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Issue 371

Making the future since 1992

40 Y E A R S O F

P ROD UCT IO N

The hardware, hardware ideas and innovators that shaped MA one of dance music’s most enduring genres THE SOUND 7 pages of fres h tips & techniques

H E A R F RO M A RT ISTS BEHI ND T HE C L A S SI C S… [ J E F F M I L L S ] [ J U A N AT K I N S ] [ K E V I N S A U N D E R S O N ] [RICHIE HAWTIN] [SVEN VÄTH] [BLOODY MARY] & MORE

FM | WELCOME Editor-In-Chief Si Truss, simon.truss@futurenet.com Reviews Editor/Online Content Manager Simon Arblaster, simon.arblaster@futurenet.com Managing Editor Kate Puttick, kate.puttick@futurenet.com Art Editor Phil Cheesbrough, philip.cheesbrough@futurenet.com BIG THANKS TO… Richard James, Danny Turner, Hamish Mackintosh, Rob Redman, Tim Cant, James Russell, Bruce Aisher, Roy Spencer, Oli Bell, Adam Lee, Olly Curtis, Robbie Stamp, Jon Musgrave, Martin Delaney, Jon Musgrave ADVERTISING For Ad enquiries please contact: Kyle Phillips, kyle.phillips@futurenet.com MARKETING Direct Marketing Executive: Will Hardy PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION Production Controller: Fran Twentyman Production Manager: Mark Constance Printed in the UK by: William Gibbons & Sons Ltd on behalf of Future Distributed in the UK by: Marketforce (UK), 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HU Tel: +44 (0) 203 787 9001 CIRCULATION Head of Newstrade: Tim Mathers SUBSCRIPTIONS Order line and enquiries: +44 (0)330 333 1113 Online enquiries: www.magazinesdirect.com Email: help@magazinesdirect.com INTERNATIONAL LICENSING AND SYNDICATION Future Music is available for licensing and syndication. Contact the Licensing team. Head of Print Licensing: Rachel Shaw, licensing@futurenet.com MANAGEMENT Managing Director, Future Passions: Angela O’Farrell Brand Director, Music: Stuart Williams Content Director: Scott Rowley Global Head of Design: Rodney Dive Head of Design (Music): Brad Merrett Group Art Editor: Graham Dalzell Future Music, ISSN 0967-0378, is published monthly with an extra issue in December by Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA. UK The US annual subscription price is $197.60. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named World Container Inc, 150-15 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Prices is Pending at Brooklyn NY 11256. US POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Future Music, World Container Inc, 150-15 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA Subscription records are maintained at Future Publishing, c/o Air Business Subscriptions, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH16 3DH. UK

We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. The manufacturing paper mill holds full FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification and accreditation All contents © 2021 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/or have the necessary rights/ permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions.

Techno logic

When you write regularly about music technology, as we do here at FM, there’s sometimes a risk that you can end up getting so worked up about new gear and technology that you lose sight of the real ‘point’ of all this stuff – the music itself. Sure, a new synth plugin or modular rig can be exciting in its own right, but unless it inspires creativity, then surely it’s nothing but an expensive toy? This issue’s cover feature is all about drawing a connection between those two sides of what we do – tracing the roots of one of the most important genres in electronic music, and seeing how its been shaped by gear, technology and multiple generations of ever-more adventurous musicians and producers.

Si Truss, Editor-In-Chief simon.truss@futurenet.com

F | CONTENTS

44 IN THE STUDIO WITH…

Telex

The Belgian synth pop pioneers look back at their influential early years, now compiled on a new album for Mute

This Issue | Contents

ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS

80 Review Roland Verselab MV-1

76 REVIEWED

IK UNO Synth Pro Is the Italian brand’s latest analogue instrument worthy of that ‘pro’ tag?

20 Classic Album Squarepusher

Review Strymon Nightsky

Plugin roundup Spring reverbs

In The Studio with… Andrew Hung

Producer’s Guide to… Sample synthesis

REVIEWS

INTERVIEWS

FEATURES

SOCIAL

76 IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro 80 Roland Verselab MV-1 84 VPME Euclidean Circles v2 86 Roundup: Spring reverbs

72 HANNAH PEEL On her latest LP, Fir Wave

12 Filter: Loopcloud 6 and more 24 Get a print or digital subscription to Future Music 26 Album Reviews

88 Black Lion Revolution 90 Strymon Nightsky 92 Testbench: Pulsar 1178 94 Sounds and samples 97 Gear guide

18 TALKING SHOP JAS SHAW 20 CLASSIC ALBUM SQUAREPUSHER 52 THE TRACK SIMON DOTY

28 40 years of techno production 56 What’s on the Future Music YouTube channel 58 Producer’s Guide to… Sample synthesis 70 Retrospective: Oramics

Find us online at futuremusic.co.uk Watch our videos youtube.com/ futuremusicmagazine Follow us on Twitter @futuremusicmag Join us on Facebook facebook.com/ futuremusicmagazine 7

F | ON FILESILO

52 THE TRACK

Simon Doty – The Beacon INCLUDES VIDEO

The Canadian prog-house master talks sampling and house piano riffs

ACCESSING YOUR BONUS DIGITAL CONTENT

FILESILO.CO.UK This issue’s bonus samples, videos, audio and bonus archive samples are all available to access via FileSilo. At the link above, log in or register, then unlock over 12GB of goodies! 8

This Issue | Contents

IN THE ARCHIVE – UPDATED!

TECHNIQUE & FEATURES

FM’s Sample Archive gives you over 18GB of carefully-curated, royalty-free sounds to use in your music. Here’s what’s inside... AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.1

HOUSE & TECHNO

> ’90s Ambient (562 samples)

> Chicago House (537 samples)

> Ambient Dawn (490 samples)

> House & Techno Stabs (213 samples)

AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.2 > Majestic Bells & Mallets (444 samples) > Spring Reverb & Tape Delay (533 samples)

ATMOSPHERES & BACKGROUNDS > Atmospheric Beds (369 samples)

> Jacking House (518 samples) > Warehouse Techno (575 samples)

PERCUSSION > Modular Percussion (510 samples) > Shakers, Tambs & Toplines (503 samples) > Sticks, Knocks & Rims (502 samples)

TRANCE & RAVE

> Noise, Crackle & Hiss (512 samples)

> Classic Breakbeats (371 samples)

> Sounds of the City (371 samples)

> Rave Synths (524 samples)

CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.1 > Analogue Polys (625 samples) > SH Collection (500 samples)

CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.2 > Analogue Poly Chord Hits (342 samples)

> Trance Tools (537 samples)

THE LATEST BATCH AMBIENCE EXTRAS

> Classic Synths: ’80s, ’90s, ’00s

> Ambient Orchestral (246 samples)

(678 samples)

> Ambient Piano (469 samples)

> Hardware Arps (511 samples)

> Sound From The Ether (492 samples)

CREATIVE DRUMS

BASS BUNDLE

> Cyborg Beats (514 samples)

> Amped-Up Bass (234 samples)

> Lo-Fi Sampling (555 samples)

> Sub-Frequency Grooves (256 samples)

> Obscure Drum Machines (517 samples) > Overloaded Beats (889 samples)

ESSENTIAL DRUMS

FOUND FAVOURITES > Mechanical Sounds (390 samples) > Out There FX (500 samples)

> 808 and 909 (39 samples)

> Studio Noise (234 samples)

> Ultimate Cymbals (503 samples)

> The Edge Of Noise (512 samples)

> Ultimate Kick Bundle (505 samples)

> The Sound Of Water (375 samples)

> Ultimate Snares & Claps (676 samples) > Vintage Drum Machine Hits (548 samples)

FX & TRANSITIONS PT.1 > Filter Fun (496 samples)

FUTURE DRUMS > Beyond Breakbeats (186 samples) > Digital Percussion (502 samples) > Electro FX (321 samples) > Granular Drums (499 samples)

28 40 years of techno production INCLUDES AUDIO

The gear, ideas and artists behind one of dance music’s key genres

EXCLUSIVE SAMPLE PACKS

’70s Synths – Part 2 CYCLICK SAMPLES PRESENT…

Our celebration of 1970s synth sounds continues with this pack of wonderfully warm and retro synthesised pads and chords.

> Dub Percussion 2 (537 samples)

Analogue Drums

> Destroyed synths (519 samples)

> Jazz Drums (499 samples)

GROOVE CRIMINALS PRESENT…

> Sci-Fi FX (501 samples)

> Total Snares (501 samples)

> Gates ‘N’ Sidechains (287 samples) > Total Transitions (260 samples)

FX & TRANSITIONS PT.2

HIP-HOP, FUNK & SOUL

MORE BEATS > ‘80s Pop Drums (197 samples)

SYNTHS & MORE

> Cosmic Soul (386 samples)

> Chord Stabs (136 samples)

> Funk Keys (279 samples)

> Clone Wars (523 samples)

> Hip-Hop Drum Machines (387 samples)

> Percussive Leads (289 samples)

> Minimal Hip-Hop (540 samples)

> VHS Synths (207 samples)

Looking for meaty synth drums? We’ve got you covered with this pack of characterful percussive hits and looped grooves. 9

Contents | This Issue

BONUS SAMPLES DOWNLOAD THEM NOW FROM FILESILO.CO.UK/FUTUREMUSIC

Check out the latest bonus sample packs from Loopmasters at ﬁlesilo.co.uk/future-music-371

FM | FILTER

Loopcloud 6 can use AI to recommend sounds for your latest track Loopmasters’ sample store also adds new search tools, extra effects and much more

The Future Of Music | Filter

There was a time when buying a sample pack was a relatively simple transaction – cough up cash and receive a themed bundle in return. Recent years though, have seen the race between online sample suppliers hotting up significantly, with Loopmasters – now owned by Beatport – facing off with the likes of Splice and NI’s Sounds to find increasingly creative, convenient ways to serve up fresh sounds for your latest project. In the case of Loopmasters, this is facilitated by Loopcloud, the company’s plugin-come-storefront, which has recently been updated to version 6. The headline feature of Loopcloud 6 is a new AI-assisted

search tool, powered by technology from Jamahook, which can suggest new sounds for your project using an analysis of any sound in the Loopcloud library as a starting point. This starting sound can be a commercially available sample or sound uploaded as part of the user library. Each sound has options to find harmonic or rhythmic matches and similar sounds. While it’s not exactly going to auto-generate your next track, it’s a neat tool that can throw up loop or riff ideas you might not have considered otherwise. Of equal interest are the new Audio Filters on the search tools. These let users refine results not just by key and BPM, but using sliders to constrain qualities like rhythmic density, swing and stereo width.

As with previous versions, the plugin can sync to a host DAW and lets users process samples prior to purchase, so users can see how they might fit into a track before committing. Tools let users apply a variety of rhythmic sequencing/ gating patterns, adjust a sample’s pitch and BPM, and process sounds with onboard effects. V6 adds a trio of new tools in this latter category, adding a multiband EQ, Tonebox amp sim and compressor. Loopcloud offers multi-track functionality, so users can process and playback several loops or samples simultaneously. After purchase, users can then download both processed and unprocessed versions of samples. V6 adds extra options for how sounds can be downloaded, so they can be dragged-and-dropped into a DAW, copied and pasted, or exported as groups, stems or raw files. V6 also adds a dark mode, plus various other interface refinements. Loopcloud is a subscription service, with tiers starting at £5.99 per month. Each tier offers a different amount of monthly points – used to purchase samples – plus storage space for user samples, ranging from 5GB for the Artist tier to 250GB at Professional. A free trial is available from Loopcloud.com for new users.

Filter | The Future Of Music

Focusrite buys Sequential (and Dave Smith’s analogue synths) In a significant music tech industry development, British audio company Focusrite have announced that they're acquiring Dave Smith’s highly respected Sequential synth brand. Smith founded Sequential Circuits in 1974, designing the legendary Prophet-5 and many other influential synths and drum machines. He was also a key player in the development of the original MIDI spec, announced in 1981. Smith returned to the hardware synth market in 2002, starting Dave Smith Instruments. Over the past two decades, his products have been a crucial part of the analogue revival. Dave Smith Instruments was rebranded as Sequential in 2018, with Yamaha having returned the name to Smith in 2015. A rebooted Prophet-5 was released in 2020. Sequential now joins the Focusrite Group’s family of brands, which includes Focusrite, Focusrite Pro, Martin Audio, Optimal Audio, ADAM Audio, Novation, and Ampify. The theory is that Sequential will now benefit from greater resources to expand its global markets and R&D. There is, of course, some crossover with Novation, who have

several synth products of their own. The acquisition opens up the ibili off tech h being b i shared h d possibility between Novation- and Sequentialbranded instruments. “With Focusrite, we’ve found an ideal home and a perfect cultural and technological ﬁt,” says Dave Smith. “Phil Dudderidge and his team have a long history of quality, vision, and focus on what musicians and audio pros really want. We’re excited to join

such an industry powerhouse and contribute to our mutual success.” F i F d Phil Focusrite Founder Dudderidge commented: “We’re excited to add Sequential’s instruments and pedigree to Focusrite Group’s portfolio of world-class audio and music production tools. “Dave Smith’s history as an innovator speaks for itself. From his creation of the world’s ﬁrst fully programmable polysynth, the Prophet

5, to his co-invention of MIDI, Dave has literally changed the world of ki mus forward to continuing his history of innovation and expanding the global market for Sequential’s instruments.” Although Sequential is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Focusrite plc, Sequential’s day-to-day operations and product development will remain unchanged, with Dave Smith remaining at the helm.

Ableton Loop Create event will connect musicians from around the world Following its enforced postponement last year, Ableton’s Loop event is returning for 2021 – albeit in an online-only format. Loop Create will take place on 26-27 June, and is designed to bring together music-makers from all around the world. This will be hosted on the Ableton Loop microsite, with sessions kicking off at 11am CET and continuing throughout the two

> 14

days. Sessions will then be repeated to suit different time zones. The sessions, which are designed to offer insights and techniques, will be presented in different formats, and hosted by artists, musicians, ‘technologists’ and educators. Attendees will also have the opportunity to meet each other in “facilitated conversations”. Loop Create is free to attend for anyone who registers, with registration opening on 26 May.

The Future Of Music | Filter

UVI’s Super-7 combines Juno-106 and 707 sounds to recreate an ’80s groove Antelope Audio’s Axino Synergy Core puts an audio interface inside a USB microphone There are plenty of USB condenser microphones out there, and some also serve as USB audio interfaces, but Antelope Audio’s Axino Synergy Core goes a step further by offering modelled versions of 18 classic microphones, too. The story starts with the mic hardware – there’s a gold-sputtered diaphragm that’s designed to give a flat frequency response and give you as accurate a representation of your original sound as possible. The cardioid pickup pattern promises to minimise noise and put the focus on what’s going on in front of the mic rather than anywhere else. The hybrid preamp, meanwhile, is said to offer transparency, and there’s AD/DA conversion at 24-bit/192kHz. The Axino Synergy Core uses Antelope Audio’s own mic modelling engine, with the 18 emulations covering classic dynamic, tube and FET condenser models. These can all be used in real-time, and the workflow enables you to experiment with different emulations. On top of this, you also get 10 Synergy Core effects, including compressors, EQs, preamps and dynamic processors based on classic studio gear. More can be added as paid-for expansions. Controls on the microphone itself include Volume and HP (headphone) knobs, alongside -10dB pad and high-pass filter switches. The software control panel enables you to make further settings, as well as adjust the signal routing and effects processing. The Axino Synergy Core will be available soon priced at $399/£399.

Released in 1986, Roland’s MKS-7 was a multitimbral sound and rhythm module that contained the combined guts of the Juno-106 synth and TR-707 drum machine. Now it’s been revived and reﬁned by UVI, in the form of Super-7. Described as a “6-part analogue toolbox and groove designer”, this looks like something of an ’80s dream machine, giving you everything you need to create your next synthwave opus. Super-7 comes with 260 ensemble presets – these are based on multisamples of an MKS-7 and drum machine sounds from across the Roland X0X range and far beyond. The ensemble presets have discrete rhythm, bass, melody and three multi-purpose synth layers, all with their own voice and arpeggiator controls. Your patterns, grooves and sequences can all be performed in real time.

Super-7’s sounds were sampled through a custom chain of outboard processors and recorded three times: normally, with the hardware chorus engaged, and with the noise switch active. This means you can turn these features on/off, as with the hardware. Presets are fully editable using the amp envelopes, multimode ﬁlters and

ﬁlter envelopes and effects (EQ, drive, phaser and effect sends for two reverbs and two delays. The arps can also be customised and come with their own presets). Runs on PC/Mac and can be hosted in either Falcon or the free UVI Workstation. Regular price $79/€79, sale price $49/€49.

M-Audio update the Oxygen MIDI keyboard range M-Audio continue to revise and reboot their classic Oxygen range of MIDI keyboards, with the latest versions – known as the MKV models – getting smart controls, automapping, and a built-in arpeggiator. There are 25-, 49- and 61-note models in the range, all of which feature full-size, velocity-sensitive keys, faders, trigger pads and more.

The Smart Controls relate to chords and scales. With the Smart Chord feature, you can play full chords by pressing a single key, while Smart Scale ensures that you’ll only be able to play notes from your chosen scale. Both of these features are customisable, and you get more than 15 different scale variations. The Auto-mapping feature is designed to make setup a breeze,

with multiple controls – Transport, Faders, Pan, Record Arm, Solo, Mute, Select – being automatically conﬁgured for your speciﬁc DAW. Most major DAWs are supported: it should just be a case of selecting your preferred DAW on the Oxygen (MKV) and making the appropriate preference settings in your DAW. The customisable arpeggiator, lets you adjust Type, Octave, Gate and Swing settings, and can operate in Latch and Momentary modes. It can run either at the tempo you set on the keyboard or sync to your DAW. The new Oxygens come with a range of software tools along with 60 free lessons from Melodics and a 3-month subscription to Skoove.

Filter | The Future Of Music

Akai go old-school with the ’80s-style MPC One If you’re a longtime user of Akai’s MPC production boxes, you may have been missing the ‘muddy grey’ look that helped to define iconic products such as the legendary MPC60. Fear not, though, because Akai Pro have just launched the MPC One Retro – a new MPC that offers all the features of the MPC One, but looks like it’s arrived from the late ‘80s. The distinctive 16 grey pads are here, as is the retro-coloured housing. However, under the hood this is a thoroughly modern standalone music-making powerhouse, with a quad-core processor and a seven-inch capacitive multitouch screen. When you're happy to be tethered to a computer, the MPC One Retro can also operate as a controller for the MPC2 software, which offers DAW-like levels of functionality. There’s plenty of connectivity, too, along with 4GB of storage. “Akai Professional and the MPC have a longstoried history that resonates profoundly with users from all around the world,” says Dan Gill, Akai Professional’s Senior Product Manager. “Each recalls their first MPC encounter and the role that it played in their most cherished musical experiences. “The MPC One Retro is our tribute to this rich history while proudly asserting our continued commitment to creating the most powerful standalone music production devices in the world,” adds Gill. “MPC One Retro truly embodies the best of the legendary products throughout the years and the ultimate modern standalone music production workflow.” The MPC One is available now, priced at £640.

Free ﬁrmware update means Arturia’s KeyStep Pro now does even more

We’re as keen as anyone to talk about new products, but for many musicians, it’s the updates to ones they’ve already bought that are the most important. Take, for example, the new version free 2.0 firmware for Arturia’s KeyStep Pro MIDI/CV keyboard and sequencer, which adds both new performance features and stability/workflow improvements. New features include a global transpose function and global offset for the five main parameter controls. Users can now also record both arpeggios and chords into sequences.

The MIDI Thru port can now be used as a second MIDI output too, making it easier to sequence multiple instruments at once. Other notable reﬁnements include a smoother Mono mode, the ability to listen to sequencer steps without having to hit play, and the ability to create arpeggios without the sequencer running. To our mind, KeyStep Pro was already one of the best devices on the market for melodic sequencing and ﬂexible hardware control, and these subtle yet useful improvements look set to make it even better.

