2a to 2c.wav are orchestral passages, as mixed, and with the Mid then Side signals set to -24dB.

We’re going to add some delay to the snare and distort the kick, so we insert Delay-1 into the High slot and Distortion into the Low one. Unfortunately, Multiband FX-2 doesn’t let you solo its bands, but by bypassing the Delay-1 and lowering the Split until only the kick is distorted, we find a good kick/snare crossover point at 111Hz. Hear what we’ve done in 5. Processed drums.wav.

Replacer can also be used to replace or reinforce individual elements within full drum mixes. Here’s a stereo drum kit clip on an audio track. To reinforce the snare, we load a Replacer on an Effect Track 100% wet, and drag an E-Snare instrument into its INST slot. Raising the send level from the drum kit channel triggers the Replacer snare with every sound in the signal. Nasty.

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With different effects in the Mid and Side FX slots, we can process each signal discretely. In 3. Orchestral mix.wav, we’ve put a Compressor onto the Side channel to up its weight, and an EQ-5 followed by a Transient Control (with the Attack knob raised to 53%) on the Mid, to brighten the central signal and bring out the transients of the violin and snare. The result is a ‘shinier’, wider sound.

Replacer offers a tidy, effective means by which to use an audio signal to trigger MIDI notes. It’s primarily intended for drum replacement, as the MIDI output is monotone rather than melodic. Let’s start by using it to replace a snare drum playing on its own channel. We program a drum pattern triggering Bitwig’s Drum Machine Hip Hop Kit preset and insert a Replacer container on the snare channel.

Tuning the Replacer Freq filter to detect just the snare and lowering the Threshold proves moderately effective, but we can’t quite get the detector to ignore the top end of the kick drum entirely. Placing an EQ-DJ before the Replacer and muting the Low band solves the problem, though, and the result in 9b.wav is a reinforcement snare playing in parallel with the drum track.

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  59

>  make music now  /  bitwig fx > Step by step 3. Advanced effects chains with Bitwig Studio’s Wet and FB FX

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One of Bitwig Studio’s coolest features is its ability to independently process the wet output or feedback circuit of certain devices. Let’s use this to radically reshape a drums/bass/percussion/pad mix. We start by placing a Reverb on an Effect Track and sending a bit of our drums (which you can grab in 1. Dry mix.wav) to it.

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Reverb has TnkFX and WetFX slots for processing the late reflections and full wet output respectively. Loading a Distortion into TnkFX (50% wet) with a Chorus loaded into the Distortion’s WetFX (100% wet) gives the tail a weird edginess. A Delay-2 (100% wet, 24% Width) in the Reverb Wet FX slot turns the early reflections into a gentle wash that sits nicely behind the beat.

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We insert a Chorus into the bass to give it some width and wobble. We put a low-pass Ladder filter in the Chorus’ Wet FX slot with the Envelope Follower brought fully to bear. This is followed by a Transient Control, with the Sustain at 69%, which turns the chorus output into a bass ‘tail’. Get a load of this chain (and the others) in the Tutorial Files folder.

POWER TIP

>Go steady

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To the pad sound, we’ll apply some sidechain compression with a twist. We insert a Dynamics device into the Pad channel, keyed off the drum track. Putting a Delay-2 in the Sidechain FX slot makes the keying signal more rhythmic. Preceding it with a Transient Control set to Attack 100%, Sustain -100% makes it spikier.

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A Delay-2 goes onto the Percussion track, with a Compressor in its Feedback FX slot. This compresses the feedback circuit, which feeds back harder, making for a great spot effect when turned on only in bars 5-8. The same trick works equally well with the Reverb FX Track’s Delay-2, in bars 13-17.

You can of course use VST plugins within your Wet/FB FX signal flows, but access to Bitwig’s routing system is only available through its own devices – ie, the DAW won’t magically give you the ability to tap into your VST reverb’s wet output. Another thing to be aware of with Feedback FX in particular is that putting a gain-raising effect (or one with a further feedback circuit) into a FB FX slot can result in very fast level increases, so keep a limiter last in the chain when experimenting.

Dynamics and EQ A collection of dynamics and equalisation tools is an essential inclusion in any DAW, and Bitwig fares pretty well in this department. The simplest of the three equalisers, EQ-DJ is a three-band model with adjustable crossovers (up to 1.67kHz and 11.9kHz), attenuation down to -infdB and boost up to +18.1dB, and mute controls (ie, kill switches) for each band. Not only is it useful as a DJ-style ‘performance’ EQ/filter, but it can be just the ticket for quick elimination of headroomeating low frequencies, clearing space in the middle of a sound’s frequency range, etc. The next step up is the parametric EQ-2, a two-band EQ offering a choice of bell, shelving and 12/24dB low/high-pass filter modes for each band, and an interactive graphical interface. Although falling numerically short of Ableton Live’s EQ8 (on which it’s clearly based), EQ-5 expands on EQ-2 with the addition of three more bands, 60  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

switchable between bell and notch modes, as well as depth and global curve Shift controls. EQ-5 is the flagship here, and very capable it is, too – despite lacking a spectrum analyser. For basic compression duties, Compressor sounds pretty good and features automatic gain Makeup alongside the expected Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release and Input/ Output Gain knobs. The Dynamics device expands on it significantly, though, with the ability to apply separate downward (positive Ratio up to limiting) or upward (negative Ratio down to 2.00:1) compression to the ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’ elements of the signal, each of which has its own Threshold and Knee settings. Both Ratios and Thresholds are adjustable from the graphical display, and by combining the two techniques (eg, upwards on the quiet range, downwards on the loud range, with an unprocessed margin between the two), some unusual amplitude manipulating can be had.

Dynamics also features a Sidechain FX insert point, and Peak and RMS detector modes. The same Sidechain FX slot can be found on Bitwig’s Gate, which keeps things simple with its Threshold, Depth (gain reduction) and envelope – no hysteresis or lookahead. Also free of frills, the self-explanatory Peak Limiter houses Gain, Release and Release Bias (response curve) controls. Although probably not one to rely on on your master bus, it does a solid job on channels and groups. Finally, Transient Control is your classic transientshaping device, enabling you to boost or attenuate the algorithmically determined Attack and Sustain portions of the input signal. Use it to add (or detract) punch to (or from) drums, basses, etc, and extend decaying sounds by raising the levels of their tails. It’s a great inclusion, even if it’s not as smooth or transparent as the likes of SPL’s Transient Designer or NI’s Transient Master.

bitwig fx  /  make music now  < > Step by step 4. Bitwig Studio’s Note FX

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Bitwig Studio’s Note FX are the equivalent to the MIDI effects found in some other DAWs. Transposition Map remaps incoming notes on its X axis scale to output notes on the Y axis. We start with a MIDI part in G minor triggering Bitwig Studio’s sampled Fender Rhodes. Hear it in 1. Rhodes dry.wav.

Arpeggiator features the usual range of arpeggio patterns (Up, Down, Up/ Down, Random, etc), as well as a pair of sequencers for programming the velocity and duration of each step. We timestretch our keyboard part to twice its length and push it through a 16-step arpeggio. Check it out in Random, Up/Down and Chord modes in the Tutorial Files.

Note Pitch Shifter slides the whole input up or down in pitch. Octave +/buttons give you three octaves of range either way, while the Semitone control travels from -48 to +48, and the Fine knob handles micro-tuning (for Bitwig’s internal instruments only). 5. Note Pitch Shifter.wav sees us shifting our Rhodes part down an octave, up 4 semitones and up 75% Fine.

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In Transposition Map, each orange block’s position on the Y axis determines the note that will actually be output when a note comes in at its key position on the X axis. In 2. Rhodes remapped.wav, you can hear our keyboard part raised 7 semitones and remapped to G Major Pentatonic.

Note Filter simply lets you set low and high limits for pitch (Key) and Velocity, outside of which incoming notes will be ignored. In the Tutorial Files folder, you can hear our original, unstretched Rhodes part being limited to Key 0-65, then Key 67-127 and Velocity 84-127. Notes with the selected properties are the only ones allowed through the Note Filter to the instrument.

Last but not least, Diatonic Transposer remaps incoming notes to specific keys and modes (pre-transposed up to 50 steps in either direction), with the option to map notes not belonging to the scale to the nearest note in the scale (great for ‘bluffing’ your way through a live performance!) or filter them out completely. The audio examples demonstrate both applied to our Rhodes in G Lydian mode.

And the rest… While we’ve discussed and used most of Bitwig Studio’s effects devices, there are still a few outstanding that we ought to tell you about… For digital distortion, Bit-8 is an interesting take on the usual bitcrusher/sample-rate reducer with its Jitter control and Wet FX output. To rough up a drum loop without totally changing its character, use Bit-8’s built-in gate in conjunction with the Mix control to distort just the peaks in the signal, allowing the rest through clean. Fairly unusual as a DAW-bundled effect, Freq Shifter lets you adjust the frequency range to be shifted and bias the shifted signal towards the left or right channel. Rotary and Tremolo, meanwhile, have you covered for modulation of volume and stereo positioning, although – like Ladder’s LFO – neither can be synced to the tempo of your Bitwig project. We hope this is coming in a future update, because while setting LFO speeds in Hz is an acceptable (if retro) way of working, no modern modulation plugin should be without it. Still, at least Tremolo can be retriggered by MIDI, making it ‘pseudo-syncable’. For creative comb filtering, Bitwig presents two options: Comb and Blur. Comb is a simple frequencyadjustable comb filter with bipolar feedback control, while Blur puts two variable-feedback comb filters on each channel for ‘smearing’ and diffusion effects – it can even be pressed into service as a crude but quite cool-sounding short reverb. With its Pre and Post effects chain insert points, Ring-Mod is another synth module-style device clearly waiting for Bitwig’s forthcoming ‘modular device creation’ system to come to fruition, since on its own, it simply enables manual shifting of its ring modulation frequency. Flanger offers negative or positive feedback, a range of (MIDI triggerable) LFO shapes, a Width control and a Wet FX slot. Its LFO can be MIDI-retriggered, like Tremolo, compensating awkwardly for its lack of host sync. Delay-1 is a stereo-linked version of Delay-2 – ie, one setting for both channels. Mercifully, this and its big brother can be synced to Bitwig’s project tempo. Finally, Tool is a utility device for controlling gain, Pan, Width and per-channel phase inversion, and the FX Layer and XY Effect Containers (covered in-depth in 203) facilitate parallel layering and X/Y-pad-operated mixing of multiple effects chains respectively.

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  61

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SYNTH SOUNDS of the SEVENTIES Fire up the lava lamp and lace up your platform shoes – we’re off to the grooviest decade ever in search of that solid gold synth sound!

From roller skates and panel vans to bellbottom jeans and polyester leisure suits, the 1970s were nothing if not colourful. The Summer of Love had given way to grittier, edgier, acid-etched hard rock, dirty denim and shaggy beards. Amidst Death Wish and Dirty Harry, pop culture managed to carve a bright – if plastic – path through the grit and gloom. It was the age of technology; the space race roared on and all in glorious televised colour; kids cheered as The Six Million Dollar Man thwarted baddies and Evel Knievel soared over cars, canyons and, yes, even sharks. And it all occurred against a backdrop of synthesised sound. The synthesiser may have been born in the 60s, but it came of age in the 70s. Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Lucky Man kicked off the decade with one of the very first synthesiser solos in a rock song. Improvised in a single take – almost a throwaway – it’s instantly recognisable for its sweeping glide and its deep, resonant sound. It was the solo heard around the world, and keyboardists scrambled to catch up.

Fortunately, companies like Moog and ARP gave musos plenty of opportunities to do so over the decade, churning out one classic synth after another. From Moog’s Minimoog and ARP’s Odyssey to Sequential Circuits’ polyphonic Prophet-5, the synth sounds of the 70s have become indelibly imprinted onto our collective cultural consciousness. It wasn’t just the rockers that were responsible. Funk and soul musicians embraced the electronic sound and the radio rang with synthesised bubblegum pop. The democratisation of synthesiser technology allowed solo musicians to create fully orchestrated arrangements on their own, most obviously demonstrated by synth heroes Jean Michel Jarre and Isao Tomita. The popularity of these new synthesised sounds went far beyond novelty. They were powerful, pointed and even at times profound. Over the next few pages, we’re going to show you how you can recreate those super synth sounds of the 70s. Sizzling solos, burping brass, and space-age laser zaps – you’ll find all the smash hits here!

download See every classic technique in video form on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

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>  make music now  /  synth sounds of the 70s

Analogue oscillators

© Redferns

If you could travel back in time to the 1970s and ask an electronic musician about the synthesiser, he’d likely rant about the instability of the instrument’s oscillators. Analogue oscillators were anything but dependable – even those on the best synths drifted in and out of tune as internal and external temperature changed, making the quest for precision a fool’s errand. Yet as technology advanced and rocksolid digital alternatives were introduced, musicians were astonished to find that it was their very lack of precision that helped to make those ancient analogue instruments sound so thick, warm and powerful. Fortunately for us, the oscillators on most virtual analogue synths provide fine-tuning parameters that can be modulated by slow LFOs – ideally with a random element – introducing some amount of unpredictable instability. At the very least, you will likely find a ‘detune’ function that can be used to fatten up the sound as those oscillators beat against one another. A little detuning can go a long, long way.

Chris Franke of Tangerine Dream piped his Prophet-5 into no fewer than five fuzzboxes

Distortion and overdrive A ‘hidden’ feature of the Minimoog was the ability to feed its output back through the filter section via jacks on the rear panel, giving an overdriven effect. Some synthesists even ran their signal through guitar overdrive pedals. Create a similarly hot tone by running a virtual synth through distortion effects, whether they be super-flexible modern types, simple guitar stompbox recreations, or gnarly virtual amps.

Sweeping solos One of the most enticing features of the synthesiser was its ability to bend notes. Moog’s pitchbend and portamento functions provided keyboardists with new tools for artistic expression, and 70s synth players took full advantage.

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For the classic portamento lead heard on so many solos, start by loading up AlphaCM in your host of choice – we’re using MuLab, but you can use what you like. We’ll start by loading up the DetunedOscs preset found in the Tutorial Files folder.

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A characteristic pitchbent sound is the calling card of the sound we’re after, and it’s made using portamento – aka glide – a feature found on many analogue synths. Activate AlphaCM’s Glide function by clicking the Glide button twice, then nudge the Time knob ever so slightly.

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We can give the sound a little more bite by increasing the filter Cutoff a bit and nudging the Resonance. Throw on an echo effect and you’ll have a simple, expressive solo sound that you can turn to again and again. Do us a favour and forget about the cape, though, would ya?

synth sounds of the 70s  /  make music now  <

Catchy clavs The Hohner Clavinet was a staple of the funk and soul music of the 1970s. Heard on countless hits by the likes of Stevie Wonder and Billy Preston, and even taken up by rockers like Rick(s) Wakeman and Wright, the Clav was more often than not run through a wah pedal for a juicy, filtered sound. Needless to say, synthesists were emulating the Clavinet from day one, and the sound was a fixture among the preset banks when programmable synths like Sequential Circuits’ Prophet-5 were introduced during the last half of the decade. It’s easy to see why, too. Creating a synthetic Clavinet sound is as close to a no-brainer as it gets, demanding only a rudimentary knowledge of envelope generators. To make one of your own, you’ll need to start with a couple of saw waveforms about an octave apart. Much of the sound is created with the envelopes. Set the amplitude envelope for an abrupt attack and a very short release, no sustain or decay. Wah can be simulated by using a filter envelope to modulate the filter’s cutoff frequency. A decent amount of resonance should be added in for that characteristic squelch. Check out our video to see exactly how it’s done!

The polyphonic talents of the Prophet-5 lent themselves well to simulated brass sounds

Brass tactics Synthesists were limited to monophonic play for much of the 1970s. When polyphony came around, musicians were quick to exploit it for synthetic brass timbres. Run a couple of detuned sawtooth waveforms through a filter and set the envelope attacks to ‘open up’ the filter over a second or so. The release should be short, and the sustain ought to be a bit lower than full volume, allowing for that initial burst of sound.

