Inhaltsverzeichnis für January 2018 in Computer Music

Non-Lethal Applications Snapshot Drag your hardware into the age of total recall – this idea’s so simple that we can’t believe it’s never been done! Total recall of all device settings is one of the most compelling reasons to ditch the hardware studio in favour of the computer-based DAW – an assertion we’ve been making for years. In the days before the DAW, engineers could store and recall patches on some devices, but anything that pre-dated MIDI could only be documented by actual paper patch sheets. Those among us that still harbour a misty-eyed affection for some vintage analogue effect or synthesiser have likewise been forced to document favoured settings for our dusty darlings on paper, with overstuffed three-ring binders our only means of storage. Snapshot puts an end to…

Cost is perhaps the most compelling argument for concocting our own faux vintage sounds. The craze for all things analogue has driven the price of actual vintage synthesisers and effects through the roof – particularly if said hardware has a famous pedigree. For example, recent prices for a working Roland Jupiter-8 have catapulted to over £5,000, while a well-kept EMS VCS 3 could set you back £cm10k. Yet these instruments are actually fairly simple in concept, if not execution. Certainly, part of the latter example’s allure lies in how unpredictable it is – due, ironically to having been built with the cheapest and most readily available components in the first place! As a rule, collectors’ prices do not necessarily reflect the musical ability of these instruments, but rather their increasing…

“There was, believe it or not, a time when it was so unfashionable that owners all but gave them away” The weight of history The tale of Yamaha’s CS-80 is the story of a big, unruly, and thoroughly lovable underdog. Released to a positively lukewarm reception in 1978, it didn’t exactly take the world by storm at the time. In fact, Yamaha only shifted 2000 of them, and there was, believe it or not, a time when it was so unfashionable that owners all but gave them away. And yet today, this behemoth is seen as something of a holy grail among vintage synth aficionados, commanding stratospheric prices on the secondhand market. Those who can afford them will almost certainly find themselves on the receiving end of a steady stream…

FX from reversed synths One of Gaist’s arrangement tricks is reversing sounds to segue between sections. Here, they reverse a techy analogue-style bass from Sylenth1 to create a warping effect. Adam explains the feeling they’re going for: “It just drags you from one section of the track to the next.” Stuart agrees: “We do use [the effect] quite a lot. We use percussion reversed, synths reversed; it’s just an element that helps you progress, and keeps you interested.” Trippy toms with delay and distortion A touch of distorted percussion adds to Mind’s uneasy, oppressive feel. “Adam felt that more percussion was needed to draw you in at the beginning of the track,” Stuart recalls. “In the intro, we’ve got a basic, dry tom – just a simple offbeat piece of…

WINNER Bitwig Bitwig Studio 2 €379 Web www.bitwig.com Format Mac/PC The second full version of the spiritual rival to Ableton Live is an absolute belter, adding a wealth of enhancements and tweaks, and introducing a new modulation architecture that’s sure to be copied by other DAW developers in the future. In a nutshell, the Unified Modulation System appends every Bitwig device and VST plugin with a limitless number of modulation slots, each of which hosts one of 25 modulators, including envelopes, LFOs, a step sequencer, a keytracker, envelope followers and so on. A modulator can be assigned to any number of parameters within the instrument or effect, and either monophonic or polyphonic. The modulators themselves are quite amazing, boasting deep functionality and excellent visual feedback, and the whole setup turns…

WINNER Universal Audio Moog Multimode Filter XL £189 Web www.uaudio.com Format Mac/PC, UAD-2/Apollo Introduced as the main event in the Moog Multimode Filter Collection, MMF XL draws on “various incarnations of Moog designs” – most notably the Sub 37 synth – to improve immensely on its predecessor in every conceivable way. First, the algorithms are ‘eight years better’, resulting in a filter that sounds absolutely phenomenal – high resonance sweeps scream like they really mean it, and the analogue saturation modelling is so warm you can almost feel the heat. Then there’s the addition of Notch and three-pole options, upping the versatility. The envelopes and LFOs are much more capable now, the former offering a choice of targets plus Attack and Release controls, the latter now numbering two for mad…

WINNER Cableguys TimeShaper €39 Web www.cableguys.com Format Mac/PC Running within the ShaperBox “creative effects rack” plugin that now plays host to five of Cableguys’ ‘Shaper’ modules, TimeShaper takes the developers’ proprietary LFO-based architecture and applies it to the modulation of a virtual playhead in the input signal relative to the actual playback position on the host DAW’s timeline, slowing it down and speeding it up, tape- or turntable-style. That’s mad enough, but TimeShaper is also a multiband processor, enabling up to three discrete frequency bands to each be effectively treated with a separate instance of the effect. Flippin’ mental. The LFO editor allows for the design of highly intricate waveshapes from 1/128 to 32 bars in length, by dragging nodes around or drawing stepped progressions. The horizontal position of the…

