Table of contents for December 2015 in Computer Music

As much as we’d all love to think otherwise, the vast majority of end listeners to your music are not going to be staring slack-jawed at the speakers in awe of your mastery of parallel sidechain routing or dynamic EQ trickery. No, your listeners want to be moved by your music, be it a pounding EDM track, a sweet R&B jam, a monstrous metal juggernaut or a classical workout. Great source sounds, a good frequency balance and solid dynamics are certainly important, and a catchy song goes without saying. But you can have all of that and your track may still seem somehow sterile, cold and – the ultimate diss for those chasing phat and juicy mixdowns – “digital”. Beats don’t groove as one. Sampled instruments sound fake and plastic.…

EASY GUIDE SOLOING WITH MODES Employ these alternative scales over different chords in a progression Read the full article on p74 DESIGNER SOUNDS DELAY-LOOP PADS Get epic atmospheres by stacking multiple software instruments Read Read the the full full article article on on p pxx 76 GEEK TECHNIQUE DEEPER COMPRESSION Owen attempts to get a wild, untamed sound under dynamic control Read the full article on p78 DR BEAT THE TOMS Get them right when programming any beat or virtual drum kit Read Read the the full full article article on on p80 pxx…

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…

Forget centenaries – decimal is so passé. If you’re reading this space, it means that you’re our kind of geek, and you’ll appreciate the hex-citing fact that this is Trackers and Demoscene column number 128 – that’s 0x80 in hex. Appropriately, for this momentous instalment, we bring you big news: the brand new Renoise 3.1 beta, the first update to the program in a year and a half, is here! Among the many notable enhancements is the revamped sound engine, which includes a rewritten filter section, optional band-limited/oversampled playback, and support for sample rates of up to 192kHz. Phrases can now be triggered in both Keymap and Program mode, bringing them into line with the improvements we saw recently in Redux, Renoise’s pluginbased sibling. There’s also now a more powerful…

Our Burning Question in 94 (available in paper-only format in December 2005) was one of music technology’s eternal posers: does all music software sound the same? Our conclusion – that it’s down to you to achieve the sound quality you want to hear – is as valid now as it was back then, but you can still guarantee that, right now, someone on a forum somewhere is arguing that one DAW’s audio engine isn’t as good as another’s. Elsewhere, there was talk of us getting broadband from a “stratospheric balloon” (that one never quite, ahem, ‘took off’), and we reviewed version 6 of FL Studio. We also showed you how to emulate the then super-hot and still pretty popular Access Virus using software synths, and celebrated the “new wave of…

Cockos “While as an average user I am often hesitant to update software, as a developer, I always want to make sure our users have access to the most options. If we find a serious bug, we’re inclined to make a fix available to our user base as soon as possible. We have a very long major version cycle (two to three years), so we can spend a lot of time on the smaller details, and users don’t feel like they’re pushed to upgrade.” – Justin Frankel Beatskillz “Software updates are needed to fix bugs that might occur in a combination of platform, DAW and some hardware configurations. After the first release and beta testing, we still find certain customers with issues; we try to recreate the errors at our…

It’s hard to believe that in the space of most of our lifetimes, a completely unknown new musical technology has gone from science fiction to utter ubiquity, via novelty and controversy – so much so that even those of us old enough to have experienced a time before digital sampling mostly struggle to remember it. As with most technology that we all take for granted, there’s a huge amount of confusion (ie, ‘bollocks spoken’) about what it is, how it works, and why we love or hate it so much. The term ‘sampling’ originally referred to the act of converting real-world analogue waveforms into ‘sampled’ digital snapshots of sonic moments, which could be stored, manipulated and played back. Nowadays, almost all the music we hear, whether on TV, radio, the…

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 Back in 207’s edition of the Easy Guide , I introduced the concept of modes: by playing major scales from starting points other than the root note of the scale – playing A major from B to B instead of A to A, for example – you get access to a world of different musical flavours. Having got the basic gist of this, however, what next? How do you take…

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. Continuing our whistlestop tour of the drum kit – over the last three issues, I’ve covered the hi-hats, snare drum and ride cymbal – we now come to perhaps its most misunderstood element: the tom toms, or toms, as they’re usually abbreviated. The average drum kit will feature two or three toms, although more flamboyant drummers may elect to include many more. There are two types: rack toms and floor toms. By and large, rack toms come in diameters from 8" to 14" and are mounted on a…

