Table of contents for Autumn 2022 in Computer Music

Since she began producing music at LIPA while studying for a degree, Amy Elle made a firm promise to herself to make music that transcends any particular scene: when you’ve been exposed to a whole array of styles growing up, why pick just one? Now she’s becoming almost as well known for her incendiary house productions as her DJ appearances that have taken her across the globe playing venues as far as the States and iconic festivals like Amnesia and Tomorrowland. Most recently she’s played BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend, with the radio station adding their support to a growing number of other outlets tipping AmyElle to be one of the dance stars of 2022. 1 How did you start out in music production in the first place? AmyElle: “I’ve…

bargain beats In just the same way that you would rarely compose or produce a rock track without the right type of electric guitar sound, the same can be said for the myriad of different drum sounds that we have available to us, thanks to the extraordinary age of access to samples and drum software. To amplify this further, there are so many genres and subcategories of commercial music, meaning the right choice for your drum sounds could make the difference between commercial hit, or designation to the download bargain bins. Finding your sound One of the most extraordinary factors when it comes to drum sound selection and choice is how in vogue certain sounds can be. In much the same way that fashions and tastes repeat every few years,…

Witech TheDrumSource PC Armed with an onboard sequencer which adopts a similar styling to most drum machines, TheDrumSource is a sample-driven plugin which allows the user to import their own samples. It comes packed with plenty of samples to get going, and provides Sync Mode for running in tempo with your DAW. witech.se Junn JM-1 PC Styled after the legendary Linn Drum, JM-1 provides all of the classic sounds of the original, complete with a beautiful interface for controlling volume and planning. There is no onboard sequencer, with the plugin designed to act as a sound source only. freevstplugins.net SampleScience Vintage Drum Elements Mac/PC While not strictly free (it’s $1) this plugin is designed as an emulation of the Yamaha RX-5, which was an excellent machine from the late 80s…

> Step by step 4. Channel The Weeknd with a LinnDrum pattern 1 We’ll use our DAW for programming here. Begin by setting up your DAW with four tracks, for kick, snare, hi-hat and claps. Ideally, use LinnDrum samples, either from your DAW library or a third-party source. We are using the UVI BeatBox Anthology 2, and have selected the L Drum set from the default library. 2 The tempo for this track is pretty quick and driving, so move your metronome/tempo to a speed of 170bpm. If you are using a drum plugin to act as your sound source, be sure to switch off any Sync element within the plugin. 3 Beginning with the kick track, we’ll work in a two-bar loop or cycle. Enter notes on the first…

We have a beats theme this month, so as well as our huge Bargain Beats feature from p18, we’re looking at tuning your drums here. The kick and snare drums in a track are typically the most dynamic sounds in the mix, and not only define the rhythm of the piece but also provide its fundamental frequency and weight. Along with the bassline, they’re the most important sounds in the mix by far, and are usually the base for everything else in the song. This makes getting them right from the very start extremely important – do a sub-par job here and you’ll waste a huge amount of time making tweaks and adjustments to solve problems that could have been avoided. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to select,…

Composers and producers are always on the prowl for new and exciting sounds. As any media composer will tell you, there can be plenty to inspire from a library packed with timbre from another realm. Dame Evelyn goes to Air The recording location for Spitfire’s latest library, sees a return to Air studios. This time however, they have enlisted help from Dame Evelyn Glennie, who is one of the greatest percussionists of our time. But this is not just another percussion library. Resonate consists of four percussion instruments, some of which aren’t immediately identifiable as such, and all played in less than conventional ways, with a number of different articulations and enhancements. The four main instruments on offer are Barrel, Timpani, Water Tank and Thundersheet. While there is a small…