© Redferns

The resonant sweep The 1970s were full of laser zaps and blaster fire, thanks partly to the popularity of Star Wars. Musicians were exploiting their synths for such sounds even before that seminal sci-fi blockbuster hit the cinemas. Kraftwerk were quite fond of percussive zaps, often making them an integral part of their rhythm tracks. The sound is created by cranking up the resonance and using a very short envelope to sweep the cutoff frequency down rapidly, resulting in the familiar squelching hit. The amplitude envelope should likewise be very short. Neither envelope should have any sustain at all, and the decay should be just long enough to provide the “zap” as the filter clamps down. As for which waveforms to use, it hardly matters, partly because much of the sound is defined by the filter resonance itself, but also because it’s over so very quickly.

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Think sync!

Sample & hold

An immediately recognisable lead sound can be created by syncing one oscillator to another – a technique heard in The Cars’ Let’s Go.

In the 70s, sample & hold was responsible for everything from chattering computers to calculating androids. This rapid-fire stream of random bleeps and bloops is created using a function called ‘sample & hold’, a technique wherein the chaotic and unpredictable output of a noise generator is ‘sampled’ at regular, rhythmic intervals. You can also achieve it using the random waveform from an LFO (essentially the same thing) or a step sequencer set to random values. Set it up to modulate both oscillator pitch and filter frequency – the satellites are singing!

The ARP 2600 provided a sample & hold oscillator for random modulation

Roll off the highs

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Fire up u-he’s ZebraCM and call up the UH Initialize preset. Click the Sync button on Oscillator 2. Turn the knob just below the Sync button (Sync Tune) to 12.00. Right-click the knob below it and select Env2 from the list – Env2 will now control the sync.

70s-style sounds can sound even more vintage when you apply familiar engineering techniques and effects. Consider how those original sounds were recorded and reproduced – it’s easy to forget that engineers back then didn’t have access to the pristine (some say clinical) equipment of today. Every step in the recording chain coloured the sound, but in your DAW’s mixer, the signal is preserved perfectly every step of the way. Simply rolling off the highs using a shelving or low-cut EQ can help mimic the softer treble associated with vintage recordings. See our video for further tips for EQ’ing for a retro tone.

Tape tone

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We’ve just replaced Envelope 1 with Envelope 2 as the mod source for the sync function. Let’s tweak it a bit more to drive it home. Go to the Filter section and reduce the Env 2 amount to 0. Change the filter mode to LP Vintage.

It cannot be denied that the onceubiquitous tape deck played a significant role in shaping the sound of the 70s. It was the era of huge, multitrack reel-to-reels with 16 and 24 tracks squeezed onto one or two inches of magnetic tape. The process of tape recording itself altered the sound of the signal. A quality machine would subtly compress and distort the signal in

70s gear – from consoles to compressors – changed the tone of the signal at every step of its electronic journey

a complementary fashion, while a poorly maintained deck would kill the highs and add lots of tape hiss. If you’ve got a dedicated tape plugin, then give it a try, but if not, you can achieve usefully similar results by adding slight limiting and even a bit of distortion. Also try introducing a tiny bit of noise, either from the synth’s noise oscillator, or by routing both the synth and an audio track of quiet hiss to a buss, mixing them together and processing them further.

Use a vintage tape emulator in your DAW to get the characteristics of an analogue deck

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Turn the Cutoff up to 110 or so, and the Resonance to around 25. Now increase Envelope 1’s Sustain to around 71, and nudge Envelope 2’s Attack up to about 17. You can continue to adjust the sound to taste. Try playing in monophonic mode with some portamento!

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NEXT MONTH 10 killer transitions, fills and edits to enhance any track’s flow

Audio  Interfaces: The Guide Get to know the ins and outs of this crucial studio kit with our advice on optimising, operating and choosing one

The received wisdom is that proper music production requires a proper audio interface. But with most computers already incorporating some form of audio and sometimes even MIDI connectivity straight out of the box, what are the advantages of dedicated input/output hardware? That’s what we’re here to explain in this concise guide. We’ll start with a run down of the main features over the page – this offers a ready reckoner of all the main options you will likely encounter and hopefully help you assess which of those features you’ll need in an audio interface. Then it’s onto actually using one, and the associated issues of latency and buffer sizes, and how these impact the tasks your interface performs. We’ll also take a look at incorporated interface software and what

part it plays in monitoring both live input signals and playback signals from your DAW. Next, we’ll help you pick the best of the bunch, in our selective buying guide. Obviously, interfaces come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so to aid this process, we’ve divided things into three quite distinct categories: band, singer/songwriter and DJ. Each has its own specific demands, which are potentially met by functions found on different interfaces. Nevertheless, if your needs fall between these three categories, there are plenty of further options that combine features of those we’ve included. Finally, we’ll turn our attention to pushing your chosen interface to its limits, considering the ways you can customise or expand on its features. We’ll also consider a few less run-of-the mill uses for your interface that may not have been immediately obvious.

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guide

Anatomy of an interface 03

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Front panel

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Combination inputs – to save space, interfaces usually use combination (‘combi’) connections that can handle XLR or mono/stereo jacks – whichever you choose to plug into it. This covers the three main standard connection types.

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Instrument input – most interfaces include at least one ‘instrumentready’ high-impedance input. This is designed for guitars and basses, which would otherwise require a dedicated DI box before being connected to the interface.

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Gain control – this adjusts the preamp gain, typically of an analogue circuit prior to AD conversion. The gain amount will depend on what sort of input type you’ve selected – mic, line or instrument.

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Phantom power – 48-volt power for capacitor mics is often switched on for groups of mic inputs. You may also find the switches hidden at the back.

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Interface active – a solid LED indicates all is working properly via your chosen connection protocol

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Lock light – a solid LED indicates that the device is clocking successfully to its chosen source. A flashing light would indicate a problem and may result in clicks and glitchy audio.

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Headphones – most interfaces include at least one headphone output; however, with more complex interfaces, you may find two, with flexible routing, allowing you to prepare bespoke cue mixes tailored to the tastes and needs of different performers.

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Metering – varies from solitary ‘peak’ or ‘clip’ LEDs to multipart level meters, and it may even stretch to output metering. The most important thing to glean from any meter is that if your signal is exceeding digital zero, it’ll be clipping, and you should reduce the gain.

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Monitor/Output level – controls the overall output level from the main outputs. Note that this is not the same as adjusting the master fader in your DAW.

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Mute – mutes the monitor output when necessary.

Other front panel features – these could include a monitor mix control which blends the headphone mix between inputs and outputs, a mono button, mute button, dim button, MIDI activity LED, and/ or a sample rate LED.

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Back panel

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Power supply – your interface needs to get power. Options include internal /external power supplies or USB/FireWire.

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MIDI – you won’t see MIDI ports on all interfaces, and most controllers now connect to computers via a dedicated USB cable anyway. But, MIDI allows you to play synths on your DAW from an external keyboard, send MIDI to external synths and hook up devices such as control surfaces.

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Word Clock – standard for linking the digital clock signals of multiple devices. You may see both input and output connectors, allowing the device to act as both a word clock master and slave.

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Connection protocol – interfaces connect to your computer using one of a number of connection protocols, including USB, FireWire and Thunderbolt, though they could also use a PCIe card with a breakout cable or interface box. For the latter, connections could be MADI, ethernet (RJ45) or other proprietary cabling.

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Digital Connectivity – digital signals tend to be sent with phono and optical connectors for protocols like S/PDIF and ADAT. You may see professional options such as XLR (for AES/EBU) and BNC or ST1 (MADI). Digital inputs are a necessity if you’re using an external AD converter.

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Monitor Outputs – some larger interfaces include ‘monitor’

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outputs. These tend to duplicate the main outputs, but with the added functionality of responding to the interface’s monitor level control, for connecting direct to monitors.

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Line Outputs – these are analogue outputs used to feed external gear such as mixing desks, headphone amps for monitoring, outboard effects, etc.

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Mic/line inputs – additional mic and line inputs are often at the back.

Other rear panel features – some interfaces use multipin D-type connectors for bespoke breakout cables or protocols such as TDIF (Tascam Digital Interface). Be careful when connecting as functionality may be specific to your unit.

audio interfaces: the

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> Step by step 1. Adjusting latency for recording and mixing

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To avoid timing problems when monitoring, the interface’s buffer needs to be set as small as possible without introducing digital glitches. This requires trial and error. 64 samples is a good start but could still be unacceptable for singers, who ideally need near-zerolatency monitoring. It’s usually configured via your DAW’s Preferences.

Automatic plugin delay compensation can also play havoc with both the audio you hear and that which is recorded, and avoiding delay-inducing plugins during recording is wise. Again, some DAWs include workaround options. Cubase’s ‘Constrain Delay Compensation’ and Logic’s ‘Low Latency Mode’ both attempt to minimise this issue.

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Latency explained When we discuss latency, what we mean is the input to output delay. This is the time a signal takes to make its journey through the interface inputs and AD converters – which itself takes a short time – pass through the DAW running on your computer and then back out via the DA converters to the output. Each part of this chain introduces some kind of delay, and this is an issue for real-time monitoring when recording. Any significant delay between what you play and what you hear will affect your timing or simply be off-putting. The largest latency culprit is the DAW, and its delay is set by the buffer size. So why not simply reduce the buffer size? Inevitably this has a knock-on effect on the computer’s ability to perform, and very low buffers can lead to instability or annoying pops and clicks. The more virtual instruments and effects you pile on, the worse this will become. So ideally, we set the buffer size to match the task at hand. Further problems are created by automatic delay compensation and by delay-inducing plugins placed on master outputs, although some DAWs have ways of ameliorating this.

Even with the correct buffer setting, recorded audio may still play back out of time. In short, some DAWs record ‘what you hear’, compensating for monitoring latency, while others record ‘what you play’. Some tackle this with manual correction settings – Cubase’s are shown. Route a click via an output, then input it for recording to help adjust this setting.

When you’ve moved onto mixing, latency isn’t much of an issue, but you’ll instead want to squeeze the most from your CPU. Try using the longest buffer size available – 1024 samples or above is a realistic choice. The only real downside is that your DAW will feel less responsive when you hit play and adjust plugin controls, as there’ll be a short delay before you hear the results.

> Step by step 2. Using an audio interface’s monitoring software

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Hardware and software can work together to achieve near-zero-latency monitoring. Examples include ASIO 2.0 Direct Monitoring, and Pro Tools HD, designed for consistent, reliable, lowlatency performance. For an affordable and flexible solution, look for an interface with a software-controlled monitoring system, such as MOTU’s CueMix or Focusrite’s Scarlett MixControl.

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Using your interface’s onboard mixing software is usually straightforward. Here we can see the mixer inputs are available as faders – that includes the physical inputs, and the incoming output from the DAW. Typically, the mixer balance can be saved as a preset, which is useful for setting up headphone cue mixes for different situations or performers.

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Naturally, true flexibility comes if you can have multiple mixes running together. Here, each tabbed page allows us to create a separate stereo mix, which we can route to a specific output. This allows us to create bespoke headphone mixes – ideal when recording bands – while retaining a different control room balance.

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guide

The quick guide to buying an audio interface

Presonus’ AudioBox 1818VSL has enough inputs to carry the load of a full band

Band If you’re recording a band, you’ll be looking for maximum input flexibility combined with near-zero-latency headphone monitoring and headphone outputs, and this sort of requirement stretches the humble audio interface to its limits. Focusrite’s Scarlett 18i20 ticks a number of boxes and still manages it via USB 2.0, which means compatibility with most computers. The 18i20 tag means 18 inputs, and by adding a separate analogue-to-ADAT converter and an

DJ The right sort of interface for laptop DJing will depend on how complicated you want to get. Look for one that can at least provide two pairs of outputs – one for mixing and one for cueing.

analogue-to-S/PDIF converter, you could make this 18 analogue inputs. The icing on the cake comes in the form of two separately assignable headphone outputs, near-zero-latency monitoring software, and the £399 pricetag. MOTU produce a number of excellent multichannel interfaces, and their 2408 PCIebased system is definitely worth checking out if you need maximum channel count and flexibility and don’t mind relying on an installed card. Alternatively, their 896 Mk3 (£859) includes both FireWire and USB2 connectivity, eight mic pres, some excellent metering, their

well-respected CueMix monitoring software, and onboard DSP effects. If you want ultimate flexibility and multiple channel recording, and overdubbing is a key part of your process, then a combined desk and audio interface could be the best option. Mackie offer the greatest range of products and the flagship Onyx 1640i (£1500) includes 16 mic pres, 2 DIs, 4 sub group buses, talkback and a 16x16 FireWire interface. Further options to investigate are RME’s new FireFace 802, M-Audio’s M-Track Eight, and Presonus’ AudioBox 1818VSL (above).

For a compact, laptop-powered output device, Native Instruments’ Audio 2 (£85) ticks a lot of boxes. Its two stereo outputs are designed to provide either headphone cuemix and one main output for software-based mixing, or two main outputs leaving you

free to cue and mix on an external mixer. In its basic form, it’s also iOS compatible. Couple it with their optional power supply and you’ll not only get more volume but can charge your iOS device at the same time. Integrating mixing and interfacing is becoming more commonplace, and Allen & Heath’s Xone:23C (£419) does just that. It includes a four-stereo-channel USB interface, but also has four typical mixer inputs, providing the best of both worlds. Finally, if you’re really serious about laptopbased DJ mixing, NI’s Traktor Kontrol S4 MkII (£700) is a force to be reckoned with, not only because it provides a bespoke control surface but because it also includes a proper audio interface. OK, it’s not perfect – mic input is jack rather than phantom-powered XLR (which would be ideal) – but nevertheless, with two pairs of phono/line inputs on the back, you can easily integrate external turntables or CD decks. Plus MIDI in/out and audio driver compatibility make S4 perfect for other DAW software.

compatible, so you can share sessions with pro studios. There are many mid-range interfaces that are suitable for singer/songwriters, but one of our faves is Steinberg’s UR44 (£284). It not only offers a little more connectivity but incorporates onboard DSP including reverb for real-time monitoring. Nevertheless, it really comes into its own when used with Cubase as its True Integrated Monitoring System embeds much of the UR44’s functionality including near-zero-latency monitoring, streamlining the recording process. At the top end of the scale, we have UAD’s Apollo Twin (from £729). This Thunderbolt-only interface includes very high-quality mic preamps, powerful integrated monitoring, and real-time processing courtesy of UA’s many plugins. It’s incredibly slick to use, compact and it looks

and sounds amazing. The only slight frustration beyond the Thunderbolt-only spec is the fact that it’s not bus powered.

NI’s Traktor S4 is an enviable DJ controller cum audio interface

Singer/ Songwriter Singer/songwriters don’t need oodles of inputs and outputs, but they do need zero-latency monitoring and most probably a device that’s easily portable. Avid’s Fast Track Duo (£159 street price) offers a decent entry point for Pro Tools, and it will work with any ASIO/Core Audio compatible PC/Mac software. With two mic pres doubling as instrument inputs, it can handle a typical singer/ songwriter setup including two concurrent inputs such as DI’d or miked guitar and miked vocal. The Direct Monitor button provides zero-latency hardware monitoring, and it’s bus powered via USB. There’s also a bundled copy of Pro Tools Express, which although limited to 16 stereo audio tracks, is fully Pro Tools 72  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

We gave the Apollo Twin a 10/10 in our review in

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Tips and tricks

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Believe it or not, although they’re primarily designed to work whilst connected to a computer, a number of audio interfaces can also operate in standalone mode. If you’re interested in this feature, then interfaces from major players such as M-Audio, MOTU, RME and Focusrite are all worth checking out. Naturally, features do vary from one unit to the next; however, interfaces typically either retain their most recent settings when they’re powered down, or allow you to save a specific ‘standalone’ patch to their internal memory. The latter should load automatically if the interface is powered up when disconnected from your computer.