The Future Of Music | Filter

Modal Electronics say the Skulpt SE is the most affordable MPE hardware synth out there

Modal Electronics have taken their original Skulpt portable synth back to the drawing board and returned with the new Skulpt SE. Offering the same compact form factor as its predecessor, this replaces the grey and black touch keypads with more traditional black and white ones. The front panel descriptors have been made more legible, and the build quality has been improved. You get 127 brand-new patches and MPE support – something that was added to the original Skulpt via a firmware update. In fact, Modal claim it's the most affordable MPEcompatible hardware synth around. Sound architecture consists of two Wave groups per voice, each with four oscillators. You can smoothly sweep between waveforms, and there’s additional oscillator modulation, too. There are also state-variable 2-pole filters – these can morph from low-pass through to band- and high-pass – and three envelopes. The

two LFOs (one global, one polyphonic) can be synced to internal or external tempo, and there are integrated delay and distortion effects. Skulpt SE also comes with an integrated sequencer and arpeggiator,

Universal Audio’s LUNA update turns the DAW into an API analogue console

and you can polychain up to four of the devices (or the original Skulpt, for that matter) to create a 16-voice virtual analogue sound engine. In-depth sound and editing and management can be done using the

UA’s LUNA recording platform has always had a strong ‘analogue’ vibe, so it's apt that the latest update (v1.1.8) sees UA giving users the opportunity to endow it with a full API analogue console emulation. The API Vision Console Emulation ($699) features software versions of API’s L Series preamp, EQs, compressor, gate, filters and summing circuits. It’s designed to give the sound and feel of a large-format console within the LUNA environment, putting multiple plugin windows in a row in the mixer. The new add-on uses your Apollo interface’s built-in DSP for low-latency live tracking, then employs native processing when you’re mixing. If you want to add some API flavour in another DAW, you can check out the new API Preamp plugin ($149). This emulates the API

Modal app, which runs on all major computer and mobile platforms and is VST/AU compatible. Skulpt SE should be available by the time you read this, priced at £170.

212L’s preamp circuit, also giving Vision console features like a Mic/ Line switch, dedicated cut filter, and -6dB Line pad. If you have an Apollo interface, you can use its Unison technology to get some API-style punch and detail during tracking, or apply the sound to multiple channels when mixing. Finally, on an API tip, UA has updated the API Vision Channel Strip collection ($299), giving this analogue console emulation switchable EQ modules and a modelled output section for additional tone-shaping. These updates are all enabled by UAD Software v9.14, and this also includes C-Suite C-Vox ($349), a noise and ambience reduction plugin. Designed specifically for vocals, this enables you to reduce ambient room sounds during live tracking, and clean up existing recordings.

Talking Shop | Jas Shaw

doesn’t make sense to me that adding gain earlier up the chain and then backing off your desk gain would work, but it seems to, so they are staying plugged into those ribbons. “In the spirit of misuse, I’m wondering if they’ll go pop if I throw line-level audio into them. My main desk is a germanium-based thing but it’s not powering up and these may give me the vibe I’m missing while I can’t use my favourite desk. “I have a bunch of different desks, all quite small; an 8-channel, a 12 and a 16. I did consider selling them all and getting a single big desk but in the end I found that I never record more than 12 things at a time anyway.”

imian Mobile Disco’s Jas Shaw has spent much of the past year in isolation – due to both Covid and in recuperation from an operation. He’s made the most of that time though, channeling energies into his wonderfully melodic, atmospheric new album, Sollbruchstelle. We caught up with Shaw to ﬁnd out more about his workﬂow, inspiration and expensive-sounding desk habit... When did you start making music?

“I started out with guitar and slowly bought pedals. I’ve not touched a guitar for ages but I think that the experience of how you can totally change the sound of an instrument just by re-ordering the effects chain has stayed with me. “It’s really worth doing if you are feeling discouraged, plug an electric guitar directly into a line amp with no effects, then strum. It’s the sappiest, weediest sound known to man and all of rock music came from that with just the application of distortion. Whatever gear you have, it can do cool stuff if you keep at it.” Tell us about your studio…

“I’ve got a studio next to my house, fancy monitors and one of those spinny chairs with lots of levers, I’m not mucking about. Having more space than the old SMD studio meant I could retrieve old bits of gear stored at my mum’s house and stuff that lived in the live lock up so there’s loads of synths and amps and cables. “I like being able to make a setup and then abandon it for a while without having to pack it all away each time. The downside is that about half the gear could do with a service and I can’t do the more complicated bits. Plus I have a no-power-supplies rule; electrocuted while poking about in a compressor isn’t the valorous death I like to think awaits me.” What DAW do you use, and why?

“I’ve used a bunch of DAWs and they are really much of a muchness. They’ve all nicked ideas from each other so I’m not sure it makes much difference. I use ProTools as I’m used to it and when I started out that was what all the studios ran. It suits me because it’s good for editing and the fact that it’s a bit of a joke for MIDI is ﬁne for me because I do all of my sequencing with external sequencers.”

What dream bit of gear would you love?

“Electrocution while poking a compressor isn’t the death I hope awaits” Jas Shaw What could you not do without?

“Probably Cirklon or Norns if I’m in writing mode, but then a good monitoring system is also really the backbone of a studio. It’s a hard choice. Having amazing monitors is great but I bet my new monitors measured similarly to our old ones at 10cm from the cone. Having a bigger room with treatment is as important as the frequency plot on your boxes. Saying that, I recorded 90% of the recent tracks in an untreated room

and I really like how they sound; so if you only have headphones or bits of foam on your walls don’t worry.”

“I’d love something acoustic I could control over i2c but stuff like that requires big money and a team of techs. Perhaps more achievably, I’d like one of those grainy future-synths with digital voice engines.” When approaching a new track or project, where do you start?

“I tend to start with a ‘what if’ type idea, and usually it involves undoing something that was working and replacing it with something else that most likely doesn’t work yet. Then it’s a problem solving exercise that eventually results in a new working system. Secretly, the whole time I keep my ear out to see if it makes music for me. Once it’s working it’s not very interesting, so we start again.”

What was your latest studio purchase?

“Like many, I’m not in a ‘buy gear’ mode at the moment, the last big purchase was Norns and that was 18 months ago. For Sollbruchstelle I used a stereo ribbon mic and was having trouble getting enough level from it so I bought a pair of the germanium fetheads and they’ve been great. It

What are you currently working on?

“I’m back to tooling about, learning how stuff works and nibbling away on various projects in the hope that some of my new knowledge will react with something and push it over the line to being a thing rather than something that isn’t quite a thing.”

DO NOT MAKE A TEMPLATE “I see a lot of this ‘have everything ready to go’ type advice and while I can see that it’s great for some, for me this is not helpful. I’m not looking to maximise my efﬁciency or achieve quick results with minimum effort, or at least not with music. Making lots of music isn’t the aim, you’re aiming to make something you didn’t expect. ”

Beware duct tape! “Do label cables but do not use masking tape or duct tape for labelling cables, that leaves a manky goo residue that your future self will hate you for. Also, label power supplies, both ends. A cable that goes behind the racks

that is unlabelled is not an intriguing mystery, it’s a waste of half an hour.”

Embrace the new “There’s a golden period when you ﬁrst get something, record that. But, you get that again when you go back to something that had been overlooked for a while, and this time because you’ve already exhausted all the low hanging fruit, you push it to somewhere that wouldn’t have been possible the ﬁrst time around. Certainly, it’s not practical to keep everything but if you can hang on to a few bits, then sometimes the best uses are still to come.”

FM | CLASSIC ALBUM

Rephlex, 1996

Words by Roy Spencer

e may be one of the most celebrated producers of his, or any generation, right now. But, when he started, the man they call Squarepusher couldn’t get no love. As Tom Jenkinson, he’d poured his soul into 1994’s Stereotype EP – a blistering stew of ﬁlthy force and fusion, years ahead of its time. Yet, of the 1000 made, 200 were couriered back and dumped in his doorway. “They couldn’t sell them,” says Tom. “Based on that, I came out of it thinking, ‘OK. I had a go’. I took it as a creative success. But, in all other respects, a failure. I accept that the world wasn’t interested in it…” Thoughts turned to jacking it all in. Tom, an academic to his core, would get back to his learning. However, a string of other

Squarepusher Feed Me Weird Things

12”s and EPs from the era began to catch light. And his experimental fusions of head-smart jazz stylings and breakbeat chaos became the hottest sound on the underground. To his surprise, a bidding war began to rage between ice cool labels like Ninja Tune, Warp, and R&S. But, the eventual album deal would be struck with Richard D James’ Rephlex Records. And Mr Aphex Twin himself would whittle down a stack of DATs to piece together Squarepusher’s mind-melting debut album. “The album came together through that process,” says Tom. “It was driven by Richard, with the earliest music from late 1994, to early ’96.” The resulting LP would showcase the full spectrum of Tom’s technical and inspired bass playing, insane junglistic drum programming, and car-chase future funk. And become a landmark release from one of the most experimental producers, in one of the most experimental eras in electronic music. Not that he ever thought he’d make a career out of it, though: “I never aspired to be a professional. They tend to suck the life out of everything. I’m still doing my best to hold it at bay, now.” Feed Me Weird Things turns 25 this month, and gets a full reissue on Warp Records. And they’re not expecting many returns, that’s for sure.

Classic Album | Filter

©Rob Hann

Track by track with Squarepusher Squarepusher Theme “The guitar chords were sampled from an Applause acoustic guitar that I’d had since I was 11. And this was the first piece I recorded using the Fostex M80 8-track, which I think gives the solos a tangible sense of liberation from the gruelling live-to-DAT process. “The bass solos were performed on my Ibanez Roadstar II bass which I had bought at the age of 14 and was my mainstay instrument right up into this period and beyond. “This was also an early example of trying to programme drums in a way that blurred the hallmarks of live drumming and breakbeats, trying to cultivate an ambiguous region between the two where the respective distinctions fall away.”

Tundra “I wanted to hear a hardstep track that was as emotive as it was hard. I loved all the jungle of he time. It was a big inspiration, and an exciting period of music. I wanted to hear the emotive side of it expanded. “I wanted to explore material that was harmonically elaborate, and see how that could be integrated into that hard breakbeat framework. That intention reaches right back into the Stereotype EP and before. “The ‘cello’ sound was made by rubbing a plectrum on a bass guitar string. I was attempting to emulate the fast bowing vibrato of a violin family instrument. As you hear the pitch changing of the note you can hear the plectrum scraping slowing down and speeding up.”

The Swifty “This was recorded back in the days when I didn’t have access to a multi-track. So, there’s live bass on that track playing song-sequenced material. It was done like a live take, all in one go, playing the bassline as well as running the sequenced material and recording it all onto 2-track, to a DAT machine. “There was no opportunity for any kinda edit. If there’s something wrong with it you have to play it from

Squarepusher’s Feed Me Weird Things turns 25 this month. To celebrate, Warp are reissuing the album on double vinyl, CD, and in digital formats. Besides a remastering job, taken from the original DAT tapes, the release also comes with a lengthy booklet, and the two bonus tracks from the era – Theme from Goodbye Renaldo and Deep Fried Pizza. “It’s a lot closer to the original tapes than the first issue was,” says Tom. “And the vinyl, in particular, is sounding a lot, lot, better as well.”

the start. It wasn’t a recipe for an easy recording session. “I was also searching for influences outside the immediate realm of bass players for my bass playing. Around this time I was taking a lot of inspiration from wind players, in particular saxophonists.”

Dimotane Co “This was the oldest track that ended up on the record. I think it exemplifies something that is also found on the Stereotype EP, explored further: these sort of assaults of noise, alternating with breaks. “I remember the first time I played that out at a show. It was such an amazing experience. Funnily enough it was at the The George Robey gig which is referred to by Richard James on the original sleeve notes. I played this at the soundcheck, and just saw the beer glasses rattling above the bar. It was quite an exciting moment. I thought, ‘This is going to be a good gig. This is going to be fun.’”

“I don’t think the original issue of the LP was flawless. Not at all. It became apparent, when we remastered it, how strange the record sounded. A lot of the 1-2K band removed. I believe that the mastering engineer was trying to unite the pieces, because some of the music on there does sound pretty harsh. But, it meant it took a lot of the energy out the mix. So, this time around, we’ve gone how the DAT tapes originally sounded.”

Smedleys Melody “This was quite a technical bass guitar challenge – trying to do a line which was bass, but with chords and melody happening at the same time, with no overdubs. It was also exploring different time signatures, running at the same time. So, if you slow the record down, you’ll hear what sounds like just an assault of chaos, in terms of the breakbeat programming. But, it’s actually quite strictly organised. “They’re super-fast tempos. But, because of the speed they’re running, you don’t really perceive it as a rhythm in the conventional sense. There’s quite a lot of different meters and tempos happening at the same time. For however lighthearted it sounds, it was primarily a technical exploration in various different ways in the piece.”

Windscale 2 “This was named after the power station. My favourite topic in study was always physics. So, buildings like

power stations embodied, on the one hand, these principles of applied science in terms of power generation, which was a thing that fascinated me. But, also the buildings themselves, were quite awesome. “And, in the case of nuclear power stations, they had that atmosphere of doom around them. They are imposing, fascinating, and scary, at the same time. I think some of those feelings were being evoked, for me, by this piece of music. “Again, it features more attempts to emulate the cello in a similar fashion to how I did on Tundra. But, using a 50p coin, in this case.”

North Circular “In tribute to the A406. That road, we all love…[laughs] “Travel is an interesting reference for me, because it’s tangential, but still quite central to how I experience music, you know? It’s been an abiding fascination to me, trying to make music that conveys a sense of motion. It’s certainly not the only

Filter | Classic Album

track on the record that’s trying to do something like that. “Calling it North Circular was just a kind of shorthand for me trying to do that. Combined together with the fact that I thought that piece would sound really amazing on a car stereo. It was really designed for that sub-heavy car system.”

Goodnight Jade “There’s a percussion sound in this from some kind of cheaply manufactured souvenir instrument sold at tourist destinations. It just sounded like shit, to be frank. But, I managed to get a sample out of it, that was then detuned. “I used it as this interesting, wobbly, effect. But, with a kind of nice, sharp attack to it, which I partly generated through some processing. “It then emerged, after having put it backwards and forwards through some tape machines and the Akai S950, into this pretty interesting sound. “And then, the melody and harmony speaks for itself. It’s just a little tune, isn’t it? And, my girlfriend liked it, so I named it after her.”

Theme From Ernest Borgnine “This is an example of where all the drum breaks were made on the [Boss] DR-660, and then sampled on the S950. So, one of the ways I’d do that was to run the 660 through an Ibanez CP9 guitar compressor pedal. It would just ﬁlth it up, and give it big attack at the start, where it’s pulling the gain down. “The thing that everyone recognises from this piece is the [Roland SH-] 101 melody. For me, it’s a quintessential SH-101 melody. It’s using the inbuilt sequencer, so there’s only that one sequence available. There’s a maximum of 100 notes that you can use. “It’s a very primitive system. But, the combination of that with that glorious ﬁlter and oscillator, and it’s just got that utterly timeless sound.”

UFOs Over Leytonstone “This was inspired by an incident that tuned out to be a ﬁgment of our imagination. Friends and I were driving up to a club in London, just buzzing along the A12, out of Essex. And, basically, it was a bit misty, and we were quite imaginative. And, a

combination of that, with perhaps a couple of other factors thrown in, led us to believe that we saw a UFO. “I remember driving down there a couple of years later and recalling this, thinking it was so weird. And then looked over and saw that actually it was a roof of a tower block. “But, you know, the impression was exciting and unnerving, as you’d expect it to be. So, it was cool. And, in my defence, the track was named before I realised I had imagined it. At the time the reference had integrity.”

LIKE IT? TRY THESE…

Plug Plug 1: Visible Crater Funk The mix of live drumming and breaks on the ﬁrst few Plug EPs inspired and fascinated Tom. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘710’, ‘341’, ‘607’

Kodack “I never really played the violin. But, I bought one out of Loot for 20 quid. Partly with an aim to see if I could get into playing it. In the end I tended to just use it for samples. I managed to make a half decent string sound out of it, which is audible on this track, at the start, and then at various points. “Another DR-660 drum break on this, in the chorus. This was done by sampling into a [Yamaha] VSS-30 sampling keyboard, which I got in Cash Convertors in Winchmore Hill, for ﬁve quid. It was about as noisy and low-res as you could get, but within a very much useable thing. I used to sample on the VSS-30, and then re-sample on the S950, so then I could sequence it all properly. It was a pretty helpful, fun bit of kit.”

Tom Jenkinson Stereotype E.P. A lot of the Squarepusher sound was explored on this 1994 release. Its poor reception, however, nearly caused him to give up. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘1994’, ‘Greenwidth’, ‘Whooshki’

Various We Are Reasonable People Warp compilation, featuring a collaboration with Aphex Twin from around the Feed Me Weird Things album compilation days. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Squarepusher / AFX – ‘Freeman Hardy & Willis Acid’, Autechre – ‘Stop Look Listen’, Two Lone Swordsmen – ‘Circulation’

Future Gibbon

In the studio with Squarepusher “It was all made late 1994 to early ’96 in various bedroom rigs. I had the [Akai] S950 by this point. I’d borrowed one, before that. I didn’t have an Atari, or any other computer-based sequencing, then. I didn’t get anything of that order until well into the 2000s. “The Boss DR-660 was used for triggering the S950. Then, there was some of the Roland kit, which I still have. Like the SH-101, the TB-303, TR-707, and 606. I borrowed a 909 right at the end from Grant [Wilson-Claridge] at Rephlex. “The mixer was a [Soundcraft] Spirit Folio 12-channel thing. I also had a Viscount EFX-1 – sort of a nice little cheap and cheerful effects unit with plenty of fun stuff on there. I accumulated all this stuff as I went. “Then I had a Yamaha VSS-30 sampling keyboard, an Ibanez CP9 guitar pedal, and a Fostex M88 8-track, which came half way through the making of the album, which is also worth noting.”