Techivation are fledgling developers that have already released a couple of powerful yet simple pay-for plugins (T-Compressor and T-De-Esser Pro) as well as a couple of simpler yet perfectly capable freebies (T-De-Esser and T-De-Esser Plus). For their third outing they’ve turned their attention to sorting out your mid range and the plugin in question is the suitably titled T-Clarity (VST, VST3, AU & AAX). In keeping with their other plugins, this features a pretty simple interface, with frequency range selectors (Low, Lo-Mid, Mid, Hi-Mid), attack rate (Sharpness), gain reduction ratio (Intensity), threshold (Processing) and output level slider (Output). Metering includes an output Level meter and gain reduction metering on the right, while the filter band specific input level is indicated by a halo around the Processing control. To help you…

Cyclick Drum Machines It’s a drum machine theme and Cyclick Samples beat us to it with our first pack of new samples. Rob tells us more… “This sample pack has six kits of modelled analogue, synth-generated drum sounds. The seven components per kit have been hand/trackpad-carved from VA synths: the Modular, Synthi, SEM and ARP 2600 from the Arturia V Collection and the GForce OB-E. These were levelled and processed with an EQ, compressor and transient shaper. Each drum machine was sent to a pair of group buses for further compression, EQ, reverb, saturation, plus an exciter and limiter. The resulting loops are spread across seven tempos and each kit contributes a main beat and an alt mix through the second bus per tempo. “The six drum kits are available…

news Cherry Audio’s Miniverse (formerly Minimode) is a fantastic recreation of the 1971 synth they can’t mention (Minimoog). And we loved it, giving it a full 10/10 a couple of issues back. It’s quite exciting news, then, that Cherry Audio and MRB have exploded the concept into Miniverse Module Collection, 14 new software modules to be used on the Voltage Modular platform. You get ‘standard’ oscillator, filter, glide and more modules plus poly versions so you can expand your Mini sound into a 16-note poly one. It costs $59 (currently $39 if you’re quick), with a 50% discount for customers who previously bought the Miniverse instrument. Deal! cherryaudio.com…

Drums are the backbone of all the music we make (OK, not ambient music but you get our drift). As computer musicians, the drum machine is one of our most important tools, and pretty much every DAW comes with at least one, or samplers packed with drum hits ready for beat creation. Over the next 20 pages we’ll take you on a journey through all of your drum machine options, from how history defined what sounds we use today, the fundamentals of basic drum machine programming, through some of the best free and paid for drum machine plugins, right up to more complex programming used by some of the biggest artists of the last four decades. We’ve got mixing techniques, advice on how to create drum sounds from synths, and…

> Step by step 1. Basic arrangements 1 Every DAW is equipped with some form of drum sound collection and editor for programming drums. As we’re concentrating on programming beats in this tutorial, just bring up a basic set of drum sounds, that appeal to your musical or production sensibilities. We’re using a simple one-bar editing template, divided into 16 steps. 2 Let’s begin with the bass drum, often called the kick. Some years ago, several companies pooled their hive-minds to create the General MIDI Drum Map; this stipulated which drum sounds would be assigned to which notes. It was agreed that the kick would reside on note C1, which is often the lowest note on larger keyboard controllers. You can normally see the note name, within your editor. 3…

> Step by step 2. Create a classic Planet Rock TR-808 pattern 1 We’ll be using Roland’s superb plugin version of the TR-808, but you can use any 808 sample pack available in most DAWs. This pattern is based around two bars of music that repeat, so for ease we’ll write the pattern in the step editor of our DAW. 2 Create a two-bar cycle or loop using your DAW editor and set your DAW’s tempo to 126bpm. If you’re using the Roland 808 plugin, or another similar plugin with its own sequencer engine, be sure to deactivate the playback sync option. On the Roland plugin, you’ll find this described as Position Lock to DAW within the Option menu. 3 Let’s enter the pattern for the bass drum or kick.…

> Step by step 5. Get the iconic Kate Bush sound 1 It’s possible get great LinnDrum effects using just sounds from your DAW. We’ll use the factory samples from Logic Pro. Create a new track, load the Logic based Sampler and locate the LinnDrumProcessed Kit from the included presets. We’re running at a tempo of 108bpm to match the original. 2 The toms within this kit are a little on the high side in terms of pitch, but we can detune them. Locate the toms within your sampler’s editor, and detune the mid and low toms down by a few semitones each. The actual amount will vary according to taste and track. 3 You can use any method you wish to enter the notes, but we’ll start by using…

