Sommaire pour November 2015 de Computer Music

We love sharing our production tips and technical tricks with you, not to mention taking you into the studios of established producers so they can show you theirs. We love giving you the tools to do it, too, in the form of high-quality samples and top-notch plugins. But ultimately, the real pay-off comes when the theory is put into practice and the tools pressed into purpose to build a complete piece of music. This issue, we bring you all of the above in the form of our epic Drum ’n’ Bass Track-Builder 2015. With endlessly enduring popularity, DnB is the genre that just won’t quit, and it absolutely smashed the poll when we asked our Facebook followers which genre they’d like to see tackled in the successor to cm209’s massively…

1 Break: Creating a break with Addictive Drums 2 2 Lynx: Distorted DnB 808 bass with FabFilter Saturn 3 Keeno: Creating an orchestral DnB sequence 4 Chromatic: Creating a DnB hoover stab DNB TRACK-BUILDER …then, we use their sounds to flesh out a complete dark DnB banger, step by step 1 Transforming Keeno’s composition into a DnB pad 2 Layered DnB synth and vocal stabs 3 Using Break’s drums to make a hard-hitting DnB beat 4 Adding percussion layers to a DnB beat 5 DnB drum bus processing 6 Programming and processing a Reese bass 7 Incorporating Lynx’s 808 bass 8 Deconstructing the final arrangement Read the full article on p50 GROOOVE CM This month’s plugin giveaway is an innovative and ultra-flexible drum instrument – yours for free Read…

The Plugins collection is a suite of complete, limitation-free instrument and effects plugins. It’s an incredible resource, boasting more than 50 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 Ohm Force, KV331 Audio, u-he, Cableguys, AudioThing, XILS-lab, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen and zplane. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is Plugins? Is it just freeware from the internet? 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! Where do I get Plugins? As a download from…

Although we’re all about digital music here at , we also appreciate the emotional attachment of more tactile formats. Scandinavian demoscene musician Xerxes has taken to vinyl for his latest EP, Exerxes, temporarily dropping the pseudonym in favour of plain old Klaus Lunde. Find out how to get hold of it at bit.ly/XerxesVinyl. Podcasts come and go, but to make it to 200 is no mean feat, and BitJam are celebrating with not one but four excellent mixes of scene music from the last six years. Get your ears round it post haste at bit.ly/BitJam200. DEMO OF THE MONTH Be Kool Fool by Focus Design Certainly not the most technically impressive of all the demos we’ve seen this month (that accolade would go to Supervenience by Z Brothers bit.ly/Supervenience), but…

Drum ’n’ bass issues have become a tradition over the years, and in Winter 2005 (issue 93), we mentioned popular DnB sub-genres clownstep, dubwise and neurofunk in the course of our guide. Helpfully, this also gave us the answer to that issue’s Burning Question: “Are there too many music genres?”. Switching stylistic gears somewhat, we also showed you how to sound like Slipknot (these were strange musical times) and brought you news of Sony’s latest attempt to revive the iconic Walkman brand. It’s safe to say that this wasn’t the ‘iPod killer’ the company might have hoped it would be. In the reviews section, we lavished praise on JazzMutant’s Lemur, calling this endlessly customisable, €2000 multi-touch device “a controller of the future”. The launch of the iPad a few years…

Sinevibes “iPad Pro is certainly a very promising device, as it has now made the final leap towards matching our laptops’ power and screen size. But it is now up to app developers to make good use of all this. More tracks, more effects, longer timeline, etc – that’s all a given. But will we be able to use two synth apps side by side with Split View in iOS 9? And will we have more precise editing abilities thanks to iPad Pro’s greater multitouch tracking resolution and Apple Pencil? I certainly hope so.” – Artemiy Pavlov Auxy “You could build a fantastic music-making experience for iPad Pro, and if a lot of people use the device, it makes sense for companies to invest in new apps for it. “We…