“This was just a hell-for-leather chaos track. There was no attempt to make any navigating sensitive melodies and carefully worked out harmony. It’s just a barrage of noise. And then a very kind of shoddily assembled chord structure. Just a sort of slapdash jam. I doubt if it took more than a day to do it. “The slapdashness is mirrored in how I treated the DAT tape. If you listen, it fades in at the start. That’s because I accidentally deleted the start of the track on the DAT. I’d recorded something else earlier, recording over the track. It’s just slapdash through and through. But, it’s still a good laugh.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

To grab the exquisite new reissue of Feed Me Weird Things, hit up: bleep.com

Aphex Twin Richard D James Album The other experimental drum&bass, electronica, and noisy acid album of the day. You might have heard of it. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘To Cure A Weakling Child’, ‘Cornish Acid’, ‘Logan Rock Witch’

Squarepusher Feed Me Weird Things (2021 Reissue) The album, as it was meant to sound, lovingly remastered with bonus tracks. Out this month. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Theme from Goodbye Renaldo’, ‘Deep Fried Pizza’, ‘Squarepusher Theme’

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FM | ALBUM REVIEWS

ALBUM OF THE MONTH

Ishmael Ensemble Visions of Light Severn Songs

wo years on from their critically acclaimed debut album, A State of Flow, Bristol’s experimental jazz and electronic outﬁt, Ishmael Ensemble return with their wonderfully expansive sophomore album. Led by saxophonist and producer, Pete Cunningham, the band exude an innate understanding of the visceral interconnectivity of jazz, electronic and experimental. Their music is at once cinematic whilst also channelling UK leftﬁeld dub and bass sensibilities. Visions of Light is no different, treading that same line with perfect balance and poise. The gentle, emotive and light opening of the record soon turns to a harder-edged, faster hypnotic fusion of electronic music and jazz. Exploring darker, tougher sounds that we have heard from the band before, Ishmael Ensemble drag us down into their heady, unfamiliar but thrillingly wild compositions. Almost psychedelic and with a nod to wider club culture, the propulsive rhythms and

spiralling grooves spin you out and welcome you to a new reality. The second half of the album turns more peaceful and contented, as warm melodies and softer vocals join the beautiful strings and harmonies that stretch out across this vast and alluring landscape. Expressive and free flowing, but controlled and subtle, Visions of Light captures the evolution of a band that reveres innovation and creativity. Amongst all the sounds jostling for position on this record, it is the Ishmael Ensemble spirit of mesmeric crosspollination that takes centre stage once again. A band with a confident, distinctive sound that joins the dots between disparate cultures, Ishmael Ensemble are one of the true unifiers of the world. Tom Jones ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Wax Werk, Soma Centre, Morning Chorus

9/10

RECOMMENDED

Albums | Reviews

Matthew Dear, Preacher’s Sigh & Potion: Lost Album Ghostly International The career of US producer, vocalist, DJ and songwriter Matthew Dear has never been linear or predictable. The more he has veered away from the conﬁnes of house and techno, the more eccentric and exciting his music has become. Preacher’s Sigh & Potion is a lost album, unveiling a collection of tracks that he had put together between 2008 and 2009 and thus captures Dear right at the point he was

becoming more expansive as an artist, giving us a fascinating insight into the creative sparks at the time. The record is built on looping guitar structures, giving a distinct nod to his Texan heritage. The record is playful, laid-back and off-beat, which actually feels familiar to the leftﬁeld pop sensibilities that we have come to know of Dear since this period. The album feels rough, uncomplicated

and home-built, giving it a personal and charming feel, like an early evening drinking session in a small bar on the outskirts of a dusty town alongside Dear himself. Forensically tracing Matthew Dear’s music is near impossible, but this is as close as you will get and it’s one hell of a fun ride. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Muscle Beach, Hikers Y, Crash and Burn

8/10

Perila How Much Time it is Between You and Me? Smalltown Supersound

planted ﬁrmly in the African diaspora, the record has a truly global feel featuring contributors from all over. The result is a feel-good, inclusive party atmosphere, full of energy and positivity. A brilliant snapshot of the collective personality and spirit that makes Moonshine such a special outﬁt. Tom Jones

he suitably sensual, weird and erotic debut album from experimental producer, sound designer and composer Aleksandra Zakharenko’s Perila alias. The Russian-born, Berlin-based artist ﬁrst emerged on Berlin Community Radio and then went on to create her own brilliantly singular podcast series, Weird Erotic Tension. WET has since helped to grow a community of expressionistic music that combines ﬁeld recordings, erotic poetry and atmospheric electronic productions. Perila’s debut album commits the same aesthetic to record, taking us on a mind-expanding, introspective but highly atmospheric and sensual journey across unfamiliar and almost mystic landscapes. Amorphous structures, eerie reverb, distorted vocals, distant, jangling melodies, breathy recitations, subtle drone textures and otherworldly FX drift through the centre of the record as the Russian’s innate experimentalism spins us further out towards the edges of reality. There is a feeling of the tussle between a sense of detachment and introspection, like losing yourself from the world in an intense connection with a lover. That intimacy and sensuality is palpable throughout. How Much Time it is Between You and Me? Is the perfect way to separate your senses from your environment so they focus on the love and life around you. Tom Jones

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST:

Ginseng, Cria, Woah

Time Date, Untitled, Fallin Into Space

8/10

9/10

Moonshine SMS for Location Vol. 4 FORESEEN Entertainment Moonshine are a much-loved collective of Montreal-based musicians, DJs, dancers and visual artists who have been celebrating pan-African pride since their 2014 inception. Whether it’s their popular underground parties, celebrated mixtapes or dynamic releases, the collective serve up a vibrant, modern African sounds that are full of life and joy. On the fourth instalment of their acclaimed SMS

for Location mixtape series, the collective draw thrilling links between Afrobeat, hip-hop, Kinshasa electronic music, Soweto house, funk and bass. It’s bass-heavy, electronic sound combines inventive production and traditional instrumentation to create a rich and diverse tapestry. Vocals are in African French, Swahili and English and although the roots of the album are

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

40 Y E A R S O F

AUDIO ON FILESILO

PR O DU C T ION

Since its birth in the early 1980s, techno has taken over the world and remains one of dance music’s most enduring genres. This issue, we delve back through nearly 30 years’ worth of interviews to discover how the changing face of technology has shaped the sound of techno

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

t’s hard to pin down an exact date that techno as we know it today was born; unlike some other genres, there isn’t one definitive release that can easily be singled out as the first proper example of techno. It’s more accurate to say that, like both house and hip-hop, it emerged over the course of the early ’80s out of the roots of synth pop and electro, as a byproduct of the arrival of the first wave of truly affordable electronic instruments. Even if the precise date is up in the air, you an certainly tie the birth of techno to a place ca – the city of Detroit – and a small circle of oung Black musicians. If there is a single yo originator, it would undoubtedly be Juan Atkins. Ass a young man at the dawn of the 1980s, Attkins acquired his first synths – first a Korg MS-10, then later a Sequential Pro One – and began experimenting with creating tracks, be resulting in a string of proto-techno releases under the moniker Cybotron with friend Rik Davis. While quite simplistic in their construction, the earliest Cybrotron releases, such as 1981’s Alleys Of Your Mind, bear a distinct similarity to European synth acts such as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, whose hit Cars had arrived two years previously. Atkins, along with close friends and fellow techno pioneers Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, would absorb an eclectic melting pot of

For Atkins, an element of futurism and sci-fi played a role in these earliest musical experiments. There’s no doubt that this outlook was, to an extent, a reaction to the postindustrial landscape of Detroit, which had begun its much-discussed decline by the early ’80s. Atkins has cited the influence of American writer Alvin Toffler too, whose book Future Shock he’d studied as a teen, and whose writings inspired the fledgling genre’s name. This tendency toward the futuristic would remain a running theme throughout techno and its numerous offshoots, found predominantly, for example, in the afro-futurism of later Detroit icons Drexciya. By contrast Saunderson, who grew up in New York and moved to Detroit later, was equally influenced by the soul and disco coming out of his home city. Through NYC radio he absorbed the likes of Chic and the extended remixes designed for the dancefloors of the iconic Studio 54. Of the Belleville trio, Atkins was the first to release music, following up Cybotron’s debut with synth-pop indebted tracks such as Clear and Cosmic Cars. In 1985, Atkins’ collaborator Rik Davis left the group and shortly after, under the alias Model 500, Atkins released No UFO’s. Built around a punchy 909 beat, funk-style synth bass and repetitive vocal, No UFO’s is arguably the first track sonically recognisable as ‘techno’ as we know it today. The years that followed would see the arrival of formative techno classics from each of the Belleville trio, such as Strings Of Life from Rhythim is Rhythim (May) and Good Life by Inner City (Saunderson), as well as contemporaries KEVIN SAUNDERSON such as Eddie Fowlkes and Blake Baxter. The sound, and its name, was eventually solidified with the release of the compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit, compiled by British journalist Neil Rushton in collaboration with the Belleville originators.

musical styles through Detroit’s legendary local radio stations and inﬂuential hosts such as WGPR-FM’s Electrifying Mojo. The trio – informally dubbed the Belleville Three, after the suburb of Detroit they called home – have cited everyone from homegrown Motown icons to David Bowie, New Order, Parliament and even the B-52s as early inﬂuences. Despite the shared listening experiences, techno’s founders came from different places as musicians. “I’ve been making music all my life, starting out with a guitar, then a drum set, but I didn’t really start experimenting with electronics until around 1978,” Atkins explained to Future Music in 1999 (FM80). “I hadn’t heard of people like Kraftwerk at that time, but I’d been working on demos, really early versions of tracks like Alleys Of Your Mind that were put together on cassette. “At that time I had a basic mixer and a Korg MS-10, which was the synth that really developed my interest, introducing me to waveforms and oscillators. I’d just bounce between two cassette decks, taping from one to the other to create the overdub. There’s a real art to that.”

“DEEP SOUND PROGRAMMING PLAYED A BIG PART IN DETROIT’S SOUND”

HANDS ON, HANDS OFF

Juan Atkins and his Korg MS-10 were there at day one of techno’s inception

Alongside the social and cultural influences, the impact that 1980s music hardware had on the creation of techno is inescapable. The genre’s birth coincides with the rise of ‘affordable’ music hardware, such as the synths from Korg and Sequential cited by Atkins and, most significantly, Roland’s run of iconic rhythm machines. Techno’s style is derived from more than just the sound of these specific machines though – it’s equally influenced by the way in which they were used. Early techno tracks were largely the work of one or two musicians, created in simple home setups rather than big, wellequipped studios. This meant that their production involved working around a lack of gear and manpower, making use of often-

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

Orbital on creating UK techno classic Chime [FM 10, 1993]

“We were using a four-track to record, when all of a sudden I just thought, ‘hang on why do I keep recording when it’s all happening live now? Why don’t I just use the four-track as a mixer and record into another tape deck?’ Chime was one of those funny things where you don’t really think about it. It turned out to be our bestselling record! I think there’s a lot to be said for doing music without any thought behind it, just slapping something together and seeing what happens. You get a good feeling, because you’ve started and ﬁnished before you’re fed up with listening to it.”

simplistic sequencers to loop and trigger patterns while wringing as many sounds as possible out of each instrument. As Saunderson told FM in 1998 (FM71): “I think [The Groove That Won’t Stop] is a good example of what you can do when you get into some deep sound programming. I think that played a big part in creating Detroit’s unique sound back then; we really did spend a lot of time programming. Programming sounds is an important part of how your vision comes alive. It helps you create. You can come up with sounds which just trigger all kinds of ideas or give parts a whole new life. “You’ve got to remember that back then we didn’t know anything, a lot of times we created something and it almost happened by accident. It wasn’t done because we were sitting down thinking through logically, it was done because we were in a creative mood working on sounds that inspired us…” In the years following techno’s initial breakthrough, a new name rose to prominence

“CHEAP AVAILABILITY OF THE ANALOGUE SEQUENCER SHAPED TECHNO”

give you more options to create something for people to hear. I could layer three or four turntables together, because the music doesn’t change if JEFF MILLS there are no breaks, bridges or choruses. You realise that you can juggle the in Detroit. Originally known by his radio DJ minimal tracks or mix them together to create a moniker The Wizard, Jeff Mills became popular whole new track.” for his mixing style, initially marked out by Mills backs up the idea of techno being quick mixes between records, and later evolving heavily inspired by the gear available at the to create live edits using a combination of three time. “A lot of it has to do with the machines turntables and drum machines. themselves,” he told FM in 2018 (FM338). Mills explained the origins of the setup to us “Making the analogue sequencer more regularly in 2009 (CM Special 36): “For years it had available and cheaper played a big role in been the dream of DJs to search out really shaping techno music – we started using these minimal tracks... things that would allow you to random sequences to create a certain type of extend. That comes from hip-hop, where you sound. We’re inﬂuenced by what these want a fairly simple break or groove so you can machines can do, which comes down to what then do things to it. The three decks thing people design for us.” came as a direct result of music becoming In 1989, Mills formed Underground more minimal. The idea was that if it was that Resistance with Robert Hood and ‘Mad’ Mike minimal, you could layer it together the way Banks. The group became known for their you’d layer tracks in the studio, and that would distinctive style, which was sonically hard-

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

Basic channelstyle percussion

Perhaps more than any other genre, techno allows endless creativity when it comes to the percussive elements. Here we’ll use some plugin presets in Logic Pro X to create a shifting, dub techno-style percussion line

03 >

The pattern is very static at this point so, to inject some movement, we have called up Logic’s AutoFilter plugin. We have selected the Panning Band Pass preset which, as the name suggests, automatically applies a rhythmic band pass filter as well as moving the sound across the stereo field.

01 >

04 >

02 >

05 >

We’ve set Logic’s tempo to 141bpm and loaded a synth tom sound into Sampler. The choice of sound will depend on your track, but any short percussive sound will work well. Of course, it’s always useful to dedicate some separate production time towards creating your own library of unique drum and percussion sounds.

With the metronome engaged, we recorded a series of MIDI notes from a keyboard and, using 1/16 Quantize, snapped the notes to the grid. A different feel can be achieved by experimenting with the Swing slider. This will depend entirely on the style of your track.

To further process the sound, we have added a BitCrusher to add some crunch, a Stereo Delay using the 1/8 Dotted preset to add stereo bounce, a Channel EQ to cut the lows and accentuate the mids, and finally the Large Synth Room preset in ChromaVerb to add lots of space.

We duplicated the first track but instead used a metallic found sound. All the plugins are still in place but, to add some variety between the two parts, we adjusted the LFO Rate on the AutoFilter from four bars to five bars. This simple modification gives the looping percussion a more complex, polyrhythmical quality.

The two parts could be routed to an Aux track to allow further processing, perhaps with sidechain compression, EQ, and filters. Alternatively, the loop can be exported as audio but, to ensure all of the effects work correctly in the loop, select Realtime and Bounce 2nd Cycle Pass in the Bounce menu.

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

edged and lo-fi, with a propensity for antiestablishment and anti-corporate statements that tapped into the same class and race tensions as those explored by hip-hop contemporaries Public Enemy. In 1994, UR member Robert Hood would go on to release Minimal Nation, a foundational blueprint for minimal techno, an offshoot that distilled the genre’s machine-driven rhythms down to their purest form. With tracks based around just one or two synth riffs and strippedback drums, Minimal Nation put the production emphasis on the grooves and subtle shifts in sound. It was a style that would be highly influential on later artists like Richie Hawtin.

THE BERLIN CONNECTION As techno spread from Detroit in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it quickly found popularity in the UK, tying into the burgeoning acid house scene and inspiring artists such as A Guy Called Gerald and 808 State and later the likes of Kirk Degiorgio, The Black Dog and many others. As Degiorgio explained in 2013, as the UK scene established itself, it quickly created a relationship with the second generation of techno artists emerging in Detroit. “Shut Up and Dance sampled Carl Craig so he sampled them back. There was a lot of that. [Craig] loved the stuff we were doing and licensed some of it for Planet E. The third release on

[Degiorgio’s label] A.R.T. was from him before he was as well known. It really was the birth of it all.” While the genre was popular in the UK and elsewhere in Europe – such as Belgium, where the label R&S became a significant supporter – it was Berlin that quickly established itself as techno’s second city. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and a new mood of openmindedness created the perfect breeding ground for techno’s anti-establishment and futuristic undertones and sense of sonic adventurousness. Dimitri Hegemann, founder of Berlin Atonal festival, is credited with first introducing the pioneers of techno to Berlin in the mid-’80s. It was in ’89, however, that the scene really took root; a year that saw the first ever Love Parade – and its influential afterparty at Hegemann’s Ufo club – as well as Mark Ernestus founding the influential Hard Wax record store. As well as being one of the most important importers of techno records with Hard Wax, Ernestus would have a huge impact on the genre as one half of pioneering dub techno outfit Basic Channel, alongside Moritz von

COMPRESS AND LIMIT; THAT’S KEY TO DRUMS YOU CAN FEEL IN THE CLUB © XAMAX\ullstein bild via Getty Images

From Loveparade, its after-parties at the Ufo club, to its successor club Tresor, Berlin transformed techno

Oswald (among numerous other aliases the duo worked under). Structurally, dub techno bears similarities to the minimal sound Robert Hood was refining across the Atlantic – both representing the genre at its most loop-centric and groove driven. However, whereas Minimal Nation made use of few effects – mostly a simple touch of reverb – the dub techno of Basic Channel makes liberal use of delays, reverbs and modulation effects to create a more spaced-out take on the sound. The ‘dub’ in the name comes from the hardware-heavy process of ‘live remixing’ adopted from reggae – a genre link Ernestus and von Oswald would explore more thoroughly as Rhythm and Sound – and the heavy use of tape echoes such as the Roland RE-201 imparted most tracks with a muffled, bassy quality and a soothing coat of tape hiss. As dub techno progressed, another defining trait was the often low-level of the percussion – whereby kicks, snares and hats would take a back seat to pulsating synth chords and delayed stabs. The origins of Berlin techno didn’t happen in isolation from the genre’s origins though. By the early ‘90s Berlin artists like von Oswald were regularly collaborating with Detroit artists, creating what was often known as the ‘Berlin-Detroit axis’. After the Ufo club closed in 1990, Hegemann opened Tresor in part of a former department store near the city’s Potsdamer Platz. The club, along with its associated record label, would go on to play a major role in making Berlin a global mecca for techno fans and aspiring producers. Over the years, techno artists from all over the world FIEDEL have relocated to Berlin, from Richie Hawtin to modern luminaries such as Objekt, Blawan and PAN-founder Bill Kouligas. In recent times, Berlin techno has been synonymous with Berghain – a club worldfamous for its unpredictable door policy as much as its music – and its associated label Ostgut Ton. The ‘Berghain sound’ (if there is one), is probably most closely associated with artists such as Ben Klock and Marcel Dettmann, whose atmospheric but tough tracks play like a more industrial update to the dub techno of ‘90s Berlin. It’s a take on the genre that puts the kick at the forefront too, often using sub-heavy, reverb-drenched drums as both rhythmic backbone and bassline. The percussion in modern Berlin techno often has a sound designed to match the post-industrial clubs where tracks are regularly played – effect treatments are dark and cavernous, bringing to mind spaces like the former powerplant that houses Berghain’s main dancefloor. Speaking to FM in 2019, Berghain regular Fiedel shared his secrets to tough, Berlin-style drums. “As a source I sometimes use the Max For Live Drum Synth plugin, and sometimes I

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

Jungle-inspired breakbeat loop

Breakbeat loops have been used in many areas of electronic music, most prominently jungle and drum & bass. But this versatile drum loop can also be found in various forms of techno Here’s how to create your own…

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With the sliced break rearranged, we’ve added a room reverb to give the separate samples some cohesion. Plus, we’ve added shaker and tambourine loops. To get the tambourine to sit better within the loop, use EQ Eight to roll off the low and high frequencies, and the LFO Tool plugin.

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The most commonly used sample is from the 1969 track Amen, Brother by The Winstons. We have added a four bar break to an Audio Track in Live with the Warp Mode set to Re-Pitch. As our project tempo is 140bpm, the loop now plays slightly faster compared to the original.

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To accentuate the sliced loop, we’ve loaded a separate kick drum into Simpler and sequenced a simple pattern. The kick is detuned and filtered using the MS2 Circuit and a little Drive. The kick is then treated with a short mono reverb so as to blend in with the sliced breaks loop.

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We now need to chop up this four-bar loop. To do this, right click on the audio clip, select Slice to New MIDI Track and click OK to use the default settings. Live now automatically creates a Drum Rack with each detected slice loaded into Simpler and mapped to different MIDI notes.

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We can now use a MIDI keyboard to create a new pattern at our project tempo by triggering individual slices from the original Amen Break. Although Live does a fantastic job of cutting up the loop, typically the warp markers on some individual slices will need adjusting to ensure there are no clicks.

We route these elements to a Group track and add the Saturator and Glue Compressor. As the loops are set to Re-Pitch mode, we can approximate a classic sampling technique by increasing the project tempo to 180bpm and resampling the sped-up audio. Retuning to 140bpm, our resampled loop has now acquired a more authentic vibe.

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

Techno kick and rumble

The low-end of dark driving techno is often created by processing the kick drum. Here we’re using a selection of aggressive effects in Ableton Live to produce what’s generally known as the “rumble”

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We then add an Effects Rack for several stages of parallel processing. The first chain is the dry kick signal. Additional chains are added for Dark Verb, Delay and Clear Verb. Each chain has a series of effects, and the volume of each of the chains is then blended for the final sound.

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We’re using Sonic Academy’s Kick 2 plugin. Another option is to use a kick sample, typically from a Roland TR-909. However, Kick 2 allows greater flexibility in duration, pitch and top element clicks, essential to hone and personalise the style of your track.

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The Dark Verb chain includes a Convolution Reverb Pro, set 100% wet, followed by the Amp plugin. This distorted reverb needs to be radically shaped using an Auto Filter, with the Filter Frequency set at 96.6Hz. The Gain, Amp Type and EQ controls have a pronounced influence on the sound, so try all the settings.

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The next stage is to add harmonic bite to the kick using the Drive control on the Saturator plugin. It’s worth experimenting with the Curve Types as well as the DC and Color controls, and Dry/Wet balance, as these greatly affect the sound. We have then added EQ Eight to sculpt the sound.

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We need to create some breathing space for this dark reverb using a Compressor sidechained from Kick 2. The Ratio, Attack and Release can be adjusted to suit the feel of the track. The general idea is to have the filtered reverb pumping on the offbeat.

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

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A heavily filtered and distorted delay is another option to use instead of reverb. In this case however, we’re subtly adding repeats at higher frequencies to add rhythmic interest. We’ve added Amp, again 100% wet, and Delay. Because the repeats are stereo, we’ve added a Utility plugin to add control to the width of the delay.

These repeats also need to be controlled using Auto Filter, but to a far lesser degree here than the Dark Verb processing. The Filter Type, Drive and Circuit Slope determine the character of the filtering. Similarly, the delays are sidechained using the Compressor plugin to add some pumping.

The blended outputs from the four chains in the Effects Rack are now routed through an EQ Eight set to Mid/Side mode in order to filter out low frequencies in the sides of the stereo field. This is followed by a standard EQ Eight to filter out the ultra-lows and to notch out some boxy frequencies at 135Hz.

The last stage is to add a Utility plugin so all frequencies below 120Hz are summed with the Bass Mono switch. And finally, a Limiter plugin is added to compress the kick and rumble elements. Alternatively, the separate elements of the Effects Rack can be bounced to individual tracks for further processing.