The burgeoning market for orchestral samples seems to have increased exponentially over the last few years. Let’s face it, there are only so many ways you can spin an orchestral library, without feeling like you are merely repeating history, albeit with better technology through each new release. Any company dipping their toe into the orchestral department needs to be brave and have an angle, and that could possibly sum up UVI and their latest offering, Augmented Orchestra. Time for action Let’s begin with some kudos: UVI have a highly respected track record. They have an enormous catalogue of some of the finest sounds you could ever want. The vast majority of these centre around the sampling and reproduction of synthesiser classics, from the very earliest lesser known synths to vintage…

Following in the footsteps of the two-in two-out EVO 4 and four-in four-out EVO 8, you would expect that EVO 16 offers an eight-in eight-out configuration – in the analogue domain, it does. But it also features two pairs of optical connectors that can connect to SPDIF or ADAT hardware running at up to 96kHz. This means that, with the necessary additional hardware, EVO 16 actually has the ability to handle a total of 24 channels of I/O at 48kHz, or 16 channels at 96kHz, which is pretty impressive at this price point. All eight of the analogue inputs can take mic or line signals via XLR/Jack combi sockets, and the first two, located on the front panel, can also take hi-z instrument inputs. The remaining input sockets are on…

All the hardware and software you need! If you’re as skint as we are – and we’re all counting the cash these days, let’s face it – then you can’t miss next month’s Computer Music. We look at the best budget setups for all manner of music making tasks and pick the best hardware and software combos for less than 500 sheets. You can’t miss it! PLUS! Free IK plugin! The classic EQP-1A, worth €79.99, for free! Yes, really! Reviews East West Forbidden Planet, UVI Mission 6 and much more! The Guide! The best budget audio interfaces tested and rated…

The Rhythmicon, invented and developed by Leon Theremin and Henry Cowell in 1930 is considered to be the world’s first drum machine. Despite this grand title, it was played rather like a conventional music keyboard, with each note triggering a set of notes to be played, which in turn generated rhythmic patterns. The resulting cacophony was a highly polyrhythmic affair, where it could play quintuplets against triplets, with a minimum of effort. It was calculated that it would take over 455 days to be able to play every conceivable Rhythmicon pattern, or combination of patterns, in completion. Not quite the drum machine notion that we’re more accustomed to these days. In the tradition of the ’round-the-piano-singalong, a market was beginning to reveal itself with a desire for rhythm generation units…

Roland Cloud TR-606/707/727/808/909 Mac/PC from $9.99/mo The Roland Cloud continues to offer some of the best virtual representations of classic synths and drum machines, with no shortage of drum machine content. While the 808 and 909 don’t require further detail (see previous pages), the kitsch-ness of the 606 is superb, with pseudo-Linn stylings available from the 707, and Latin accompaniment from the 727. The plugins can be purchased outright, or paid for monthly/annually on subscription. rolandcloud.com Toontrack EZ Drummer 3 + EZX Expansion libraries Mac/PC from €165 (EZD3) + €80 (EZX) While EZDrummer 3 is predominantly an acoustic suite, the bewildering collection of expansion packs (EZX Packs) present some incredibly useful sounds that are worthy of exploration. The Electronic EZX is a good case in point, combining humanistic grooves with…

> Step by step 3. Use your DAW for an Orbital-inspired 909 pattern 1 Start by loading up your DAW with an appropriate set of 909 sounds. If these aren’t immediately obvious, try loading your DAW-based sampler, and have a look at the sample menu in an attempt to find something suitable. We are working in Logic Pro and using the sound set called EXS909, from the default Logic sample library. 2 The pattern we’ll create uses only one bar, so set up a one-bar loop/cycle in your DAW. We’ll work with the step sequencer edit page within Logic Pro, but you can use any grid editor you like. Watch out for the correct note names, which will correspond to the drum sounds. Set your Tempo to a classic 120bpm.…