INPUT FX Apply audio effects to the audio inputs and MIDI effects to the MIDI inputs FOLDERS Tracks can be easily assigned to a Folder for collective control and a tidier workspace TRACK FX The Track FX button opens a floating window for easier access to track insert effects VCA GROUPING The upper and lower red markers indicate Master and Slave VCA Group status COMPING Audio and MIDI takes can be compiled using multiple lanes on one Track ITEM FX AND ENVELOPES Item clips can be treated to their own automation envelopes ROUTING Indicates which routing functions – Master, Send and Receive – are active ROUTING OPTIONS Route signals between tracks without the need for busses Throughout its ten-year history, Reaper (Rapid Environment for Audio Production, Engineering and Recording) has…

RANDOMIZER Drag on the X/Y pad to morph between four sounds randomised from your current patch BROWSER Includes over 900 new categorised presets TABBED INTERFACE Main functions are split between three panels QUICK PRESETS Store up to eight patches for easy switching, comparison and morphing DUAL LFO The enhanced LFO design includes a sub component SUB LINK The sub oscillators can be unlinked from the Main oscillator parameters TONE Shelving filters for making quick changes to the high-frequency content of the oscillators TRANSMOD The improved modulation matrix now has 16 slots LEAK Blend in the pre-filter signal SCOPE Visual feedback and access to Curve & Euclid modulation sources It’s been almost a year since we got a tantalising taster of FXpansion’s updated Strobe2, and well over five years since the…

Drive is a saturation control, variable from Clean (0) to Driven (10). It influences input and output transformers, and valve stages. Processing is inactive at 0. The Timbre knob dials one of two tone curves into the gain stages: Dark (boosted mids and attenuated highs) and Hifi (boosted lows and highs for a sweetening curve). The Dark curve applies a broad, gentle boost (2 or 3dB at its maximum setting) centred on 350Hz, and a high-frequency shelving cut (-2dB at 15kHz). Hifi’s shelving boost adds up to +2dB at 100Hz and 10kHz. Interestingly, Drive produces different harmonic distortions for each compressor model. At maximum Drive, MkIII has few upper harmonics, while both MkI and MkII have extended upper harmonics. Also, for all models, lower Drive settings introduce second harmonics, gradually…

Slam Dawg (VST/AU/AAX) is the first plugin from Beatskillz, a sub-brand of Beatfactory Academy, the Delhi-based outfit behind the excellent Bollywood Sounds sample libraries. Essentially a self-contained mastering suite, Slam Dawg is billed as a one-stop-shop for club-and radio-ready masters, and promises “great mixes and beats within minutes”. Designed for quick and simple operation, it offers just a single control for each of its seven processes. Mud Out combines low-cut filtering with what sounds (and looks on an analyser) like a bell-shaped 50Hz boost of 12dB – as you raise the dial, it brings up the main sub bass frequencies while cutting off the messy lower ones. It’s a blunt tool, akin to the ‘Mega Bass’ function on an old Sony hi-fi, but well calibrated. We wouldn’t trust it on…

MDrumEnhancer’s EQ is a five-band parametric device with an insane amount of flexibility. Each band can be set to one of 13 curves, including Peak, Band Pass, Notch, High and Low Pass, and set to affect the left or right channel only, if desired. Crucially, each band can be made ‘dynamic’ – the louder the input, the greater the gain change – with various controls used to shape its level-dependent action, including Attack, Release, RMS length, Peak Hold and Threshold. This is supplemented by the Harmonics facility, where the relative harmonics of the centre frequency are also boosted or attenuated by a set amount, from 0% for no change, up to 100%, where the harmonics are gain-changed by the same amount as the fundamental. Up to 16 harmonics can be…

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 224), 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.…

DEEP Engage to push the low end harder into the drive stage POWER Flick this off to bypass the plugin GAIN Crank it up for a more compressed, growling tone EQ Dial in your bass tone with familiar amp-style controls VOLUME Clean level adjustment of the plugin’s overall output MIX Dial this back to blend in the dry signal for a classic DI/amp tone CAB Choose from two simulated speaker cabinet setups Back in 212, we introduced the mighty GrindMachine CM, a behemoth of a guitar amp simulation crafted exclusively for Computer Music by skilled metalworkers Audio Assault. We’ve been thrashing its five roaring amp heads and ten punishing cabinets into oblivion ever since, but even with GrindMachine CM’s towering stacks blasting away at full bore, we still felt that…

cm What are the different stages required in creating a playable orchestral instrument? CH “They’re numerous, copious and nonlinear! I think the key to a successful playable orchestral instrument is in the recording, and the key to a good recording is picking a great player, in a great space, recorded by a good engineer. Possibly equal to this is having an experienced producer who can coax a performance out of the player. “Planning also ensures everything is shot, which then feeds into the post production process. First we mix as you would any normal recording; stem then edit and title; sometimes tune and noise reduce, then we have different teams implementing and testing. The final step is to try and use it in anger, which is where Paul [Thomson, co-director]’s…