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The Clear Verb chain also uses the Convolution Reverb Pro, but here the objective is to add general ambience. The on-board EQ is used to limit the reverb frequencies produced. The stereo width control can be used to widen the feel of this ambience, or to push it to the centre of the stereo field.

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

use [Live’s] onboard drums like the 808s or 909s. I’ll layer drums though, in order to separate the lower and higher parts so I can focus on the low end. I’ll have the same drums – for example a 909 – split into two so I can shape both elements separately. Then to create powerful drums, of course, you have to compress them and limit them. That’s the key to making sure you can hear them and feel them in the club.” It’s no coincidence that, alongside its long history as a hub for techno artists, Berlin is also home to several signiﬁcant music technology brands. The crossover between the genre and those creating new music technology has always been strong in the city – Ableton co-founders Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke were both members of minimal techno outﬁt Monolake at the time of the company’s launch, and Native Instruments has employed a number of notable DJs such as Objekt and Errorsmith, the latter of whom developed the company’s excellent Razor synth

In a neat bit of reciprocation, both companies have signiﬁcantly advanced the ways in which techno is produced in the 21st century. NI software such as Reaktor, Massive and Kontakt are key tools for creating the textural, often-atonal sounds used in modern techno. With its hybrid take on the classic MPC format, Maschine is a prime conduit for the genre’s hands-on ethos. Ableton Live, meanwhile, has become the de facto DAW of choice for modern techno producers thanks to its loop-focused workﬂow and non-linear approach (although it’s by no means the only viable option). These, along with the likes of Bitwig and modular mainstay Schneidersladen – and its Superbooth trade show – mean that Berlin remains a prime

spot for adventurous music makers and technologists alike.

ROLAND DOMINATION It’s difﬁcult to talk about most electronic genres without eventually mentioning Roland’s 1980s machines, but the links between the Japanese brand and techno are arguably tighter than with any other genre. The TR-909 is effectively the foundational machine of the genre; its sounds and workﬂow inspired the earliest Detroit techno releases and it remains the go-to rhythm machine today. Jeff Mills, an undisputed master of the 909, explained its appeal in FM 338: “its sounds are kind of party-ready. They’re so distinctive and have just the right amount of resonance and tuning that you don’t need to put effects on them to make them sound great. It’s also a really powerful machine that came along at a time when music needed to be powerful. This was during

“THE 909’S SOUNDS ARE PARTY-READY. YOU DON’T NEED TO PUT EFFECTS ON THEM” E

[FM 301, 2016] “I would say don’t overcomplicate things. Create something that feels right to you that has a pure, honest energy and is infectious. An example of that is when I spent three or four days with the engineer explaining the patchbay to me. He showed me all these great effects, but I was like, no, fuck it, put all the effects in mono please – I want eight mono sends with everything coming back to the board so I can do feedback loops and EQ the hell out of them with minimal panning. It’s about making a track that feels good.”

Richie Hawtin on making great techno

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

Melodic techno synth

Lead synths in melodic forms of techno use snappy filter envelopes for pluck sounds that lend themselves to atmospheric processing. Here we show you how using Xfer Serum…

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Bright waveforms provide a good starting point for lead synths. Basic Shapes position 2 is selected for Osc A, and a saw wave for the Sub Osc but with the octave set at +1 so that it’s in the same register. Osc A is detuned slightly to provide a unison sound between Osc A and the Sub Osc.

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We have opted to use the MG Low 12 filter, set Env 1 to control the filter Cutoff, and routed Osc A, Osc B and the Sub Osc through the filter. There any many excellent filter types to try in Serum. These can also be used in the effects section in addition to the main oscillator filter.

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Within Serum’s effects page, we have added some subtle bitcrushing using the Downsampling circuit in the Distortion rack. This is mixed in at 20% to add some digital-sounding harmonics. This is followed by some light compression to even out the notes and gel all the elements together.

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Osc B also uses a sawtooth wave but set to one octave below Osc A to thicken the overall sound. Additionally, multiple voices for Osc B are created by setting the Unison control to 4 with some Detune dialled in to provide a richer, and wider, sound.

Finally, we have added two plugins from Native Instruments. Firstly, some granular space from the Dark Impact preset in RAUM. This is followed by a slightly modified version of the Relay preset in REPLIKA. The mix of these effects adds space and dimension creating a wash of sound like a synth pad.

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Pluck sounds are created with a short Attack and fast Decay. Release determines how long it takes for the notes to subsequently fade out. By default, Env 1 is routed to the amplifier, but we can also associate Env 1 with the filter so one set of envelope controls are used for both.

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

Mutated Absynth techno drones

Background textures are hugely important to techno. Let’s create a techno-tinged, unpredictable and movement-filled drone with the help of NI’s additive synth

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With the mutated Absynth note playing, record to a new track using a resampling audio routing within your DAW. We use Live, and select a 2-bar section of the resampled audio, pressing the Fade button in the Clip View to prevents clicks when the audio loops. In this example, we also selected the Texture Warp Mode, and detuned audio by an octave to add more grain and grit to the sound.

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Load an instance of Native Instruments Absynth and create a two-bar MIDI note, in this case a very low note at E0. The starting point is to find a preset that has some movement and character. For this example, we selected the Alcove Fields preset.

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The final step is to add in various effects to the resampled audio track. We add an EQ Eight to roll off the low end, a large and wide reverb to add space and depth, an Auto Filter to sweep over 8 bars. Finally we add a ping-pong Delay to add further stereo interest to the filter sweeps.

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With a preset selected, the key part of this process is to use Absynth’s Mutate function. This randomly alters various parameters producing an entirely new, mutated version of it. This stage can be repeated until a useable sound is produced. This process is unpredictable and usually takes several iterations with the Mutate button.

You can now export the resulting audio, making sure to select the Render As Loop function in order to fully integrate the effects within the exported loop.

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

Octave One’s Lawrence Burden on working with hardware [FM 312, 2016] “A lot of it is about the relationship with the machine. The different characteristics you get with them. If you come from this era, you can probably get the same kind of feeling from software, but for us it’s like, this 909, not only does it sound different but there’s a way it reacts differently. Like, a particular synth has an individual way it reacts; it’s the quirks, the little nuances.”

the rave era and electronic and techno music, where you often needed the drums to be very strong. The 909 was always ready to go, straight out of the box, which is different from the 808 where some sounds are a bit soft. On that machine, the tuning is interesting on the kick drum, but when you need to hammer the sound it doesn’t have that type of dynamic.” Sven Väth voiced a similar opinion back in 2002 (FM122): “I think the 909 is so enduring because somehow you have a relationship with the machine. There are certain sounds you always remember. We sample it a lot as well, especially the bass drums, and then distort and loop them. But even so, a good 909 kick is still a good 909 kick. Also the hi-hats, they’re just unique. They give the tracks that techno feel because old techno always had those sounds.” It’s not just the 909 that has had a major impact on the creation of techno though. The TB-303, obviously, is the cornerstone of acid, ﬁrst misused to iconic effect by Chicago outﬁt Phuture, while the SH-101 has long been a

“YOU CAN HAVE AMAZING SYNTHS BUT YOU HAVE ONLY SO MANY HANDS”

and the sound of it will never not be totally satisfying.” It would be a misnomer to suggest that techno production is simply a case of RICHIE HAWTIN using one specific set of retro instruments. The genre’s sound and evolution comes down as much to the way that techno favourite, thanks largely to its simple musicians interacted with these – if we’re being but hands-on workflow. honest – fairly limited machines, as much as As Richie Hawtin put it in 2016 (FM301): the sounds themselves. “The 101, honestly... You can have all the most As Glasgow techno pioneers Slam told FM in amazing synths with as many knobs as you 1998 (FM71): “Techno is all about exploring want, but you only have so many hands. I did, the machinery. It doesn’t matter if you don’t and still do, gravitate to simplistic machines have [a 909 or 303]. What matters is your that I can get something out of very quickly.” The 101 was among the Roland gear attitude. If you’re willing to push beyond the instrumental to the creation of Daniel Avery’s boundaries and make original, innovative ambient techno modern classic Song For Alpha music, to push the machines to their utmost, too, as he told us in 2018 (FM330): “I bought that’s techno in its purest form.” an 808 and those long, drawn-out kicks feature heavily. For pads, finding a Roland JX-3P and INNOVATION AND EXPLORATION running it through a series of different reverb While, as with other electronic genres, you units instantly made a huge difference in the could certainly accuse some techno producers studio. The 101 was used a lot again this time

Feature | 40 Years of Techno Production

of being overly obsessed with retro gear from the heyday of analogue, there has also always been a strong trend toward innovation within the genre. Hawtin is a prime example, having been instrumental in the formative days of digital DJing with his early adoption of Final Scratch and Ableton Live, through several innovative interactive live tours and, in recent years, launching his own MODEL 1 DJ mixer. As sampling and digital technology began to become commonplace in the ‘90s, techno producers were quick to make use of it to adventurous ends. Compared to genres like house, where samples are often used as wholesale loops, techno production tends to involve more oddball creative processing and manipulation. As Dutch pioneer Speedy J explained of his process in 1997 (FM57): “I like shaping sound and inventing new textures and always record while I’m doing it. I’ll play something, loop it with the sequencer, and keep shaping it until I’m happy with it. The whole process has interesting results or will have useful parts in it. Then I will sample bits from that again, treat it again and again. I have a huge library of my own sounds to work from.” It’s this sort of adventurous approach that has made techno one of the prime drivers behind the rise of modular synthesis in recent years. With its emphasis on rhythmic triggering, modulation and complex interaction, modular synthesis is a seemingly perfect match for a genre like techno.

way to connect all my instruments. The desk has a very important role in that, because if I had to record each sound separately, you kind of lose the moment. It’s all about pushing the fader, seeing what it does, putting some effect on it, then moving on. I feel if you’re loading everything into a computer then, for me, it becomes static.” Sequencing remains a key element of techno creation too. In the software realm, something like Bitwig Studio, with its modular ‘Grid’ system, offers a mass of modern sequencing tools, as does the wealth of free and commercial tools available for Reaktor or Max (now integrated into Ableton Live). Even setting aside the near endless possibilities offered by Eurorack, it’s a boom time for hardware sequencing though, thanks to innovative and easily integrated tools such as Korg’s SQ-64, Pioneer DJ’s Squid or Arturia’s excellent ‘step’ range. As 808 State’s Graham Massey told us in 2019 (FM349): “The BeatStep Pro plays a huge part due to its tight CV/gate sequencing. You know those drawings by Escher where you can’t tell whether you’re going up the stairs or down? It gave rise to these weird earworms – patterns that move around and give a tweaky aspect to the record.” As was the case for those Detroit originators, learning the ins-and-outs of an instrument remains the key way to get the most out of it. As Bloody Mary said in 2020: “If I’m using the Access Virus, say, I’ll go to the studio and work only using that. I’ll just play with the synth, jam and make crazy noises using the LFO and all the frequencies and try to get the best that I can from just one sound. I’d say it’s better to know exactly what you can get from the gear you’re working with. It’s not a competition. I would love to have more STEFFI gear in my studio, obviously, but if you really work with one piece you’ll be surprised what you can take from it.”

Berlin-based artist Rebekah explained its appeal to FM in 2020: “With softsynths I was always trying to find a proper raw techno sound, but found it a real struggle. With modular you have to learn the lingo but the sound is instant – and the sound I wanted was in the modular realm. With softsynths, I have to do a lot more layering and adding distortion.” So what’s the key to creating the perfect production setup for techno? As we’ve seen, vintage Roland sounds are a solid starting point, although by no means mandatory. There are countless solid software recreations these days, with Roland’s own Cloud service providing the most convenient bundle. In hardware, Behringer’s remakes offer cheap authenticity, although, for us, Roland’s TR-8S is the best balance of vintage vibe and modern flexibility. Whether you’re using hardware or software, the ability to get hands-on is key. As Ostgut Ton mainstay (and owner of an enviable synth-stuffed studio) Steffi explained to FM in 2017, studio layout is key to her workflow: “I guess I just like to get everything laid out before I record. When I stepped away from the computer and found my love of hardware sequencing, for me that was a

“IF YOU LOAD EVERYTHING INTO A COMPUTER, IT BECOMES STATIC” © Joby Sessions/Future

INTO THE FUTURE

For Steffi, hardware sequencing and a hands-on workflow are key

In 2021 techno is still a huge global force, albeit one that sits somewhat outside of the mainstream. While clubnights and festivals from outfits like Drumcode – the worldconquering label run by Swedish producer Adam Beyer – can sell out arena-sized venues for multiple nights, in the public consciousness, techno is still a mysterious subculture, often misused as a byword for any and all electronic music. Indeed, much of the most exciting music comes out of underground circles, from the leftfield bass of UK labels like Livity Sound or Perc Trax to the playful hard-edged sounds of up-and-coming artists like VTSS. As Kevin Saunderson told us in 1998: “When Juan, Derrick and I first set out on this thing, we had no idea what would happen. I could never have imagined how it would turn out. But no doubt what we did back then changed the world.”

40 Years of Techno Production | Feature

Robert Hood-style lead synth Many classic techno tracks have been created with simple mono synths which suit hypnotic grooves. We’re using the TAL Bassline 101 plugin, sequenced within Ableton Live for a Minimal Nation-style riff

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The Envelope Section is shared between the Filter and Amplifier section. The settings here create short, snappy notes that affect the duration of each note and the dynamics of the filter based on the Env slider in the VCF section. Higher amounts will produce distinctive Acid-303 style filtering.

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The ﬁrst step is to create a sequence of MIDI notes that will form our synth loop. One useful technique is to use Ableton Live’s arpeggiator, located in the MIDI Effects section, in order to generate tempo-locked notes at various octaves when pressing just a single key.

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For oscillator tones in the Source Mixer section, we’re using a Pulse Wave with the Pulse Width slider set to zero to produce a square wave. The Saw Wave is blended in to add some edge and, to add some distinctive 101-character, a subtle amount of the Noise oscillator is also added.

The waveforms are now shaped by the Voltage Controlled Filter (VCF) section by adjusting the relationship between the cutoff ﬁlter Frequency, Resonance and Keyboard Tracking (KB) sliders. The Filter Envelope (ENV) slider determines how the ﬁlter is subsequently controlled by the Envelope Section.

The Mod slider in the VCF takes a signal from the Modulator Section of the synth. In this example, we’re adding a small amount from the Random waveform (Sample & Hold) to introduce ﬂuctuations in the cutoff Frequency which helps maintain interest as the loop cycles.

Finally, with the loop playing, the audio can be routed to a new audio track and the synth’s controls can be tweaked and recorded in realtime. The ﬁnal step is to add a touch of reverb and delay, the amount of which will depend entirely on the vibe of your track.

In The Studio With | Telex

Telex

Belgian trio Telex was one of the first to bring electronic pop to the European hit parade. Danny Turner chats to Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers about the band’s past and present

Telex | In The Studio With

ormed in 1978 by vocalist Michel Moers, keyboard enthusiast Marc Moulin and sound engineer Dan Lacksman, Brussels-based Telex blended experimental electronic music with disco and pop through their stripped-down cover versions and selfdepreciative songwriting. The group’s success peaked in 1980 when, despite their misgivings, they were persuaded to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest. Preferring to remain anonymous and shunning live performance, they teamed up with glam-rock synth poppers Sparks, remixed Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys and released albums intermittently up to 2006. However, after the untimely death of Moulin two years later, Telex decided to call it a day. Thankfully, a final flurry of activity now sees them working with Mute Records to rework their back catalogue and release a 14-track compilation featuring unreleased tracks.

What were your musical backgrounds prior to forming Telex? MM: “Marc was into jazz and fusion, I was into rock, folk and jazz and Dan more pop and electro music. He was the first one to play with synths and listen to that music, although Marc did have a Minimoog. We all had specific roles in the band. Marc was the keyboard player and composer, I was the singer and composer and Dan the sound wizard. We had opinions about each other’s actions, but the best thing was that there were three of us so there was always a majority for decisions we made.” DL: “I was working as an assistant engineer and then a freelance engineer and was very interested by a new instrument called the synthesiser and managed to buy an EMS VCS3 just when Gershon Kingsley’s big hit Popcorn came out in 1969. Everybody was discovering the synthesiser and a lot of artists wanted to have some electronic sounds on their arrangements. After a few months I knew how to use it and thanks to my studio boss we did a master class demonstration and I began working as a synth programmer and specialist for Belgian productions, going from studio to studio.” Kraftwerk’s ethos was futurism and the relationship between man and machine. Did you have a similar message for Telex? MM: “The whole of the first album, Looking for Saint Tropez, was about communication – or lack of it – through the machines, but we never played the game of being robots. It was more about making pop music related to the cartoons that we were surrounded by in Belgium. When we began there was only Kraftwerk, so the influence was more related to the simplicity of their sound and the beginning of rhythmic electronic music. Other artists like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze were more temperamental-sounding.”

DL: “Kraftwerk were my influence and closer to what we wanted to do because they did everything electronically whereas even Yellow Magic Orchestra used real drums. Before Telex, I experimented a lot with modular synthesisers to make drum sounds and one of the first things Florian Schneider told me years later was that he was astonished we could do that using modular equipment because Kraftwerk only had a rhythm box that they used to take apart.” What modular gear were you using to make those drum rhythms? DL: “Everything came from the Modular Moog. I found a way to sync a little eight-note click and trigger a module called the Envelope Follower that allowed you to generate a sound every four beeps. Every four was the bass drum, so I mixed oscillators, noise gates and different envelopes to get a bass drum sound and made a kind of snare and a hi-hat.” As mentioned, you became friends with Florian Schneider. What would you talk about? DL: “At the beginning I didn’t dare to talk about music, so we mostly spoke about Belgian beer and food because he wanted to get away from the technical side of his job. Of course he was telling me stories about Kraftwerk on tour and what happened sometimes, but not a lot. Once he asked if we could do a track together about plastic pollution and I was pinching myself. At the time, his studio was not ready but he knew mine well because we used to meet here every time he came to Brussels. Florian liked Brussels very much and thought about buying a house here because he liked the atmosphere.” One of your most well-known tracks was Moskow Diskow. Was it influenced by Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express? DL: “Not really – they’re both about trains, but we had this crazy idea of having a disco in a train and wanted to build the sound of a train into the rhythm track and make the steam engine sound like a hi-hat rhythm. It’s a strange idea because if you listen to a real train the tempo’s not constant because when the train goes faster so does the steam [laughs].” Did you all share a vision that electronic pop would be the music of the future and want to be a part of that process? MM: “We didn’t really think about the future, we just wanted to do something of our own with all these new instruments – something far away from rock ‘n’ roll and the other music coming from America. We were trying to make continental music with machines, but thought our music would be disposable after six months as fashions change a lot.” Some of the early electronic artists were quite envious that Gary Numan was the first to popularise electronic music, were you? MM: “We weren’t surprised because Are ‘Friends’ Electric? was impressive and what he was doing was very powerful. The only thing I remember is that when we went to the BBC to be on Top of the Pops I was sitting next to Gary Numan for an hour and he

In The Studio With | Telex

didn’t say a word because he wasn’t very talkative.” DL: “The electronic sound he made was part of the song and the arrangement, but it was mainly about writing good songs. The first OMD records and Soft Cell also wrote good songs.” Tell us more about your debut album Looking for Saint Tropez and some of the early technologies you used on that record? DL: “When I made my first album as Electronic System, by chance I made a little hit record using the EMS VCS3 so I could immediately invest in the big Moog modular system in 1972/73. When Telex started in 1977, we mainly used the Modular Moog,

the Polymoog, the Sennheiser VSM 201 Vocoder and some sort of handmade sequencer that was strange because it didn’t even have a start button – it started immediately when you switched it on.” Synths were obviously very expensive back then. Did you have to rent them? DL: “No, I bought them because I was lucky enough to have a little hit called Coconut, so instead of giving my money to the tax man I bought the modular and used it professionally for my studio sessions. Thanks to my wife, I kept on investing in synthesisers and had a car full of equipment, and soon after our first album I bought an Oberheim OB-Xa that we also

“Fifi was probably the only natural sound on the album, though we cheated sometimes”

used a lot. This was all pre-MIDI, which is why Marc was so incredibly important to us. He was a very natural and sophisticated keyboard player who helped us to make music using the few tracks that were available to him.” There’s a track on your first album called Ave Fifi, with what sounds like bird samples… DL: “It is a real bird. My first studio was on the first floor above a shop and I had a canary called Fifi that was always following the tunes on the radio, so we said to ourselves why don’t we make a backing track for Fifi and record him? We prepared a backing track, put a little speaker in front of the mic and when it was ready we took Fifi from the ground floor to the studio and he sang it in one take. The chords were based on Ave Maria, hence the title Ave Fifi. Sadly, I moved to a new location and brought a cat with me to kill some mice and one day we found Fifi completely terrified in his cage with the cat trying to catch him. He died a few hours later of a heart attack, so only then could we say ‘ave’ to Fifi.” MM: “Fifi was probably the only natural sound on the album, although we cheated sometimes. On Moskow Diskow we used some real hand claps, a little shaker and vocals of course. We used a Fairlight in 1984, but the first real sample we used was a guitar chord on a track called Raised by Snakes. There was no sampler at the time, so we put the chord on an analogue tape machine and pressed the return button so we could inject the chord into the track. It was sampling done with a tape recorder, as the Beatles had done a long time before.” Were you aware that there was a negative reaction to electronic instruments from those who feared they’d put musicians out of work? DL: “At one of the first sessions I did at Studio Madeleine in Brussels there were a lot of string players in the studio. I was preparing my EMS VCS3 to record some electronic sounds and one of the musicians passed behind me, pointed at the VCS3 with a mean finger and said very loudly so that everyone could hear, ‘This is a machine we have to forget because it’s going to replace us all!’ “In London, the Musician’s Union was very against the first synthesiser, and that was a bit of a problem. What didn’t help is that when the Polymoog came out the company put names on its sounds like ‘strings’ and ’brass’, which was a pity because the synthesiser was much more than that. But the biggest problem was the Mellotron because it was a sampler that recorded real instruments.”