With releases on labels as diverse as Ram, Hospital, 31 Records and Soul:r, Steve Nobes (Lynx) is a truly versatile DnB producer. We set him the challenge of creating some big bad bass sounds, and he set about it with relish, FabFilter Saturn and a clutch of 808 kick drum samples. cm: How come you opted for 808 kick samples rather than synthesis? SN: “I guess because a lot of my tracks use 808 basses! I just love the sub elements to them, and when you overdrive them, you can end up with really unusual, mysterious things coming out of the top end that you’d never expect. cm: What is it that makes 808 kicks so special? SN: “I think for me, personally, it’s that it doesn’t sustain a single…

Drum ’n’ bass production duo Chromatic (aka Leon Bailey and Joe Rossitter) have more than proven their sound design skills with releases on a range of labels including Innerground, Playaz, Commercial Suicide, Fokuz and Utopia Music, plus gigs at Fabric, Detonate and various venues outside the UK. We invited Leon to bring his portable setup into the studio for a hands-on hoover session with the Access Virus TI. : What made you decide to recreate the iconic ‘hoover’ sound for this tutorial? LB: “DnB has always been about signature rave stabs and bass samples. Who doesn’t love a rumbling Reese or menacing Mentasm over a meaty sound system? A lot of producers sample these sounds, which is great, but we also love to make our own from scratch. Doing things…

It’s a cliché often repeated in production circles: the key to making a great track is selecting suitable sounds at the source, instead of wasting time and processing power trying to make below-par sounds fit the bill. But what constitutes a ‘suitable’ sound, exactly? When making a track-building tutorial like this, we spare you the agony of our ‘behind the scenes’ sound selection process – following us audition 50 kick drums would be a tedious process indeed – but rest assured that we’ve put in the time and effort auditioning many sounds to find suitable matches in the context of other elements. In fact, context is a key word here. A snare may sound impressive in isolation, but it might not work when layered with your chosen breakbeat; in this…

As we’ve mentioned, you don’t actually need to understand a single line of code to make your own plugins. Thanks to something called a visual programming language (or VPL), custom tools can be cobbled together using pre-existing elements. The concept of VPLs closely resembles that of a modular synthesiser, where various modules are patched together with cables. In fact, some of the most popular software modular synths (NI’s Reaktor, for example) are really just visual programming languages dressed up for music, and it’s not uncommon for developers to prototype their ideas in a modular environment. It’s only natural to assume that audio-orientated visual programming languages might take the next step by allowing users to export their creations as plugins, and, indeed, Jeff McClintock’s groundbreaking SynthEdit shareware made this a reality…

InsideInfo As a drum ’n’ bass producer and DJ, Paul InsideInfo’s back catalogue features releases on such lauded labels as Virus, Viper, Metro, Critical, Hospital and Renegade Hardware. In between gigging and twisting up weird noises for his tracks and sample libraries, Paul also produces music for commercial advertising. soundcloud.com/insideinfo This month we’re stepping into dreamland and creating a trippy but beautiful patch that’ll be great for sitting atop a vast soundscape, or even using on its own as a soloed part. I’ve been wanting to use Native Instruments’ Prism in a Designer Sounds tutorial for a while – it’s an unconventional beast of a synth, using modal synthesis to create ringing, bell-like tones. Once you get your head around the non-obvious interface, it’s a sound…

Kit list HARDWARE Apple Mac Pro Apogee Ensemble KRK VXT8 Yamaha NS10 Native Instruments Maschine SOFTWARE Apple Logic Pro 9 & X LennarDigital Sylenth1 reFX Nexus Native Instruments Massive Sonnox Elite bundle Universal Audio UAD plugins iZotope Ozone 6 FabFilter plugins Brainworx bx_XL “Compared with a lot of parents, my mum and dad were pretty easygoing,” says Fedde Le Grand, “but there were three rules that were non-negotiable. One: play sports. That was OK, cos I was into football. Two: learn an instrument. No problem. I was passionate about music and studied the piano for several years. Three: ballroom dancing classes – foxtrot, tango, waltz. [Laughs] I loved it and, yeah, I can still do it. Who knows… maybe I could take my music in a…