“I had no idea about the history of the 808 or what it stood for. It made hip-hop drum sounds, and that was all I cared about” “Everyone’s calling this the return of Way Out West, but as far as we were concerned, we never went away. There was a never a point where we said, ‘Right, that’s it! It’s the end!’ Way Out West was always there, always bubbling along. And we just decided it was time to put out an album.” Jody Wisternoff makes it sound like a new Way Out West release is a regular occurrence, but the new album, Tuesday Maybe, is actually the first Way Out West collection since 2009. Back then, Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, Ronan Keating was Number One in the album…

MAIN TOOLBAR Adjust Dry and Wet levels, access presets and more PRE FX INSERTS Process the input signal with up to four effects/plugins BASE DELAY Set the Pattern and Feedback Loop timeline range LOOPS TIMELINE Set the predelay and delay times for two feedback loops LOOP MODULES Each feedback circuit can host yet more effects PATTERN SECTION Sequence up to eight delay taps PATTERN MIXER Balance, pan and process the eight delay taps POST FX INSERTS Load up to four final effects SPREAD Dial the stereo image down from full width to mono DUCKER Duck the wet signal with the input or external sidechain OUTPUT LIMITER A brickwall for keeping the output under control The last year or so has seen a glut of superlative delay plugins hit the market,…

Having set themselves a new benchmark with the stellar Outer Space delay (10/10, cm245), AudioThing’s latest plugin has a lot to live up to. Wave Box (VST/AU/AAX) is a dual waveshaper with a few nifty tricks up its sleeve… In the Box At the heart of Wave Box are its two waveshapers – Curve 1 and Curve 2 – each accessing a library of six waveshapes. These comprise sine, hyperbolic sine and tangent, floor- and ceiling-rounded square waves, and a linear function. The Curve 1 and 2 knobs control the amount of shaping applied – increasing the ‘step resolution’ of the Floor and Round waves, for example, or tilting the linear function towards vertical. The way in which the two shapers are combined depends on whether the plugin is in…

Zero-G Eastern Percussion Module£60 This scripted Kontakt instrument packs over 5000 Middle Eastern percussion round robin multisamples (300MB) into a self-contained playback and mixing instrument. Presented in a mixer-style interface, the main drum channels include darabukas, doholas, bandirs, djembe, sagat and more, each with its own set of articulations, while the ‘Extras’ channel offers a ton of supporting latin and other percussion. Plenty of per-channel effects and an auxiliary reverb are on hand for sound shaping, and a vast and well-organised library of brilliantly performed MIDI patterns can be played back within EPM itself or by dragging clips to a host DAW. Superb! www.timespace.com Loopmasters Freddie Joachim £35 San Diego-based hip-hop producer Freddie Joachim makes his soundware debut with this 1.49GB sample library, which makes up for its modest file…

Plugins Download Vacuum Pro, plus the rest of our 75-strong plugin collection Tutorial Videos See and hear exactly how it’s done with our expert video guides Samples Inspirational track-making fodder, including our handmade CS-80 pack Tutorial Files Follow along in your DAW with WAVs, project files, MIDI clips and more Log in at www.filesilo.co.uk/computermusic Register this issue for instant access to our plugins, samples, videos and files on your desktop computer Free for digital readers, too! Read on your tablet, download on your computer…

You gotta hand it to Ableton for making each iteration of Live really count. The last major update debuted nearly five years ago with Live 9 – and it still rocks hard. But what would a 2018 remix of this ubiquitous music creation and performance package look like? Stop your dreaming! Live 10 is (almost) here. To see it in action right now, head immediately to watch our First Look videos at bit.ly/Live10CM. First, four new Devices bearing the obligatory self-explanatory names. Wavetable is a synth with two morphable oscillators, “wavetables derived from analogue synths”, unique unison modes, filters by Cytomic, and a breakout view for easier editing. Echo promises the sound of classic hardware delays, featuring analogue-modelled filters, “noise and wobble for vintage imperfections” and reverb for “diffuse soundscapes”.…