Telex was a bit like Daft Punk in that you didn’t want to show your faces or play live. Do you think that had a negative effect on your career? MM: “It didn’t damage us but I understand what you mean because we were never stars. We were probably a bit older than most musicians that started and we wanted to have a normal life. The three of us did other things, Dan was in the studio working for people, Marc had a job in radio and I was an architect, so we didn’t want to quit everything and go on the road. Marc and I had been

In The Studio With | Telex

on stage before and there were always technical problems. With all those electronic instruments the problems would have been enormous.”

TELEX’S GO TO GEAR

But you did take part in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980. How’d that go? MM: “When it was proposed we said you’re crazy, it’s not our environment, but after two weeks we decided pop music was the epitome of what we wanted to do. Everything was pre-recorded except for vocals and none of our gear was plugged in on stage because they were afraid of short circuits and fire, so all the machines were there just for show.” DL: “The rules said you must bring a backing track but all the instruments on tape must be seen on stage. The drums were made with the modular, so we brought that on stage with a Polymoog and another keyboard but we had problems in rehearsal because the conductor said ‘Stop! I hear drums but don’t see any drums’, so I had to explain that the drums were made with a modular machine.” MM: “We may not have done any concerts, but Eurovision had about 100 million people watching. I was nervous because I couldn’t hear myself on the speakers, although because of the lights I couldn’t see the audience anyway. We lost a lot of fans as they were wondering what on earth we were doing there… and didn’t get many new ones [laughs]. ”

“Our main synth for drum sounds, bass sounds and sequences. We used to pass sounds through its filters too.”

We don’t seem to have characters like Sparks today, and Telex had a sense of humour too… MM: “It’s difficult to put humour in music because the line is very thin. With music, it’s easier to make people cry than laugh.” DL: “The records that sell the most are hip-hop, and some of them are very good but the lyrics are very serious. There must be artists around with a sense of humour, but you don’t hear them very frequently due to the evolution of music genres.” What explains the 18-year gap from 1988 to your final studio album How Do You Dance? MM: “After Looney Tunes we’d get together from

Polymoog

“The first polyphonic synth we used, mainly for pads but also to create the vocoded choirs and polyphonic sequences through the Moog filter.”

Roland Sequencer System-100 Model 104

“Compatible with the Moog Modular but at a fraction of the Moog 960 sequencer price.”

Oberheim OB-X

“I wanted a companion polyphonic synth for the Polymoog that was programmable and could save and recall sounds. The Prophet-5 was difficult to obtain in Belgium and the OBX-8 had 8-voice polyphony and the Prophet only 5.”

Fairlight CMI

“Time for sampling! In 1983, after working with Thomas Dolby on his second album, The Flat Earth, I decided to buy a Fairlight CMI. We used it a lot on Wonderful World and Looney Tunes.”

Sennheiser VSM201 Vocoder

“For choirs and ‘robotic’ vocals (like Rock Around The Clock). It has high intelligibility due to its design in quarter octave channels in the midrange. Just as expensive as the Moog IIP.”

MXR Flanger

“We used it a lot on lead vocals, keyboards and the steam engine sound for Moskow Diskow.”

On your third album, Sex, you enlisted Sparks to help write lyrics for you. How was your experience working with the duo? MM: “It was great, especially thanks to Ron Mael’s sense of humour. I was enveloped in my own little room doing the vocals, but for Dan and Marc it was like being on a talk show.” DL: “At first we were very impressed to be in the studio with Sparks, but one day in the middle of a session at my home studio Ron was sitting at the keyboard and we heard an ice cream van go by. Ron stood up, walked to the window and said ‘they’re calling me, they’re calling me’. We thought to ourselves, what’s he doing? It was a relief when he explained that when he was young he worked as an ice cream guy but was afraid to visit certain no-go places in Los Angeles where the little kids were always trying to steal his money. That’s why he developed that mean face and a little moustache. We thought that story was funny and from then on it was very relaxed in the studio.”

Moog Modular IIIP

Telex | In The Studio With

In The Studio With | Telex

Did you embrace digital technology when it arrived in the mid-’80s? DL: “Everything was slowly evolving. I kept buying new machines like the Synclavier, which was the first digital synth and then you had the FM synths. On the recording side, we kept using the multi-track machines and before Pro Tools we had the Fairlight III, which was the first direct-to-disk recorder. We used the technology of the time and you could do things you couldn’t do before, but you could always use analogue synths rather than plugins. When do you decide that something is obsolete? People continue to use very old machines working with valves rather than transistors and I think that’s what’s happened with analogue synths – they’ve created new machines because everything is possible depending on what you prefer the sound of.” Why do you think so many producers have returned to modular synthesis? DL: “If you use a computer – even if it has very good plugins, it reproduces the sound exactly the same every time and our brain recognises that you’ve heard that sound before. In some ways, it sounds sterile, but when you use an analogue machine there’s always some imperfection that makes the sound alive. That’s more interesting than the best sampler or whatever, but they both have good aspects to them so it’s just a question of using the best instrument for what you want to do. When I mix hip-hop tracks, they use a lot of samples, so I sometimes propose to make an analogue bass sound with a Minimoog because it puts life into the track.” You seem more interested in hardware emulations of classic synths like the Moog Grandmother and Studio Electronics Midimoog now. How do they compare to vintage synths? DL: “I don’t know why but I was always attracted to Moog – I tried ARP once but thought it sounded a bit thin by comparison. The problem is that every time there’s a new model I ask if I can try it, and every time I try it I end up keeping it. They are all so different and have that special character. The Midimoog is a real Minimoog put in a box with a great MIDI interface. The design of the original instrument had a mistake between the mixer and the filter where there’s a bit too much level that gives it a slight distortion and a very specific sound. They’ve tried to replicate that in some of the new synths like the Moog Subsequent 37, which doesn’t sound clean because it’s a bit overdriven.” Did you ever get to meet any of the synth designers like Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim or Dave Smith?

time to time to see what we could do, but every time we made a track we didn’t think it would be interesting enough to take it any further. We never split up and when Virgin London was bought by EMI they asked us to make the record How Do You Dance? At that time we had sufficient inspiration and were starting to have fun in the studio again, so we went ahead and made the album.”

DL: “I met Bob Moog at a trade show in Frankfurt just before I bought one of the first Polymoogs. In fact, I did a demonstration there because the guy who was demoing it was ill one day. The company was called Norlin and Bob was working for them. He was a very nice guy but he didn’t like the design of the Polymoog. It wasn’t really one of his inventions, but it was the first polyphonic synthesiser so it was a great new instrument. I would have really liked to have met Dave Smith because the OB6 that he made with Tom Oberheim is a really fantastic polyphonic synth. I use it all the time because the sound is so incredibly rich.” You have some modern technologies too, like the Arturia Sparkle drum machine… DL: “Arturia does a pretty good job with all of its plugins, but the Sparkle is one of the first hybrid drum machines.” When did you decide to work with Mute to release your new compilation This Is Telex? MM: “It was the right time because we’d just escaped from a former contract that was dead for almost 15 years. Somebody suggested Mute Records, so I sent an email and was surprised because I thought we’d knock on the door and have to wait for a month but Daniel Miller answered the next day. It all went very fast and we soon started to think about remixing and remastering a lot of our tracks.” DL: “Mute came to the studio and they were so enthusiastic, which was great for Michel and I. The first idea was to reissue everything but mainly start from the original master tapes and redo the

transfers digitally because the quality of the converters are much better now. Then we sat between ourselves and thought about mixing some tracks from the album Sex again because we were not very satisfied with it. We started with one track and it went so well that we decided to listen back to everything and mix about 60 tracks. The idea was not to make them ‘better’; we just wanted to keep the spirit of the original tracks all the way through.” Tell us about the undiscovered track The Beat Goes On/Off? MM: “As I mentioned, we gathered in the ’90s from time to time and that was one attempt we made that we didn’t think was good enough. Having heard it again, we changed our mind and I knew I had it on a minidisk somewhere but couldn’t find it. DL: “When we discovered the song we only had a rough mix, so once we found the multi-track we decided to do it again. We also mixed our cover version of the Siouxsie and the Banshees track Dear Prudence and put that on the compilation.” Will we hear brand new Telex music one day? MM: “I don’t think so; Marc played such an important part and isn’t a musician we can replace. DL: Without Marc, it wouldn’t be Telex.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

The new Telex compilation album This Is Telex is out now on Mute Records. For more info, visit mute.ffm.to/is-telex

Telex | In The Studio With

FM | THE TRACK

Simon Doty The Beacon

Knee Deep In Sound, 2021 Canadian prog house prodigy Doty’s productions have become popular with a diverse selection of DJs including Carl Cox, Joris Vorn and Hot Since 82, who released Simon’s Ananda Project-sampling The VIDEO ON Beacon on his Knee Deep In Sound label. We caught FILESILO up with Simon to enquire about his audacious sampling habits, and discover more about his approach to music production in general. The Beacon uses part of Gaelle Adisson’s vocal from Ananda Project’s seminal Cascades of Colour. It’s a brave move to sample such a beloved track! “It was a really personal favourite for me. It’s not something I’d normally do, but I hadn’t heard too many versions of it out there. So I decided, ‘let’s just see what happens’, if it ended up being

just something for me to play DJ-wise, that was fine. We were pretty lucky that we ended up being able to actually clear it.” Was it difficult to license the sample? “It was a little bit! We had a back and forth with King Street Sounds. I think something that probably worked in our favour is the pandemic going on right now and people need to make money. I think that it was a good opportunity for them, it was potentially coming on Knee Deep In Sound which is a reputable enough label, so I think it made sense for them to do it. I certainly wasn’t expecting any type of guarantee that they go for it, but it seemed to end up working out for everyone.” In the video you mention you played the piano part in yourself. “Yeah, I did. I had some piano and guitar lessons growing up, and I played trumpet in the band at school. So I definitely have some musical background, but I’m not like a full-on piano player. I can still play stuff in, especially things like this. Sometimes it’ll just come super quick, you’re not even really thinking about it, just playing it in one time. Usually those ones actually end up being the sort of piano lines or leads that work the best. It just happens super quick, almost subconsciously, you’re trying something quick and boom, there it is!”

Simon Doty | The Track

“Certain sounds just define house, and the piano and organ from the M1 are two of those. Just in the same way an 808 or 909 drum machine are staples in a lot of music, even in hiphop. The 808 will never go away!”

You use the Korg M1 plugin for various elements in the track. What do you think it is about that instrument that gives it such an enduring popularity? “That’s an interesting question. I think there are certain sounds that just define house, and the piano and organ from the M1 are two of those as they’ve been such staples for so long. Just in the same way an 808 or 909 drum machine are staples in a lot of music, even in hip-hop. You know the 808 is never going to go away, is it?” You have a few hardware synths in the studio, and you used the Moog Sub 37 for the bassline in The Beacon. Do you ever use soft synths for basslines? “I love u-he Diva, I think it’s definitely the plugin that’s captured analogue the best, and all the other producers that I talk to seem to agree. There are a lot of good ones out there, but the Diva is pretty amazing, especially for bass, so it’s been a number of tracks. I use Spectrasonics Omnisphere quite a bit, it’s a little different in that it uses sampled hardware, and it’s great for everything. Then all Arturia ones too, like the Minimoog, those types of ones are great for bass. There are some tracks I’ve done recently and released that have that on the bass, but it’s usually a combo of hardware and software stuff.”

The Track | Simon Doty

THE GEAR Hardware:

> Apple MacBook Pro > MOTU UltraLite mk3 > Mackie HR824 Mk2 x2 > Moog One > Moog Sub 37 > Korg Minilogue XD > Prophet-6 Desktop

Software:

> Ableton Live > Valhalla DSP plugins > Waves plugins

You say mastering can be more noticeable when playing tracks out in a club and sometimes you’ll use your own mastered version of a track for the release. Will these have been versions that you’ve played out in clubs before deciding they’re release-worthy? “Yeah. I’ve had the same studio monitors and setup for a while now, like five or six years, so I trust the speakers pretty well. You build that trust, but in terms of a club atmosphere, I’d definitely like to play something first before releasing it as my own master. Typically I’ll have played all of the tracks for a release, and a couple of them I’ll have given to some DJ friends too. Sometimes I think a track is good and maybe doesn’t need anything doing to it, but for another it’d be good to hear what the mastering guy or girl could do. The mastering Knee Deep In Sound use is really phenomenal, some of the best I’ve heard. There’s been a couple of times with my releases with Knee Deep, I’ve played it in a club and been like ‘Oh wow, that sounds really good!’”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Simon Doty’s Solaris EP on Anjunadeep and Because of Art – Lost In The Sun remix on Stress Records are out now 54

Simon Doty | The Track

Making The Beacon’s deep piano lines in Live

Simon uses the classic Korg M1 plugin with judicious application of effects to create a majestic piano

03 >

Next, Waves H-Delay is applied with a 1/8D delay time. “You can hear the piano bouncing back. I think it probably ended up making it phase a little bit, given the rhythm of it, but it wasn’t anything too major and I really liked the bouncing groove that it added to it,” Simon notes.

01 >

“I played this one out pretty quickly,” begins Simon. “I did a couple of takes, and I ended up just quantising everything to the grid. It was pretty simple but the groove of it fit with the track, and it really fit with the vocal too.”

04 >

Simon uses H-Delay’s hi-pass filter to tame the low-end of the delayed signal. “A really quick way to mess up your mix is to have a lot of low sounds delaying. It gets really messy, really quickly,” he advises.

02 >

The patch Simon uses is the M1’s M1HousePiano program. Valhalla DSP ValhallaPlate is applied with a relatively lengthy 2.6s Decay time. “One thing I’ll use quite a bit on these is the low gain, which is a nice way to EQ out some of the bottom of the reverb, so it doesn’t get too messy,” he says.

EQ Eight hi-passes the whole signal after the delay and adds a subtle mid-range bump, and Live’s Auto Filter is used to provide low-pass automation. Simon also uses Live’s Chord MIDI effect to add another octave above the original MIDI, and this is automated to kick-in mid-way through the track.

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THE TRACK

Leading producers go in-depth on the sounds, ideas and techniques behind their latest releases

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HIGHLIGHTS

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From our famous studio sessions to gear tours, technique tips and much more DON’T MISS:

We’re back in LA for a chat with producer Benjamin Wynn, aka Deru

New to Eurorack? Learn the essentials in our Modular Monthly playlist

Principleasure shows us the processes behind his debut album, I

Our Producer’s Guide playlist helps you get the most out of your hardware

Joal, Eighty Four

The Berlin-based artist shows us how he created some of the effects on Eighty Four in Ableton Live DON’T MISS:

Document One, Hands Up Joe Froud and Matt King show us how they made this ‘filthy’ DnB number

Victor Ruiz, Love Story The Berlin-based producer breaks down his latest slice of techno

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Check out our Best Of playlist – a selection of our most essential production technique tutorials

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Want more insights into the studios of the stars? Take a look at our playlist of classic In The Studio sessions

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FM | PRODUCER’S GUIDE

Sample synthesis

Rob Redman cuts and shuts, granularises and mangles samples to discover new sonic possibilities Sample synthesis is an umbrella term that covers a few other names, like texture VIDEO ON synthesis and granular FILESILO synthesis, which all have one thing in common: unlike subtractive or additive synthesis, which use pure waveforms (think sine and square) sample synthesis uses found sound. By this we mean that the final ‘voice’ is created by manipulating sounds that have been

recorded, rather than created in a much more fundamentally mathematical way.

Get out of here This can range from the very simple to the extreme, where results could be as basic as taking snippets of beatboxing to create a sequenceable drum machine, to huge morphing pads that are the culmination of multiple sound sources, with effects, envelopes and filtering.

The takeaway point is to not limit yourself to your DAW. You can get fantastic results in the box, but we wouldn’t underestimate the possibilities that you can uncover if you take a field recorder out and about with you. We tend to now keep a Zoom H5 in our bag with a windshield, so we can quickly capture any interesting noises, from traffic, rain and other ambient sound to more local, percussive elements and even conversation.

Which brings us to our next point: you can create different timbres and tones with sample synthesis but nothing quite gets you there like a human voice. People sound so different that a few words of a chat at a bus stop, or in a shop queue, can be the beginnings of a whole new instrument. Similarly you could sample one instrument to create another, with wildly different outputs, or record a second of a finished track, taking

Sample Synthesis | Producer’s Guide To

and manipulating the sample into a wholly new entity.

Grow your own Over the next few pages we’ll look at a few tools and techniques to help you get started with a process that can eliminate your GAS for good: the act of making every sound or sample you own a new instrument. We’ll stick mostly to the DAW for this; Logic is our preference, but the key thing to remember is that this is all about principles and, while we’ll show you some things step by step, the process is less important than the pipeline or the principle. A lot of what can be done here can be done with hardware too, so break out the Kaoss pads and the sampling modules, as they are built for this kind of fun.

Out and about with the Zoom H5 – just remember your wind shield

Vocal synth

We’ll kick off by using our own voice as the basis for a new synth. It doesn’t matter what you say or sing, but get the recording and bounce it as a .wav file to use it. Any mic will do for this purpose. Our sample is available if you want to use it.

There are many ways of manipulating a sample but we’ll use Pigments here, so load it into a fresh track, then choose sample as the synthesis engine and load it into the sample player. Turn off engine 2, as we will just use this one layer.

Now turn on granular and head to the edit section. Here you can define the section of sample you want to work with. Leave as is if you want to use the entire clip, with grains taken from any point of its duration.

Some imaging can sound good, so set the high-pass to the right and the low-pass to the left, with some keyboard tracking for both. This is one of those details that can lift your sound design without being too in your face.

The default amp envelope is really a gate, so dive in and set an ADR envelope to shape the amplitude. Continue tinkering here, or head to the effects. Some reverb and phaser finish the job and now the short vocal sample is a big ambient pad.

Now set the grain properties. Do what feels right. The plan is to set the size of grain, density of grains and any randomisation you like. You can set two filters as well, to tame the sound. A low-pass with a resonance can make this more musical.

Producer’s Guide To | Sample Synthesis

Cut and shut

One in the bank

Samples don’t have to be totally transformed from their original state to be of value. But it’s fun to be at least a little creative with them. What’s more, you can use your DAW without the need for plugins. Take a short vocal clip and add it to a track.

Alt-click and drag to make a copy with a crossfade. Reverse the first one and line it up how you like. Opting to use one without lyrics can help this work. Select both and bounce in place, to a new track (keep originals in case).

We tend to build our own reverbs. To do this, disable the reverb in Step FX and load your favourite. For us, it’s an ambient preset we’ve made using Valhalla Supermassive (a great reverb and free – our preset is available with this tutorial).

This can be the basis for a bouncy syncopated part. We load up Logic’s Step FX into an audio effects slot. At the bottom you can see the blue blocks. With Gate activated, use these as sliders to set levels for the gate on each step. Magic will ensue.