MAIN TABS Access the Pitch engine, sequencer Clock, Envelopes, Modulators, Sound engine and General controls TRIGGER SEQUENCER This bar triggers the Arp Envelope and Mod envelopes EDITING CONTROLS Select from a trio of sequence editing tool sets to the right MOTION SEQUENCER Obscurium’s central modulation command hub, defining the sounds and patterns it plays LOOP BARS These two sliders set the ranges of the Motion Sequencer and Step Sequencer independently KEYBOARD Shows both incoming MIDI notes and all notes being triggered by Obscurium’s Pitch engine PRESET MENU Choose from over 400 presets, split across 22 banks, plus a User bank FLEXIBLE PARAMETERS These define which parameters are controlled by the Motion Sequencer, and by how much SHIFT FADER For real-time switching of lane parameter assignments, the Shift Fader action can…

ProDrummer includes over 14,000 MIDI grooves arranged across eight main genres with multiple subgenres, time signatures, styles and part types (fill, verse, chorus, full song and so on). The Grooves browser only works once you have a kit instrument loaded. Grooves can be auditioned in the browser, dragged straight into your DAW, or thrown into the Song Builder. The Song Builder is a one-track arranger somewhat reminiscent of Toontrack’s EZ Drummer 2 Song Creator, allowing you to compile a part from a selection of loaded grooves. Grooves can be topped, tailed, copied and pasted, and playback syncs to the host DAW, but beyond that, there’s no onboard part modification. Both individual sections and the whole song can be exported as a MIDI file, but if you’re using the plugin rather…

Zero-G Cinematic IDM £56 Fusing the glitchy instrumentation of IDM with the programmatic sensibilities of soundtrack composition and production, Cinematic IDM comprises 700 loops, 100 one-shots and 416 sampler instruments. The 400 drum loops present about as wide a range of percussive moods as you could ask for, while the rest are all about ambience, texture and FX – you won’t find a ‘Basses’ folder here. It’s a tightly focused library that succeeds in its genre-splicing mission admirably. We do wish Zero-G used descriptive file names, though, rather than just numbering. www.timespace.com 9/10 Mode Audio Dawn House £16 Mode Audio’s semi construction kit approach – with all the samples in a pack named by project, but not all categories featuring all projects – makes Dawn House seem oddly like less…

KORG LEGACY COLLECTION M1 Containing all the sounds of the M1 and all 19 of Korg’s optional add-on cards, the Legacy Collection M1 provides more than 2700 preset sounds in all. Coming in standalone, VST, AU and RTAS formats, it also adds filter resonance. The effects are ramped up, too, with dual dedicated effects processors available for all eight multitimbral parts. www.korg.com KORG iM1 A different beast to the desktop version, Korg’s iM1 for iPad offers the additional after-market cards as in-app purchases (for a total of over 3300 sounds), but adds a keen KAOSS pad controller in addition to filter resonance and beefed up effects. The touchy-feely interface answers any and all complaints about the original’s lack of physical controls. www.korg.com SONIC CAT LUXONIX RAVITY A conscious attempt to…

Step 1 On your PC or Mac, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk, then either register for a new Vault account, or log in if you already have one. Step 2 Click ‘add a magazine’ in the top bar, select the issue you want to add to your Vault (eg, this issue is 223), and answer a few simple security questions. Step 3 Go to ‘my vault’ to see all your mags – click a cover and use the links to download! You can download as much or as little as you like.…