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Stuck for ideas on what to actually do with your interface’s newfound standalone capabilities? First up, interfaces that include integrated software can be configured to flexibly route inputs to outputs, so at the simplest level, you can use your interface as a mixer. This could be to subgroup signals or – if it has headphone outputs – to create headphone mixes. If you regularly practice with a band using the same setup, once you’ve dialled in the mix once using the mixer software, you can just bring the interface without the computer next time around. You may also be able to route analogue to digital and vice versa, which will turn your interface into a standalone AD or DA converter. Finally, there may be the option to route one type of digital connection (optical, say) to another type (coax, perhaps).

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Even the most well-spec’ed audio interfaces tend to include no more than eight mic pres, limiting things a bit if you’re recording a band. However, they often supplement the audio connectivity with S/PDIF and ADAT connections. So, if you can grab an ADAT- or S/PDIF-equipped mic pre or converter with standalone mic pres, you can increase your available input streams.

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One way to increase physical connectivity is to add another interface. Some manufacturers allow you to combine multiple interfaces – excellent if you have the budget. However, you may also be able to aggregate different interfaces. In the picture below, we’re

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More and more audio interfaces are including some form of integrated DSP effects, either for processing signals as you record them or to provide onboard monitoring effects such as reverb. Here, we’re using the king of them all – Universal Audio’s mighty Apollo – to add reverb and delay to our guitar signal, and we can opt to record either that or the dry signal.

using OS X’s Audio MIDI setup to combine two interfaces into one aggregated one.

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Although integrated mixing software is now commonplace for interfaces, it isn’t the only option for managing your ins and outs. For simplicity, flexibility and to keep things tactile, a small mixing desk can be the perfect sidekick. Use it for monitor control, headphones, and quickly routing in any hardware device.

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If you work solely in-the-box but like real-world analogue processing, connect your interface outs to outboard gear and route the processed signals back into your inputs. Many DAWs include features to make it a cinch to integrate external effects into your projects; for instance, Logic has its I/O plugin, Ableton Live has its External Audio Effect, and so on.

Glue multiple audio interfaces together and use them as one with OS X’s aggregation capabilities

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It’s not unusual to find audio interfaces integrated with other devices such as keyboards and even guitar processors (Digidesign’s Eleven or Line 6’s Pod, for

An analogue channel strip needn’t be costly – Focusrite’s Trak Master can be had for as little as £40 secondhand!

example). Sometimes this combination will be ideal, particularly if you’re on the move and need to keep your system simple, or if you need it tailored to your particular needs.

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The most obvious way to expand your interface is to invest in an external mic preamp or channel strip. External preamps include much better circuitry than your typical interface, and a channel strip includes other tone shaping options such as EQ and compression. A quality digital output converter – aka DAC – is the icing on the cake. Decent channel strips can be had for reasonable money, so don’t despair.

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The

Step sequencing

to of…

computer music Shuttle through some more production terms – we’ve sorted the stems from the subs and put it all into simple English

S PART TWO

of effort into minimising, mic spill can actually be beneficial in certain situations, such as imbuing drum kit recordings with a natural, organic energy that often makes them sound more cohesive and ‘glued’. Indeed, multimic’ed virtual instruments – such as drum kits – often give users the ability to adjust spill levels.

Steinberg

One of the biggest players in the music software industry, Steinberg are a German Solo music software and hardware (audio interfaces Italian for ‘alone’, solo in a musical context simply and MIDI controllers) manufacturer/developer established in 1984 and now owned by Yamaha. refers to any sound or instrument auditioned or played entirely on its own. Every channel on any Their first proper release (disregarding the DAW mixer will feature a Solo button – activating commercially unsuccessful Multitrack it silences all other channels that aren’t also soloed Recorder) was the Pro-16 MIDI sequencer for (or made ‘solo safe’ – an option in certain mixers) the Commodore 64, followed by Pro-24 for the Atari ST, which developed into the seminal for the purpose of tweaking the sound of that Cubase, eventually making its way onto Mac channel in isolation. Most DAWs use ‘common and PC, currently at version 7 (although various sense’ within their soloing systems – soloed ‘reboots’ along the way make the real number auxiliary tracks (eg, effects returns) maintain input from channels routed to them, for example, much higher) and without doubt one of the most popular DAWs in the world. As well as rather than requiring them to be soloed as well. pretty much defining the general shape of the Soundware modern software DAW with Cubase, Steinberg also invented the game-changing VST protocol, Commercially retailed (or free) packages of bringing the incredible real-time effects and ‘sounds’ intended to be loaded into DAWs and virtual instruments. Soundware comes in various instrument plugins that we now take for granted to the software studio for the first time. forms, including libraries of discrete sampled loops and one-shots, multisampled ‘ROMs’ for Stem playback via engines like NI Kontakt and UVI Workstation, banks of presets for synths and A rendered mix of a related group of tracks that source material for hybrid synths/samplers. together serve as one element of a larger mix, created to facilitate remixing, archiving or any Spill/bleed other operation for which supplying every component track of a project individually When multiple microphones are used at the would be excessive or unnecessary. Typical same time to capture separate elements of a single source – the drums and cymbals of a drum stems might include a mixed drum kit, the individual sections of an orchestra, combined kit, the strings and body of a guitar, the various sections of an orchestra, etc – the inadvertent but synth pad and lead parts, mixed bass and drums, or a collection of backing vocal tracks. inevitable leakage of elements other than the one intended to be captured into any given mic is However, more recently, the term has also come to refer to individual tracks rendered called spill or bleed. While this is a phenomenon that recording and live sound engineers put a lot from a project including processing. 74  /  Computer Music  September 2014

Before the graphical MIDI sequencer, synth and drum machine patterns were programmed directly into the instruments themselves via step sequencers. These typically offered 16 buttonoperated ‘steps’ cycling around constantly, each of which triggered its assigned sound when activated. The steps could be set to a range of note values (1/4, 1/8, 1/16, etc), the tempo and shuffle/swing (see S, Part 1 in 206) of the sequencer could be raised and lowered, each step was adjustable in terms of pitch, volume and other parameters, and sequences were strung together to make ‘songs’. Step sequencers still get built into many new virtual instruments (and effects, for modulating parameters), offering, as they do, a fun, focussed, self-contained and ‘rigidly electronic’ alternative to the more flexible piano roll.

A sequencer (at the bottom here) offers a number of steps on which to activate different notes or settings

Stereo A stereo audio signal is one comprising discrete ‘left’ and ‘right’ channels, each of which is sent to a corresponding loudspeaker, creating a wide panorama. Although finished tracks end up as a stereo mix, many (if not most) of its components will be mono channels, panned to specific positions between the left and right channels of the master output, routed to stereo reverbs and other effects, and ultimately coming together to create a stereo soundstage.

Streaming In sampling, streaming refers to the real-time playback of audio data directly from a hard drive, rather than from RAM. Not so long ago, consumer-level hard drives and the busses they ran on weren’t fast enough to handle streaming, and thus the number and length of samples that could be used to make a sampler patch was limited by the amount of RAM available to the sampler. Today, though, even external drives are more than up to the task, and streaming of (potentially enormous) samples is a standard feature in soft samplers such as NI’s Kontakt (via its Direct From Disk mode) and Steinberg’s HALion.

Strip Silence A function of certain DAWs and audio editors – such as Apple Logic, Avid Pro Tools and Steinberg Cubase – whereby an audio file or region is analysed for sections of silence (or amplitude below a user-specified threshold), which are then automatically deleted, leaving the resultant non-silent sections in place for moving and manipulating as discrete regions or files.

a to z of computer music  /  make music now  <

doesn’t have any effect on the sound of the summed channels; analogue summing busses, however, can impart a small amount of desirable saturation, harmonic distortion, crosstalk and other subtle electrical influences, giving the summed signal warmth and character (assuming the components involved are of high quality, of course!). Some producers bounce mixes through hardware summing boxes to get this sound, or more commonly, use console emulation plugins like Slate Digital’s VCC.

Sustain

Kontakt can stream ‘Direct From Disk’, allowing real-time play of truly gigantic sampled patches

State variable filter (SVF) A filter capable of outputting multiple filter modes (low-/band-/high-pass, etc) at once – depending on the design, you’ll be able to either mix or switch between them. Some software filters emulate the active analogue circuitry of original SVFs and/or the mixable modes feature.

Sub bass Any bass sound below around 80Hz, either played on its own or used to bolster a higher bassline. Sub bass tones are usually generated using simple sine, square or triangle synth waveforms with little processing, and while they’re not heard without an accompanying ‘regular’ bass sound that often these days, they were a defining feature of early drum ’n’ bass and hip-hop.

Subtractive synthesis A form of synthesis in which a raw waveform (eg, square wave, saw wave, or a sample, etc) is routed through one or more filters, the mode, cutoff frequency and resonance of which are adjusted in order to attenuate (‘subtract’) harmonics in the signal – cutting the high frequencies with a low-pass filter, for example. By far the most ubiquitous form of analogue synthesis is subtractive, while other kinds of synthesis can be said to contain a subtractive element if they include a filter section.

Summing The act of mixing multiple signals down to a single mono or stereo output. Using group/bus channels in a mixer is summing, as is routing those groups to the master output. In digital systems, summing is a transparent process that

In music technology, sustain has two definitions. The first is the volume level at which a synthesiser tone is held between the end of the decay stage and the start of the release phase – ie, until the triggering key/note is released. The second is as in ‘sustain pedal’, which connects to a MIDI keyboard to emulate its equivalent on a piano, allowing notes to ring out when depressed.

Three of the best… sYNTHESIsERS Spectrasonics Omnisphere 133 » 10/10 » £299 To our minds, Omnisphere is a strong contender for the title of ‘greatest synth ever made’. With its brilliant, intuitive interface, endless feature set and vast library of mind-blowing presets, this hybrid monster never fails to amaze. www.timespace.com

Sync Synchronisation. Multiple events – single or repeated – occurring at the same time and/or rate; or the regulation of the timing of one thing by another. In music production, the word can refer to a few things, but the main one is slaving time-based parameters of plugin instruments and effects to the DAW hosting them. The speed of an LFO on a synthesiser plugin, for example, may be switchable between absolute time (setting it to 8Hz, say) and host sync, whereby a note value (1/8, 1/16, etc) is specified, slaving the LFO speed to the tempo of the host DAW.

Synthesiser An electronic instrument (hardware or software) designed to replicate real-world sounds and – more importantly – to create entirely new ones. There are several types of synthesiser, but they can all be broadly categorised as (virtual) analogue, digital or hybrid. Simply put, analogue synths use oscillator circuits to generate raw tones that are sculpted into musical sounds using filters, modulation and effects; digital synths do their thing using one or more of a range of techniques, including frequency modulation (FM – also a feature of many analogues) waveshaping, additive synthesis, physical modelling and granular. Hybrid synths combine analogue and digital elements (eg, an additive synth with analogue filters, or a synth mixing sampled and analogue oscillators). Synthesisers are fundamental to electronic music of all kinds, and important in pop, rock and even modern classical and jazz styles.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Native Instruments Massive 107 » 9/10 » £169 A modern synth classic, Native Instruments’ flagship virtual analogue (and then some) synth has been instrumental in the development of dubstep thanks to its speaker-quaking sound and powerful modulation system. www.native-instruments.com

Wolfgang Palm PPG Wavegenerator 202 » 9/10 » €99 A less predictable choice here, WaveGenerator is a stunning threeoscillator wavetable synth from the creator of some of the greatest digital hardware synths of all time. Also available as a near-identical iPad app (£13.99). www.wolfgangpalm.com

u-he’s Runciter plugin offers blendable SVF-style low-, band- and high-pass filters

NEXT MONTH Our ultimate glossary continues with the letter T

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  75

Dave Clews’

Modes

download Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at vault.computermusic.co.uk

Want to impress your friends with words like Phrygian and Mixolydian and actually know what you’re talking about? Read on… In music theory circles, modes are something you often hear mentioned, but what they are and how they’re used somehow always manages to retain an air of mystery. Think for a moment about an arpeggiator and the different modes it has. It’s a single device, but you can change the mode it operates in to make it perform differently. It might have one mode that plays arpeggiated notes in an upward sequence, another mode that plays them downwards, and one or two modes that play arpeggios that rise and fall in different patterns. This principle of

>Step by step

switching modes to obtain different outcomes can be applied to the major scale. A mode is formed when you play a major scale starting from any note other than the root note of the scale. Play a C major scale (all the white notes) from C to C and you get the usual, happy, When the Saints Go Marching In-style run of notes. If you play the exact same notes from D to D, however, you get something totally different with a sadder, more minor, What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor feel. Since a major scale contains seven different notes, each can act as the starting

note, so there are seven different modes. They’re named after ancient Greek tribes, and they are: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. Each mode has a distinctive sound and musical character. The concept of modes is really simple once you understand what they are, but even when you’ve got your head around the basics, it can be hard to figure out what to actually do with them. So once we’ve touched on the theory behind them, I’ll look at one or two ways you can apply modes in your own productions.

Exploring the seven modes of any major scale

Tutorial

Files

1

4

This wouldn’t be an Easy Guide if we didn’t start off by looking at our old friend the C major scale. Here it is, eight notes, played on the white keys of the keyboard, from C to C. Check out the interval pattern between the notes. We have C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, so the interval pattern is T-T-S-T-T-T-S, where T stands for Tone and S stands for Semitone.

Let’s now look at the same scale, playing the exact same notes, but instead of going from C to C as before, we now play all the white notes from D to D. It’s all the same notes, in the same sequence, but just by starting from a different place, we’ve switched to the second mode, the Dorian mode.

76  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

2

5

What this means is that the interval between the first two notes in the scale, C and D, is a tone (two semitones), between D and E is another tone, between E and F is a semitone, and so on up the scale. If we were to repeat this T-T-S-T-T-T-S pattern starting on a note that’s not C, the result would still be a major scale with that note as its root.

The reason it sounds different is that the interval pattern has shifted – it’s now T-S-T-T-T-S-T. Our ears are now hearing the first note of the new scale (D) as the root. Reinforcing the new root note of D with a long, low D bass note confirms the scale’s new, minor-ish identity: D Dorian. It’s the mode used in Eleanor Rigby and Scarborough Fair.

3

6

The major scale in its standard form is, in fact, the first of the seven modes, the Ionian mode. Here it’s played from C to C, and emphasised by a long C in the bass. The bass note playing the root, or tonic, of the scale, reinforces its ‘tonal centre’ so we can rely on what our ears are saying: that this is a bog standard C major scale, aka C Ionian.

Continuing in this vein, the next mode is the Phrygian mode, created by starting a major scale from its third degree – in the case of C major, this is from E to E. Its interval pattern of S-T-T-T-S-T-T lends the Phrygian mode a distinctly Spanish feel. It’s effectively a traditional minor scale with a flattened 2nd degree.

easy guide  /  make music now  <

Recommended listening LoRDE, ROYALS

The Mixolydian mode is a major scale with a flattened 7th degree. The vocal melody in Royals is a perfect example of D Mixolydian # (D-E-F -G-A-B-C-D), particularly in the verse sections.

bit.ly/LORDERoyals DANNY ELFMAN, The SIMPSONS THEME

The Lydian mode gives the famous Simpsons theme its familiar jaunty feel. The initial melody is mostly C Lydian but sneaks in a flattened 7th at the end of the phrase.

bit.ly/SimpsTheme

Pro tips Individual Identities

While modes are derived from parent major scales, once you’ve got your head around that, it’s a good idea to consider them as scales unto themselves. For b b b instance, F Dorian (F-G-A -B -C-D-E ) may look similar to b b b b the traditional F minor scale (F-G-A -B -C-D -E ), except b that F Dorian contains a D, where F minor contains a D . So another way to think of the Dorian mode is that it’s effectively a minor scale with a sharpened sixth degree.

Relatively speaking

Just as C major is the relative major of A minor, you can also use the relative major term when talking about modes. Let’s take D Dorian as an example. Because Dorian is the second mode, and begins from the second degree of its parent major scale, the parent scale of D Dorian must be C major, as D is the second degree of the C major scale. Thus we can say that C major is the relative major of D Dorian.