One particularly useful aspect of working with samples is that many sample players, whether DAW-based, or modular, offer hierarchical organisation of files. This is useful for keeping track but you can also create banks of ‘kits’. We use ALM Busy Circuits’ wonderful Squid Salmple as an 8-channel sample player. We have a bank saved to the SD set as a drum kit, composed of sounds made using methods described elsewhere in this article. We can then use a sequencer, or other trigger source, to play these sounds back, with the option to add further effects and processing non-destructively. What’s more, we know that our saved kit will sound the same played through the modular as it does when loaded onto my custom Logic drum kit designer presets. So, if you’re a sample enthusiast make sure you organise in a logical and, importantly, consistent way.

Can you kick it?

1 60

There are an almost endless number of kick drum samples out there. Many of these are fantastic but ultimately lack your input, so grab a mic and make your own from found sounds.

Combine recordings that share a flavour but differ slightly. We made one soft impact on a cushion, on the heel of our palm on a notepad and one thumping one fist into the other. Trim these and line up the transients; it already sounds good.

All that’s left is to EQ parts to filter unwanted frequencies and add a compressor to the cushion punch part, to fill the low end and add punch/kick to the sound. Then bounce the three down to a single file, load into your drum kit and voilà.

Sample Synthesis | Producer’s Guide To

Wave shapes

To get your head around what is really going on with sample synthesis you need to step back a little and look at the fundamentals of what sound is, which is waves of pressure that hit the ear, which sends the data to the brain, which in turn tells us what the sound originally was. In most forms of synthesis we take maths-based wave shapes and change them, in various ways to get the results we want. A sine wave is very pure so no matter how much we affect it with filters and

envelopes, the sound is always very sine-like. Other waves are similarly pure and have tonal qualities that we know and love. Wavefolding

adds complexity and is the end of the purity but also the start of the interest we can add to our sonic palettes. Samples are the next step

Fundamental waveshapes have plenty of value but we need complexity and motion to stay interested

as they offer very complex sounds that are in themselves the results of multiple waveforms layered and inherently affected by the conditions and environment they were recorded in. When capturing your samples, think about not only the sound but whether or not you want to incorporate ambience or bounce. Do you want to treat the space like a vocal booth with dampening and diffusion, or capture and echo and external noise that might spill into the recording.

Building a kit in Logic

You can drag files and folders into the track panel in Logic. When you release the mouse you’ll get a pop up asking what you’d like to do. This is fine for individual samples but it’s not what we want to build a kit.

Hit F to bring up your file browser, open a finder window, then drag your sample folder from the finder into the Logic file browser. This will show you the name and waveform, along with some sample data.

Now, drag your kick over to the track panel, where a popup will appear. There are a few options here but the one you want is the drum machine designer. If you want a melodic result then one of the samplers might be better.

Logic is creating a number of samplers, one for each drum. You can access the sampler option in the bottom part of the panel, with options for things like pitch and envelope. Use these three detail panels to adjust your kit pieces as you see fit.

Right-click the kit track in the arrange window and choose New Pattern, to bring up the step sequencer. Now it’s just a matter of punching in your rhythm. Note that you delve into each sample for modulation, giving humanisation to your beats.

The Kick sample will be loaded into pad one. Drag your other samples in, one by one, filling the pads as you go. You can see each drop zone has a cog icon, so click this and change the name of the slot to keep things neat and logical.

Producer’s Guide To | Sample Synthesis

Samples for texture

Using a sample in your music doesn’t have to mean using pre-recorded sounds. You can also resynthesise a fundamental waveshape, so here we will use Mutable Instruments Beads to make a texture from an incoming triangle wave.

For this example, we’re running a triangle wave at 8’, with no effects directly into Beads input. We’re not modulating the wave in any way either, so we can focus on the resampling of the wave to create a texture.

A major contributing factor to shaping this sound is the envelope. We went with a mix of square and exponential ramp down for a plucky sound that isn’t too harsh. You might need to adjust the density to balance this.

Our triangle wave is pretty simple but it does have some movement at a very small scale, so the time control will have effect. Choose where on the wave the samples/grains start to play from. Balance this with the size knob. Setting this anticlockwise reverses playback. We pick short plucks.

Set the mix to full so you only hear the processed sound, then add a few grains by turning the Density knob. We prefer clockwise, which gives randomised generation over time.

Although the density is random the patch still sounds quite static so plug your modulators of choice into the time and size jacks, noting that you can internally modulate using the attenurandomizers, which control input CV clockwise and internal mods anti-clockwise. We like Maestro.

POWER TIP Isolation

You can use the pitch knob to randomise the pitch, generating random pitches. At high densities this can make some interesting textures but for something musical simply plug in your sequencer (or keyboard) and use the knob to control the amount of CV. We used a channel of Marbles for this.

You can go wild with effects at this point but actually Bead’s internal reverb is really nice, so increase the density (of the reverb not the grains) and you’ll end up with a very pretty spacey sound.

When recording anything but ambient sounds it is worth using some form of isolation to avoid the need to fix unwanted frequencies in your samples. A windshield is good for outdoors or a small booth like the Aston Halo is perfect for indoors, especially for vocal capture.

THREE OF THE BEST

Sample Synthesis | Producer’s Guide To

Native Instruments Pigments £159 Pigments is one of those VSTs that covers a lot of ground. With virtual analogue, wavetable and sample synthesis, heaps of modulation and a great interface, it could be the only synth plugin you need.

native-instruments.com

Instruo Arbhar £499 Instruo’s granular synthesis module is a thing of beauty, in looks as well as sound. Its multiple buffers, versatile modulation and even a built-in mic make this one of the best, and most musical, granular/sampling modules out there.

instruomodular.com

Playing a custom kit can be just as fun as sequencing one. A grid-based input device can make for some happy accidents

Making a usable instrument

We have looked at building textures, manipulating vocals and so on and these are all useful parts of our sonic arsenal but what’s really useful is to put these together into a playable sample-based instrument. How you play it is another article but it could be sequenced, played on a keyboard, tapped out on a grid-style device like the Push or, as we’re doing

here, using Logic’s step sequencer. The principle is to make something playable. It could be a neo-soul collection of chords, or a collection of risers you can pick on-the-go and these all lend themselves well to this setup but we’ll stick to a drum kit, made using the techniques described before. We saved a set of these samples that you can use if you wish but we’d deﬁnitely

recommend making your own. I’m using Logic, but similar tools and workﬂows exist for other DAWs. The main consideration here is to ensure that your samples are prepared and sit together well, so make sure that you are fully happy with volume and EQing and take care of things before you get started. A little reverb on a bus can help apply some ﬁnal gelling to the kit too.

EQ is your friend Mutable Instruments Beads £275 Mutable Instruments Beads, the successor to the wonderful Clouds, is a complete redesign and one that does the job of texture synthesiser wonderfully. Complete with tape emulation and reverb, it pays its way, even in the smaller skiff setups.

mutable-instruments.net

When making samples for drums we often layer up beatbox style elements with other impacts. These often have a broad frequency range, so it’s best to EQ each part before combining. This saves a load of stress later on.

For this hi-hat we used our voice but it needed tweaking so we put a high-pass shelf in and added boost around the 5.8k. We also reduced hiss from 12k upward. Combined with a sharp metallic impact, this makes a usable hat in a drum sequence, where it lives in the right range (less mud).

In The Studio With | Andrew Hung

Andrew Hung

Left dissatisfied by his debut solo debut album Realisationship, Andrew Hung felt the need to brush up on his craft and break through some mental barriers. Danny Turner discusses the follow-up, Devastations

Andrew Hung | In The Studio With

ndrew Hung, best known for being one half of electronic music duo Fuck Buttons, is very much in demand. Despite the project being on hold since 2013, he’s subsequently recorded a track with Jean-Michel Jarre, co-produced for Beth Orton and Aimee Osbourne (daughter of Ozzie), and wrote the soundtrack to cult director Jim Hosking’s comedy horror, The Greasy Strangler. Hung’s second solo electronic album, Devastations, documents a transitional period in his career. Striving to perfect the one-man-band approach to its predecessor Realisationship – a body of work he’s only recently come to appreciate, despite being recorded almost entirely digitally, its propulsive beats, angular instrumentation and stark, yearning vocals are a disarming throwback to ’80s new wave songcraft.

Was Devastations recorded pre-pandemic or did the isolation give you the perfect opportunity to work on a second solo album? “I’m not sure how to compartmentalise the process now but it was definitely finished during the pandemic. Most of it was written before, but when it came to mixing it took or four or five attempts to cross the line due to whatever mental barrier I was experiencing. I guess going through all those mixing processes gave it a degree of re-polishing – it certainly gave me the opportunity to inspect my working processes because I’m always looking for ways to be as efficient as possible.” How do you feel Devastations builds on the your debut solo album Realisationship? “I heard Realisationship again recently, but it’s only now I actually think it’s a good album. It was my first solo record and my initial expectation was ‘I can do this’ – and I did, but at the time I felt like I’d let myself down and it could have been better, so I went a bit militant and focused on improving pretty much everything. Nothing really changed in terms of the artistry, but I focused a lot more on the craft of making an album. With Devastations I feel I’ve brought out more of what I wanted but couldn’t.” You appear to be quite self-critical. Does a point arrive when you have to finish a record, warts and all? “At the time, I’d put that lack of satisfaction I mentioned down to my craft. I looked for a depth I couldn’t quite define and went on this journey to uncover that. I started to wonder if my dissatisfaction was down to the lack of value I placed in myself and started excavating my mind to discover why that occurs. As a result, I’m more comfortable with it, which explains why I can hear Realisationship for what it is rather than what I

wanted it to be. The reason I struggled to mix Devastations was also due to me wanting it to be something rather than judging it for what it was.” It seems to be influenced by a post-punk/new wave sound. Was that deliberate or more down to your lo-fi-sounding production process? “I like the idea of punk in that it gives you permission to do whatever you want. For me, it was less about an aesthetic and more to do with having that freedom. In that respect, I do find there’s a connection, but I’ve been hearing quite a few interesting interpretations of the album lately. A lot of people say it sounds like Jarvis Cocker. ” We were thinking more Joy Division… “Joy Division for sure, but as I mentioned there’s been quite a few comparisons to Pulp. I guess I’m flattered by that – it’s nice to be compared to icons isn’t it?” You mentioned that you found it difficult to find the confidence to sing on your own recordings. Are you more comfortable with that now? “I’ve had to focus quite a bit on the vocals. I didn’t realise how much technique was involved in singing – I thought it was just like talking [laughs]. I’m pleased with my voice now, but I did attend an intensive vocal course so I’ve been taught quite a lot over the past three or four years. One is tempted to believe that preparation removes the magic of a vocalist, but my experience is that the lessons allowed me to reveal what I wanted to come out. My teacher told me that the magic only happens when art and craft meet.” You have a very passionate and expressive vocal, so it’s hard to envision anyone else performing your songs… “The reason I didn’t use guest vocalists on the first album was more out of laziness – I couldn’t be bothered to organise it. It would be so much easier to make instrumental music, but there’s something about vocals that enables you to have an emotional directness to your audience and that’s really what I’m interested in now. Hearing your voice loud in a room is an extraordinary and overwhelming feeling – it felt so different to anything I’d done before and has been incredibly valuable for that reason.” The vocals, and the music, seem to have an underlying tension. What subject matters are you detailing? “Personally, the album was about going through an ending of sorts and the tension is about breaking through the last part of that into a new world. The first track is called Battle and the second Promises, but with the third, Brother, I felt myself coming into a clearing – a push to move away from the pull of an old habit.” As an established artist but a relative newbie to vocals and lyric-writing, what tips would you give for people who want to explore that side of the musical coin?

In The Studio With | Andrew Hung

“I’d recommend they get a condenser mic because they’re quite cheap. The first one I bought was a RØDE NT1-A and I like how you can sing directly into it without having to do a lot of processing yet it still sounds good. I like writing lots of ideas – mostly they’re just repetitive patterns, but if they make me feel anything, I find they’re worth pursuing.” You performed all of the instruments on the album, including drums. Is that also something you’ve taught yourself? “On Realisationship I couldn’t play drums for a full song, I’d just play eight bars of a track and get a live drummer in. This time, the distinction between

demoing and production is not as clear cut because the drums on Devastations are all VSTs. I use XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums and love the sound of it. When I first used them I wasn’t getting the depth that I wanted and wondered whether it was to do with the ambient sound around the drums, but I’ve got them sounding really good now. I’m basically just playing the drums on a keyboard and then adding a few delay throws to add a little extra detail and variety. I also added quite a lot of saturation to make them sound big. I don’t like to over-edit though, because I want the drums to have a sense of propulsion.”

“There’s this purity to using the Game Boy; you have to focus on arrangement”

Space has quite a proggy sound, and we like how you use spacey sounds to embellish the track. What were you using on that one? “The bassline was taken from a well-known dancehall rhythm sound from the Casio MT40 keyboard, and I recorded that with some lo-fi bass notes that I later replaced with VSTs. With this album I wanted to reintroduce an element of noise and that’s probably what gives the track its spacey feel. I’ve always been a fan of Native Instruments Massive for that. The arpeggio synth sound came from Arturia’s Analog Lab. I’ve always loved organ sounds as they’ve got quite an emotional depth, and I’ve started using a VST version of the Korg MS-20, which has a lovely harsh, piercing sound.” To the untrained ear, Devastations sounds like a band, yet most of it has evidently been made in the box. Is that testament to how sophisticated software has become? “A few decades ago, the live instruments would have been recorded first and the electronic elements added, but this process was the complete opposite. The guitars were the last thing to be recorded along with the final vocals. Guitars are quite difficult to replicate in a VST but I used Guitar Rig, so I’d attribute most of the guitars to VSTs too, although I did use a preamp as a digital interface.” You mentioned focusing on improving your mixing technique. What specific areas have you concentrated on? “For the mix, I like to begin by having quite a basic recording process. If I want to make sure a song’s alright I’ll write it on a piano and if I want to make sure the beats are OK, I’ll listen to them on their

Andrew Hung | In The Studio With

In The Studio With | Andrew Hung

own, so I like stripping stuff down to their bare essentials and making them sound good before adding any effects. The best technique for mixing is to have a good arrangement and if there’s too much going on in one frequency range I’ll just bump stuff up to the top where there’s more space. For me, reverb is an afterthought that I use to glue everything together. I’ll use the FabFilter reverb if I want things to sound a little classy on strings or guitar, and for vocals I used iZotope Nectar, because that’s really easy to work with.” Did you learn a lot about mixing and production from the sadly departed Andrew Weatherall? “I’d never been in a studio before meeting Andrew so I learnt what was possible from him. I still think about that time – things just pop up. He taught me to maintain integrity in my artistry, and that it doesn’t matter how good you are technically, there’s something you have to get to the heart of. He didn’t touch the keyboard or the computer – it was about how anyone in that room, regardless of what they were doing, was affecting the sound. He was a massive presence, which was perplexing at the time but powerful. What’s got to be drummed into producers is that it’s very easy to focus on things that aren’t really important. I experienced that with Andrew and Beth Orton. They ooze an experience that you can’t really put into words – you just know that they know.” But with Beth you were producing for her… “She’s a massive hero of mine so I just produced her in a way that would get the best out her, which was really all about getting Beth to play. Encouragement and support is really important and she said at the time that no one had just given her a keyboard to play with.” What with Devastations being recorded using mostly digital tools, you presumably have quite a streamlined studio setup? “It’s a little old outbuilding at the back of the garden and quite basic. Because lockdown’s been quite sedentary I’ve tried to create a standing up area, so that’s my exercise [laughs]. I’ve got a painting area in one corner with my keyboards to the side and the computer desk at the other end of the room. I’m really into this idea of diversity of activity because I feel like it all feeds into each other. I see painting and music as the same thing; it’s a safe place for me to feel what I don’t feel safe enough to feel in the real world. I noticed throughout lockdown that if I haven’t made anything, I feel a bit useless.” Are you one for swapping instruments in and out to keep yourself inspired? “I’ve gone back to my Game Boy more recently because the flashcards are so cheap and good now. There’s this purity to it because it automatically makes you write in a way that you have to focus on arrangement. Because you don’t get that big a variety of sounds on a Game Boy you have to focus on the range that you use, and because the textures produced by its chip are very minimal you have to

focus more on the melodic aspect. I’m under the impression that you can get a lot of emotional weight from melody and then the texture brings it out even more.” Can you be more specific on how you use the Game Boy as a production tool? “I started out with an emulator on my computer that had Game Boy ROMs. The first one that I used was called Carillon Editor, which was extremely simple, but now I use one called Little Sound DJ. You’ve got four channels – the first two are purely synthetic, the third has lo-fi samples of drum machines and the fourth is a noise channel that I use for rhythms. They’re called trackers, so it’s basically like a four-track with numbers and it’s table-based so you just have to programme in rows of notes in order to represent the beats. I’ve got a Teenage Engineering OP-1 too, which I don’t use a lot but it’s nice to have something different for gathering ideas. Its strength is its portability and the battery lasts for ages. You can make complete tracks on these devices, and lots of people do, but for me they’re a bit more like notebooks.” Is there any part of your recording process that’s outsourced? “I’m hoping that I won’t have to mix my album as many times in future, and the reason for that is because I know that I’ve got to talk to a mastering engineer. I never used to talk to them and felt quite nervous about it. It’s like taking your car to a garage – that feeling of going somewhere where you’re no longer an expert. I remember asking my mastering engineer, Noel Summerville, what the boundaries of responsibility were [laughs]. The way that I work is quite intuitive and if I start thinking too much about it then I’ll go down this rabbit hole of whether the album has the right tonality and it all starts to trip me up. Now I can mix something and it feels like I’m in charge of the feeling and the mastering engineer’s in charge of getting it to a standard by which it can be distributed.” Fuck Buttons has been on hold for a while, can we expect a return to that or do you have other projects lined up? “I’m totally focused on writing my own music at the moment and have already started the next record. I just want it to be as direct to my heart as possible and hopefully I can see that pathway now. With the last two albums there was a lot of fumbling around, but now I feel like I’ve got a purpose. I don’t think the pandemic has fed my emotions; it’s been more like an iron, ironing out the creases and bringing out of me what I needed to bring out.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Andrew Hung’s new album Devastations is out June 18 on Lex Records. For more information, visit andrewhun . bandcamp.com

Andrew Hung | In The Studio With

FM | RETROSPECTIVE

Oramics

From founding the Radiophonic Workshop at the BBC to her unique Oramics machine, Daphne Oram was a pioneer

here are few movements in music named after a single person; even fewer are named after women. Daphne Oram’s work is one of the great contributions to music tech. Born in 1925, Oram was a talented pianist and organ player as a child. Her professional career in music and recorded sound began during World War 2; in 1942, on leaving school, she turned down an offer of a place at the Royal College of Music in London to instead take up a role as a junior studio engineer at the BBC, where her responsibilities would include mixing live broadcasts and creating sound effects. The BBC’s approach to sound and music was, at the time, as much a scientific pursuit as it was artistic. Like so many major broadcasters, the corporation valued precision and quality of sound as much as the more conventional musical aspects. In 1958, alongside her colleague Desmond Briscoe, Oram oversaw the

creation of the Radiophonic Workshop at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, West London. Essentially an experimental sound effect and soundtrack unit, the Workshop used new technologies, musique concrète techniques and tape manipulation to create soundtracks for BBC broadcasts including the popular sci-fi television series Quatermass and the Pit, and radio comedy The Goon Show. In later years, it would soundtrack Doctor Who. Disappointed by the BBC’s reluctance to embrace new electronic music techniques, Oram resigned less than a year after the Radiophonic Workshop was formed. In 1959, Oram set up the Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition in Kent. It was here that she continued work on her Oramics technique, a unique approach based on the theory of using strips of 35mm photography film to control primitive electronic sound generators. The film was fed through a machine which used

light-dependent resistors to read control symbols painted onto the film. The Oramics machine effectively let the user sequence musical patterns, with control over variables like pitch, amplitude, timbre and reverberation (by sending the signal to speaker and mic in an echo chamber). With the help of a 1962 grant of £3,500 from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (over £75,000 in today’s money), Oram developed the Oramics machine alongside electronics engineers Graham Wrench and Fred Wood, plus her brother John. By 1966, the prototype machine was functional, albeit not perfect. Work continued to refine the idea, but the Oramics machine never took off as a commercially viable product. Nevertheless, the Oramics machine was a huge technological achievement and an important part of Oram’s own compositions. What’s striking about it in retrospect is the way its horizontal strips of film appear

so similar to aspects of modern music software. The Oramics approach was decades ahead of its time in how it represented musical information visually. As part of the development of the Oramics approach, Oram also successfully patented what may well be the first digitally controlled oscillator, nearly two decades before such technology became commercially available via synths like the Roland Juno-6 and Korg Poly-61. Oram died in 2003, aged 77, and interest in her work slowly grew over the following years. In 2011, the original Oramics machine went on display at London’s Science Museum, drawing more interest in Oram’s work. Since then, Oram’s position as an influential figure in electronic music history has been widely acknowledged. In 2016, Goldsmiths PhD student Tom Richards created a working version of the Mini-Oramics machine Oram had planned to build in the early 1970s, keeping the legacy alive.