“I worked with the Isobel Griffiths Orchestra at Air Studios and the LSO at Abbey Road” ABLETON LIVE “I started on Nuendo and Cubase when I was a teenager at the end of the 90s. Then, as I was doing film music, I had to work on Pro Tools. I don’t know why, but I was always very uncomfortable on it. When I started to do live performances with my former electronic band, I had to start right at the beginning again with Ableton Live. I fell in love with it in the same way I fell in love with Cubase; it’s a quick way to realise your ideas without barriers; there’s no limit to your imagination. I also use some VSTs and effects from Live, and they will often…

PAGE AND PARTS Open Smart Controls, switch/mute/evel Parts, and load a preset per Part OSCILLATORS Two analogue-style oscillators live here. Blend oscillators, and dial in Drive and Ring Mod ARPEGGIATOR Turn incoming chords into a monophonic sequence with this section DUAL FILTERS Two resonant multimode filters: one HPF/BPF,and oneLPF AGE, VTA AND SETUP Apply Drift and Dust; level, pan and Shape the output; and set up Glide ENVELOPES Dual filter envelopes, amp envelope and a mod envelope RANDOMISATION Randomise settings, and prevent specific sections from randomisation EFFECTS Chorus/phaser and delay, master width and level settings, plus glide and sync controls GLOBAL Save/oad a global preset, plus Load Locking VOICES Toggle Doubling, Eco mode, and set the number of voices LFOs Get parameters moving with two low-frequency oscillators MOD Set up…

It’s easy to assume that any discussion of vintage synths will be centred around the analogue classics, yet there are a great many early digital synthesisers that have become sought-after for their unique characteristics. While you might think that any digital sound synthesiser would be easy to emulate in software, there are those who will insist that it will never sound like the original. You see, digital synthesisers of the past weren’t actually entirely digital – even something built entirely around digital sound generation and manipulation would require some sort of digital-to-analogue conversion to output the signal. These early D/A converters suffered from poor signal-to-noise ratios at the very least, and often exhibited aliasing and clock noise. Compared to today’s crystal clean softsynths, these guys were downright cantankerous! Furthermore, most…

WINNER Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 £305 Web www.timespace.com Format Mac/PC It’s hard to know where to start with Superior Drummer 3’s enormous list of highlights and killer features, there are so many of them. At the fundamental level – as an acoustic drum kit ROMpler – it’s without equal. Six full drum kits were recorded by engineering demigod George Massenberg in 14 configurations (sticks, brushes, rods, single/double-headed toms, etc), 11.1 surround, and a ton of articulations (27 for each set of hi-hats!), resulting in a drive-busting 230GB of sample data. X-Drums can load external samples; any ‘pad’ can be stacked with multiple sounds, both internally and externally sourced; and the mixer now features a whopping 35 effects modules. And then there’s the Tracker. This potentially game-changing drum replacement system analyses…

WINNER Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol Mk2 £479/559 Web www.native-instruments.com Format Mac/PC Released simultaneously with Maschine Mk3 – the two were designed to be paired up, both visually and functionally – NI’s second-generation MIDI keyboard is a massive upgrade over its predecessor. Built first and foremost as a controller for the Komplete suite of instruments and third-party NKS-enabled plugins via the Komplete Kontrol plugin or standalone host, Mk2 ditches the alpha-numeric monochrome displays of Mk1 in favour of the same dual full-colour LED screens found on Maschines Studio and Mk3, plus their attendant buttons, capacitive knobs and 4D push encoder. This not only makes browsing and loading plugins and presets a much quicker and more logical process then before, but also enables KK2 to be used as a secondary Maschine controller,…

WINNER u-he Repro-1 $120 Web www.u-he.com Format PC/Mac Like every other year since the dawn of the VSTi, 2017 brought with it a slew of spectacular classic synthesiser plugins, but it’s u-he’s component-modelled resurrection of Sequential Circuit’s legendary Pro One we’ve found ourselves firing up more than any. Like the original, Repro-1 is a two-oscillator monosynth, Urs Heckmann and team refusing to pander to modernity with the addition of a polyphonic option. The oscillators feature pulse width modulation and hard sync, and you can dial in either a noise oscillator for bite and fizz, or a feedback circuit for bass boost. Frequency-sculpting is handled by a self-oscillating 24dB/octave low-pass filter, and modulation is brought to bear on it, the amplifier and the oscillators by two ADSR envelopes, an LFO and…