Dave Clews In a studio career spanning almost 25 years, Dave has engineered, programmed and played keyboards on records for a string of artists including George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner and Estelle. These days, in between writing articles for and other magazines, he collaborates on occasional songs and videos with singer/songwriter Lucy Hirst, aka Polkadothaze. www.daveclews.com

The 7 modes of C Start from C and these are the shapes on the keyboard that each mode creates

7

Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian, the four remaining modes, follow the same pattern, each mode shifting another note up the scale to use as its starting note. The table on the right of this page shows the seven modes all starting from C – C Ionian, C Dorian, C Phrygian, etc. Hear how they sound in our video and tutorial files.

8

So, how do we put all this to good use in our tunes? You can take the notes in each mode and play them in any order or combination over the required bass note. Here we have a lead line playing notes from the C major scale over an E sustained bass to produce a melody in the E Phrygian mode.

1. C Ionian

T T S T T T S

2. C Dorian

T S T T T S T

3. C Phrygian S T T T S T T

4. C Lydian

T T T S T T S

5. C Mixolydian T T S T T S T

9

Here’s a track based in the key of C whose melody switches from C Dorian # b b (C-D-E -F-G-A-B ) to C Lydian (C-D-E-F -G-A-B) and back. Notice how each mode that passes through the note of C comes from a different parent major scale. All the notes in b C Dorian come from the B major scale, as C b is the second degree of B major. The notes in C Lydian originate from the G major scale.

10

This tune is made up of notes# from the G major scale (G-A-B-C-D-E-F ), but it’s being played over a sustained E bass note. What mode does this make it? E is the sixth note of that scale, so playing those same notes starting from E will give us… the Aeolian mode! The Aeolian, coincidentally, is identical to the minor scale.

NEXT MONTH How to smoothly connect chords in sequences using voice leading

6. C Aeolian T S T T S T T

7. C Locrian

S T T S T T T

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  77

MATRIX & FUTUREBOUND

We quiz the DnB veterans on the genre’s commercial direction and the changing face of music technology

It may be well over 20 years old, but drum ’n’ bass is arguably bigger now than it’s ever been. Its frantic beats provide soundtracks to adverts, pack out the world’s stadiums and have become a ubiquitous presence in the singles and albums charts. “So many times in those 20 years, people have said drum ’n’ bass is finished,” laughs Brendan Collins, aka Futurebound, one half of the duo who took the track Control into the UK Top Ten earlier this year. “But that’s the great thing about this music: the more people shoot it down, the stronger it gets. And I don’t think it’s reached a peak, yet… there are bigger and better things to come. “I don’t want to sound like I’m spouting off here,” he adds, “but there is some incredibly exciting music being made in this country in 2014. Yes, the sound of drum ’n’ bass has gone totally global, but it’s the UK that’s setting the benchmark.” Although Collins is based in his native Liverpool, and his partner Jamie Quinn – aka Matrix – is in London, the duo have been working together for almost ten years. Their 2007 debut album, Universal Truth, was followed by remix work for the likes of Justin Timberlake and Moby, and the duo have just

80 / Computer musiC / September 2014

released a new single, Don’t Look Back, on 3 Beat Records. Computer Music: Can we start by addressing the Liverpool/London situation? Is it literally two studios, over 200 miles apart, with ideas banged across from DAW to DAW? Brendan Collins: “Yeah, that’s the online revolution for you. You can be in different cities, different countries… it really doesn’t matter. We each start on different ideas and send them back and forth, changing little bits as we go along. After a few weeks – sometimes, it’s months; we are aware that we take far too long to finish things – it gets to a point where we think, ‘This is coming together. Let’s nail it.’ “That’s when a song can benefit from us both being in the room; when you’re just doing those final tweaks, the spit and polish, and getting ready for the mixdown. We’ve both been making records for a long time, and we trust each other to make the right decisions, so even if Jamie’s working on his own, I know the song will sound exactly how I want it to sound.” : Have you both got identical setups? Jamie Quinn: “We’re both working on Cubase

matrix & futurebound / interview <

“We each start on different ideas and send them back and forth, changing little bits as we go along”

September 2014 / Computer musiC / 81

> interview / matrix & futurebound 7.5, but he’s on a Mac and I’m on a PC. I used to work on a Mac, but mine died without warning a few years ago and my brother [fellow DnB producer Optical] said, ‘Why don’t you let me build you a PC? It’ll be half the price and give you twice the horsepower’. My brother is biased, cos he’s a complete Windows freak, but in this case, he was right. Cubase does seem to run slightly better and sound slightly better on Windows. I have still got a Mac laptop, but it only gets used for things like DJ editing. “I’ve grown to like Windows, but I sometimes wonder if it really does matter what operating system you’re on. Brendan’s on a Mac, but we still get the job done.” : Always Cubase? BC: “Cubase has been a constant, yeah. I have dabbled with the others – Logic… Pro Tools, which I didn’t get on with at all! – but I always come back to Cubase. A lot of mates have been saying, ‘Ableton is so quick – you can really bang

down your ideas.’ But I’m sorry, it doesn’t sound as good as Cubase.” : You’ve been working together since 2005, but your drum ’n’ bass history stretches back a lot further. JQ: “Me and my brother both started messing around in the Commodore days on some sort of free tracker software. Him and some of his mates clubbed together and bought a secondhand Akai S700 sampler and, eventually, he started producing some of those early drum ’n’ bass and breakbeat names, like Ray Keith and Jumpin’ Jack Frost. “Obviously, I had my brother’s influence there, so I was surrounded by drum ’n’ bass, but seeing that sampler at work also made a huge impression on me; just being able to chop up a loop and create something new. Drum ’n’ bass owes a huge debt of gratitude to the sampler.” BC: “I was actually way more interested in football than music when I was kid. I went for

trials at Tranmere Rovers, and they kept asking me back, but one weekend I went to my first warehouse party and never managed to make it to the training ground. I saw the way the DJ controlled the crowd and I thought, ‘That’s what I’m going to do with my life.’ “Both me and Jamie are 80s kids, and we grew up on breakdancing, electro… Afrika Bambaataa. To me, that’s the roots of jungle and drum ’n’ bass right there. Alongside that, you’d got bands like Renegade Soundwave, the early breakbeat stuff, then Fabio And Grooverider beginning to speed things up a bit. I remember being at Eclipse in Coventry, hearing Mickey Finn play a hip-hop 12" at 45rpm and thinking, ‘This is fucking crazy, but it totally makes sense to me.’ “I made my first record in 1993, but two years later I did a couple of new tracks, Sorrow and Liquid Groove. I went down to Metalheadz in London, handed a DAT to Goldie and one to LTJ Bukem. When I got back home the following

82 / Computer musiC / September 2014

Redferns via Getty Images

Matrix & Futurebound ‘playing them out’ at Brixton Academy

matrix & futurebound / interview <

“The way we wrote songs back then was completely different. Being in the studio was all about the loop” morning, my mam said, ‘You had a phone call from a bloke called Goldie and a bloke called Bukem’. We put out a 12" on Skanna Records and it sort of blew up a bit from there. All made on an Akai and a bit of hardware, with my mates.” JQ: “I was thinking about those early years the other day, when I was in the studio. It dawned on me that the way we wrote songs back then was completely different. Being in the studio was all about the loop. You’d either start with a well-known jungle loop or dig through some old funk vinyl to find something new. As things got a bit more adventurous, you might start adding a little bit of drum machine, too. But that’s how every song started: you built from the loop upwards. “These days, I don’t think we ever start with drums or loops. It’s always chords, melody or, very occasionally, vocals. The Magnetic Eyes vocal actually started life with a completely

different backing track… different chords and everything. One day, we just stripped it back and started again, using the vocal as the starting point. For us, it’s the melody and the vocals that provide the backbone.” : Musically, your tunes are pretty dense and powerful. How easy is it to fit what is often a big, ‘poppy’ vocal over the top of that? Hope you don’t mind us using the world ‘poppy’! BC: “Nah, we don’t mind you using that word at all. You get different problems with different songs. The way we usually work is that we send out a backing track to a few singers, listen to what comes back, and we sort of know which vocal is going to work straight away. But we like to tailor each vocal to the song, so we then go back in the studio and re-record the one we like, just so we can zoom in on certain parts and get

Kit list Steinberg Cubase 7.5 LennarDigital Sylenth1 Reveal Sound Spire SoundToys Decapitator Slate Digital Virtual Buss Compressors Tone2 Gladiator iZotope Ozone 5, Stutter Edit Native Instruments Razor, Guitar Rig 5, Massive Dada Life Sausage Fattener Audio Damage Eos Vienna Symphonic Library Vienna Ensemble Pro

September 2014 / Computer musiC / 83

> interview / matrix & futurebound

Top Ten DnB JQ: “Did we ever think we’d see our stuff in the Top Ten? If I’m being totally honest, no. Of course, we thought the songs were good, but it was a surprise to achieve that level of success. Styles and genres are always coming and going, but it really feels like drum ’n’ bass has made it into the mainstream. It’s no longer the outcast; it’s part of the musical backdrop to everyday life.” BC: “Success can cause problems, though. Get a record in the chart and people start coming out of the woodwork, having a dig at you for ‘selling out’. I was in Fabric the other week and ended up having an argument with a bloke about this. I was like, ‘Look, if people who aren’t necessarily into drum ’n’ bass use our tunes as a starting point for getting into Hype or Andy C, then everybody benefits. What’s the problem?’ “I look at it like this: me and Jamie love making music. We love making club tunes, and we still do that all the time, but we’ve also got the chance to cross over and do something a bit different. If people say we’re ‘selling out’, it’s up to them, but I’m not losing any sleep over it.” 84 / Computer musiC / September 2014

them gelling perfectly with the music.” JQ: “A vocal certainly complicates the mix because, as you say, there’s a lot of music sitting behind it. The biggest headache is finding that right balance between the two – making sure people can hear the words, but not losing the power of the tune. “A lot of the problems arise from the sounds that you’re using and what you’re playing. I know that sounds a bit basic, but if it was that basic, producers would never make those mistakes. The answers are usually very simple – a quick tweak of a synth filter and you’ve opened up some space for the vocals. “But we also have a terrible tendency for overdoing the backing track. Piling on layers of window dressing and hooks and percussion and effects and… sometimes, it’s just too much, and we have to start taking things away to find room for a vocal. “Ha! Silly, really. If we’d just left a bit of room for the vocal in the first place, we’d have been fine.” BC: “Our problem is that we listen to too much 80s music. Everything was epic in the 80s. And we listen to Pink Floyd, too. That great big wall of sound. No wonder it takes us so long to mix a track!” : Are there certain synths that seem to work better on those big, vocal-led tunes? JQ: “There are a lot of soft-synths and plugins on

“Our problem is that we listen to too much 80s music. Everything was epic in the 80s” the computer – a lot of choice – but we always seem to get drawn to the same two or three. About half of the sounds in every song we do come from Sylenth1 – that’s the main workhorse. But it’s not just because of what it can do and how good it sounds; it’s also incredibly intuitive. Yes, the filters are great, the distortion is great, but, for me, the important thing is that you don’t have to pull out the manual every time you want to make a change. I can’t tell you how crucial that is in the studio. If you have to come to a grinding halt every half hour because you don’t know how to alter the sound, I can guarantee you’ll stop using that synth. “We also use Tone2’s Gladiator and [Native Instruments’] Massive, but, for me, Massive is always a bit more of a head-scratcher. I just don’t find it as enjoyable to program.” BC: “Yeah, but Massive will always deliver the goods. It never lets you down. I’m a big fan of Razor, too, especially for basses.”

matrix & futurebound / interview <

JQ: “Processing-wise, it’s mainly the SoundToys Decapitator – that can give you everything from serious distortion to just a bit of subtle warmth on the vocals – and Ozone on the master buss. We sort of trust that to get the loudness that we’re after.” : Did you get caught up in the loudness wars? JQ: “Obviously, your songs needs to be loud enough for a club system, but I personally think the best songs out there at the moment are the ones that have sacrificed a bit of loudness and gone for something that’s a bit cleaner and with some old-fashioned dynamics.” : We haven’t really talked about beats. You said that you no longer start your writing process with them, so at what point do they come in? JQ: “Usually after there’s a bit of structure and weight to a song. We’ve got a whole bunch of loops in the library, and we just fire them in one after the other until we find something that clicks. “We never do that thing of writing a beat for a particular song. I don’t think you can do that. Beats are… it’s like they’re a totally separate entity. I shut myself away for a couple

of weeks and do nothing but beats; layering, adding percussion, messing with the envelopes, getting things popping with the Renaissance Axx, then trying to pull the whole thing together into a coherent whole. The Slate Digital Buss Compressor is great for that. “In the early days, we used to do all the beats in Kontakt, but I was convinced they just didn’t sound fat enough, so we started doing them straight into Cubase as audio. Kicks, snares, percussion all on their own group, different processing on the drum master, snare tails all finishing in the right place, transient shapers…” JQ: “…Spectrum analyser to check the levels on the bottom end…” BC: “It’s such a long, complicated process. There was one song we started last year and I think we kicked it off around January. We didn’t actually finish it until September! “You have so much freedom as a producer these days, and that’s brilliant; but sometimes, I do wish we could adopt some of that beautiful simplicity from the early days of drum ’n’ bass. Production-wise, the tracks were all very raw back then. There was none of this, ‘Let’s put a bit of sidechain on my 15 layers of snare drum’. The songs were basic, crazy, energetic and they made us dance! Good times, man… good times.”

The single, Don’t Look Back, is out now. Keep your ears peeled for upcoming Matrix & Futurebound remixes of Eric Prydz and Oliver Heldens/Becky Hill

Hear more

Don’t Look Back bit.ly/MFDontLook Control bit.ly/MFControl WWW

www.3beat.co.uk soundcloud.com/matrixandfuturebound twitter.com/matrixandfuture facebook.com/matrixandfuturebound

reviews  <

The latest computer music gear tested and rated! Our promise We bring you honest, unbiased appraisals of the latest computer music products. Our experts apply the same stringent testing methods to all gear, no matter how much hype or expectation surrounds it.

What the ratings mean 1-4 A seriously flawed product that should be avoided

5

This product’s problems outweigh its merits

6

A decent product that’s only held back by a few flaws

88 SYNAPSE AUDIO DUNE 2

7

Solid. Well worth considering

8 Very good. A well-conceived

The second version of this versatile synth claims to be able to pump out over 8000 synth voices at once. We get it on our test bench for some serious synthesis

and executed product

9 Excellent. First-rate and among the best you can buy

10 Exceptional. It just doesn’t get any better than this!

90 XLN Audio Addictive Drums 2

92 Arturia Spark 2

96 Renoise Renoise 3

98 Vengeance Sound Glitch Bitch

100 IK Multimedia EQ 73 & EQ 81

102 Sinevibes Hexonator

104 Acustica Audio Silk EQ

106 Mini Reviews

Awarded to products that challenge existing ideas and do something entirely new

A product has to really impress us with its functionality and features to win this one

If the product exceeds expectations for its price, it will receive this gong

In the opinion of the Editor, the best product reviewed in the magazine this month

September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  87

>  reviews  /  synapse audio dune 2 Stacking Oscillators 1 and 2 can now stack up to 32 voices each

MOD MATRIX Route modulation sources to destinations – this can even be done on a per-voice basis

Unison voices As well as oscillator stacking, you also get eight unison voices

Voice Edit/Common Unison voices can be edited individually as eight distinct layers

FIRST LOOK

VIDEO

See – and hear! – Dune 2 in action in our first impressions video: bit.ly/DUNE2vid

Master Activate up to 16-note polyphony, employing up to 8320 simultaneous oscillators!