KIT DISPLAY Information on the currently loaded kit – click it to access Grooove CM’s main menu SAMPLE SELECTION Load up to two samples per Key using drag ‘n’ drop, or the dropdown menus SOUND ENGINE Where the magic happens! Dial in how Grooove CM responds to velocity – see the tutorial opposite for more detail. CLUES Displays control options for whatever’s under the pointer – press a number on your computer keyboard for info on what each does HELP TOOL/SPEAKER Click the ‘?’ icon and hover the mouse pointer over a control to see its tooltip SAMPLE PRE-ADJUSTMENT Basic tweaks made to a sample before it is further processed by Grooove CM’s Sound Engine KEYS Each of the six ‘drums’ in Grooove CM is known as a Key MIXER…

You’re known for emulating classic instruments and effects – what’s the appeal of this old gear, and how do you like to put your own stamp on it and update it? JK “The centrepiece of most of our recreations is faithful emulation of the key components of the originals, which makes the software versions sound authentic and genuine. However, we do our best to always enrich the user interface and processing path with ‘extras’. Adding new parameters and enhancing the interface with components unavailable in the originals moves an ‘idea’ forward in time, making the product fulfil all the expectations and needs of today’s users.” What’s your most popular effect, and what’s the reason for its popularity? JK “Decimort. Undoubtedly. Its popularity is inextricably linked to a few simultaneous occurrences…

It’s a genre that spans every level of modern music, from the top of the commercial charts right through to the deepest, darkest underground venues. It has one foot placed firmly in its past, consistently maintaining its jungle heritage of breakbeat manipulation and bass fetishism, while simultaneously looking to the future by incorporating cutting-edge sound design and mixing techniques that leave most other genres looking primitive in comparison. Make no mistake: drum ’n’ bass is here to stay, and it’s more popular than ever. Packed full of blistering beats, gigantic basses, atmospheric FX and razor-sharp vocals, contemporary DnB tracks are overwhelmingly intricate and impressive, leaving even the most die-hard production heads perplexed. And there’s no wonder – professional DnB producers put in unimaginable hours honing their craft in order to…

01 STARTING POINT Sitting down at a completely blank DAW project page with a view to creating something new, fresh and exciting can be incredibly daunting, so it’s always good to have a starting point, even if you end up in a completely different place. Make a folder and stuff it with samples relevant to the idea you intend to roll with. For a typical DnB track, start with a selection of breakbeats, 100Hz-ish kicks and fat snares; cool percussion loops and hits; drum rolls and weird percussion edits. Then add some more creative sounds from your sample library, full tracks of a similar vibe, and even some pictures or quotes that inspire you. When you feel you have enough fuel to stoke the creative fire, load up your project…

If you’ve watched any of our Producer Masterclass videos featuring DnB artists (Break and DLR being two recent examples), you should be familiar with the importance of drum bus processing – ie, the treatments applied to a single group bus containing a multitude of drum signals. Each individual element of a drum groove may come from a wide variety of disparate sources – for instance, your drums may be comprised of a backbeat from a drum ROMpler, a sampled break rolling behind, and one-shots from sample packs – and while the individual sounds may all work together, there will likely be a lack of cohesion and ‘glue’ amongst the different sounds. The listener must perceive your drums as one single entity – a bit like a real acoustic drum kit…

Unless you’ve been serving time in a lunar penal colony, you’ll be aware that emulating analogue gear is big business. The fact is, computers made music production cheap and easy, yet at one time they left the seasoned engineer cold, lacking the desirable impurities of the analogue signal. That’s no longer the case, as so-called ‘analogue-modelled’ plugins bring that sound to our DAWs. There are many different approaches to modelling analogue gear in software, and developers can spend years tweaking their code to better imitate the effects of sought-after gear, some even modeling the hardware down to a component level. But how is it done? How is the sound of a specific bit of kit turned into software code? To Angus Hewlett, it’s pretty straightforward. “It’s essentially analyse, build, compare,”…

The Copy and Paste buttons at the top right of every one of Sylenth1’s Oscillator, Filter and Amp Envelope sections give you an easy way to copy all the parameters of those sections from one to another, and from Part A to Part B. Simply click the C button of the oscillator, filter or envelope to be copied, then the P button of the one you want to overwrite with the copied settings. The two Mod Envelopes in the modulation section and all Master Effects modules are also equipped with Copy and Paste, incidentally.…