“Approached with realistic expectations, Master Assistant is a solid enough system” INSTANCE NAME The name entered here shows up in Tonal Balance Control IRC LL The Maximizer has a new low latency IRC I mode LEARN THRESHOLD Set the Maximizer to auto targeting MASTER ASSISTANT Ozone 8’s automatic mastering system! LINK Various parameters can be linked for group adjustment VINTAGE TAPE The Vintage Tape module now has a 7.5IPS option STEREO INDEPENDENCE Separate transient and sustain linking SPECTRAL SHAPER Fix harshness with this new module TRACK REFERENCING Load up to ten tracks for A/Bing We don’t know how iZotope manage to keep finding new things to add to their acclaimed software mastering suite Ozone (VST/AU/AAX/RTAS/standalone), but find them they do. Ozone 8 might look like a relatively lightweight update on…

Pitchshifting drums to get them in key with the track around them is often a hairy process. Even the best software pitching algorithms can only shift kicks, snares and toms a short distance in either direction before the transients begin to suffer and the character of the sound changes, becoming increasingly less drum-like the further you go. Waves reckon they have the solution to this particular problem in their latest plugin, Torque (VST/AU/AAX), which, they say, employs their new Organic ReSynthesis technology to facilitate manipulation of the pitch and formants of drum sounds without affecting their transients, duration, resonance and overall timbre. Organic ReSynthesis even gets its own logo on the UI, which suggests that Torque could be the first in a series of some sort. You can Torque Torque…

AAS’ latest effect plugin (VST/AU/AAX) combines a stereo delay with the physical modelling synthesis for which the company are best known. Comprising three individually bypassable signal processing sections, a final Mixer stage and an LFO for modulation, it enables transformation of the input signal or its echoes into tonally disparate sounds via one of four ‘acoustic resonators’. Objeq of desire The first stage in the signal flow is a pair of filters – High and Low Cut – each sweeping from 20Hz to 20kHz and offering a choice of 6dB, 12dB or 24dB/octave rolloff slopes. After that comes the all-important Object section, where the acoustic resonators are brought into play, using complex filtering to make it sound as if the input is being merged with or ‘played through’ a particular…

 Art is, as they say, subjective. Our reaction to art is based on our own experiences and ideas, and each of us perceives the same work of art in our own way. As it turns out, this subjectivity can also apply to our perception of the tools used to make art. Nowhere is this clearer than in how each of us reacts to certain musical instruments and studio equipment. For some producers and engineers, only the cleanest, most transparent gear will do. For those few, the desire is to create or capture the sound with as little interference or colouration as possible. In fact, for many years, this was the stated goal of those that designed studio equipment, including electronic musical instruments – the term ‘straight wire with gain’ was…

Squelchy bass It’s the sound that filled a thousand dancefloors – the screaming, squelchy acidic bass of Roland’s TB-303. Though the original unit costs a small fortune these days, the sound is pretty easy to approximate even without a dedicated emulation. Start by sequencing a square wave in a short loop (the TB-303 also offered a sawtooth waveform, so that’s game, too). Next, add some glide to some of the steps. The 303’s envelope control was limited to a Decay knob that could be tweaked in real time, so keep your envelope simple: fast attack, full sustain. Next, plumb it all through a piercing resonant filter (preferably diode-based), modulated by the same envelope generator as the amp. Add some overdrive and away you go!. Resonant zap Whether you’re a classic…

“A single day can provide a wealth of samples” If you’ve been at this music-making game for any time at all, then you’re likely already aware that there are loads of virtual analogue synths on the market. Hardware options like those from Roland and Novation abound, while software variants cram our plugins folders to bursting. Manufacturers and developers alike tout their own particular methods of achieving the most accurate and authentic analogue sound. Yet there are many for whom an imitation simply won’t do. It’s got to be the real deal or nothing. If you’re lucky, you might have one or two actual vintage analogue synths around – or know somebody who does. If the latter, you may be able to make use of a decent sampler to realise your…

WINNER Exponential Audio R4 €289 Web www.exponentialaudio.com Format Mac/PC The current flagship reverb plugin from ex-Lexicon man Michael Carnes’ Exponential Audio, R4 is a ramped-up sibling to R2, intended to serve as a ‘character’ alternative to the super-transparent Nimbus. It does this by generally adhering to the Nimbus layout and architecture, but adding to it with Chorus and Gate algorithms, and modulation controls for the Early and Tail filter sections. The Chorus has four LFO behaviour modes and separate Rate knobs for independent modulation of the pitch of the tail and the Early and Tail filters, as well as the tail density modulation at the heart of the fabulous new Hall 2 algorithm. The Gate, meanwhile, enables a fine degree of control over the dynamic shape of the tail. There’s…

