Sommaire pour December 2016 de Computer Music

“Instant inspiration generators…” Although it’s way more hipster to proclaim yourself an ‘all-analogue’ producer and fill your studio with sound-making toys, in-the-box music-making is undoubtedly the most effective way to make (and actually finish) music. Not only can digital software faithfully replicate the sonics of an outboard processor that costs ten times as much, but there are plugins that can boost your creativity far beyond anything a hardware box can do. Yep, I’m on about those instant inspiration generators that morph plain source sounds into sonic gold; those go-to effects you reach for when you need that magic spark to propel your next production forward. Whenever you turn on the radio and have one of those ‘how the hell did they make that sound?’ moments, you know it’s probably down…

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 See this issue’s entire video content on the next pages Tutorial files A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials This digital content has been thoroughly scanned and tested at all stages of production, but as with all new software, we still recommend that you run a virus checker before use. We also recommend that you have an up-to-date backup of your hard drive before using the content. Future cannot accept responsibility for any disruption, damage and/or loss to your data or computer system that may occur while using this magazine’s programs and/or data. Consult your network…

EASY GUIDE THREE-NOTE NINTHS See how to squeeze sevenths and ninths into three notes Read the full article on p76 STUDIO STRATEGIES COMBINING TWO DAWS Ilpo divulges why he thinks it useful to split up your working life Read the full article ad on th p78 ll article on pxx DR BEAT DELAY WITH DRUMS Find out how echoes can inject life and groove into your drum programming Read the full article on p80…

“After we’ve determined an estimated pitch curve for the sample, we use a predictive algorithm to smooth it out” cm What’s your history in music and in programming? What do you do over there at Native Instruments? JH “I’m the Product Designer for NI’s Reaktor Instrument development team. I used to play a few instruments (piano, saxophone…), but most of the time, I play around with synths and sequencers as a hobby. I also learned programming as a hobby, while I was working at my previous job, as a Mechanical Engineer.” cm What was the toughest part of Form to create from a development point of view? JH “Some of the features in Form required us to stretch the limits of what is possible in Reaktor. One feature in particular,…

Sinevibes Fraction cm229 » 8/10 » $69 Fraction produces rhythmical mayhem by slicing, repeating and effecting audio on the fly. It offers eight audio slicers, 15 effects, four parameter animation generators, and plenty more. It’s Mac AU-only, though. www.sinevib.es Xfer Records LFOTool cm166 » 9/10 » $59 This super-popular tool coded by Serum creator Steve Duda gives you custom LFO shapes to control volume, filter and panning, for everything from sidechain-style pumping and trance gating to autopanning and filter wobbles. www.xferrecords.com Audio Damage Bitcom cm191 » 7/10 » $39 An uncompromising sequencer-powered plugin that will crush your bits in the most brutal ways imaginable. For each step, you can toggle any of the 8 bits on or off, set a random selection, and hear the dry signal or built-in synth.…

FabFilter Timeless 2 cm142 » 10/10 » £94 At first glance it’s a straight-up tape-style delay, but with FabFilter’s powerful modulation system onboard, this evocative echo machine becomes so much more. It also features a Stretch mode, for smoothly adjusting delay time without changing pitch. www.fabfilter.com UVI Relayer cm222 » 9/10 » €129 A supremely well-designed plugin, this one lets you dial in timing, level, pan and two effects for each of 32 delay taps. UVI aren’t far wrong when they say its “possibly the last delay you’ll ever need”. www.uvi.net PSP Audioware stompDelay cm232 » 10/10 » $83 Have you tried the amazing cmDelay that’s free with this magazine? You should! Its big brother, stompDelay, is even more insane, packed with exciting extra features. Click the PSP header in…

Effects are highly addictive, and just one is rarely enough. Guitarists found this out pretty quick when stompbox effects became widespread in the 60s and 70s. A few manufacturers attempted to indulge the axeman’s appetite with mega-pedals housing multiple effects (see Ibanez’s epic PUE-5 Tube for a prime example – this hulking beast even featured a real 12AX7 valve!). Multieffects really took off during the 80s digital revolution. Now, just a handful of onboard DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chips could produce a wide array of effects. For example, there might be a total of 20 effects to choose from, and you’d be able to run, say, 4 at a time. This approach kept costs down and allowed manufacturers and producers alike to explore the exciting new possibilities of digital processing.…