With his smart attire and sensible specs, J. Willgoose Esq. isn’t your typical Producer Masterclass house hipster or DnB rudeboy – on the contrary, dear reader! Public Service Broadcasting comprises multi-instrumentalist Willgoose (John for short) and drummer Wrigglesworth, and their unique selling point is the sampled archive materials that accompany their cinematic, anachronistic sounds – news reports, documentaries, public information films and movies are mixed into their indie/ electronic tracks. caught up with John in his South London studio to find out how PSB came into being, and learn the secrets behind their vintage sounds. “I was making a lot of primarily electronic music at home,” begins John. “I was trying to sound like DJ Shadow, and doing some bluegrassy stuff with finger picking, trying to…

If you want to capture the sound of vintage gear, there are no shortage of sample collections available meticulously recorded via many of the classics we’ve listed here, but they don’t allow you to sprinkle your own material with that lo-fi fairy dust. Over the next few pages, we’ll look at ways to simulate the sounds of old machines, but for a number of them, you can go straight for a virtual recreation. One such, 112dB’s Morgana, is a painstaking recreation of Ensoniq’s beloved Mirage, right down to the chips. At times, the recreation can be almost too authentic, particularly when editing, although the virtual faders are more than you got with the original hardware unit! For the sound of an Emulator II, Togu Audio Line…

Launched way back in 2004 and the first of several plugins from the developer of Reason’s Mälstrom synth, Microtonic – also known by the slightly clumsy moniker TONIC – scored 9/10 in 71’s review of v1, then the same again in 163’s review of the current v3. It’s one of a surprisingly rare music software breed: a virtual drum machine, complete with step sequencer, that generates all of its sounds purely using synthesis, without a sample in sight. Each of Microtonic’s eight channels mixes a simple but effective analogue-style oscillator with an equally straightforward noise generator, then processes the resulting sound with distortion and EQ. The workflow is fast and intuitive, and the sonically fabulous drum, percussion and FX sounds it blasts out are perfectly suited to techno, house, hip-hop…

Break Touted as ‘the DnB producer’s DnB producer’, Break has a discography that’s seen him release tracks through the likes of Metalheadz, RAM, Critical and Shogun, as well as his own imprint, Symmetry. His latest album, Simpler Times, has just been released to rave reviews after smashing up festivals and clubs this summer. www.symmetryrecordings.co.uk Pad sounds are very useful in many genres of music, whether they’re acting as a bed for other instruments to sit on or as the main feature of a track. There are many sources that can make an effective pad, from synthesisers, strings and organs, to keyboards, guitars, and so on. One really effective method that I’m going to show you today is using a delay effect to create a smooth bed of interesting harmonic material.…

It’s well over 30 years since Thomas Dolby first charted with the quirk-heavy electro grooves of She Blinded Me with Science and Hyperactive . Although he enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic, Dolby soon lost interest in the ‘music’ business, instead finding himself drawn to the tech revolution in Silicon Valley. Over the next couple of decades, Dolby became a known and respected dotcom name, helping to develop tools and techniques that would eventually lead music production away from the traditional studio and into the box. He admits that it made him a wealthy man – at one point, two thirds of the mobile phones being sold around the world were using a software synth that had been developed by his…

INPUT AND OUTPUT LEVELS With a fixed threshold, the input level is used to set the amount of compression MOVEMENT Subtly works up the bottom end saturation, bringing it forward in the mix BREAKUP Sets the input drive level and hence the saturation of harder low frequencies THD Two levels of harmonic distortion: subtle and heavy ABUSE Further distortion circuitry adds more extreme dirt and grunge at the bottom and crunch at the top PUSH A high-frequency shelving boost on the sidechain signal for reducing harshness ATTACK AND RELEASE Set the envelope characteristics of the compressor SATURATION Drives the input amp to introduce analogue fatness OUT Sets the onward signal level after all EQ gain changes A/UBK/B Three EQ characters: vintage, modern and the more extreme UBK, with continuous controls…