Owen Palmer As an in-demand dance music engineer, Owen’s worked with a slew of outstanding underground artists behind the scenes from his London studio. After years of meticulously studying what makes a great production tick, Owen has promised to share his most advanced and coveted techniques each month exclusively in . Get in touch with Owen about this month’s subject at… cm223@owenthegeek.com I tend to like quite hot showers, but my tactic is to start with the water at a lukewarm level and then to gradually raise the heat until it’s just right. I’ve noticed that I sometimes need to make the tiniest of movements with the dial to find the right temperature – a flinch too far and I have to gently ease it back in the opposite direction…

SIGNAL PATH Select between single and dual parallel signal paths TONECLOUD Click the cloud icon to use Bias FX’s online preset sharing options SIGNAL FLOW VIEW Drag and drop modules to reorder them, and scroll to view the full signal path CONTROL PANEL This area shows the currently selected module for editing, or the effects browser. UPLOAD Upload and share your preset to Tonecloud DUAL PATH Dual signal path includes two amps MIXER The dual path mixer lets you level, pan and delay each of the parallel signals for stereo setups QUICK SNAP For instant snapshot recall, Bias FX has eight Quick Snap locations GLOBAL OPTIONS These include input gate, tuner and overall output EQ ADD FX Click here to open the browser and add more effects You may have…

Enkl is the Swedish word for ‘simple’, and Klevgränd’s new monosynth is exactly that: simple in both name and intent. However, we’re not sure that Enkl should be considered an entry-level instrument, as a number of unusual design choices have been made that might well confuse the novice. It has two oscillators with familiar analogue waveforms (triangle, sawtooth, square, noise) that can be added together, subtracted or multiplied. Adding the oscillators just means mixing them, and multiplying them performs ring modulation, while the subtraction mode essentially means phase-inverting one of the oscillators prior to mixing, most notably resulting in a phasing effect when using similar waveforms. The oscillators can be sent straight to the output or to the filter section. Each oscillator has a dedicated LFO for amplitude or frequency…

SoundBrigade wouldn’t be anywhere near as useful as it is without the Snap/Control switch. This determines whether the plugin reacts pretty much instantly to frequencies that pass the Threshold, or whether the effect ‘snaps’ in – a bit like dialing in a medium attack on a punchy compressor. In Control mode – not to be confused with the Control Mission – frequencies passing the Threshold are tightly clamped into place (although, thankfully, this can be softened using the Action knob). Control mode, then, is ideal for non-transient-heavy material – we had it working wonders on backing vocals, drum overheads and floaty synths. Snap mode, in contrast, seems to clean up rhythmic parts (rhythm guitars, drums, choppy synth lines, etc) without dulling their transients. With the Tame, Control and Master Missions,…

Grooove CM Create movin’, groovin’ drum parts in no time with this brilliant drum instrument in VST, AU and standalone formats, p10 Samples 1GB of drum ’n’ bass sounds in the Loopmasters CM DnB Artist Pack, plus 50 Grooove-compatible kits in our Micro Kits pack. p14 Tutorial videos High-quality videos to guide you through our tutorials. Wherever you see the icon on the left, there’s a video version to watch Tutorial files A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials CM Plugins Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on p16…

Constantly innovating and evolving, drum ’n’ bass is an eclectic style that embraces glitchy minimalism, sudsy pop and everything in between. Staying on top of such a broad, cutting-edge genre can seem a pretty tall order, but the good news is that we’ve teamed up with top soundware publisher Loopmasters to bring you this exclusive pack of state-of-the-art DnB samples, all for free! The CM DnB Artist Pack comes fully loaded with a gigabyte of topnotch loops, drum hits, FX, basses, synths and atmospheres curated from 20 of Loopmasters’ awesome Artist Series sample libraries. You’ll find sounds designed by some of the biggest names on the scene, including Icicle, June Miller, Blu Mar Ten, Kasra and many more. No less than 859 speaker-shaking, royalty-free sounds are yours for the taking,…