Oscillator waveform A diverse array of waveform options across Virtual Analogue, FM and Wavetable modes Oscillator Mixer Set levels and panning for three Oscillators, Ring Modulation and Noise

Filter Swish new zero-delay feedback filters for dazzling analogue emulation

Filter and Amplitude Envelopes Dune’s basic envelopes are now accompanied by four multiplestage envelope generators

lfo section A trio of LFOs with sync, polyphonic mode, and fade-in control

Synapse Audio Dune 2 £131

A ground-up rewrite sees the launch of Synapse’s most adventurous synthesiser yet. Has all the hard work paid off? Dune 2 is a synth plugin (VST/AU) built around Synapse Audio’s eight-layer Differential Unison Engine concept, previously seen on the original Dune and our own Dune CM. Expanding on v1’s powerful per-voice modulation capabilities, Dune 2’s eight unison layers can be spread via detune and pan controls as before, but can now be directly edited globally or individually (each voice can be soloed), unlike the original where you had to program changes to the eight unison layers via the modulation matrix (which you can still do too). It’s important to note that Dune 2 is not backwards compatible with Dune 1 presets. Dune 2’s oscillator section has been upgraded and is now capable of building complex stacks on oscillators 1 and 2 (see Fatter than fat) that combine with the eight-layer unison for up to 520 oscillators per note, or 8320 simultaneous oscillators at full 16-voice polyphony! Are these impressive figures

actually meaningful in real-world usage? Indeed they are: we were able to fire off all 8320 oscillators with filter key-tracking, using only about 30% of the CPU in a four-year-old Intel i7 PC – not that this is something we’d probably ever do outside of testing, of course. On a similar note, you can set the LFO modulation rates between Normal, Fast, Very Fast and Audio

“Dune 2’s oscillator section has been upgraded and is now capable of building complex stacks”

88  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

Rate modes, which require progressively more CPU juice.

Dune tune

Oscillators 1 and 2 can each be set to one of three synthesis modes: Virtual Analogue (very fat-sounding sawtooth, pulse and triangle waveforms), WT (wavetable) or FM. In WT mode, you have access to 27 banks of wavetables – including ‘Legacy’, which comprises the 60 waveforms from the original Dune – with the awesome newly added ability to smoothly morph from one to the next (when modulated, ideal for crafting detailed, moving pad patches). Another interesting wavetable consists of 22 transient waveforms, seemingly sampled from a variety of live instruments, and including drum and percussion sounds as well as piano, bass and flute. The FM synthesis type is actually Yamaha DX7-style digital phase modulation, rather than

synapse audio dune 2   /  reviews  <

“It can certainly roar and growl when that’s what you want, but the general vibe is expensive-sounding and glossy” analogue frequency modulation, with two algorithms based on three sine wave operators. It’s a very limited implementation, but that’s fine, as FM synthesis clearly isn’t Dune 2’s main selling point. Having said that, it can produce a variety of basic FM timbres, and when you factor in the eight-layer system with up to 32 stacks per voice, the point is not so much to revisit traditional FM synthesis, but more to explore avenues offered by combining it with the synth’s insane multi-oscillator capabilities. To reiterate: each of Dune 2’s eight layers can be deployed 100% independently of the others, sort of like the two layers in LennarDigital’s Sylenth1. Oscillator 3 is rather more limited than 1 and 2, having evolved from the original Dune sub oscillator, though now being freely tunable. There’s also a noise generator with adjustable stereo width and its own high- and low-pass filters, and a ring modulation option between oscillators 1 and 2.

Heavenly 17

Dune 2’s filter has a Drive control and a choice of 17 types, including numerous high-pass, lowpass and band-pass variants, as well as 14 subsequent filter ‘effects’ for further processing – notches, combs, distortion, etc. The new filters are based on a zero-delay feedback design, as brought to public attention by u-he’s Diva and Native Instruments’ Monark. They sound exceptionally smooth and utterly convincing in terms of ‘analogue’ realism. Other new features include four MSEGs (MultiStage Envelope Generators) that can be easily edited to produce complex bespoke modulations, including tight rhythmic effects; the addition of a Slide function to the arpeggiator; and the ability to import MIDI files for use as arpeggiator sequences. Individual unison voices can be routed to either of the two Master Effects busses, which now include two

Multi-Stage Envelope Generators – that’s the red noded line – are on hand for crafting custom modulations

Dune 2’s oscillators can be stacked to the rafters

Fatter than FAT The original Dune had a pair of knobs in the oscillator section simply labelled FAT (stop sniggering at the back, please) that would engage seven-voice unison at the oscillator level. Dune 2 greatly expands on this, enabling you to specify from one to 32 stacked oscillators, with per-oscillator detune and pan spread controls. There are a total of nine stack tuning modes available, which can be further modified using the AMT control. The basic Linear mode is pretty much as you’d expect, spreading the specified number of oscillators evenly across the pitch range, with the AMT control determining the mix level of the

delays, two EQs, distortion, phaser, chorus, reverb and compression modules. These are all exceptionally high quality for built-in effects – especially the reverb – and can be ordered however you please.

Sand storm

Alternatively u-he Diva 178 » 10/10 » £138 Features zero-delay feedback filters and emulates a range of classics, including Roland’s JP-8000

Between its well-equipped oscillators and flexible zero-delay feedback filters, the overall sound of Dune 2 is distinctly clean and rich in character. It can certainly roar and growl when that’s what you want, but the general vibe is expensive-sounding and glossy. You can tell that it’s digital, even though it confidently exudes many of the qualities of vintage analogue hardware synths. Perhaps this unique character is partly down to the complex stereo decorrelation brought about by all that oscillator stacking and unison layering. Dune 2 is definitely one of those all-rounders that can deliver most of the sounds you’re ever likely to want from a synth, from lush pads to thick basses and soaring leads. As well as its extensive feature set, it also boasts impeccable sound quality and unbelievably low host system resource usage. If the original Dune was something of an under-rated gem, the remake is surely destined for modern classic status. Web  www.synapse-audio.com

detuned oscillators around the centre one. The Non-Linear mode is even more exciting, bunching detuned voices around the central oscillator in a wonderfully similar fashion to the revered Roland JP-8000, known for its seven-stack supersaw oscillator – a feature that helped to define the sound of trance and is still preferred by many to the typical linear unison mode found on other synths. There’s also a random tuning mode that creates random offsets for all stacked oscillators and sounds more ‘analogue’. Other tuning modes include Major, Minor, Perfect 5th, and SubOsc, all of which apply static musical intervals.

KV331 Audio SynthMaster 2.6 174 (v2.5) » 10/10 » $29-239 A hybrid synthesis powerhouse that gets progressively stronger with each update

Verdict For  Rich, beautiful sound Incredible unison options Versatile envelopes, nine effect modules Outstanding wavetables Surprisingly light on host CPU Against  Basic FM implementation Wilder distortion types would be nice The best-sounding synth we’ve heard in quite a while, Dune 2 is powerful, flexible and bursting with a character all its own

10/10 September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  89

>  reviews  /  xln audio addictive drums 2 Tone Designer Provides quick per-drum tonal tweaking for snares and kicks Response Fine-tune the response of kit pieces to MIDI input

Tabbed pages Switch between AD2’s various pages, including Gallery and Explore for kit browsing

Edit page The primary page for sound tweaking can be opened from various places including the Mixer fader labels

Beats page This page hosts AD2’s MIDI beats library, including searching and Transform options

Snare Buzz AD2’s only bleedtype option is the snare buzz level, which responds to the kick and toms

FX page Houses the two auxiliary effects Kit page Includes the kit piece overview, loading, auditioning, linking and main level control

Mixer Includes faders for nine drums, hi-hats, room mics, overhead mics and the extra processing bus, as well as FX returns and the master output

Comp & Dist/Tape & Shape Two instances of this multieffects insert can be opened per kit piece, each functioning as a compressor/distortion or tape emulation/transient shaper

XLN Audio €180-450

Addictive Drums 2

One of the most popular virtual drum kits on the market finally reaches v2, but can it improve on its already-excellent predecessor? Eight years ago, Addictive Drums first hit our hard drives, and it’s testament to the quality of XLN Audio’s debut release that it’s managed to stay relevant for so long without any kind of overhaul – until now. The good news is that Addictive Drums 2 doesn’t break anything in its goal of improving the instrument’s core remit – namely, delivering a flexible, realistic virtual drum kit and (preset-driven) drummer with a relatively low hard drive footprint and an almost non-existent learning curve.

The big idea

The first thing to know about AD2 (VST/AU/AAX/ standalone) is that it eschews the conventional notion of a ‘core’ sound library. Instead, you buy whichever drum kit(s) and grooves you want and the engine/interface comes bundled for free. The upside is that you can truly pick and mix your elements; the downside is that in order to make this possible, XLN Audio have divided

the entire Addictive Drums library up into three separately purchased module types: ADpaks (kits), MIDIpaks (‘beats’ – ie, grooves) and Kitpiece Paks (individual sound expansions). Existing users will find this pretty confusing at first (see Updates and library matters for details), but it does give newcomers plenty of options. Addictive Drums 2 is visually and functionally similar to XLN’s Addictive Keys, with Gallery and Explore pages now complementing the established Kit, Edit, FX and Beats pages. Gallery and Explore enable you to browse and audition the kits and kit presets you own alongside those that you don’t, with a ‘Buy now’ banner linking to the online store. A slightly depressing sign of the times this may be, but it does offer quick insight into what’s available, as well as auditioning of their excellent and varied kit presets.

Addictive personality

AD2’s other new features enhance what came

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before. First, the maximum kit size has increased, with six new kit piece slots making 18 in total, three of them freely assignable to any sound you like and the rest serving specific roles – kick, snare, etc. Individual kit piece insert processing now includes a new Noise module, four bands of EQ rather than three, and two multieffects modules incorporating v1’s effects (compressor, saturating limiter and distortion, previously presented as individual units) and adding transient shaping, tape saturation and new distortion algorithms. The two effects auxes are now called Delerbs, comprising a reverb and delay you mix between. The Kit Piece Controls section sports two new options: Response and Tone Designer. Response gives precise control over filter cutoff and volume velocity modulation, as well as Alternate (round robin) mode on/off, and velocity limiting and offset. This all enables detailed tweaking of the response of each kit piece to MIDI without

xln audio addictive drums 2   /  reviews  <

“There are now a handful of sampled synth tones and noises built into the engine itself for combining with the kit pieces” actually tweaking the MIDI itself. Snares and kicks can be sonically shaped with the Tone Designer. TD’s exact behaviour is specific to each kit piece, but essentially, it adjusts the frequency content, including resonant frequencies, and those contributing to brightness and boominess. Also specific to snares and kicks is the new Link option for simultaneous triggering of user-connected kit pieces. There are now a handful of sampled synth tones and noises built into the engine itself – sine waves, white noise, kicks and snares, etc – for combining with the kit pieces. The big news, though, is the new Fairfax Vol. 1 drum kit. Recorded at LA’s Fairfax Studio, this is a big, bold earthy Gretsch rock kit with two snares – Tama and Craviotto – and Zildjian K cymbals. Although integrated MIDI groove sequencing remains absent from AD2 (its beats have to be dragged from the library into your DAW to be edited), the Beats browser boasts two major new features. Grid Search allows you to choose a pattern or quickly enter one into a grid, upon which AD2 filters the resulting list of beats down to the most similar ones in the library; and MIDI Transform modifies the library beats by adjusting their velocity ranges, velocity offsets and accenting, and reassigning pattern elements to different articulations. Naturally, these adjustments become part of the MIDI file dragged into your DAW. Finally, AD2 includes two new recording options. The Audio Recorder constantly buffers up to 15 seconds of AD2’s audio output, no matter what you’re doing with it, for dragging to your DAW or desktop as a WAV file, while the Record MIDI function lets you capture MIDI from your DAW or keyboard to create your own beats.

Mojo intact?

Addictive Drums 2 represents a serious upgrade from v1, with awesome new processing options

You can modify AD’s MIDI beats by fine-tuning velocity, modifying accents and randomising velocity and timing

We were cynical when we first heard of XLN’s ‘IAP’ approach, but we reckon it’s a fair deal for all

Updates and library matters Version 2 introduces a reworking and recategorisation of version 1’s content to fit XLN Audio’s new buy-only-thebits-you-want approach. Consequently, there are currently 16 ADpaks (drum kits), 27 MIDIpaks (beats) and eight Kitpieces (individual kicks and snares) available, with standardised pricing for each category (€90, €20 and €10, respectively). Bundle options mean the ability to buy more at a reduced rate. But what if you already own version 1 and maybe a number of the previous expansion packs? Well, aside from the new Fairfax kit, the newly recategorised packs don’t actually introduce any new

like the new Noise modules’ Vinyl setting and the IronTransformer distortion algorithm combining with the new tape saturation and transient shaper to open up many extra avenues of drum design. The Fairfax drum kit sounds terrific, with a well-captured room sound to match; and the Tone Designer is a brilliant addition, providing a quick and powerful alternative to EQ for managing ringing and resonances in kicks and snares. However, there’s still no integrated sequencer or complex bleed functions (snare buzz from kick and toms is as far as it goes), but XLN tell us that these are deliberate omissions in order to keep AD2 simple. Although the change in library implementation made us feel like retreating to the comfort of version 1 at times, Addictive Drums 2 is a resounding success. It’s still light and easy to use, but with a sound that’s better than ever, and it stands up well to its competitors from FXpansion and Toontrack. Web  www.xlnaudio.com Prices  ADpak, €90; MIDIpak, €20; Kitpiece, €10; Artist Bundle (2 ADpaks, 2 MIDIpaks, 2 Kitpieces), €180; Producer Bundle (3 ADpaks, 3 MIDIpaks, 3 Kitpieces), €250; XXL Studio Bundle (6 ADpaks, 6 MIDIpaks, 6 Kitpieces), €450; Upgrade from version 1, €80

sample content at all. It’s all been upgraded to match the engine’s new capabilities, though, with new presets sitting alongside recreations of the old ones. Of course, to get your hands on all of that good stuff and AD2’s other improvements, you have to pay an €80 upgrade fee. Doing the maths based on the new price list versus the cost of the original version (which effectively comprised three of the new packs), though, by upgrading you should in total have shelled out about the same amount as someone buying AD2 brand new. It is all slightly confusing, but the deal is certainly a fair one.

Alternatively FXpansion BFD3 199 » 10/10 » £229 The latest BFD marks a major reboot of this highly regarded and powerful drum kit instrument Toontrack EZDrummer 2 205 » 10/10 » £99 A simpler instrument, but it wins on the creative front due to its excellent song sequencer and groove library

Verdict For  Powerful but easy to use Tone Designer for snares and kicks Flexible MIDI Transform options New Fairfax kit Integrated browsing for expansion packs Against  Limited bleed options No onboard sequencing Addictive Drums 2 keeps the ease of use and lightweight resource demands of v1 while improving both flexibility and sound

9/10 September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  91

>  reviews  /  arturia spark 2 Transport controls Record, play and pause your project, and use the dials to set the tempo and volume

Sections Jump between Spark’s eight sections with these tabs

Current project display Keep track of the currently selected Project (includes kits and patterns)

Instrument parameter knobs Assignable knobs for controlling up to three instrument parameters simultaneously

Performance effects matrix A range of live performance effects, including filtering and slicing

Sequencing steps Each button represents a sequencer step but also handles other functions in SparkLE mode

Loop mode Activate looping function and change the loop length and position

Drum pads Used for triggering both drums and song chains, these are the heart of Spark

Arturia

Spark 2

€129

Three years since the launch of Arturia’s virtual drum machine, the competition is fiercer than ever, but can v2 relight the fire?

When Arturia first launched their hardware/ software Spark drum machine in 2011, we gave it a decidedly lacklustre review ( 168, 5/10). The software and sound library showed promise, but the hardware failed to impress. Last year’s SparkLE hardware ( 194, 9/10) and subsequent software point releases and soundbank updates really turned things around, though, so it’s with some excitement that we find ourselves squaring up to Spark 2. Fully compatible with both the (discontinued) original and LE hardware, Spark 2 offers vastly improved sequencing and song modes, a completely overhauled interface, expanded REX support and, most intriguingly, an entirely new modular sound design engine and interface with which to design and process your own sampled or synthesised percussion and instrument noises. It’s important to note that the SparkLE hardware remains unchanged (indeed, you can

buy and run Spark without it), so we’re only reviewing the software here.