Stealth Limiter (VST/AU/RTAS/AAX/ Standalone) is the latest addition to IK Multimedia’s T-RackS system, available via the T-RackS Custom Shop or direct from IK’s site. It can be used within T-RackS for standalone operation or building self-contained plugin chains within a host but also comes as a regular plugin, which is more convenient for DAW use. The interface is refreshingly straightforward, centring on just two knobs: Input (0dB to +20dB) and Ceiling (0dB to -20dB). The metering is also very simple, with a gain reduction meter flanked by input and output meters indicating both peak and RMS levels. That’s it for metering options, and the meter scale can’t be adjusted, which is sure to raise a few eyebrows. The rest of Stealth Limiter’s settings are laid out across four central panels:…

Proper gain-staging is essential to any good mastering workflow. This is the process by which a relatively quiet signal is carefully and progressively built up in level and perceived loudness as it passes through the processing chain, until the final limiter. Good metering throughout is essential for understanding what each effect in the series is doing, and to avoid overloading the signal and damaging the dynamics and frequency spectrum. But this is Slam Dawg’s greatest failing… All you get are very basic left and right channel output meters and absolutely no input metering. The meters have no dB value display and can’t be switched between peak mode (telling you when your signal is overloading) and RMS (giving essential information about average loudness) – we’d guess they’re RMS, based on their…

ORGANIC MIXDOWNS 20 ways to add life and groove with our expert videos 1 Humanisation using DAW randomisation 2 Improving the realism of programmed piano parts 3 Using articulations via keyswitching 4 Layering guitar string noise samples for realism 5 Using round-robin sampling to avoid repetition 6 Subtle tempo changes to add drive and excitement 7 Extracting the tempo map from an audio recording 8 Avoiding clashes of live and programmed beats 9 Advanced warping tactics for better results 10 Matching mistimed drums when layering 11 The effect of loop length on the overall groove 12 Automatically matching grooves with a groove map 13 Adding life and depth to synths with modulation 14 Virtual ‘re-amping’ with AudioEase Speakerphone 2 15 Re-amping a synth through a real room 16 Vinyl crackle…

JOHN CARPENTER LIVE John Carpenter’s eerie, synthfuelled movie soundtracks are the stuff of music technology legend, so it’s great to hear that he’ll be playing them live for the first time in 2016. His performance will take place at the ATP Iceland festival in July. 3D (AFTER)TOUCH Potentially good news if you’ve upgraded to Apple’s new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus: it looks like developers will be able to use these devices’ ‘3D Touch’ pressure-sensitive displays to enable aftertouch support on onscreen music keyboards. MICROSOFT ‘HEARTS’ BITWIG On the subject of touch, it was great to see Microsoft and Bitwig working together as they launched their new Surface tablet/laptop products and the multitouch-friendly Bitwig Studio 1.3. This looks like it has the potential to be a pretty powerful hardware/software combination.…

As you may have guessed, Velocity can be modified in pretty much the exact same way as timing. Adding a little random variation here can also help your parts to sound more real. We settle on a range of -4 to 4 for Velocity randomisation using Cubase’s MIDI Modifiers, and again, this can be ‘frozen’ to make the changes permanent. With some sampled instruments, there can be a noticeable sonic difference between one velocity layer and the next, so if your velocity randomisation is causing the instrument to awkwardly flit between layers, adjust the randomisation range or the velocities of the source notes to remedy the issue.…

ISSUE 223 November 2015 • Drum & Bass: watch four masters at work; build a track with their sounds • FREE drum instrument • How plugins are made / How to use Sylenth1 • Dirty Vegas masterclass ISSUE 222 Autumn 2015 • Modern Compression: make your mixes more powerful and polished • Agent CM: FREE pluginhosting AU/VST plugin! • Synth FX / Turnado How-to / Will Clarke video ISSUE 221 October 2015 • Instant Inspiration: get tracks finished with our creativity masterclass • Multiband distortion AU/ VST plugin for FREE • 10 Weird Tricks / Serum • How-to / DLR video ISSUE 220 September 2015 • Perfect Pitch: Shift, tune and harmonise like a pro • FREE pitch-correction and harmonising plugin • Studio One 3 / Melody writing /Kontakt tricks…

Few people know more about capturing the sound of a classic sampler than The Professor, tech-bod-in-chief at sample masters Rhythmic Robot. They recently immortalised one of the most iconic sampler sound banks in history – the Emulator II’s Universe of Sounds – as a Kontakt library. Capturing its true sound for a new generation wasn’t a simple matter. “I think the biggest factors are sample depth and the convertors,” explains The Professor. “The ‘old skool’ sound owes a lot to the grainy resolution of early 8-bit and 12-bit machines, which bring a lot of imperfection to the waveform that our ears find curiously attractive. Aliasing noise, for example, sometimes adds a sheen to a sample that makes it sound crisp, while low bit depths seem to make bass tones sound…