> Step by step 6. Use our ZebraCM synth plugin to create your own drum sounds 1 Begin by loading your DAW, and then load our ZebraCM plugin onto an instrument channel. We’ll start by creating a kick drum sound, but to ensure we start from a default, select Init from the dropdown menu, located via the Display at the top. 2 This sound will be relatively loud, so we recommend reducing the master pot to the value of 50. We won’t need OSC1 for this sound, so reduce the volume of OSC1 to 0, but increase the level of White Noise to a value of 100. 3 Move over to the filter section, which is located on the top right-hand side of the plugin. Click on the filter type…

In the late 70s, polyphonic synthesisers were an expensive business; Oberheims, Prophets and Polymoogs were all over £3,000, and that’s when that could have bought you a nice car instead! Then along came Roland in 1978, at a price point of £1,800, with a four-voice poly called the Jupiter-4 Compuphonic. Compu-what? The term Compuphonic was one of Roland’s calling-cards, indicating that the synth’s oscillators were placed under micro-control, to assist with tuning, while its potential was opened up for the saving of up to eight user patches, which you would obviously try not to use all at once. With the emergence of this new plugin version, Roland have unapologetically extended the ethos considerably; you can increase the patch saving capabilities to as many banks of 64 as you might like,…

It used to be a common slight levelled at young bass guitar wielders, that the only reason they took up their four-stringed instrument was because they’d thrown in the towel with learning guitar, and plumped for something easier. It’s a juvenile dig typically made by those who’ve little understanding of the amount of skill, rhythmic and melodic dexterity required to handle a bass properly. While production and arrangement innovations come and go, the bass guitar still remains a fixture across genres. From funk to rock, R&B to rap, solid, ambidextrous basslines, driven by human finger-flair and melodic improvisation, aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. While many of us may have a dusty old bass kicking around in our home studios, and naively assume that laying down an adequate bassline is a…

Toolroom Academy, the soundware and education arm of Toolroom Records, have a pretty impressive catalogue of club-related sample packs, and they are now adding to this with their first plugin. Infinite (VST, VST3, AU, AAX, Audiosuite) is a multieffects plugin conceived by DJ/producer Mark Knight and producer/mixer James F Reynolds. Designed primarily for builds, drops and transitions, the plugin aims to streamline this process, reducing the need to build multiple chains from scratch. Infinite has eight effects: Delay, Crunch, LFO, Reverb, White Noise, HP/LP filter, Formant and Width. It also has two views, Simple and Complex, which you select in the top left. Simple is the default, providing control of the eight effects via a large macro knob (see Simple Mode). Complex provides an expanded view, showing the eight effects…

In the early days of the Suite, DopeSonix – or DopeVST as they were then known – provided us with an excellent but basic hip hop drum machine, Beat Machine CM. Now they’re back with not one but three editions. How awesome is that?. DopeSonix create excellent, vibey plugins, sound sets and MIDI files, and they are probably best known for their trio of Beat Machine plugins. It’s precisely these hip-hop-inspired drum machines that power our latest Suite additions: Beat Machine 1 CM, Beat Machine 2 CM and Beat Machine 3 CM (AU, VST, VST3). Much like our original Beat Machine CM, these are straightforward playback plugins with quite limited editing capabilities. But what they lack in flexibility they more than make up for in sound. Trust us, the production…

experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist fields every month SYNTH MASTERCLASS A STRANGER THINGS VIBE Read the full article on p42 PRODUCTION USING ALCHEMY AS A SAMPLER Read the full article on p44 COVER FEATURE: ULTIMATE DRUMS Five videos on recreating some of the most famous drum machine beats Read the full article from p18 YOUR FREE PLUGINS! How to download, explore and use this month’s amazing free plugins Read the full articles from p84…