“Whenever the clients went home, I’d switch the gear back on and work through the night” Master of the universe Scoring documentaries for beloved figures like Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking would be a dream job for any composer, but that’s just the tip of iceberg when it comes to Sheridan Tongue’s CV: he’s also composed for BBC dramas such as Silent Witness , DCI Banks , Hotel Babylon and a whole slew of other projects. We visited Sheridan in his stunning Cambridgeshire studio to find out more about making music for national institutions, and to take a sneak peek at his latest endeavour, a very personal album under his IN-IS pseudonym. So, how did Sheridan manage to get himself…

So you want to craft those colossal, mix-dominating synth sounds heard in electro and progressive house, played on big room dancefloors by the likes of Afrojack, Hardwell, or Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike? You know the kind we mean - those huge synth riffs that jump out of your speakers; or when you wear headphones, they make it seem as if the space between your ears houses a whole galaxy of glorious sound. Synth riffs so bright and deep that you instinctively scan the vicinity for natural disasters. While some may have dismissed the big room phenomenon as being sonically homogenous and melodically simplistic compared to other dance genres, they may have missed the point of fun and powerful party music (the clue is in the…

Revolutions in music don’t come along very often, but when they do, they change the way we listen to and make music forever. The guitar amp was originally devised for one reason: loudness. With all the extra decibels the amp afforded them, guitarists were able to take centre-stage, and the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history… but in many ways, times have moved on. The guitar amp is still alive and well, of course, but thanks to digital technology, guitarists now have the ability to load up a legendary rig right inside their DAW. And they’re not the only ones who benefit – virtual amp emulations are there to be used and abused by musicians and producers working in any genre. The playing field is wide open, and anybody can…

With so many effects crammed into your virtual guitar rig, you can pretty much process anything… but remember, at the core of an amp sim is its excellent distortion engine, modelled on a selection of colourful valve preamps coupled with tone shaping cabinets. First up, try adding some retro colour to individual drum sample hits, including snares, kicks and hats. For a more hi-fi sound, bypass the cabinet and tweak the amp drive and tone controls, then, for the full on lo-fi effect, you can switch in the cabinet. The same technique is also works well on acoustic drum kits, and is particularly good for dirtying up room mics. Next up, vocals often benefit from some extra saturation. Try blending in just a little from a clean but slightly driven…

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. Although delay might not immediately spring to mind as a music production tool of particular relevance to drums, by eliciting controlled echoes from individual parts of the kit (the snare or hi-hats, for example), a wide range of sonic improvements and effects can be cooked up, from pseudo-reverbs to rhythmic spot FX and more. In this tutorial, I’ll take a very simple drum part and turn it into something rather more exciting through the application of a variety of delay treatments. I’ll be using Native Instruments’ Battery 4…

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 7 Solid. Well worth considering 8 Very good. A well-conceived 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! See and hear the latest software in action in our ‘2 Minutes With…’ videos! Wherever you see the icon, head straight to your DVD, the Vault download area, or our YouTube…

Unfiltered Audio’s Sandman seriously impressed us in cm217’s review, scoring 9/10 for its playful combination of delay and looper functionality. The follow-up, Sandman Pro (VST/AU/AAX), ups its games in both areas. The first change is to the architecture of the delay line. Six new modes have been added to the original, which is now called ‘Classic Tape’ and comes with Saturate, Wow and Slew knobs. The other modes have their own control sets, offering up a rich variety of echo-related shenanigans, from granular pitchshifting and reverse delays, to ‘instant’ delay time changes and a 16-tap multi-tap. The sixth mode, No Echo, feeds the input directly to the Sleep Buffer for delay-free stutter effects. The left and right delay times can be unlinked, too, in Independent (separate Delay Time knobs for…

The Harmonic Contour Filter establishes and affects the harmonic relationship between the input signal and synthesised tail, bringing the two together seamlessly. In Track mode, the input signal is taken as the harmonic/pitching source, and the all-important bipolar Harmonic Filtering control progressively attenuates similar or dissimilar elements in the reverb tail. With the similar components removed, very strange, dissonant effects arise, while knocking out the dissimilar stuff can keep the tail constantly tied to the input pitch, rather than clashing with it when it ‘overhangs’ through key changes. In Keyboard mode, the reverb is ‘snapped’ to a user-defined key or chord, either by filtering out harmonics outside that key or quantising all of them to its harmonic series, the latter being the bigger, denser option. The Breathiness slider adds random…