While there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to mixing Microtonic’s Oscillator and Noise sources for specific types of drum, there are some rules of thumb. For a kick drum, you’ll likely want mostly Oscillator with a bit of low-pass filtered Noise for cut and dirt. Snare drums use a roughly even mix of the two, with short envelope Decay on both and band-pass filtering on the Noise. Toms are similar in balance to kick drums, but higher pitched and perhaps with more Decay. And finally, hi-hats and claps are mostly if not entirely noise, with high-pass filtering on hats and the Modulated Envelope mode used for claps.…

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… cm224@owenthegeek.com Let’s face it: today’s music is hyper-compressed. But despite a few old farts kicking and screaming against it, I don’t believe the thirst for stylistic over-the-top compression effects will wane any time soon. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as taking dynamic effects ‘too far’. I mean, there’s no inherent limit to the amount of gain reduction or speed of a compressor’s release time that necessarily leads…

Thomas Dolby may have started out as a musician, but he spent the best part of 15 years in Silicon Valley watching the internet revolution rattle around the globe and helping to develop some of the music software that we now take for granted. So, who better to answer the question: where next for computer music technology? “I appreciate you asking me that question, but the answer probably lies with 15, 16 and 17-year-old musicians and producers who haven’t grown up with the same set of rules that I grew up with. There’s a new broom sweeping through the industry, and things are going to be very different in 10 or 15 years’ time. “I’d hazard a guess that those changes will have something to do with the human/computer interface;…

STYLE SELECTOR Select one of eight compression styles here DYNAMICS CONTROLS Pro-C 2’s main parameters plus Knee and Range controls SIDECHAIN SECTION Sidechain parameters and internal/external routing toggle KNEE AND LEVEL Visualises compression settings and input/output signals GLOBAL CONTROLS Includes Oversampling, MIDI Learn and input/output level PATCH MANAGEMENT Patch loading and saving, Undo/Redo, and A/B comparison buttons LEVEL AND LOUDNESS METERING Input, gain reduction and output levels TIME CONTROLS Envelope and lookahead parameters GAIN CONTROLS Wet and dry signal level parameters SIDECHAIN EQ CONTROLLER A three-band EQ on the sidechain input signal FabFilter’s original Pro-C compressor debuted back in 2007, which makes it something of an OAP in plugin terms. Back in 119, we were impressed with its modern design and sidechain routing capabilities, awarding it 10/10. However, dynamics plugins…

Klanghelm is Berlin-based developer Tony Frenzel, and MJUC (AU/VST/AAX/RTAS) is his fourth commercial plugin release, following up the awesomely powerful DC8C (10/10, 196). This time around, tube-based compression is the order of the day, although, once again, MJUC is inspired by various hardware units rather than directly emulating any of them. MJUC features three selectable models that govern its overall workflow and sound: a gentle ‘early’ design (MkI), a more upfront 60s US-inspired design (MkII) and a flexible modern design (MkIII). Each has its own controls and GUI, although they all have those big Compress (threshold) and Make-Up (-12dB to +36dB) knobs. MkI is the most straightforward, with ratio Mode (Comp or Limit) and six Timing constant settings. Reminiscent of the Fairchild 670, these include fast attack and release (option…

You might be wondering why you need Intersample Peak Limiting in your limiter, as surely, if the digital ceiling isn’t exceeded, and the limiting is done in a controlled way using a decent limiter rather than just clipping the signal, your file should both sound right and be good to go. That’s sound logic, but it doesn’t take into account what happens during the digital-to-analogue conversion process. When you factor in the reconstruction filters used to deliver the analogue waveform, the signal can easily exceed 0dB. Typically, it will only exceed zero by a fraction of a decibel, but it can get up to around 3dB. While well-designed D/A converters often compensate for this, the cheaper ones found in mobile devices and computer audio systems don’t always fare so well.…

Marketed as a “modern alternative to drum replacing”, MDrumEnhancer is an effect plugin (VST/AU/AAX) designed to combine the individual tracks of a multitrack drum part with triggered samples, which are resynthesised according to the characteristics of the input signals (the actual process is a secret), in order to, well… enhance them. The triggered sounds can be shaped using dynamics and EQ, with the latter configurable as a dynamic equaliser. The standard MO is to use MDrumEnhancer on an auxiliary channel, as you would a reverb (although there is a wet/dry mix control for direct insertion), and mix it with your drums. You’re always going to need the original sounds, because the processed samples don’t have transients – they’re only intended to improve the body of the sound, not replace the…