After eight

Before we start, let’s have a quick recap. Spark is a hybrid MIDI controller and software instrument (VST/AU/AAX/standalone). It draws on a combination of sample playback and synthesis to present over 30 classic drum machine emulations and a large number of genre-specific and original kits. The classic drum machine kits have always been excellent, the original electronic kits good and the ‘real’ kits below par, and all of them are triggered and controlled either by your DAW or the software’s internal sequencer. So, what’s changed? Most obviously, the GUI has been quite brilliantly overhauled. It looks much better, and where there were previously three pages (Project, Kit and Instrument), there are now eight. The first is Main, which mirrors your

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connected Spark hardware (we’re using SparkLE here) with slight improvements on the previous verison (nicer graphics and helpful drum descriptions on the pads). Next is Sequencer, which has also been enhanced, both visually and functionally, making programming automation (of pad and effects parameters) much easier than before. The Song page is a huge step forward. It enables you to string patterns together in chains, 16 of which can be triggered from the drum pads, facilitating complicated and genuinely spontaneous live arrangement. You can also set these chains to run sequentially from one to the next, for quick song construction. The Studio page is where drum kits are constructed, giving access to a choice of synthesis, samples and REX file import for each pad. Although functionally similar to previous versions, it’s visually much clearer now, and the

arturia spark 2   /  reviews  <

“Spark still suffers from the same problem as previous versions: the kits are better than the patterns” refinement of REX file support is very welcome indeed, letting you trigger the single slices of a REX file (forward or reversed) or the whole loop, complete with basic envelope and pitch controls (although only for the entire loop, not per slice). It doesn’t, however, automap REX files across the 16 pads. We know this would mean an upper limit of 16 slices, but it would be useful nonetheless. The Modular page is without doubt Spark 2’s most exciting new feature, giving you a set of tools with which to create entirely new sounds – see Modular must-have.

Sounds abound

The Mixer is largely unchanged from the previous version, but is – again – a little nicer to look at, while Library is now far more usable. Using the old version was a little like selecting tracks on a CD jukebox, but now everything is much clearer, and helped along by a search filter like that in Arturia’s Analog Factory. Finally, Preferences houses a range of options, including Shuffle type (triplet or dotted), export settings (audio and MIDI files can be dragged and dropped out of Spark into your DAW or OS), record quantise and more. Those are the headlines, then, but it wouldn’t be a full version update without some new content, so Spark 2 introduces over 50 new kits and associated patterns (Projects). As you would expect, many of these take advantage of the new Modular system, but nonetheless, Spark still suffers from the same problem as previous versions in this department: the kits are better than the patterns, particularly when it comes to the genre-specific stuff. Granted, you shouldn’t be buying a programmable drum machine on the basis of its preset patterns, but if they’re going to include them, they might as well be properly representative.

The new Studio section offers a vastly improved system for customizing samples, REX loops and synth sounds

Mess with any sound using Spark’s modular sound design tool

Modular must-have By far the most significant addition to Spark 2 is the new TAE-based Modular sound design engine, enabling you to take any pad (containing a REX loop, a sample or a synthesis engine) and go to town with it, combining and processing it with various sound generating and effects modules. Ten modules are on offer: Oscillator, Filter, Envelope, RingModulator, LFO, MiniMixer, CVModulator, StereoFilter, KarplusStrong (a percussion/plucked string synth technique) and SpringMass (makes percussion sound like it’s being played in a variety of metal cylinders).

Spark out

On the whole, Spark 2 is a really solid update, but there are a few things that we’re quite surprised to not see added to the feature list. The first is a note repeat function: whether you make EDM, deep house or techno, current production trends are making this two-decade old concept a modern studio standard. And speaking of old-school features, unlike Akai’s flagship MPC Software and NI’s Maschine, there’s no global retro emulation mode onboard for the crunchy sounds of classic boxes like the SP-1200 and MPC-60. We also think that there’s now a strong case to be made for adding plugin hosting support, although with 18 onboard modules to chose from, live performers do have plenty of choice in this respect. Spark has been a powerful and fun percussion solution for some time now, although largely thanks to its staggeringly comprehensive collection of vintage drum machine emulations. With version 2, though, it has much, much more going for it than just that. If you’re in the market for a software groovebox with tons of tweakability and modulation, it’s a competitively priced option that you definitely need to try. Web  www.arturia.com Info  Software only, €129; with SparkLE, €249

There’s no limit to what can be done with all this. You could take a soundgenerating oscillator and split its left and right channels between different types of ring modulators and envelopes, creating crazy stereo drum sounds – or use the mini-mixer module to create a blended mono version of the two. How about beefing up a weak kick sample by layering it with a sub oscillator? The system amounts to a great way to really stand out sonically, and within minutes of starting to play with it, you’ll find yourself creating unique but eminently usable and ‘current’ sounds.

Alternatively Akai MPC Element 200 » 9/10 » £119 Better genre-based content and drum pads but no knobs, and it can’t beat Spark’s vintage drums library NI Maschine Micro MKII N/A » N/A » £279 Far more power, plus plugin support and a much broader library, but no rival to Spark’s vintage instruments

Verdict For  Nice new GUI Unrivalled vintage drum machine library Modular section is awesome Very stable Workflow much improved Against  REX support could be better Inconsistent genre-based content The already-popular virtual drum machine just got much better, particularly with the addition of its excellent new Modular system

8/10 September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  93

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September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  95

>  reviews  /  renoise 3 Transport The usual suspects, including playback controls, metronome on/off, global tempo and more

Tabs Switch between the Pattern Editor, Mixer and three Instrument Editor tabs, the latter viewable on a separate monitor

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Analysers Various visualisers, including individual track oscilloscopes that double as mute and solo buttons

Pattern Sequencer Numbers describe the structure of the song and function as live cue playback buttons

Instrument slots All your instruments live here, whether they’re single-sample, multisample or plugin

Pattern Matrix An alternative way to manipulate and view the tracks contained within your patterns DSP/Automation tabs Toggle between track effects and the automation panel

Track effects Insert native DSPs, Meta devices and plugin effects, as well as the newly introduced Doofer

Pattern Editor The nuts and bolts of your music. The “code” here describes notes, octaves, instruments, volume and much more

Disk Browser Load, save and preview various file types, and peek into the data contained within other songs

Renoise

Renoise 3

€78

It’s been over four years since v2 of this highly individual, history-rich music production application. Has time been kind to the king of trackers? For the uninitiated, the vertical ‘lines of code’ interface of the tracker can be intimidating, but it’s really just an alternative way of displaying note information to the horizontal blocks of your regular DAW. It doesn’t take long to learn the ropes, and tracking is a method of music making that’s been around since 1987, predating even the serendipitous marriage of Cubase and the Atari ST. But Renoise has only been around in its current form since 2002 and has about as much in common with the Amiga trackers of old as Cubase 7 does with that ancient ST version. When we reviewed Renoise 2 in early 2009 ( 138, 10/10), it was already a solid package, and there have been no shortage of mouldbreaking point releases since then, delivering enough significant features to more than justify Renoise’s intriguing license fee system. You see, when you shell out for a Renoise license, it’s valid for a whole version number; so if you buy at v2.6, you’ll get everything up to and including

v3.6. The 2.x additions have included the nowessential Pattern Matrix with its powerful pattern aliasing, Groups for nesting tracks up to six layers deep, Sample Slicing for quickly hacking up loops, Lua scripting for building custom Tools, and a ton of native DSPs (effects) and Meta devices (see Ultimate control). Since v2.8, Renoise has also been available in both 32-

“The sampler, plugin hosting and MIDI controls have all been combined in the new Instrument Editor”

96  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

and 64-bit builds, along with it’s own built-in plugin bridge which lets 32-bit plugins run in the 64-bit version and vice versa.

The magic number?

Renoise 3, then. First and most obviously, the GUI has been completely rebuilt and now supports panel resizing and collapsing. The sampler, plugin hosting (VST/AU/LADSPA/DSSI) and MIDI controls have all been combined in the new Instrument Editor, which can be detached for viewing on a second monitor – we’d like to see this added to the Mixer, too. The Instrument Editor is where the most profound changes to Renoise 3 have been made, particularly with regard to the Sampler. The old sample envelopes have been ditched in favour of Modulation Sets, which control the same five basic parameters as before (volume, panning, pitch, cutoff and resonance), but with the ability to combine multiple modulation devices (LFOs,

renoise 3  /  reviews  <

“Automatable, MIDIassignable Macros can simultaneously control multiple parameters on any number of devices” envelopes, key and velocity tracking, etc) like building blocks, yielding gratifyingly complex and intricate results. In addition to this, samples can be assigned to one or more Effects Chains within the Instrument Editor, rather than only sent through track effects (as in previous versions), for the construction of self-contained instrument/effects chains and combinations, drawing on plugin effects and Renoise’s vast bank of native DSPs (effects) and Meta devices. These chains and combinations can either be used in isolation or routed into one another. The power of this exponentially increases when using multisampled instruments, as not only can each sample be assigned to its own Effects Chain and Modulation Set, but automatable, MIDI-assignable Macros can simultaneously control multiple parameters on any number of devices, opening up endless sound-animating possibilities. Note that much of this sample-mangling power will soon be available for any DAW as a VST/AU called Redux. Essentially an entire Renoise instrument in a plugin, it will include DSP effects, meta devices, the new Modulations and Effects Chains and even the Phrase editor.

Renoise’s own inspirational DSP processors can now be grouped together using Doofer

Ultimate control Renoise now contains 27 DSPs (filters, reverbs, delays, compressors, etc), and while it’s possible to automate their parameters directly, the powerful Meta Devices make complex automation a breeze. Meta devices are modulators and signal processors of varying kinds, from the LFO and XY Pad through to the Signal Follower and Meta Mixer (which takes up to three Meta inputs and combines them into a single output), and every one of their modulation outputs can be routed to just about any parameter on any DSP or plugin. While many native devices have already been introduced between

Renoise 2.0 and 2.8, version 3 adds a few more, the most welcome being the incredibly useful Doofer, which brings Ableton Live Rack-style grouping of devices, complete with MIDI-assignable Macros to control multiple parameters on multiple devices via its one knob. Another notable new DSP is Convolver, a convolution reverb that places the input signal in a virtual space generated by a sampled impulse response. You’re not solely restricted to its bank of preset IRs, of course, and the adventurous will be rewarded by experimenting with all kinds of samples of their own.

Definitely MaYbe

The new Phrase Editor is essentially a mini tracker-in-tracker for assigning (polyphonic) rhythms and melodic phrases to individual instruments, which are then triggered from the main Pattern Editor. This already-excellent feature really comes into its own when used in tandem with Pattern Commands in the main sequencer, enabling you to reverse, slice and perform tricks with this note information as a whole, just as you would with instruments outside the Phrase Editor. There’s a new Pattern Command, too, called MaYbe, which dictates the probability of a note playing. And it’s now possible to have Renoise pseudo-generatively construct patterns for you

by selecting one note per line from a selection, based on user-specified probability, so you can loop whole sections of music and get a different melodic and/or rhythmic result with each cycle. Multisampling gets more ‘realistic’ in v3, with Keyzones supporting round-robin samples in Cycle and Random mode, and samples being assignable to Mute Groups – for cutting off open hi-hat sounds with closed ones, for example. All of this ups the potential for both more realistic ‘live’ instruments and more interesting electronic ones.

Track champion

While Renoise doesn’t do anything to challenge the notion that the regimented, grid-based approach of the tracker is better suited to electronic than ‘live’ music production, it is without doubt the most powerful tracker in existence, with an impressive roster of wellimplemented, often unique features. Since we’ve only covered the major changes since v2.8 here, we should also point out that Renoise 3 is an enormous upgrade from Renoise 2.0. All in all, it’s a fresh, viable and very stable option for anyone looking to replace or accompany (via ReWire) their current conventional DAW at an unquestionably good price. A multisampled instrument, rendered from a plugin instrument, assigned to multiple Modulation Sets

Web  www.renoise.com

Alternatively SunVox N/A » N/A » Free-£4 A self-contained tracker with its own synths and effects, for mobile, tablet and desktop Psycle N/A » N/A » Free Modular Windows music studio with a tracker interface and its own synths, effects and VST support

Verdict For  The best tracker on the planet Sampler more powerful than ever Full of native DSP and Meta devices Versatile parameter control Great price Against  Limited timestretching options Interface can be overwhelming at first It’s nothing like a conventional DAW, but with its different way of working, Renoise 3 could change your music-making life

10/10 September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  97

>  reviews  /  vengeance sound glitch bitch

Vengeance Sound

Glitch Bitch

£40

A stutter-tastic new effect for the Vengeance Producer Suite line – hopefully it has a sound that’s more classy than its name The newest addition to Vengeance-Sound’s acclaimed Producer Suite range, Glitch Bitch is an effect (VST/AU/AAX) designed primarily to create those momentary (or sustained) bursts of real-time sound-mangling commonly referred to as ‘glitch edits’. Its core functionality involves repeating a chunk of the input signal – a ‘buffer’ – to create a stuttering effect, similar to a stuck CD but with the advantage of being syncable to the host DAW’s tempo (see It’s about time). You can reverse the buffer for some disorientating effects, and the Buffersize parameter has its own modulation envelope, giving you a totally intuitive, visually representative way to change the length of each repeat over time. Vengeance call this (and the plugin’s four other envelopes) an ‘n-point’ envelope, allowing you to add (and remove) as many nodes as you like, creating anything from quick glitches to repeating builds. The plugin also sports resonant high-pass and low-pass filters for bold tonal shifts; a Pitch control for dropping the buffer down in cents and semitones by anything up to an octave; a sample rate divider that can heavily crunch up the audio; and panning and volume controls – all of which can be modulated by the aforementioned envelopes.

Bitchin’

Despite its relative internal complexity, Glitch Bitch is extremely user-friendly. The presets –

without which the whole plugin would be fairly unremarkable – are programmed not only to show off what the effect can do in a wide range of situations, but also to provide a solid library of instant glitch effects beyond which you may never need to venture. They mostly comprise a collection of generic glitch edits, which are actually very usable straight out of the box. Obviously, what you get out of Glitch Bitch very much depends on what you feed into it, but it would be fair to say that it’s one of the cleaner glitching effects we’ve come across, and we really appreciate Vengeance’s unusual design strategy of making the presets a deeply integral element of the plugin. Indeed, although the individual functions that Glitch Bitch performs could be closely approximated by chaining strings of free plugins together, we’d suggest that it’s the presets – more than just the consolidation of these processes in a single plugin – that make it the viable, practical solution that it is. Of course, with the effect essentially controlled by those hugely flexible n-point envelopes, the presets are highly customisable. There’s even an internal sequencer for controlling all aspects of the plugin (including the Glitch trigger button – see It’s all about time) that can be used instead of manual live triggering and automation when you want to tightly fit your edits into the context of a specific

It’s about time The thing that separates Glitch Bitch from similar plugins is that it can be used as a DJ-style effect, triggered live via the big Glitch button in a manner reminiscent of Pioneer DJ mixers and NI Traktor controllers, letting you perform (and record) glitches on the fly. Sync Start mode quantises your triggers to specified note values (eg, 1 Bar, 1/4, 1/64t), while Free Start mode takes your glitches off the grid. You can also free up your mouse for

selecting and editing presets by triggering the Glitch button via MIDI. Changing presets on the fly would normally be considered an unusual workflow for an effects plugin, but Glitch Bitch is entirely centred on such activity – the presets enable you to find an intricate, sophisticated ‘glitch’ to suit any point in any track with minimal effort, and with the results being so dependent on the source material, this is one case in which there’s no shame in sticking with them.