WINNER Teenage Engineering PO-32 tonic £85 Web teenage.engineering Format Mac/PC Swedish electronic instrument designers Teenage Engineering have made a name for themselves in hipster music circles with their ingenious OP-1 portable synthesiser and the eye-catchingly skeletal Pocket Operator range of budget-priced synths and drum machines. PO-32 tonic, however, marks a departure for them – and the industry as a whole – being a hardware emulation of Sonic Charge’s evergreen software drum machine, Microtonic (9/10, 163). In fact, PO-32 was designed by Magnus Lidström, the brains behind said virtual beatbox. PO-32 features 16 drum, cymbal and percussion sounds, which can be triggered live or sequenced via real-time recording or manual step entry. It’s four-voice polyphonic, with only one sound from each column of the 16-button grid able to play at once,…

WINNER Tracktion Tracktion 6 Web www.tracktion.com Format PC/Mac/Linux With last year’s Freeware of the Year award going to Tracktion 5, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the upgrade of Tracktion Software’s gratis offering to version 6 (to coincide with the launch of their stellar Waveform) sees the wily developers scoop it up once again for 2017. Not even three years old yet and originally priced at $60, this brilliant application being from any financial obligation whatsoever is a huge deal for the thrifty computer musician. Although obviously improved upon by T7, then the excellent Waveform, T6 still stands as a thoroughly comprehensive software studio that provides everything required to produce complete tracks from start to finish. Now undermined to an extent by Waveform’s pop-out mixer and MIDI editor, Tracktion’s big selling point…

“Various parameters differentiate between Lower and Upper, making it possible to program two sounds” MODULATIONS Assign up to 15 mono and polyphonic modulation pairings MASTER GAIN CONTROLS Mix the outputs of PolyM’s four filters WAVESHAPE Select square, saw or both for PolyM’s two oscillators 24dB VCF A globall low-pass filter for Upper, Lower or both EFFECTS Activate PolyM’s effects, edited in the top panel FM/PM Apply frequency or phase modulation to the oscillators POLYPHONIC VCF A software-exclusive per-note multimode filter PULSE WIDTH MODULATION Apply PWM to two keyboard ranges MODE FILTER Apply eight preset ‘brightness’ filters, plus Vox Humana AMP ENVELOPE Shape the oscillators in ADSR or original Legacy mode RESONATORS A triple resonant filterbank for formant shaping KEYBOARD SPLIT Move the slider to set the Upper/ Lower divide Ridiculously…

Sample Magic Klip £100 Web www.samplemagic.com Format PC/Mac, Kontakt 5/Player Pushing Kontakt scripting to its limits in its realisation of an MPC-style virtual groovebox, Klip enables performance triggering and pattern sequencing of samples from an onboard library of over 4000 dance- and electronicaorientated one-shots and loops (you can’t import your own, unfortunately). Samples are loaded into the 16 pads using a genre/type-based menu hierarchy, and tweaked in terms of tuning, start point offset, slice selection within loops, and amp envelope. Setting a Global Key repitches melodic loops (if you so choose), and, of course, the whole instrument syncs to host for use in any DAW. One pad can also be assigned for chromatic play over two octaves, and all of them are processed pre-mixer with their own auto-panner, envelope-controlled resonant…

Though there are a wide variety of DAWs, each with its own unique interface, there are similarities when it comes to loading up and using plugins, and most stick to one of two approaches. The first – as seen in Steinberg’s Cubase, Apple’s Logic, and Cakewalk’s Sonar – involves insert slots on a track or mixer channel. These are used in the same way as an insert effect would be used on a hardware mixer. In other words, the effect is placed ‘in line’ on that mixer or track channel. Plugins might be loaded in by use of a dropdown menu tree or right-clicking in the effects slot. Clicking in the insert or effects slot in some DAWs – Cockos’ Reaper, for instance – will reveal a dedicated browser from…

Roland MC-202 MicroComposer Even the most studied aficionado of analogue esoterica could be forgiven for overlooking Roland’s MC-202. And that’s just what music buyers did upon its release in 1983. A dismal failure at the time, the 202 should have been a runaway hit, slotting in perfectly between the company’s much-loved SH-101 monosynth and the legendary TB-303 Bass Line – and not merely in name, but by design, as well. You see, the MC-202 was something of a mishmash of three of Roland’s 1980s classics. Referred to as a ‘MicroComposer’, it was intended as a successor to Roland’s MC-4 and MC-8 MicroComposers, dedicated sequencers designed to control external hardware. Like those beige boxes, the MC-202 sports CV and gate jacks around back, meant for sequencing your favourite analogue instruments. Yet…