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 237), 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.…

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO… CREATIVE Get more from your go-to effects, and check out our insane audio examples! Read the full article on p22 MERCURIALL U530 CM It’s yours for free – now see and hear what this blazing virtual amp can do in our expert videos Read the full article on p54 SHERIDAN TONGUE The pro soundtracker breaks down his own sonic creation in this exclusive in-studio video masterclass Read the full article on p46 BIG ROOM SYNTHS Owen Palmer shows us how to craft bold, brash sounds perfect for the main stage Read the full article on p59 VIRTUAL GUITAR AMPS Get to grips with the guitarist’s essential effect, and discover how to use them in productions of any genre Read the full article…

LINKED UP First Ableton Link was just for Live and iOS apps, but now the syncing technology has gone open-source and is being supported in Reason, Serato DJ and a beta of the new version of NI’s Traktor. It looks like it’s becoming a proper industry standard. I’M NOT ONLY SLEEPING Four lucky Airbnb-ers spent the night in a very special location in October, as, for one night only, Abbey Road’s Studio 3 was turned into a bedroom. The night was hosted by Mark Ronson, though we’re not sure whether he slept over or not. Let’s hope not. WE ONLY LIKE THE EARLY STUFF… Academics in New Zealand have restored what are said to be the first pieces of computer-generated music, made on Alan Turing’s computer in cm195cm1. We wonder…

Glitch plugins work by sampling audio input on the fly, then chopping it into tiny chunks known as grains. These grains are then repeated, rearranged and subjected to further processing to create everything from simple stutters and beat-doubling effects to insane digital meltdowns. All of the effects sequencers we just covered can glitch up your audio in this way. There are also a number of classic glitch plugins available via freeware legends Smartelectronix, such as DestroyFX’s Buffer Override and MDSP’s LiveCut. Native Instruments’ The Finger packs in 40+ effects to be triggered via your keyboard, including granular effects, looping, reverse, and so on. Perhaps the Rolls Royce of flashy granular stuttering effects, though, is Stutter Edit, designed by electronica legend BT in collaboration with plugin magnates iZotope – see our…

Not just a mix tool, reverb can truly uplift and inspire, as anyone who’s played a musical instrument inside a great acoustic space will attest. Reverb plugins can have the same inspirational quality, but since they’re not bound by the laws of physics, they’re actually superior in some ways. Traditional spring, plate, room and hall reverbs are a fine starting point, but push decay times and other parameters to extremes to embolden their character. Render them then repitch, reverse, or further mess with the output. Convolution reverbs have huge creative scope. Their impulse responses are samples of a reverb tail recorded in a real space (or from a reverb unit). But since they’re just samples, you can process the impulse response WAVs (back them up first!) to create bizarre processed…

“The classic, and most convenient, way of using creative effects is to place them on an FX send/return” The benefits of the bus As with most things in music production, there’s a number of different ways to use effects or processing in your own tracks, with the simplest of those being to place them directly on the required channel as an insert. While this is typically the best way to use effects such as EQ or dynamics processing, it can be a pain when it comes to using things such as delay, reverb or chorus. The classic and most convenient way of using these sorts of creative effects is to instead place them on an FX send/return path that ‘taps off’ an input signal from one channel before outputting an…

Apple Logic Stereo Delay “I love the simplicity of this delay; it just always works well. I usually have a difference in time delay on the left and right channels – it’s really good for adding movement and a feeling of energy to parts.” www.apple.com Audioease Altiverb 7 “This is currently my favourite reverb. The concert hall presets are fantastic – one of my favourites is Scoring Stage Todd-AO. It’s also great for smaller, harder spaces like Brightened Chapel.” www.audioease.com Universal Audio (UAD) 1176SE “I used to use the original Urei all the time when mixing in studios. This emulation is very good – great for smoothing out live solo instruments, or even synth parts that are all over the place dynamically. It has a very transparent sound, and it’s…

Showtek, We Like To Party An obnoxiously catchy riff. Under the bonnet it’s clearly classic virtual analogue synthesis, sawtooth-based, with a dollop of distortion. The appeal of the riff pattern itself has a lot to do with its rhythmic interplay with the big kick drum, which is then accentuated by a sidechaincompression-like effect. bit.ly/ShoWLTP Dmitri Vegas & Like Mike, The Hum After the breakdown parodies the humming ritual from The Wolf Of Wall Street, we’re treated to a hard, on-beat riff. Notice the insanely wide synth part and the aggressive use of distortion on some layers. The slightly nasal quality of the lead points towards multiband distortion. bit.ly/DVLMthehum Swedish House Mafia, Don’t You Worry Child The anthemic farewell song from Sweden’s progressive house super group may be mellow, but it’s…