98  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

track. Regardless of your approach, though, Glitch Bitch is just the thing for modernising a beat, adding interest to a vocal, or increasing the intensity of a build-up or off-the-wall EDM riff. It probably won’t do much for your threepiece folk band, but that should come as no surprise. Our only major issue with it is the name, which (we assume) is meant to be funny but just comes across as awkwardly sexist and embarrassing. Web www.vengeance-sound.com

Alternatively iZotope Stutter Edit 163 » 8/10 » £149 Live glitching plugin with 13 effect modules played like an instrument Illformed Glitch 2 194 » 7/10 » £40 The classic glitch sequencer with nine effects and plenty of randomisation options

Verdict For  140 very usable presets Easily generates modern drum fills Flexible timing options Internal sequencer Against  Requires eLicenser dongle Filters could sound richer Terrible name! Not as feature-rich or powerful as some glitch plugins, but Glitch Bitch’s workflow, envelopes and presets make it a winner

8/10

>  reviews  /  ik multimedia eq 73 & eq 81

IK Multimedia

EQ 73 & EQ 81 €100 each The Italian software giants turn their attention to a pair of classic Neves, but do we really need yet more vintage EQs? The latest additions to IK’s now-well-stocked Custom Shop plugin effects store are based on two classic Neve input/EQ stages: the 1073 and the 1081. The Custom Shop interface enables you to buy and authorise EQ 73 and EQ 81 without leaving your DAW, where they can be loaded as individual plugins (VST/AU/RTAS/AAX) or in the useful T-RackS ‘shell’ (VST/AU/RTAS/ AAX/Standalone). Stereo instances support independent and linked channel operation in both L/R and M/S (mid/side) formats, and each plugin also includes a handful of presets, four quick recall memory locations and two latency settings – ‘oversampling’ and ‘lowest latency’ (1284 and 132 samples respectively). These particular Neve EQs can already be found in many plugin emulations, and the specifics of their design are well-documented (see Band matters). However, beyond the basic EQ spec – four bands plus two filters for EQ 81; three bands plus high-pass filter for EQ 73 – IK have gone to town emulating other parts of the circuit. This means full component modelling of all gain stages, including the preamp and its saturation properties. In theory, then, these should get us very close to the sound of the real thing.

Make some noise

Starting with the GUI, IK have separated the gain and frequency selector controls (they’re dual

concentric on the hardware), and opted for Mic/ Line switches rather than a dual control knob, enabling slightly quicker A/B-ing of the two input paths. With both EQs running side-by-side in our DAW, we’re on the hunt for subtle behavioural characteristics typical of the original boxes. Routed through a frequency analyser, both plugins exhibit greater third-harmonic distortion when pushed hard in Mic mode – adding a bit of presence, just as you’d get with the real things – and these are more prominent with EQ 73 than EQ 81. In Line mode, both are less coloured. We also note some very low frequency (30Hz) artifacts on EQ 73 (presumably to do with modelled noise floor, hum, etc), although these aren’t present for EQ 81. Another subtle behaviour concerns levels. Engaging the high-pass filter on EQ 73 causes a small drop in level, and there’s a small level increase when switching to Mic input with either model. As discussed in Band matters, although ostensibly similar, the two EQs do sound a bit different to each other. The 73 excels at transforming snares and kicks, and adding a bit of grit to basses, while the ’81 can work wonders with ‘broad brushstroke’ changes or – at high Q settings – be far more pokey and aggressive than the ’73. We particularly like EQ 81 on acoustic guitar, vocals and piano.

Band matters EQ 73 and EQ 81 precisely match the band formats and notched frequencies of the Neve originals they’re emulating. So EQ 73 has high and low shelving, one mid-range peak band and one high-pass filter; and EQ 81 has two peak bands with optional high Q, high and low shelving with bell shape option, and high- and low-pass filters. Also like the Neves, the gain is smooth rather than notched (although the maximum gain of 16dB per band falls a couple of dB

short of the originals), and EQ 81’s peaking band gain is Q-dependent, with the sharp Q option delivering maximum gain and the broad Q yielding around 10dB of gain. While they share many features, EQ 73 and EQ 81 do have their differences. EQ 73 exhibits a touch of overshoot on the shelving shapes and gain-dependent Q on its peak band, while EQ 81 has a more linear shelving shape, and a sharper peak shape with its high Q setting.

100  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

If our budget was tight and we could only choose one of these excellent EQ plugins, it would probably be EQ 73, as it’s slightly more coloured and interesting. The two are certainly different enough to justify having both in your arsenal should funds allow, though. Web www.ikmultimedia.com

Alternatively Kuassa EVE-AT EQs 195 » 9/10 » $48 each; $80 both If you just want the EQ and not the preamp, AT1 and AT4 are modelled on the Neve 1081 and 1084 Waves Scheps 73 203 » 8/10 » $149 A flexible 1073 emulation that includes an additional mid-range frequency option and two preamp harmonic distortion modes

Verdict For  Mic and line preamp modelling Separate gain and frequency knobs Flexible channel processing with M/S Useful preamp saturation Each plugin sonically distinctive Four memory locations Against  Inherently limited in scope Two excellent Neve EQ and preamp emulations, each with its own sound but both worth owning if you can stretch to it

9/10

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>  reviews  /  sinevibes hexonator

Sinevibes

Hexonator $39 This Mac-only developer is known for some of the most unusual and esoteric plugins in the business – and here’s another The latest plugin from Ukranian developer Sinevibes, Hexonator is an AU effect plugin for Mac that generates ‘chordal’ harmonic content from whatever arrives at its input. It does this by analysing the incoming audio signal, then amplifying the frequencies within it, matching those of a sequence of notes and/or chords defined by the user, adding harmonics based on them, while dramatically reducing all other frequencies. This process is all controlled by a series of seven modules… The Resonator (actually six Resonators adjusted collectively) does the actual frequency separation, based on the selected notes/chords. It includes controls for setting the Bandwidth, Feedback (the intensity of the ‘resonated’ frequencies), Spectrum shift (offset between the band-pass filters and feedback delay lines at the core of the Resonators) and tuning. The (resonant) Filter section features low-, high- and band-pass modes, and operates on all six Resonator voices of a chord. It’s particularly useful for shaping overly bright drum loop processing and taming Hexonator-created bassline leads (a sound it particularly excels at). The Output section controls stereo spread (of Resonator voices), amplification of the Resonator output (the Effect slider) and wet/dry balance. Of the two Modulators (LFOs), one modulates Resonator parameters and the other wobbles the Filter Cutoff and Resonance. You can switch

the LFO Waveform between a choice of eight shapes, adjust the Period (modulation speed) from 1/128 to 8 bars, and apply Chaos (a percycle random element). The modulation depth is set for each target using Sinevibes’ colourcoded slider system, as seen in many of their recent releases. The remaining three modules are Chord Constructor, Chord Sequencer Pattern and Sequencer settings. These are key to defining the frequencies to be highlighted and amplified, and are discussed in The sequencer.

Hex appeal

If all this sounds quite out-there, that’s because it is; but with certain types of sounds, the results can be absolutely awesome. It works incredibly well on basslines – particularly filtered ones with few high frequencies – effectively creating new and harmonically rich patterns based on, but not necessarily complementary to, the source signal. Vocal snippets can also be effectively enhanced, as can drab drum loops (using the wet/dry balance to keep things within some semblance of normality). However, it can be quite difficult to get all the cool stuff you make using Hexonator to actually fit into the context of a track. We recommend applying it right at the start of a project, so it can serve as the basis for monstrous tracks that you wouldn’t otherwise have made. Trying to put the

The sequencer Hexonator’s sequencer offers 1 to 32 steps (played back at the usual range of note values: 1/4, 1/16, etc, triplets included) and dictates which Chord is played on each step – you can have up to eight chords per patch. The sequencer’s length (1, 2, 4 or 8 bars) and shuffle amount can also be adjusted, and the Transition slider acts as a glide control. Each Chord comprises up to six Resonator voices, defined in the bottom-left

panel of the interface. You simply select the note pitch to be amplified for each voice, or mute that voice entirely. Chord settings can be cut and pasted between the eight slots, and you can shift each note up to six octaves up or down. In practice, programming Hexonator proves to be pretty tricky. We suspect most users will edit its excellent presets rather than start from scratch. That’s certainly how we get the best out of it, anyway.

102  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

same preset on a few channels in your track in the hope that they’ll sound coordinated simply won’t work, as Hexonator’s characteristic sounds depend totally on the nuances of the input. Hexonator is an over-the-top effect that’s hard enough to tame on its own, let alone when you start combining it with other track elements. You probably won’t use it often, and after rinsing it on four or five tracks, most people won’t touch it again for a year or two. So is it a plugin you should buy? Hell yes. Deployed with caution, it can give you incredible and inspirational results, and at this price, it’s worth the investment just for use on one track, never mind four. Web www.sinevibes.com

Alternatively SoniVox Vocalizer Pro N/A » N/A » $200 Vocoder with MIDI control for adding harmonies on the fly XILS-lab XILS V+ 195 » 8/10 » €149 This powerful vocoder creates new harmonies/notes from audio tracks

Verdict For  Unique sound Insanely cool when it works Pimps your basslines Useful presets Against  Hard to program Not very versatile Manual could offer more practical tips Decidedly mental but well worth a creative punt, Hexonator is another worthy addition to the Sinevibes catalogue

8/10

>  reviews  /  acustica audio silk eq2

Acustica Audio

Silk EQ2 €79 Another quirky classic hardware equaliser gets the full treatment from the masters of ‘effects sampling’ As with their Trinity plugin before it ( 205, 9/10), there’s no official word on exactly which hardware EQ was sampled in the creation of Acustica Audio’s Silk EQ2 VST plugin (you probably never heard of v1, since it was only around for a matter of weeks before the sequel dropped), only that it stems from Germany and the 60s. The tiny ‘W695b’ legending strongly suggests that it’s sampled from the Telefunken/ Siemens EQ of the same model number, but the important thing is that it’s built to impart a bit of characterful vintage quality to your tracks. The Mac and Windows Silk EQ2 packages are rather different in how they’re installed. While the Windows version comes in two installers – 32-bit and 64-bit, including around 300MB of impulse responses each – the Mac installer gives you no option but to install the full 653MB of data files that the software uses to recreate the sonic characteristics of the real thing. That’s quite a footprint, particularly considering you’ll probably only ever use half of it. The interface is as simple as they get: a couple of switches to activate Shelving and Mid Band EQ, gain knobs for Low (fixed at 40Hz) and High Shelf (15kHz), plus a six-position switch for selecting the mid-range band (0.7kHz, 1.0kHz, 1.5kHz, 2.3kHz, 3.5kHz, and 5.6kHz) and a Mid Gain knob. A Bypass switch and an overload indicator lamp complete the set. It might not seem like a lot to play with, but that’s a large part

of the appeal of vintage equalisers: they’re easy and simple to use, enabling you to focus on the sound rather than the controls. As for that sound, there isn’t enough space on this page for the number of superlatives we could use. Silk EQ2 adds just the right amount of sizzle and splash to the highs, while bass frequencies are given palpable muscle without introducing muddiness. And the mids! This is truly where the plugin shines. The bands are perfectly positioned to scoop out any audio muck or add presence without bringing on ear fatigue. It isn’t all roses, though. We suffered crashes when using the 32-bit Mac version in some hosts – it’s a no-go on OS X Mavericks, apparently, though we’ve been assured by the developer that this is being rectified. And happily, no such issues plagued the 64-bit version.

Smooth as silk

Minor grievance aside, Silk EQ2 is the best Acqua plugin yet. The interface is sleek and simple and the sound is simply gorgeous. This is the sound of a superb hardware EQ in software form – you can almost feel the heat rising off the chassis. Oh, and latency is less of an issue this time around – there’s still a bit of a delay, and we still probably wouldn’t want to play drums through it in real time, but the improvement over previous Acqua plugs is noticeable. Ultimately, Silk EQ2 is a fabulous character

EQ, perfectly recreated, that even the most cynical of classic hardware connoisseurs couldn’t fail to be impressed by. Web www.acustica-audio.com

Alternatively Acustica Audio Nebula 3 115 » 9/10 » €79 There are plenty of ready-made vintage effects for Acustica’s Nebula series of modelling plugins, including Silk EQ Tokyo Dawn Records TDR VOS SlickEQ N/A » N/A » Free A superb freeware offering, comprising classic reverbs in British, American, Soviet and German flavours

Verdict Sampled effects All of Acustica’s Acqua products are built on the same technology used in their Nebula effects processor. While Nebula is a sort of ‘blank slate’ for loading ready-made programs or even sampling your own using associated software, Acqua is a platform on which developers can create self-contained plugins with their own interfaces. One such developer is Silk EQ collaborator Tim Petherick, whose affordable (some free) libraries for Nebula have garnered rave

reviews. He’s covered everything from the Korg MS-20 filter to the TDK cassette tape, and various high- and low-end kit. Among more popular offerings has been his Silk EQ package, which, not surprisingly, seems to have disappeared from his site. Silk EQ2 is a variation on it, with Acustica confirming that the new Acqua version is an evolution of Petherick’s library with many enhancements. For our money, we much prefer Silk EQ2’s sleek, integrated package.

104  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

For  Authentic hardware character Marvellous mids Reduced latency vs previous Acqua plugs Simple is, in this case, better! Against  Still some bugs Huge Mac installer This recreation of a popular 60s EQ gets the sound and interface spot on, but it eats drive space and has a few Mac issues

8/10

>  reviews  /  mini reviews

mini reviews

A rapid-fire round-up of sample libraries, ROMplers and music gear Zoom

TAC-2

£349

Web www.zoom-na.com Format Mac

Zoom’s 2-in/2-out TAC-2 arrives as a rival to the likes of Focusrite’s USB Forte, offering the performance benefits of the ultra-fast Thunderbolt bus without breaking the bank. At 129.5x120x51.3mm, the TAC-2 is a pretty small unit. It sits at a shallow angle and feels solid enough despite the rather wobbly rotary/ button, which is used to switch between and control input, monitor out and headphone levels. The display comprises a stack of red LEDs, indicating the rotary’s current target and whether or not 48V phantom power is being fed to the two inputs, and two seven-segment LED ladders for level metering. Thankfully, you also get a Thunderbolt cable in the box. The back panel houses two balanced outs and two balanced mic/instrument ins, while the front plays host to a headphone output and a guitar input. Operational and phantom power are both supplied via the Thunderbolt bus, so there’s no need for an external power supply –

that alone will be a big selling point for many over USB interfaces, which usually have to be plugged into the mains for phantom power. Software control and monitor mixing is handled by the MixEfx application, which offers such delights as low-cut filters and phase invert switches on the inputs, some passable monitoring effects (three reverbs and a delay), and three memory locations. Capturing and playing back audio at up to 24-bit/192kHz, the TAC-2 sounds fantastic and records well. Latency figures are impressive, dropping as low as 1.5ms at 32 samples (at a 44.1kHz sample rate) in Logic Pro X. That’s much lower than any USB interface – the high-end model we pitted it against managed 5.2ms at the same buffer size. The TAC-2 also took up a little less CPU overhead. On the downside, the metering is a bit low-res (a few more segments would make all the difference), the stepped rotary isn’t good for fine level changes, and despite being the cheapest Thunderbolt interface money can currently buy, you can still get a lot more I/O for your money

with USB. Nonetheless, if you don’t need lots of channels and fancy finally taking advantage of that unused Thunderbolt port on your Mac, the TAC-2 is something of a revelation – a great performer in a compact package. n9/10n

arpeggiated). There’s also a big Stutter button that, when activated, makes all steps Stutters, overriding their actual assignments. Many of the Step Animator control lanes can be assigned to the mod wheel, and all of them can be randomised by activating their R buttons and hitting the big Random button. Arpeggios can also be dragged out into the host DAW or OS as MIDI. The soundbank consists entirely of material that’s already been used in other Sample Logic products, so be aware of that if you’ve already invested heavily in them. That said, the 550+ instruments and multis are – almost without exception – amazing, from organic instrumental sounds to the purely electronic and everything in between, and all thoroughly arp-propriate, of course. Sample Logic’s proprietary Effects, Triggers and LFO sections are on hand to take them further, too, offering a solid array of processors (including the bolstering Wave ‘synth’ engine, etc) and a ton of modulation. Arpology is, on one hand (the one holding the Step Animator), one of the most creative Kontakt libraries yet; while on the other hand (the one holding the recycled soundbank

and effects section, and the pricetag) arguably a bit of an expensive cop-out. In practical use, though, it’s a fun, intuitive, powerfully creative instrument that’s perfect for conjuring up high-impact sounds and interesting grooves in next to no time. n8/10n

