Computer Music October 2021
Computer Music's goal is to help its readers create great music with a PC or Mac. Each month find easy-to-follow tutorials for all sorts of music software, unbiased reviews of the latest products and answers to technical questions. Our Zinio edition does not include the DVD but it DOES INCLUDE the full software, samples and tutorial files to download. Full details inside. Download does not include Producer Masterclass in-studio video. This digital edition is not printable.
in this issue
welcome
“I got into music because of the gear. I admit it” It’s tempting, given that this is issue 299 of Computer Music, to start getting excited about ‘the big one’ next issue, but I’ll try and leave that for another four weeks or, if you can’t wait, until the last page of this issue. I’ll just say that 300 issues for any magazine these days is well worth celebrating and we’re doing it in style. Onto this issue and one of the reasons I got into music making in the first place was, I admit, for the gear. A powerful computer throbbing amidst a studio packed full of delightful hardware was the order of the day… that is until the computer became powerful enough to swallow up said hardware. Now, though,…
a double whammy from uvi
They say that summer is a slow time for news in the world of music production and that you can very possibly you can blame the Europeans for taking most of August off for their holidays (the lucky things). This year has been no exception as our news inbox has slowed to such a crawl that we actually welcomed the regular essay of a press release from Spitfire – more on that later. It’s not been an entirely news-less period though and, luckily, our favourite Parisian software developers UVI managed to release not one but two products before packing the budgy smugglers away for their annual holiday shindig. First up is their PX Sunbox, which is a recreation of the 1999 SunSyn, a hardware synth that was made by the German company,…
app watch
Shaper 2 K-Devices has tweaked its Shaper effect, a self-proclaimed “audio destroyer” that runs as an AUv3 plugin. Version 2 gives you several modules for this purpose: a glitch gate, a waveshaper, a transform module, a resonator/short delay and a low-/high-pass filter. These can be ordered however you like, so the potential for creative destruction is pretty limitless. What you won’t hear is a lot of warmth – Shaper 2 aims to give your sounds “a digital edge” rather than an analogue cuddle. Shaper 2 costs $6/£6. apps.apple.com SoundSaw It must be a destructive kind of month, as Igor Vasiliev has also released an iOS sound mangler in the shape of SoundSaw. This easy-to-use effect is designed to give your instruments or vocals a noisy, lo-fi, chip-tuney sound, and promises to add high levels…
get with the programmers
How did you get into music software? MA “We all started making electronic music about 10 or 12 years ago. We’ve played shows and festivals around the world. We studied music technology, focusing on programming, sound design, and production. We created Minimal Audio to further our passion for audio.” Tell us a bit more about Minimal Audio MA “We are a small team of musicians, developers and designers that came together to create products we love. We’ve all worked together on various music projects. Minimal Audio is the product of everything we’ve learned about music tech, sound design, and production.” What makes your software stand out? MA “Our philosophy is to create cutting-edge software which is accessible and rewarding; to push the envelope while keeping things fun and easy. An essential part of our process…
10 years back
How do you make a hit record? It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves at some point, and we gamely attempted to provide an answer in October 2011 ( 169) with a little help from DJ Fresh, Black Noise and Michael Woods. At the time, Fresh had just had a number one hit with Louder, and he would soon repeat the trick with Hot Right Now, which featured a little-known singer by the name of Rita Ora. Whatever happened to her? “We showed you how to “kick the 120bpm habit” with our ‘tempo mental’ feature” In our CM Focus feature, meanwhile, we celebrated the rise of moombahton – inevitably, this quickly morphed into the likes of moombahcore and moombahsoul before being pronounced ‘dead’ by someone or other – and we showed you…
free deesser from a brand new developer
Yes it’s the freeware bit of the mag and time to welcome another new plugin developer in the form of Techivation and their debut release T-De-Esser. It is, you guessed it, a de-esser which is “designed to repair audio without causing artefacts”. De-essers reduce sibilance, an almost inevitable occurrence in the worlds of singing, voiceovers, and dialogue recording. T-De-Esser features a large processing dial on a rather cool-looking UI, plus controls for frequency bands, Intensity and Sharpness. And all for free. techivation.com…