Playing live through a virtual guitar amp plugin will introduce round-trip latency (the delay between when you play and when you hear what you play). The size of this latency will depend on two things: your audio interface, and the audio buffer size you’ve selected. Getting the buffer down to 128 samples or below can result in a total time delay of 13ms or less, which is tolerable. Even so, buffers of this size can be sonically unreliable, especially if you’re recording into a CPU-heavy DAW project. In practice, there are a few options that can make things simpler. First, freeze or bounce any CPU-sapping tracks, as this will help achieve reliable performance at this small buffer size. Next, temporarily bypass any mastering plugins or plugins that use lookahead, as…

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 When writing chord progressions, basic three-note triads can only get you so far, and if you stick religiously to the confines of this one type of chord shape, it’s not long before the number of available choices of chords becomes quite limiting. It’s at this point that the technique of using different voicings – in other words, playing the notes of a chord in a different order, or shape on the keyboard –…

Miami’s connection with dance music goes back a long way. For over 30 years, the gaudily glamorous city has been welcoming DJs, producers, promoters and labels to the annual Winter Music Conference, spawning equally important industry gettogethers like The Producer’s Forum and the Ultra Music Festival. But many would argue that Miami’s geographical and cultural association with Cuba injected rhythm into the city’s bloodstream way before the WMC – two or three hundred years ago! Take an evening stroll downtown and you’ll hear it: the patter of rhythm and sultry melodies that provides Miami’s constant soundtrack. It’s no surprise, then, that Miami-born-and-raised Matt Van Toth and Julio Mejia – aka GTA, which stands for Good Times Ahead, just in case you’re reading this while sat at your Xbox – ended…

“Spectrasonics endeavoured to capture all the noise, imperfection and quirks of the originals” INSTRUMENT CATEGORIES Keyscape’s 36 instruments are compiled in ten folders UTILITY AND SYSTEM Adjust round-robin playback, streaming behaviour and more KEYBOARD GRAPHIC Feast your eyes on the instrument behind the current preset INFO Read all about the loaded instrument in this tab INSTRUMENTS AND PRESETS Over 500 presets shared between 36 single instruments and numerous Duo combinations MAIN TAB Houses more effects, and Keyscape’s Performance controls CUSTOM CONTROLS Every preset has its own rack of effects, laid out in one or two tabs SETTINGS Triggering, voicing, scale-snapping and velocity mapping options Well, who knew? In parallel with building one of the most powerful synthesisers of all time, Omnisphere 2 ( 220, 10/10), Spectrasonics have also filled the…

PRESETS With over 1000 presets in its locker, Icarus is ready to go OSCILLATORS Three ridiculously versatile wavetable oscillators, with sample resynthesis FILTER Icarus’ two filters access a broad range of responses types FX 53 effects (in three insert slots) cover all sound-polishing bases ENVELOPES Four AHDSR envelopes with Shape control ARPEGGIATOR Generate melodies from chords and more with the arp MODULATION MATRIX Assign up to 18 modulation sources to an extensive list of targets LFOs Three regular LFOs and the fully editable Step LFO EQ AND LIMITER Final-stage frequency and dynamics processing Tone2 describe their new plugin instrument (VST/AU) as a “3D wavetable synthesizer”, by which they mean it’s a wavetable synth with the ability to morph said wavetables in various ways. And that’s by no means the extent…

Hit the Sleep button and Sandman Pro’s delay buffer is frozen and looped, freeing you up to get creative with the plugin’s other parameters and some dedicated controls. Exclusive to the Sleep Buffer in Pro are buttons for Reverse (a one-touch alternative to inverting the Start and End points), Smooth (similar to Sandman’s Remove Clicks button but with different operation) and Sleep Filter. Perhaps the coolest new Sleep Buffer feature, though, is the waveform display. When not in Sleep mode, this simply shows the input signal; in Sleep mode, though, it visualises the left and right channel buffer contents and the ‘playhead’ position within them in real time, so that modulating the delay times, for example, causes the waveforms to stretch and compress. It’s an awesome graphical aid, although it…