Sample Logic

Arpology

$400

Web www.samplelogic.com Format Mac/PC, Kontakt 5/Player

Sample Logic’s latest release puts their new Step Animator – a cross between an arpeggiator and step sequencer – front and centre, using it to power a 5.5GB sample library in Kontakt Player. A Step Animator patch (150 presets ship with it) can be built on up to 128 steps, each step comprising knobs, sliders and secondary “Easy Draw” graphs for setting its Velocity (offset by user input or ‘as programmed’), Length, Duration, Pan, Transpose, Arp Type (Up, Down, As Played, Random and two Chordal modes), Step Type, and Stutter Rate. The first six of these are self-explanatory, but it’s the last two that make the Step Animator the powerful machine that it is, capable of generating truly mental patterns of a kind that you won’t hear anywhere else. Each step can be assigned to one of five Step Types: Note (plays the note as normal), Glide (slides smoothly from the played note to the next one), Freeplay mode (makes a ‘gap’ in the arpeggio during which you can play whatever you like), Stutter (repeats the current note at the Stutter Rate, between 1/16 and 1/128) and Stutter Alternating (the same again, but 106  /  Computer Music  September 2014

mini reviews  /  reviews  <

Native Instruments

Session Horns Pro Web www.native-instruments.com Format PC/Mac, Kontakt 5/Player

Almost ten times the size and three times the price of the original Session Horns ( 187, 10/10; upgrade for £169), Session Horns Pro is a 30GB brass library for Kontakt Player that lets you put together your own up-to-six-part horn section from a lineup of ten instruments. This consists of three trumpets (one muted), three saxes, flugelhorn, tuba and two trombones – a serious step up from Session Horns’ now-meagre collection of four-instrument Section presets. The two main NKIs (Keyswitch and Performance, and you also get all ten solo instruments) are intended for production work and live performance respectively. Performance.nki features a more flexible version of the Session Horns Animator (a high-quality library of pre-fab MIDI riffs and phrases, assignable for keyswitching) and the ability to set your own threshold for articulation velocity switching (with 14 secondary articulations available). Keyswitch.nki introduces the keyswitching

£249 between articulations (of which there are 16, including crescendos, marcatos, growls, trills and a shake) that we lamented the absence of in our review of Session Horns. Good news! Session Horns’ excellent Voicing Assistant, which handles the splitting of instruments between chordal notes, sees the addition of Smart Chord mode. This automatically generates four-note chords from one-note input, based on a userspecified root note and white-note chord map, with five mood-based voicing modifiers (Cinematic, Tension) assigned to the black keys. There’s far more to Session Horns Pro than we have room to cover here, but the take-home message is that it improves on its predecessor in every area, sounding suitably rich and punchy, as well as being capable of delivering impressively realistic solo and ensemble horn parts. It lets you play everything yourself if you want to, but it also gives you a cleverly implemented set of

Garritan

Abbey Road Studios CFX Concert Grand £199 Web www.timespace.com Format Mac/PC, VST/AU/

RTAS/AAX/Standalone Shipping on a USB thumb drive, CFX Concert Grand captures the legendary eponymous piano in the legendary eponymous studio (the enormous Studio One) via three mic arrays: Classic, retaining the natural sound of the instrument; Contemporary, brightening it up somewhat; and Player, making it sound like you’re actually sitting at the instrument. Adjustments include Lid Position, Sympathetic and Sustain Resonance, Pedal Noise, mic levels, stereo width and more, with onboard effects comprising EQ, reverb and saturation, as employed to great effect by the small but rather lovely collection of presets. With the full install weighing in at a drive-busting 132GB, it’ll come as no surprise to learn that CFX can take an age to load its samples, but it sounds absolutely beautiful, with exquisite tonal detail, powerful lows, glassy highs and a level of expressiveness that has to be felt to be believed. n9/10n

rhythmic and harmonic tools with which to automate or semi-automate the composition process, should you wish to do so. The price does put it very much at the ‘pro’ end of the market, though. n9/10n

Two Notes €8 each

Capture Masters cabs



Web www.two-notes.com Format Mac/PC, Torpedo cabinet

Two Notes’ Torpedo virtual guitar/bass cabinet plugin comes with a few basic ‘starter’ cabs, with further ones €8 a pop via an integrated store. Here we’ve got the new third-party Capture Masters series, which delivers cabs captured by high-end studios. Caverne Studios offer two bass (Ampeg & Peavey) and six guitar cabs, the latter focused on classic 70s Marshall and Orange 4x12s (ideal for modern styles too, of course), except for the cutting Angl Pro30, based on an Engl. Noise Factory cabs comprise two Bogner and one Mesa Boogie cab, and true to the description, these are great at smoothing spiky amps. Finally, Fastback Studios offer the powerful FastBack25. Used with various amp sim plugins (with their cab section disabled, natch), we found it easy to dial in great ‘mix-ready’ tones, and stack multiple cabs/mics for even bigger ones. The Capture Masters cabs are consistent in quality and generally a tad more refined than the ‘standard’ cabs – which are very good themselves – making it even easier to nail “that sound”. If you’re looking to take your virtual amp tones to the next level, you really ought to try running them through these killer cabs. n9/10n September 2014  /  Computer Music  /  107

>  reviews  /  mini reviews

Soundware round-up Loopmasters

Sébastien Léger – Funky Tech House £30 The highlights of this French producer’s soundware debut are the folder of 32 stemmed drum loops – all of which are absurdly funky and notably expansive in production style and sound selection – and the ten well-stocked one-shot drum kits. Beyond that, while the bass, music, percussion and FX loops and hits all sound great and capture the vibe of their genre nicely, there aren’t that many of each – we found ourselves wanting more.

www.loopmasters.com n7/10n

Something Else Music

Analogue Workshop Vol 2: Dark Ambient £35

Puremagnetik

Effect Racks €39 A compilation of all four Puremagnetik RackPaks (1-3, plus AmpPak), Effect Racks brings 204 elaborate signal processing chains to Ableton Live 9. From glitching devices, filters, resonators and modulators to guitar amps, delays, reverbs and DJ effects and much, much more, it’s a vast and vastly creative toolbox. The designers have made the most of Live’s Macros, too, giving each device real character through their clever naming and functionality – Liposuction, for example, with it’s ‘Fat’ and ‘Suck’ controls. A must-buy! www.ableton.com n10/10n 108  /  Computer Music  September 2014

From renowned UK sound designer Ian Boddy comes a collection of over 500 Kontakt 4/5 instruments and their 300 component samples. Entirely synth-based, the sounds are divided into loops (pads, atmospheres and drones) and oneshots (percussion, impacts, FX, etc), and range from delicate and pretty to dark and scary. The simple but effective Kontakt script makes the perfect host, and we’d label this a bargain.

www.timespace.com n9/10n

Samplephonics

Matta: Dark Garage & Dubstep £40 Why this 893MB library from Samplephonics doesn’t have ‘House’ in the title, too, we’re not sure, as its contents are divided evenly between those three genres. Matta’s driving production style is evident throughout, though, tying it all together. While a lot of the sounds (particuarly the basses) feel very familiar, the 1000 or so loops and hits aggregate to make a solid and efficient package that shifts seamlessly from style to style and stands as good value for money.

www.samplephonics.com n8/10n

Rhythmic Robot

Drumulator Plus £6 This straight-up multisampled Kontakt 4/5 emulation of E-Mu’s crunchy 12-bit classic (also available in Reason and EXS24 formats for £5) gives you the original soundbank and three custom ‘EPROMs’, all mapped across four octaves in one NKI file. The bit reduction, Saturation, Drive and Pump controls make the sound even phatter and dirtier than it is out of the box, and at this price, this is a must for any lover of vintage drum sounds, particularly if they’re also a Kontakt owner, as the other versions don’t get the interface or effects.

www.rhythmicrobot.com n9/10n

mini reviews  /  reviews  <

Drumdrops

Cr2 Records

Mapex Heavy Rock Kit £35

Progressive EDM £13

A 3GB multisampled (7119 samples) Mapex drum kit for Kontakt 5, with three snares and a set of Paiste cymbals. It’s a hard-hitting, beefy kit, with an extensive range of articulations making it capable of impressive realism. It responds well to e-drum triggering, and Drumdrops’ powerful scripted interface gives plentiful options in terms of mixing and processing, not to mention a well-stocked MIDI groove player and a very usable step sequencer. Also available in cheaper, nonKontakt options, this is an excellent, affordable rock kit.

900MB of big, bouncy ‘stadium’ EDM samples, construction kits, MIDI files and Sylenth1 presets, plus 38 minutes of tutorial videos. Cr2 have managed to keep the colours as diverse as the genre allows, and the production is first rate, as ever. The high-energy stemmed drum loops, manic basslines and hands-inthe-air synth riffs are the main reasons to invest, but the one-shot drums are also superb, and the construction kits are fun to mess around with, if not spectacularly useful.

www.drumdrops.com

sounds.beatport.com

n9/10n

n8/10n

Sample Magic

Native Instruments

Magic Maschine: Found Sound £15

Arcane Attic £44

Ten Maschine 2 projects – with extensive Macro mappings, effects setups and full MIDI arrangements – and their component Groups. The 153 samples used were all ‘found’ in urban environments and include door slams, electrical noises, metal scraping and sirens, but you’d never know it, so deep is the editing/ processing. As well as the projects themselves being worthy of release as an album, the amount of quality sounds from them belies the low asking price.

More found sounds for Maschine in NI’s latest Expansion, produced by The Boom Library, and built on an esoteric library of sampled sources such as gunshots, explosions, water, old computers and, err, an orchestra. Again, masterful sound design makes it all musically meaningful. The 39 drum and percussion Groups are the headline, of course, ranging from small and skittering to brash and cavernous, but the seven Special kits are equally awesome, too, particularly the terrifying ‘Voice Of The Lost’.

www.samplemagic.com

www.native-instruments.com

n9/10n

n9/10n

Zero-G

Loopmasters

Extreme Environments £60

Dub & Reggae XL Vol. 2 £30

An ambience and pad instrument for Kontakt 5 (other formats are included, as are the 142 samples on which they’re all based) by Zero-G regular Si Begg. Three waves are loaded, pitched/stretched, processed (including a crazy and extensive menu of convolution IRs) and mixed in a dark, attractive scripted interface, delivering an endless and interesting array of edgy textures, drones and washes. A few more filter modes and an LFO or two would be worth adding, but this is a sound designer’s dream even without them.

The second in producer Dubmatix’ series for Loopmasters immediately impresses with the diversity of its instrumentation, its 352 loops taking in melodica, horns, flute, organ and piano, alongside the usual drums, bass, keys and synths. The production style is rough and gutsy, and the flavour is richly authentic. The only slight disappointment is in the lack of live drums – they’re all very ‘sampled’ – although that does give that side of the library a decidedly dubstep edge, which isn’t a bad thing, we suppose.

www.timespace.com

www.loopmasters.com

n8/10n

n8/10n

SampleCloud

Sample Magic

Dubstep Revolution $25

Chillwave 2 £35

107 loops and 166 one-shots make up this bass music offering on the comparatively young SampleCloud label. The 40 drum loops are well produced but rather samey – surprising, given the relative adventurousness of the 30 percussion loops. The bass loops, synth loops and one-shot FX are more appealing, sounding by turns dangerous and brooding, but they don’t push the envelope of the genre at all, and we wouldn’t say that they justify the pricetag. Not a bad library by any means, but one that perhaps plays it a bit safe.

It’s laid-back Linn Drum beats and Vangelis-style synths all the way with the two-years-in-the-making follow-up to Sample Magic’s original 80s-tinged classic. While we’re not entirely sure how big the chillwave scene really is these days, this lavish 1.5GB sample (and MIDI) pack is bursting with sonic possibilities for producers in more genres than just that, from beautifully processed vocals, through dreamy guitars and crusty beats, to cinematic pads, punchy arps and more. Blissful.

www.samplecloud.com

www.samplemagic.com

n7/10n

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110  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

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>  make music now  /  blast from the past

blast

from the

Very few sample-playback machines can be called classics, but Korg’s ended up shaping the sound of an era

past

Korg Wavestation The Wavestation is an odd one. Released in the early 90s heyday of (often generic) sample-based hardware ROMplers, it offered a decidedly distinctive sound. Sure, it was packed with samples, but in its initial version, those samples tended toward innovation rather than imitation. No nylon string guitars or grand pianos here, thank you. Other such synths of the day were pitched as preset playback devices, but this… this was different. The Wavestation rose from the ashes of Sequential Circuits – the company behind many a classic instrument including the Prophet-5 and the Prophet VS vector synthesiser. It was to the latter that the Wavestation bore the keenest resemblance, sharing with it a powerful vector synthesis technique that allowed multiple oscillators to be blended over time via the use of a joystick. When Sequential called it a day, some of its boffins took up residence at Korg, bringing with them the still-viable technology of the VS, supercharged and stuffed into the Wavestation’s sleek black frame. Yet vector synthesis was only part of the story. The Wavestation also included “wavesequencing”, a means by which its many waveforms could be arranged into a linear

sequence with each step possessed of its own volume, pitch, step length and crossfade parameters. This allowed (patient) users to create elaborate, ever-changing sounds ranging from slowly evolving textures to powerful pulsating rhythms. Later iterations of the Wavestation would add a slew of standard samples – pianos, guitars, and a massive collection of drums and percussion, facilitating the creation of entire musical passages of staggering depth. These wavesequences (and individual waveforms) could be layered into Patches and combined into Performances, increasing the complexity of the sounds. To top it all off, Korg included better built-in effects processors than those in many competing ‘workstations’. Yet the Wavestation was not without its shortcomings, not least being the lack of filter resonance. You could fake it using an effects patch, but the voice filters themselves were little more than high-frequency shelving EQs, though there was a built-in exciter to spice things up. Mind you, analogue synthesis had, at the time, been declared dead, and Korg were not alone in eschewing the resonant filter in favour of an unashamedly digital signal path.

tech SPECS Year of manufacture 1990 -1994 Original sale value £1499 Current price £100 - £300 Number made Approximately 14,000

Another problem was that programming one’s own wavesequences required a lot of patience. Those who invested the time were rewarded with sounds that were impossible to achieve elsewhere, but few did. Judging by its presence on countless soundtracks and advertisements, many users seemed unable to navigate beyond the first preset sound. Strangely, popular as it was, the Wavestation was never really given a proper follow-up. Korg released a couple of rack-mounted variants and two versions of the keyboard, but only belatedly revived the technology in its recent workstations. A few software developers have adopted limited variations on wavesequencing, and Korg themselves offer a virtual version, even going so far as to add – at long last – that resonant filter.

EE

0

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$5 0

Three great wavesequencing plugins

Korg Wavestation (Legacy)

Wusik Wusik Station V7

Green Oak Crystal

Initially released as part of the Legacy Collection bundle, Korg’s virtual version of the Wavestation is as good an emulation as you are ever likely to find. It is, frankly, dead on, with everything that made the original great (barring the audio input of the A/D rackmount version), plus those much-desired resonant filters. www.korg.com

With its expansions, bundles and upgrades, it’s often easy to forget that Wusik Station is a worthy successor to the Wavestation’s mantle. Stuffed with excellent samples, this Windows-only workstation offers powerful wavesequencing and a deep synthesis architecture. Some of its features have been worked into the cross-platform Wusik 4000. www.wusik.com

Crystal is nothing less than a freeware classic – you may well already have it on your hard drive. With its combination of semimodular routing and multiple synthesis techniques, it’s an amazingly powerful instrument. One of its best features is its ability to string sampled waveforms into a wavesequence under the control of its flexible multistage envelopes. www.greenoak.com

114  /  Computer Music  /  September 2014

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