VINYL IN YOUR TROLLEY We knew that vinyl had mounted a comeback, but we never expected to see it in Tesco. The supermarket giant recently stocked the vinyl version of Iron Maiden’s new album in some of its larger stores, and other releases may follow. HOLD YOUR HANDS UP The record industry is known for being draconian when it comes to sampling, but EMI Production Music are offering a six-month amnesty to those who’ve previously used their content without permission, writing off retrospective royalties and striking deals for future payments. MERSEY BEATS We had a signature artist synth earlier this year – Novation’s MoroderNova – and now Korg have upped the ante by naming a keyboard after an entire city! The Liverpool is stuffed full of Beatles songs – maybe…

The DnB producer’s DnB producer and Symmetry label boss Break (known to his mum as Charlie Bierman) was keen to create a custom breakbeat for us using XLN Audio Additive Drums 2’s state-of-the-art virtual drumming and some sliced-up “vintage” breaks from the sample repository. We were only too happy to let him... cm: Why did you want to create a break using Addictive Drums 2? CB: “Over the last ten or 15 years of producing, I’ve gone through a lot of the classic breaks, and there are always more breaks to find out there, but it’s that freedom of being able to create your own. It’s not quite the same, but it gives you more control to create that drum kit you’d imagine. I’ve used Addictive Drums for a couple…

Fresh-faced DnB upstart Keeno – aka Will Keen – entered the scene with emotional tracks on Liquid Tones and Med School, so we were – ahem – keen to hook up with the prodigious producer and have him create us a heart-melting orchestral passage. But what is it about strings and things that beguiles the young producer so? : Where does your fascination with orchestral sounds come from? WK: “It started when I was younger. I was a chorister, which immediately exposed me to six hours of classical music a day, more or less! For ten years, I was surrounded in every aspect of it, from singing to piano.” : How did you learn how to compose? WK: “I guess I was taught the tools of how to write music…

In most club-oriented 4/4 genres such as house and techno, the first minute or two of a track is usually regarded as ‘mixing fodder’: a basic drum groove will provide the DJ with a rhythmic blueprint with which to mix, slowly introducing the core musical elements towards the drop. In contrast, drum ’n’ bass producers instead use the intro section to showcase intricate, evolving atmospheres and cinematic textures, luring the listener into an extravagant soundscape that merely hints towards the imminent beats-and-bass barrage that’s just over the horizon. So where’s best to begin when composing a DnB intro? Well, you can synthesise your own pads, FX, strings and textures, of course – and this is great if you’re making a more modern, ‘digital’ style of DnB – but drum ’n’…

DnB's love affair with syncopated breakbeats and ostentatious low end defines the genre. In the latter category, two standout tones can be considered the most widely-used and recognisable: the ‘Reese’ and the ‘808’. We’re going to use both in our tutorial track. Back in 1988, Detroit techno pioneer Kevin Saunderson created a unique, rumbling bass patch, which he incorporated into the track Just Want Another Chance (released under his Reese alias). One of the tracks on the vinyl featured this bass riff in isolation; UK jungle producers Ray Keith and Nookie then sampled this bass note and replayed it on their jungle anthem, Renegade’s Terrorist, which cemented the Reese bass’s place in the DnB hall of fame. While the sample itself is the “true” Reese, the term is nowadays applied…

Want to ensure your latest DnB banger hits hard in all the right places? We asked pro mastering engineer John Paul Braddock of Formation Audio to give us his tips for polishing up your track before you send it to the mastering house. Over to you, JP… ALL ABOUT THAT BASS? “So the song goes... but it’s actually about the bass, middle and treble! Without focus on all aspects, your mix will lack depth, focus and punch; without clear midrange in the kick and bass, they’ll never sound defined or translate on small playback systems such as tablets, radios, soundbars, phones, and so on.” REMEMBER THE STEREO “Mono is really important in dance music delivery, as playback systems are often mono. But don’t just pan your stereo elements hard left…