TUBE AMP U530 CM This tasty tube amp simulation from Mercuriall is yours for free – find out how to dial in killer guitar tones on p54 Sample packs DUB DESIGNER 500 authentic dub samples for those classic Jamaican vibes – delay tails, tripped-out FX and more, p106 LOOPMASTERS SAMPLES A 500MB compendium gathered from some of the label’s best new packs – find out more on p107 ACOUSTIC COLLECTION A bonus 2GB selection of acoustic guitars, banjos, organs, mandolins, kalimbas, drums and more, p106 CM Plugins Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on pcm108…

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 t more content. For more info, see our Vault FAQ: bit.ly/cmvaultfaq * Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault – see page 47 for viewing instructions. * Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault. See p47 for viewing instructions, or watch on Apple Newsstand via…

“A new version of Schism Tracker is available, with UI improvements and hot-key additions” The annual(ish) update to the SNDH archive (v4.6) adds 345 Atari ST chip music tracks. SNDH is a file container devised in an attempt to consolidate the myriad playback routines for decades of ST chip music into one format for modern players. A lot of work has gone into preparing the current total of 9,893 tunes into SNDH files, and you can grab them all for free at sndh.atari.org along with links to players for Windows, macOS and legacy systems. Next up, a new version of Schism Tracker is available, with UI improvements and hot-key additions. Schism Tracker (Win/Linux, schismtracker.org) is an open-source ode to Impulse Tracker, for which there exists a rich back-catalogue of superb…

“We reported that Google had taken a punt on YouTube” Sometimes, we look back at an old issue – 107, in this case – and come across a product that we’d completely forgotten about. Take TC Electronic’s Konnekt 24: this was an audio interface with built-in DSP-powered effects from the company’s PowerCore platform. Sort of like a cheaper version of UAD, though its omission from our memory suggests that it probably wasn’t quite as successful. The reviews section also contained a Rain mini PC that looked like a scanner (we didn’t see that design ‘copied’ too much…) while our growing obsession with phone-based music making saw us PhotoShop an Ableton Live splash screen onto a mobile. We’re not quite sure why, but it’s still about as close as it’s ever…

Fanu “Technology is there to offer us quicker solutions to problems and tasks. You ride a bike to the grocery store instead of walking, or write a text message instead of a real letter – that doesn’t dumb it down, it makes it faster and more convenient for you. “Mixing assistant tools give you help and suggestions, but it’s still up to you to decide if you want to keep those suggestions and control their intensity. An engineer will always be the last link in the quality control chain anyway, and it will always be up to you to be responsible for what goes out and what doesn’t.” iZotope “In short, no. The art of mixing is deep, nuanced, and requires an aesthetic determination that could differ entirely between different…

Effects sequencers You must’ve heard those ear-catching dance edits and fills where a key sound – or even the full mix! – quickly flips through a series of rapid and dramatic transformations. Slices of audio repeat, stutter and change in pitch… filter sweeps suddenly come out of nowhere… lo-fi bitcrushing bursts in and out… and snatches of flanging, phasing, delay and reverb pepper the whole lot. Only one of these effects might be applied at a time, but by quickly switching between them, a dizzying, flavoursome transition or catchy loop can be created from the plainest source material. And because the underlying source material is your song, it’s easy to create musically fitting results. The effect is most often glitchy and overt, but it can also be used more subtly…

Step by step 5. Sinister pitchshifted echoes with Crystallizer 1 Soundtoys Crystallizer can perform real pitchshifted echoes – get the demo at soundtoys.com. Load the WAVs beginning “Dark…” in a 90bpm project, loop them, then put D16 Group’s Frontier on the master bus and Crystallizer on the Piano track. We’re going to add serious weirdness to this horror-inspired groove. 2 Check out the default settings: It’s a synced eighth-note delay with a bit of feedback (Recycle) and the Reverse switch enabled. Set Pitch to 200 Cents for echoes that rise by two semitones each repeat, which, if you’re into music theory, gives us the whole tone scale. Increase Recycle to 4 o’clock to lengthen the decay. 3 Now try 100 cents for a rising chromatic scale, 300 for a diminished…