Oramics | Retrospective

Keeping the Oram legacy alive © Vicki Couchman

Oramics (2007)

This definitive compilation of Oram’s recorded works was first released by Paradigm Discs in 2007 and re-pressed on quadruple vinyl by Young Americans last year (it’s also available from daphneoram.bandcamp.com). As a starting point, try Bird of Parallax, composed in 1972 for Xallaparallax, a ballet performed at the Edinburgh Festival. It opens with sounds of the Oramics machine before developing into the kind of rolling musique concrète groove which has led to Oram being hailed as an accidental pioneer of proto-techno, about a decade and a half before anyone in Detroit stumbled upon similar ideas.

The Oram Awards

The British copyright collective PRS for Music launched The Oram Awards in 2017, seeking to support “the next generation of innovative women, girls and gender minorities in music and sound”. The awards are open to UK-based artists, with a focus on less established names, awarding prizes and bursaries to support the most original, forward-thinking work. Previous winners include ‘DIY noisenik’ Loula Yorke, multi-disciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie and techno experimentalist Francine Perry (La Leif).

The Oram Trust

Formed in 2007, the Oram Trust is a charitable organisation which seeks to “advance, improve, develop and maintain public education in” Oram’s work. Run by a board of volunteers including musicians, academics and members of Oram’s family, their work is vital in protecting Oram’s legacy. The trust’s website – daphneoram.or – is an excellent starting point and resource for further information. 71

Interview | Hannah Peel

Peel’s new album, Fir Wave, sees her resampling, re-imagining and re-dreaming the music of celebrated electronic pioneer Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop. Hamish Mackintosh found out more

Hannah Peel

Hannah Peel | Interview

ull disclosure… Fir Wave, the sublime new offering from sonic alchemist Hannah Peel, has become something of an obsession to these ears. From the other-worldy voices of opener Wind Shadow, through the hypnotic beats and synths of Emergence In Nature all the way through to the ethereal splendour of album closer, Reaction Diffusion, Peel has crafted a spell-binding electronic gem. Given access to use original recordings from BBC Radiophonic Workshop legend Delia Derbyshire as DNA for the project, Fir Wave, allowed Peel to respectfully re-interpret the source-material, building digital instruments from it to then launch it into bristling electronic realms Derbyshire would be proud of. Fir Wave, is a high watermark in Hannah Peel’s already impressive musical CV, which includes an Emmy nomination for her soundtrack to Game of Thrones: The Last Watch along with musical collaborations with artists including John Foxx, Paul Weller, Erland Cooper and Simon Tong (as The Magnetic North). Fir Wave exists in a space where electronic music of the past, present and future collide perfectly. Little wonder FM was so excited to catch up with Hannah and find out more about Delia, DAWs and discovering more tactile ways of sculpting sound.

insane.’ Some of it wasn’t ever intended for an audience or to be released. And in some ways that’s better, because then I don’t have the pressure of putting this out and people expecting massive things with it because of it being Delia Derbyshire. I had time to live with the main body of it for the last two and a half years. And then I re-visited it and mixed it all again last year so I got a bit more perspective on it and it felt like it was the right time to do it.”

Fir Wave seems to be getting universally excellent reviews, that must be pleasing? “I’m so blown away, actually because sometimes you make a record that you work so intensely on and my records usually have so many moving parts with, like, 30 brass players or the like. This one was just so simple, and it was just nice to be able to make the record and put it out as it’s self-released. Yeah, the fact that people are picking it up and talking about it is just beautiful.”

Is curation of sounds becoming an important skill for electronic musicians to have? “It’s not just about you handling the machines. It’s about curating and treating them like they’re part of an orchestra. They are part of a fabric in life, almost. You know, I love the more organic sounds where you don’t quite know what they are or where they’re from… almost like part of your psychology.”

It’s quite something to be given free access to Delia Derbyshire’s catalogue. Did you have the project in mind and then ask for the archives? “EMI Productions, who own the rights now, just came to me and asked if I was interested in making a library record for them: ‘here’s your starting point!’. I guess because I’d never done a library before that, I did have some reservations. But they quickly dissipate when you take out the feeling of having to do something that you’ve never done before – and that you’ll be using material that’s very precious to a lot of people. So yeah, I mean, once I kind of decided how I was going to do it, it became very easy. But yeah, there was a lot of trepidation about it to begin with.” What a treat to be allowed to immerse yourself in that source material for a while? “I know. I think about it and go ‘my God, that’s

The album has got a strange, lockdown quality to it, very hypnotic. How did you approach what bits of Delia’s you would work with? “I mean, if you’ve heard the original record then it’s pretty bonkers so it’s hard to configure how to assess what bits to work with. I didn’t get the stems so I just had the audio as it was released so I just chose tiny fragments of things that I thought really resonated with me. Like, there were these kind of bubbling synth sounds. When I decided that I was going to make my own instruments from those sounds in Kontakt to use with a MIDI keyboard, you know, choosing the right kind of texture, or sound was important because you can’t necessarily use all of them as a chord or anything like that. That was important so I chose specific ones, maybe like five or six, that I made instruments out of that were like ‘Delia Fire’ and ‘Delia Earth’. Then the rest were ones that couldn’t be taken out of context and replayed; ones that needed to be as they are on the record. So yeah, choosing them was quite hard because sometimes they do overlap in the original records so I had to be pretty specific but that can also be the fun part.”

There’s a real sense of respect to the original music that emanates from Fir Wave… very much not a result of banging out a few presets! “You’ve got to be though, haven’t you? And that’s really good to hear because I didn’t want to be disrespectful at all. You know, I love modular stuff and analogue sounds… it’s just kind of woven into my being, I guess, from a young age and the folk singing with my dad and stuff like that has definitely got an organic feel to it. One of the important things that I found was the ethos of the original record. It has industrial, scientific, almost futuristic element to it. When I was looking at the track titles there’s also a celestial element that’s very beautiful. So when I was thinking about what I wanted this one to be, it was very much about how we are right now. I didn’t want it to be like an eco warrior record at all, it just felt, with lockdown and everything, that I really needed to refocus and think about nature, and the sounds that play within nature. Like the inside of a tree and how that sounds like a synthesiser.”

Interview | Hannah Peel

So, was Kontakt your main weapon of choice for transforming all your collated source material into something more musical? “Yeah, that was the easiest way to do it. It’s only been the last few years that I’ve really got into Kontakt because of making my own sounds and using that in various scores. The Deceived score that I did used sounds from my house inside of the score so I sampled crystal cut-glass, doors and crazy bells that they have in the house and made those into soundscapes to be part of the underbelly of the TV show. So, I’ve used it for a while but it’s only in the last few years I’ve found the beauty in it rather than it just being another instrument. ”

It’s a very powerful sound-sculpting tool… “Yes and it just makes it unique to you and makes it fun. Sometimes when you write music so much, you need something to keep you a bit more interested and keep you excited. There’s something really nice about sampling something and then transforming it into music.” Having followed your work over the past few years, it strikes us that you’re someone who enjoys finding the ghosts in the machines…is that a conscious thing you do? “Completely. My first proper experiences of synths were with Benge because I shared a studio with him

“Delia would be fascinated by modern tech, but might well say, ‘it’s not for me’”

and also played with John Foxx. His collection of synths when he was based in London was amazing but, you know, lots of them didn’t quite work so my early experiences were of having to manipulate the ones that weren’t working properly and create something out of it. “So, it was always about the things that had gone wrong, or were a little wonky and, like you said, the ghosts in them. One of the first synths that I bought was a Juno-60, which, when you turned it on had this ghostly choir sound without even hitting any of the presets… just constantly pulsing. So yeah, I guess I’ve always come from that angle of like, the nuances and the kind of secret side of it. All totally fuelled by Benge!” You could certainly do a lot worse than having Benge, John Foxx and Stephen Mallinder as your guides! “He’s unreal! I think I used that studio time really well but I still don’t feel I used Benge’s time quite as well. Like, I just wish I had said, ‘can you teach me this, this and this and this’. Way back, when I was first talking about releasing records, I wanted to just set up my own little label and do it that way and Mal was like, why? I said, I don’t know other than for my own pleasure, which is the reason My Own Pleasure then became the name of the label. So, they’ve definitely been an influence.” To have access to such an amazing collection of synths and hardware blows the mind but there is also a slight (albeit nice) dilemma of having no restrictions to choosing what to use? “I do really miss having the freedom to use all those machines. Occasionally I’d sneak in and borrow something to experiment with then put it back for the morning [laughs]. Benge knew I was doing it but he didn’t mind.” Did you have any favourite bits and pieces from your time at Benge’s? “God, there are so many. This is random and probably not very productive but the Simmons Clap Trap, which I thought was incredible. He has loads and loads of drum machines and I really loved the TR-808, which was always fun to use. He has an original Linn Drum. I liked the Korg MonoPoly synth as well as the Solina String Ensemble machine. I think probably the 808 was my favourite though as it was the first drum machine I took to.”

When FM first approached you for an interview a couple of months back you wanted to wait until a new piece of gear had been added to your studio setup and it’s been gnawing away at us to find out what that was? [laughs] “Oh yeah, I ordered it in November and it still hasn’t arrived! It’s the Folktek Resonant Garden, have you seen them? So, you can play and bow the strings and, for me, it’s a really nice step into the more tactile modular synthesis. I also recently got an Eventide Harmonizer, which I’m really looking forward to using. I’ve got an original

Hannah Peel | Interview

It must be said that AudioThing are coming up with some really useful plugins at the moment, aren’t they? “They’re incredible. The new things they’ve made with Hainbach are brilliant – he’s amazing! Arturia are great too. They had a little offer on recently so I bought the Buchla Music Easel software. I can remember Benge had a Music Easel [laughs] but he wasn’t that keen on me borrowing it! When I compose for a studio film you have to be so fast that I tend to be more reliant on software. So, with making sounds and soundscapes, I’ll make them at the beginning of a project because that’s when you have the time to play and explore.” Is it ironic that we’ve come so far with processing power and ever-improving bit-rates only for us all to want tape saturation and bit-crunching software? [laughs] “That’s so true. I mean, some of those plugins are just incredible though. I’m working on something at the moment and we really needed a ’70s feel for it and the Reels plugin that AudioThing have developed is just fantastic. There’s a whole piece that I just recorded on my phone, which sounds amazing when you put it through Reels. I tried to recreate the original recording of my voice and the piano but the phone version had movement and background noises that I couldn’t recreate as there’s just something about the compression on the phone when you use voice memos that makes it another useful musical tool.”

Space Echo here, a little Watkins Copicat and various synths like a Wasp EDP and a Dave Smith Mopho. One that I used all over Fir Wave was the Lyra 8, which is a total noise machine! On the first track, Wind Shadow, I put the vocals through the Lyra 8 and messed with them in it. That’s what made the crazy noise that sounds like it’s ripping apart the track. There’s a Jupiter 4 on that same track and a Moog Sub Phatty, which I don’t have anymore. There’s quite a few other bits around the place too. Loads of guitar pedals and stuff.” Are you attached to your studio gear or do you get what you need from it and then move on, sell it off? “Yeah, I am attached to a couple of things. I’d never get rid of my Lyra-8, Juno-60 or my Jupiter 4, for example… or my Space Echo come to think of it. I had a Moog Sub 37 for a couple of years but I sold that so I could have the Resonant Garden and my Wasp EDP.” What do you think Delia Derbyshire would have made of present-day DAWs and music technology were she still alive? “Do you know I think she’d be absolutely fascinated but might well say, ‘it’s not for me’. Give

her a tape-machine and a corridor any day! I do think she’d be completely in awe of all the synthesisers and recording technology we have now. It’s just a shame she’s not still here to see it!” Talking of DAWs, which do you favour? “I use Logic. I grew up as a teenager using Cubase back in the day, then switched to Logic and I’ve stuck with it. It’s the best for working with visuals and quite a lot of my process of making things, even with Fir Wave, involves finding videos and different visual elements online, put them into Logic and keep them on repeat so I can write to something. That informs a lot of my music, whether a project comes with visuals or not. Sometimes they end up being completely different but it just helps me visualise the music.” Is there an equal mix of hardware and software in your work setup? “A total mix. I have a Universal Audio LA-610 compressor that everything goes through. I have a lovely preamp for when I’m recording acoustic instruments and the Eventide Harmonizer but generally everything else in terms of sound creation is done in the computer. I use a lot of Soundtoys and AudioThing plugins for effects.”

Are there any new musical machines that you’re after for your next projects? [laughs] “Well there’s the Folktek synth! That is genuinely the most exciting thing as I want to get more hands-on for the next project coming up, which involves dark, earthy, sci-fi moods and I can’t wait to get my hands on the Resonant Garden as I think it’s going to help transform a lot of feelings electronically. I also bought a Waterphone, which you put water into and it makes these gorgeous sound textures.” What’s next for you? “I’ve got a few film and TV scores to do but actually, the next big project that will hopefully come out at some point is an album with an amazing orchestra in Bristol called Paraorchestra, which is a mix of disabled and non-disabled musicians and they’re just phenomenal. They commissioned me to write a piece for them so I’ve finished an hour-long piece that combines with their skills as an orchestra – as there are some musicians who use electronics to trigger things because of their disabilities but mixed with classical orchestra components.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Fir Wave is available on My Own Pleasure. Visit hannahpeel.com for regular updates and more 75

FM | REVIEWS

IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro from £399 Rob Redman checks out this duo of synths from the budgetfriendly Italian brand CONTACT

KEY FEATURES

WHO: IK Multimedia WEB: ikmultimedia.com Desktop or keyboard variants, Analogue oscillators and filters, onboard stereo effects, paraphonic synth, either touch or semi weighted Fatar keyboard PRICING: Pro, £649 Pro Desktop, £399

IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro | Reviews

THE PROS & CONS

Versatile sound Some excellent stereo effects Sequencer is very capable The full keyboard feels good

Desktop version feels slightly less sturdy Some menu diving to navigate

K Multimedia’s latest synth offering comes in two flavours; the desktop version with its touch sensitive keyboard, pitch and mod strips, and the full version, which has a full size, semi-weighted Fatar keyboard. The keyboard is larger, sporting a heavy duty metal enclosure, as well as physical wheels for pitch and mod. Those differences – and the keyboard version’s power socket – aside, the two are identical. The user interface and innards are exactly

the same, so choosing which to get becomes a matter of which ergonomics you prefer, rather than any capabilities of the two.

UNO momento With that in mind, it’s worth noting that while the desktop’s keyboard is quite responsive and playable, the pitch and mod strips are a little less so, occasionally missing input. In all likelihood this won’t be too much of a problem, as most users will be controlling this from their DAW, or a controller keyboard.

Ports are plentiful, with full size MIDI DIN, a pair of ¼” jacks for audio out (the effects are stereo), some CV and micro USB. Both variants can be powered by USB but this can introduce unwanted noise, so the full version also offers a power brick. USB power banks work too and appear to be less of a noise issue, meaning that if you want a portable synth for travel the desktop might actually be better, whereas for stage situations the keyboard is the better choice. On to the sounds then – here

the UNO shines and from here on out, both models are identical. The UNO sports three analogue VCOs and a white noise generator, all with some great tone shaping options. Each of the three oscillators has continuous wave shape variations from saw to pulse width, with modulation. There are two analogue state variable filters, with dedicated cutoff and resonance controls. The potentiometers all feel smooth and firm, with a nice amount of resistance and, while the filter

Reviews | IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro

THE ALTERNATIVES

Korg minilogue £430 Korg’s minilogue is a polyphonic option with some similar capabilities. It has that Korg sound, and it’s feature rich… but doesn’t hold up so well in areas like the sequencer. korg.com

controls are dedicated, the function of most changes dependent on the active menu. At first that may seem off-putting, but it really only takes a few minutes to get to grips with that, as the grid below them makes it very clear, with illuminated labels indicating what is happening. The final potentiometer is for master volume, leaving a single clickable rotary control for data. This feels slightly less robust but that’s the nature of the beast (without hardstops and its need to be pressed as well as turned). Thankfully, although there is some menu diving, it’s all logically implemented. You’ll find it hard to get lost.

Sounds about right

Modal Cobalt 8 £499 Eight voices and also an app, to let you dive deeper without too much menu diving or button gymnastics. There’s a 37-key version for an extra £100. modalelectronics.com

Moog Grandmother £769 For a bit more investment there is Moog’s wonderful Grandmother, which also has a similar feature set, albeit with a very different ﬂavour. Lovely playability and a gorgeous real spring reverb too. moogmusic.com

Back to the sound shaping. Quick access buttons to the left get you where you need most, from the VCO, mix, ﬁlter, LFOs, ﬁlter and amp envelopes, mod matrix and effects. Pushing any one of these highlights the labels for the four

controls. These aren’t changeable but do present the most obvious choices. Take the LFOs as an example, where the main controls are wave, rate, fade in and sync. These four controls are all you get and can also be accessed and changed by the data encoder, with a visual representation on the display. Selecting between the two LFOs (or the ﬁlters) is a simple case of pressing the button again, with a telltale label lighting to show you which is being adjusted. The ﬁlters themselves are state variable and they’re totally discreet, with various modes and settings for amount and spacing, so dialling in complex tones is

really easy, especially with the mod matrix. The matrix itself utilises the same four knobs to select the mod number (including aftertouch and velocity), the source which covers everything from oscillator levels right through to CV gate and sequencer ties, so a lot of capability to unleash. The fourth knob is for controlling the modulation amount. The matrix is a doddle to use, fast and powerful, belying its appearance. The two envelopes, one each for ﬁlter and amp, are both ADSR envelopes with fairly decent ranges. This leaves the effects section, which is one of the strongest (mostly) digital effects you’ll ﬁnd

For me, one of the stars of the show here is the sequencer

CONTROL THE VOLTAGE The UNO Synth Pro, in both its guises, has two channels of gate and CV in and out, adding an extra layer of functionality that is rare at this price (although it’s becoming more common with the surge in modular equipment). The easiest way to take advantage of these is through the mod matrix, where the ports can be assigned however you like. If you like euclidean sequences then you could have one sending gates to the UNO. Maybe send the value of the mod wheel to an external effect, or you can send an LFO to your rack to sync up modulating a piece of Eurorack equipment. There is a lot on offer here, just another element to making the UNO a truly useful synth.

IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro | Reviews

on a synth at this price, or far beyond. The effects are limited to Drive, Chorus, Delay and Reverb, which may not seem like a lot but I’d rather have fewer great effects and a host of average ones. Hit the FX button and turn the corresponding knob to set the amount, then use the data encoder to dive deeper into things like delay type, chorus colour, or reverb pre-delay. This is where the menu diving comes in but it’s only a couple of levels deep. All the effects sound wonderful; however, the drive – the only analogue effect here – is my top pick, as it provides plenty of warmth and can really scream. Team it with resonance and use the mod wheel to control it and you get some almost guitar-like lead sounds, or aggressive basses. Chorus is very clean and also acts as flanger and phaser; the delay has a heap of options, including a fantastic ping pong. Reverbs range from small plates, through to large hall type, each sounding good, with enough control to dial in just what you need. There is plenty of control available to shape just about any kind of synth sound you can imagine, with 256 preset slots to use, many of which come with entries already for you to play. As with any synth, many of these may not be to your taste but they do give a good starting point to create your own and to check out some of the possibilities. Loading and saving is done to the right, where you’ll also find the buttons for tempo, voice, hold and arp and sequencer. There’s also a song mode, which is useful but also the most finicky setting to use. The setup button for master settings is here also. A click of the data encoder takes you into things like master tune, MIDI settings and so on. All simple but useful stuff.