Steven Slate The head honcho of Slate Digital, Steven also heads up Slate Pro Audio, Slate Media Technology and Yellow Matter Entertainment. Slate Digital’s mix-oriented plugins are some of the most accurate emulations of studio hardware ever conceived – thanks also to the super-human DSP abilities of Slate Digital CTO Fabrice Gabriel – while his sample-based Steven Slate Drums products are used the world over. www.slatedigital.com Angus Hewlett The main man behind FXpansion, Angus Hewlett has been designing world-class plugins for almost as long as the plugin industry has existed. From early classics like VST-Adapter and the DR008 drum machine, to modern marvels such as DCAM Synth Squad, Geist and BFD3, FXpansion plugins never fail to capture the character of the past while always pushing ahead into the future. www.fxpansion.com…

If you’re just making a plugin for your own use, or to put out there as a free download for others to enjoy too, creating a working ‘v1.0’ is pretty much as far as you need to go – but for commercial developers, that’s just the beginning. Running a software business isn’t easy, and developers face all manner of challenges that have very little to do with writing plugins. There’s website maintenance, support and promotion to consider. Urs Heckmann suggests that much of the hassle can be avoided if you do things right early on. “A well-tested and well-designed product needs little support and promotion,” he says. “I think it’s very important to gather a bunch of interested people to check the plugin out as early as possible.” Still, promotion…

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 tonic/dominant relationship is an element of music theory that has been prominent in the evolution of western music for centuries. But what do the terms even mean? In a nutshell, the word ‘tonic’ is the name given to the root – the first chord or note of a scale or key, while ‘dominant’ is the name given to the fifth chord or note of a scale. So we’re talking about the relationship…

Ronan Macdonald Having previously served as Editor of drummer’s bible Rhythm as well as Computer Music, Ronan is clearly the right man for this particular gig. He’s been playing drums for over 30 years and making music with computers since the 90s. While the kick provides the boom and the snare brings the bap, the hi-hats are the glue that binds them together, gives them high-frequency context and makes them groove. A pair of cymbals, usually 13" or 14" in diameter, mounted face to face on a footpedaloperated stand, the hi-hats sit to the left of the snare drum in a right-handed drum kit. By striking the top cymbal with drumsticks and opening and closing them with the pedal, a surprisingly broad array of sounds can be elicited. Very broadly…

EastWest’s new ProDrummer series sees the soundware company venture further into the pop/rock mainstream with a pair of sampled drum kits housed in their own Play engine (VST/AU/AAX/standalone). Its two volumes are available individually or as a bundle, and employ the talents of producer Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, EastWest’s own Doug Rogers, and drummer Steve Sidelnyk for Vol. 1 (approx. 60GB of kits and grooves), and producer Joe Chiccarelli and ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Chamberlain for Vol. 2 (40GB). They’re available via EastWest’s new Composer Cloud subscription service, as well as regular one-off purchase. ProDrummer’s tabbed interface comprises a Player page with interactive drum kit graphic and MIDI pattern sequencer (the Song Builder) at the bottom, a Mixer page and a preset Browser page. The Mixer includes EastWest’s SSL FX Global Suite…

Enkl’s chunky, 2D controls suggest that it was designed with touchscreen control in mind, and there is indeed an iPad version available. Enkl on iPad has the exact same architecture as the desktop model, although obviously it differs in how it’s played and the fact that it interacts with other apps, as well as minor variations in layout. Most obviously, the effects section at the bottom has been tucked away in favour of a touch keyboard, which also works as an X/Y pad. Filter cutoff or modulation can be assigned to the Y axis, and pitchbends are achieved by dragging on the X axis. You can also edit the available scale and note range, and the keyboard outputs MIDI, so it can be used to control other apps and external…