Step by step 11. An abstract alien beatscape with Molekular 1 Native Instruments’ Molekular is not your average multieffect – it’s packed with spectral gizmos, granular gadgets, and other freaky sound-transforming modules. Load up NoiseBeat.wav in a 60bpm project. Molekular is a Reaktor ensemble, so add Reaktor 6 FX to the NoiseBeat track and use the the Browser to locate Molekular.ens. Drag it onto the main Reaktor workspace. 2 The default patch sounds awesome, but we’d like to design our own from scratch. Click the patch name at the very top of the display and select 6: Single DSP » 6: 1 - INIT - Molekular. The four empty slots at the bottom are where we’ll load the effects modules. Click the first one’s down arrow to see the available…

As well as making it easier to make effects fit in the mix, using one or more effects on an FX send/return can open lots of sound design possibilities. One simple example is putting a pitchshifting plugin before a delay to pitch the incoming signal up by an octave; this’ll give the delay a high pitched sound that’ll instantly stand out compared to the original sound – great for making easy-yet-interesting vocal edits. Another great use of sends and returns is for dub mixing; expert dub mixers such as Lee Scratch Perry and Adrian Westwood can play their mixing board like an instrument, using a variety of send effects to create classic dub effects such as feedback loops. We can mimic this effect in a DAW by routing a signal…

01 SIDECHAIN EVERYTHING Big room artists routinely use sidechain compression on most – if not every – channel in a production. The first reason to do this is to establish the kick drum as the centre of groove in a track. With compressors on all of your synths triggered by the kick, it’s almost as if your synths bow down every time the kick sounds. For fine control over the release shape, many find this easier to achieve using a dedicated plugin such as Xfer Records’ LFOTool or Vengeance Sound’s VPS Multiband Sidechain, rather than using an actual compressor set up with a sidechain configuration. Another reason to use extensive sidechain compression is to make more room in the mix so that, for example, reverbs only reach their full power…

Studio Devil Amp Modeler Pro cm1 48 » 8/cm10 » $cm149 This simple package features no manufacturer-endorsed amps or fancy graphics, but the sound is excellent and there’s a selection of tone-tweaking controls and rack processing including chorus, tremolo, reverb, gate and wah-wah. www.studiodevil.com IK Multimedia AmpliTube 4 cm226 » 10/10 » €180 One of the most established packages available, with a vast array of endorsed amps, pedals and cabs complementing home-grown modules. Flexible routing, twin rigs and speaker cone selection give it plenty of sonic flexibility. www.ikmultimedia.com Positive Grid Bias Series 223 » 9/cm10 (Bias FX) » $99 There are multiple elements to BIAS: Bias Amp simulates amp and cab units, while Bias FX lets you build complex chains of stomboxes, amps and cabs. Bias Pedal, meanwhile, lets you…

“The quality of my mixdowns improved and they came together much quicker” Ilpo Kärkkäinen Ilpo – aka Resound – is a veteran drum ’n’ bass producer who’s worked with many of the scene’s biggest labels. As well as being an in-demand game soundtrack artist and mixing and mastering engineer, he runs a popular production blog focused on productivity. After 20 years in the game, Ilpo still has a passion for pushing the boundaries of production. www.resoundsound.com The debate on which DAW is best has been raging for as long as music-making software has existed. I’ve worked with a lot of DAWs since I first started out in the mid 90s, and we’ve definitely come a long way! At this point in time, it’s safe to say that all of the…

“We like to focus on building one sampled kick and making it sound as perfect as possible. The starting point is usually a short,punchy kick; depending on the sample, a short decay and a sustain at about half can really accent that punch. Add a bit of compression (we like to use The Glue) to really make sure that punch is hitting you right in the face, then layer it on top of an 808. “We always use different sidechain methods, depending what the track calls for. If there’s a bassline in the song, we’ll use a small hi-hat sample to follow the pattern of the kick – that’s the trigger for the sidechain. But sometimes we also play with the attack on the 808 envelope to get the same…

Never ones to take the well trodden path, Zynaptiq’s new reverb plugin is billed as a “harmonic tracking resynthesis reverb” that generates reflectionless ambiences “without obscuring the source”. In practical terms, that means that Adaptiverb synthesises a reverb tail based on the specific tonal content of the input signal, using artificial intelligence techniques, rather than simply building it on delays or sampled impulse responses, then conforms it to the input’s tonality or even a user-defined scale. The AI element is the Bionic Sustain Synthesiser, a machine-learning algorithm that synthesises a reverb tail based on analysis of the input signal minus transients and other ‘noise’, which are discarded as part of the process. This synthesis involves under-the-hood oscillators, interconnected and trained like a neural network, the number and frequency quantising of…