Sequence of events For me, one of the stars of the show here is the sequencer. Sure you can hit record and capture a live performance and you can treat it like a standard step sequencer but you can also sequence modulations per step with it. This isn’t overly new. In fact one of my favourite synths, the Sequential Pro 3, has this, as does my Moog One and a few others. What excites me

TOUC TOUCHY UCHY HY FEELY FEELY Y The rubber buttons are clear, responsive and are illuminated when they’re active, all keys to a good experience

PRO POWE POWER R The rear panel on both models is the same, with the exception of the power input port on the keyboard version

is the fact that the UNO comes in at such a good price point and offers such a capable instrument. It has a really simple workﬂow too. Select a step, out of the 16 step buttons, of which there are four pages, for 64 in total (more if you want to head into song mode) and adjust the parameter you want. Playback will have those modulations locked in place, giving your hands more freedom to interact on the ﬂy. Complex performances are a breeze with this setup and it is a real joy to use. One last button needs mentioning: the ALT button. This is basically a shift, giving certain other buttons a second function. Labeling for these is clear if a little

KEY FEAT FEATURES URES The Fatar keybed is semi weighted and feels good to play, with adjustable velocity sensitivity

dim but preferable to more menu diving, as it is for things like Ties, accents, copy and paste. Yes, copy and paste, which works for things like copying step information from one step to another, speeding up the process of setting rhythms up using the sequencer – great when using locked mod steps you want to reuse. All in all, this is a great instrument and one that deﬁnitely punches over its weight class, in terms of sound and functionality. When ﬁrst seeing photos of these I thought they’d feel more akin to playing a plugin but the reality is far from that. The biggest decision here is not whether you should shortlist it but which of the two

GOING GOING LIVE LIVE The plastic casing of the desktop version is switched out for a metal one on the full version, much better suited to live performances

variants to get. Both come with compromises but either would be a great addition to your arsenal, on the road, stage or in the studio.

FM VERDICT

9.0 Shames some much more expensive instruments, with a whole raft of functions and features you’d expect to pay twice as much for 79

Reviews | Roland Verselab MV-1

Roland Verselab MV-1 £599 The MV-1 prioritises vocals – as per the name – but it still covers you for samples and instruments says Martin Delany CONTACT

KEY FEATURES

WHO: Roland WEB: roland.com Built-in microphone, external microphone input with phantom power, Zen-Core compatible (3,000+ presets, 80+ drum kits), up to 128 voice polyphony, seven tracks and one vocal track, eight looper tracks, 16 vocal takes, effects, step sequencer, looper, SD card storage, USB audio and MIDI, can be powered via USB

Roland Verselab MV-1 | Reviews

THE PROS & CONS

Beautifully organised user interface Built-in mic for spontaneous vocals Covers production from beat to mastering tasks

The plastic body casing feels cheap …and transmits handling noise through to the mic A larger display would be helpful

We like the self-contained nature of it… the challenge of doing it all in this box

nusually for a hardware sequencer, the Roland Verselab MV-1 is all about vocals. It’s a sequencer, sampler, and software instrument host that uses all that as a support network for your voice. Whether processing your vocals in real time, or recording them, or importing from another source: the Verselab is good for it all. The MV-1 features a small LCD display, and various well-labelled

knobs and buttons, all of which have some chance of being readable on stage, being either black-on-white or white-on-black, and no greys in-between. There are 16 sequencer step buttons arrayed along the lower edge, and there are 16 square pads in the centre of the unit for playing beats and other functions. At the back there’s a mains power input and on/off switch, a USB-B port, full-size MIDI in/out, SD card slot, Kensington lock slot, 1/4” left and right line inputs, an XLR mic input, and finally, 1/4” left and right line outputs. The

front panel features both 1/4” and 1/8” headphone jacks, and a small grille covers a built-in mic. Truthfully, we’d prefer a more solid-feeling case, but nothing fell off during the review! The Verselab can be powered from the included mains adaptor, or kept portable with a USB-style power bank. There are a minimum of multi-function buttons, with separate buttons for choosing different types of drum track (like kick, snare), for each type of ‘melodic’ track (bass, instrument 1, instrument 2, vocal), and a Workflow section, highlighted with a white panel and a progression from left to right, starting with Seq(uence), then Section, then Song, Mixer, and finally Mixdown, ending with a graphic of a WAV file – that’s a great visual representation of how music is constructed here.

Roland provide project templates if you need backing in a hurry, otherwise it’s not such a leap to create your own. Press the drum track/kick button, then navigate to your chosen kit or sound – you can play it on the 16 large pads. Then enter record or step record mode, and add your chosen kick to the required steps in the bar using the lower pads. Expand that from there, adding more kit sounds, then a bass and keyboards, maybe, using the preconfigured tracks for each purpose. If you don’t want to start from scratch, there’s a library of patterns that can be incorporated into a new production. The onboard sounds, of which there are more than 1000, plus 80 kits, are from Roland’s ZEN-Core sound library, which is shareable across compatible

Reviews | Roland Verselab MV-1

THE ALTERNATIVES

Boss VE-500 £359 Still hardware, but even more vocaloriented - the Boss VE-500 is a pedal that includes effects, pitch correction, and harmony options boss.info

Roland MC-707 £849 Going the other way, the MC-707 focuses on delivering ZEN-Core sounds, plus sampling, in a groovebox format roland.com

instruments and software. These presets are editable up to a point, but really the emphasis is on the sheer number of sounds available. The MV-1 connects to computers or mobile devices, and then to the cloud, through the Zen Beats app. Over USB, it can send and receive multichannel audio and MIDI. The 16 large pads are for playing beats, but also as a grid-based keyboard, with the ability to assign scales across the pads, and chords to each pad individually. They’re also used as a selection tool for certain functions, like choosing a vocal take to load into a track, or selecting patterns before chaining them together. The row of smaller pads are typically used for step sequencing – no surprises there if you’ve used any Roland drum machine or groovebox before. Each pad represents a step in a pattern for the currently selected track and instrument. Again, however, these perform other functions, like sequencing the start of a vocal take, or choosing a step in a chain of patterns. Then there’s that built-in mic, and the rear mic input (48v phantom power is available). A vocal recording is known as a ‘take’, and up to 16 takes are permitted in each project. Recordings can be imported via the SD card, so if necessary you can do some editing and prep ﬁrst. There’s a

PROJ PROJECT OJECT ECT LOAD LOAD/SAVE LOAD/SAV /SAVE E BUTTON BU BUTTON: TTON: We’re admiring the way that Roland highlighted this critical button. In fact the entire MV-1 workﬂow is well organised

BUILT-IN BUILT MIC This mic is so IN MIC: very useful for capturing those spontaneous vocal moments – we wish more products had something like this

suite of vocal-oriented effects available, which can be applied during or after recording – these are fairly restrained, and Roland have probably done the right thing by avoiding excessively heavy or cheesy sound processing. There are very obvious controls for vocal processor on/off, tone, and mic on/off, gain – keeping menu diving to a minimum. Use a large pad to select a take slot and record your part, then

Ableton Live 11 Intro £69 This entry-level version of Live still provides up to 16 audio and MIDI tracks with warp modes and effects ableton.com

IT’S ABOUT THE VOCALS The Verselab MV-1 is fairly unique in terms of the way it incorporates the human voice into the world of sequencing and grooveboxes. On one level, it’s not really so different from Roland’s own MC-707, but that machine is also squarely aimed at exploiting the ZEN-Core sounds, with a bit of sampling, sequencing, and enough controls for live interaction. The MV-1 keeps those elements, but bumps them to one side, to accommodate the vocal capture, import, and processing. There are plenty of hardware tools that deal with vocal processing – Roland themselves have the VT-1 and VT-3 Voice Transformers, and Boss (a division of Roland) offer the VE-500 Vocal Performer, a pedal aimed at performers who also need real-time vocal effects. TC Helicon are a big name in this ﬁeld, with the VoiceLive range of pedals and table top devices.

DISP DISPLAY LAY: This old-school DISPLAY: old school display gets things done, but maybe it’d be nice to see a more modern, full colour offering

set the start and end points, and place in the sequencer time line by using the lower row of buttons. The workﬂow continues to mixing and mastering – with mastering effects like a multiband compressor, equaliser, and a limiter. You can then create a stereo mix on the SD card with either the full song, instruments or vocals only. We like the selfcontained nature of it, and the challenge of doing it all in this box. Not everybody wants to master a DAW before they feel qualiﬁed. The MV-1 is a 21st century take on the cassette multi trackers that were once used to create home demos. The marketing is dead-on – targeted at somebody who perhaps has a small amount of outboard, and likes the convenience of social media for sharing resources and mixes, but who gets a kick out of working against the limitations of hardware.

FM VERDICT

8.8 The Verselab is a workable solution for computer-averse producers, while integrating with the computer when you need it to

Reviews | Modular and Eurorack

VPME Euclidean Circles v2 £235 and Six Switches £42 I

f you are interested in creating sequences that don’t stick to the normal 16-note grid so often found, then Euclidean Circles might just be your new best friend. With six channels to play with, there is plenty to be getting on with and the form factor means it doesn’t eat too much of your valuable hp either. The blue faceplate is just 10hp wide (12 with the optional extension) but manages to feel roomy. In part this is due to the interface design, which uses three buttons surrounded by LEDs to create patterns, with a fourth ‘F’ button for other functions. The success of this design is in the wonderful colour coding system, which lets you see exactly what is happening at any given time. For example, if you want to change the sequence length then you click the knob until it turns blue. Surrounding each knob is a set of 16 LEDs, lit blue for active and orange for inactive. Use the knob to select a mode and turn it to set the desired amount. It is really that simple. You have six of these channels to play with, or you can chain for up to 38-step sequences. You can rotate the sequence relative to the others, by pressing the main knob, or press it again to go into step edit mode.

This version (V2) beneﬁts from the addition of the ‘F’ button which can be used to tap a tempo, or combine with other buttons to do things like chain sequences.

So far so good then? Yes but it doesn’t end there. The Joy here is using euclidean algorithms to create sequences, so the module’s visual feedback is perfect for understanding

Euclidean Circles might just be your new best friend

what is happening. In essence, the algorithm tries to divide the step count by the active step number as equally as possible. For example, if you had an eight-step sequence with two active steps they would fall every fourth step, as signiﬁed by the coloured LED ring. Easy to get your head round but also something that can be done with any sequencer. Try using odd numbers, then rotating some of the start steps and you get some really interesting results. This could be hard to track by memory alone, but the coloured lights make it a breeze. One point to note is that the LEDs are pretty bright and can overpower nearby modules in darker environments. In every other situation they feel just right. There are patch points for each channel, as well as external clock and reset, so you’ll ﬁnd that your clocking needs are well met. VPME can ship the module with its ‘Six Switches’ expander, which as 2hp is a no brainer. It’s a very simple expander with, as the name suggests, just six toggle switches. Each of these corresponds to a sequence, allowing you to mute/unmute at will. This makes for a fantastic live setup and the toggles feel solid to boot.

VERDICT 8.0

FM | ROUND-UP

SPRING REVERBS We’ve tested ﬁve plugin emulations of this characterful reverb tech. Which of them would you be proud to coil your own?

FM | MUST HAVE!

Softube Spring Reverb $89

u-he Twangstrom $69

Mogwai Audio Tools MRev Springs $34

Offering realistic sound quality, with a reﬁned interface enabling speedy reverb design, Softube’s classic spring reverb plugin creates authentic, dark, splashy tones. Spring models are chosen by a continuous blend knob from 1-3 combined spring pairs. Tension simulates spring tightness, with higher values resulting in more condensed, upfront, higher frequency decays. The Shake control is similar to traditional diffusion controls, and the slider can be ‘twanged’. A simple dry/wet mix knob balances the relative volume of the reverb, and there are bass and treble controls for tone shaping, and cutting or boosting frequencies with analogue-style ﬁltering. It’s very solid, but a bit pricey.

A fully featured, studio-grade, spring emulation plugin, Twangstrom is named after its “Twang” feature, mimicking real springs, where pulling and releasing the spring creates a boinging twang sound. The plugin has three reverb tank model types with different ﬂavours. The sound quality is high, offering realistic spring sounds that are indistinguishable from a hardware unit. The interface is incredibly intuitive and modern, opening possibilities for quick but deep sound design. The feature list includes a Drive and Tone section to colour your reverb, a ﬂexible Multimode Filter to sculpt the frequencies, an Envelope section and an LFO. We love the physical modelling controls that let you redesign the physics of the modelled springs. Twangstrom also has a modular element, enabling a huge range of sounds from this highly powerful spring reverb plugin.

A basic spring reverb unit with four Spring models to choose from. MRev Springs has input-stage soft clipping, with independent L+R output gains and phase switches. At first it appears to have separate Input and Output HP and LP filters, but these are just separate filters for the dry and wet circuit – changing the filters on the dry section doesn’t have any effect on the wet sound, which you might expect from an input filter. There is a control for Intensity; and you also get a Modulate parameter, although this only lets you take control of the modulation depth, not its rate. A less sparkling spring reverb, but it’s at least cheaper to match.

softube.com

u-he.com

mogwaiaudiotools.com.au

VERDICT 7.5

VERDICT 9.0

VERDICT 5.4

Spring reverbs | Roundup

FM | STUDIO ESSENTIAL!

PSP Audioware SpringBox $64 AudioThing Springs $89 Simplistic but still very ‘playable’, SpringBox has four spring configurations based on spring quantity and stereo arrangements, giving only a small amount of variation compared to others, but at the cost of less CPU. Two channels can be switched between with an A/B selector. Each channel has a basic filter circuit (High-cut, Low-Cut, Presence Boost), a Time control that seems to turn up to infinite decay, and a trim control for adjusting gain. There are common controls for Diffusion, Spread (mono-stereo) and parallel Dry-Wet Gains. The sound quality is the most artificial of the plugins in this list, with Springbox sounding like an old digital emulation of a spring, rather than a realistic simulation of the original sound. It has hints of that tinny digital guitar pedal sound. It blurs sounds out nicely if needed, but there aren’t many outstanding features for the price.

Boasting 11 spring models from iconic hardware pieces, an analogue-modelled three-band Baxandall EQ with links to a wet bandwidth control, AudioThing Springs is a broader but less deep plugin than the likes of Twangstrom. The sound here is pretty rough and messy... exactly what you want from a spring reverb unit! Sound quality is decent, giving a large range of usable sounds, from tasty classic units to trashy oddities, so Springs is suitable for all kinds of instrument channels. Other controls include Saturation, Stereo Width, and an added Noise button for analogue inspiration. Springs has a nifty impulse editing section, a singleknob compressor to tighten the sound, and a simple EQ. One minus is the lack of a fully variable or automationfriendly control for changing decay time, with Springs instead offering only a Long/Short switch.

pspaudioware.net

audiothing.net

VERDICT 5.5

VERDICT 8.0 87

Reviews | Black Lion Audio Revolution 2X2

Black Lion Audio Revolution 2x2 £399 Quality audio is at the heart of this firm’s ethos. Jon Musgrave tests their first fully fledged audio interface CONTACT WHO: Black Lion Audio WEB: blacklionaudio.com KEY FEATURES 24bit, 192KHz USB-C interface, 2 combination mic, line and instrument inputs, Bus powered over USB (no PSU), Macro MMC clocking technology, Analogue circuit features high quality components, PG-i noise reduction technology, Bundled software package DIMENSIONS: 213x 175x 44mm WEIGHT: 1.43kg

Black Lion Audio Revolution 2X2 | Reviews

lack Lion Audio originally made their name customising and upgrading other makers’ hardware interfaces. Over the years they’ve also designed and built various hardware devices including mic preamps, compressors, converters and external clock units. Throughout, the vision has always been to squeeze the maximum sonic performance from the available components. Their latest venture, Revolution 2x2, incorporates this circuit design experience into their very own 2in, 2out, 24bit, 192kHz, USB-C audio interface. What’s more, at £399, it’s more affordable than many of their upgrades. The interface is USB-powered with no PSU option and although at 1.4kg it’s quite weighty, the half rack unit size means it’s also pretty portable. The package is completed by a decent software bundle including PreSonus Studio One Artist, iZotope Elements Suite, Brainworx bx_ digital and Lindell 6X-500. Despite the keen price, Revolution 2x2 is packed with quality components and even includes branded USB cables. Meanwhile a new Macro MMC clocking circuit and their PG-I power ﬁltering and decoupling system prioritise audio ﬁdelity.

When I turned everything up to full, true enough there was no unsavoury computer noise to fret about. Awesome stuff. Visually, the unit is pretty understated and the feature set quite straightforward. Even so, nice touches include two identical mic/line/instrument inputs and zero latency monitoring with mix control and input mono’ing option. There’s also stereo S/PDIF in/out and there’s an Input selector to switch over from the analogue preamps to S/PDIF (remember the unit is limited to 2in/2out). On the back there’s one pair of balanced outputs (¼” TRS jacks) and on the front a single headphone output. The black design is nicely offset by backlit buttons, two-tone input level LEDs, a green USB indicator and multipart output level LEDs, so you have plenty of handy visual feedback and once you’re up and running it really looks the part. I also really like the smooth controls, chunky Monitor output knob and mostly solid build quality. On Mac OS X Revolution 2x2 is class compliant so you simply plug up and then make the necessary settings in Audio MIDI Setup. Meanwhile on Windows you’ll need to download their ASIO driver. As for latency, Logic Pro X delivered a 7.9ms roundtrip at 32 samples, which is reasonable. Maybe more importantly, I found Revolution 2x2 was very stable at this small buffer

size. Onboard zero latency monitoring means setup for recording is easy and quick, and the headphone output is clean and potentially loud. It’s worth saying that the Direct control affects both the headphone and monitor outputs, which, although not perfect for all users, seems to be standard practice for a 2in, 2out conﬁguration. In terms of audio performance it’d be nice to see maximum preamp gain above 55dB, although for a bus powered device this is acceptable and copes well with most sources. I must say I’m mightily impressed by what they’ve achieved here. Revolution 2x2 looks unassuming, but is solidly built, is easy to set up, surprisingly portable and brings crystal clear audio. Extremely worthy of your time.

THE PROS & CONS

FM VERDICT

Fairly heavy

Solid build quality Clean interference free audio Quality headphone ampliﬁer Extensive visual feedback Keen price USB bus-powered

9.6 This mid-priced USB audio interface effortlessly gets audio to/from your DAW and runs rings around more expensive devices 89

Reviews | Strymon Nightsky

Strymon NightSky £439 Bruce Aisher explores the infinite world of modulated reverb with Strymon’s new time-warped reverberator CONTACT WHO: Strymon WEB: strymon.net KEY FEATURES Three selectable reverb types.

Mod section to modulate the reverb or tone filters. Tone section to sculpt reverb timbre. Shimmer for adding pitch shifting of up to the reverb. Glimmer dynamically enhances high/low frequency harmonics

Strymon Nightsky | Reviews

lthough Strymon predominantly cater to guitar players and their requirements for ﬂoor-based effects pedals, they have gained plenty of fans elsewhere through their delay and reverb effects alongside the occasional foray into Eurorack territory. Their BigSky and BlueSky reverbs, in particular, have found a lot of favour in both studio and live synthesis circles. NightSky, their latest pedal, takes some aspects of these as a starting point but it is nevertheless very much designed to cut its own furrow in terms of sound and usability. Like a BigSky, the NightSky comes in a sturdy metal chassis, with foot switches and controls on the top, and audio and other connectivity (MIDI, USB and Expression pedal input) on the rear. The unit is powered by an (included) 9V DC supply adapter.

THE PROS & CONS

Rear switch allows unit to be optimised for either Instrument or Line level sources Full-size audio and MIDI ins and outs Sends and Receives MIDI CCs for all parameters

No labelling of ‘Live Edit’ parameters (secondary functions) on front

Do the Time Warp The BigSky caters for a wide range of reverb types, and employs an LED display and multifunction knobs for some parameter editing, whereas the NightSky largely embraces a one knob/button-perfunction approach to editing, and is built around some of the processing techniques pioneered by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in the 1980s. Their so-called ‘shimmer’ effect combined delay, pitch-shifting, reverb and EQ to create otherworldly ambiences not possible with reverb alone. NightSky isn’t designed as a direct clone of this process, but rather employs its own building blocks to create what Strymon call a ‘Time-Warped Reverberator’.

Adjust to taste The front-panel sections give some indication of what type of processing is on offer, and the real action starts in the Decay section where different types of reverb can be selected, each with progressively more complexity and diffusion. The Mod section takes care of modulation, by applying LFO or dynamic envelope-controlled modulation to the reverb delay lines (like some classic vintage Lexicon reverb algorithms), reverb size/pitch

Very much designed to cut its own furrow in terms of sound and usability or ﬁlter settings. Length and Size can be adjusted, with the later also speeding-up or slowing down any audio already in the reverb (much like adjusting the speed/delay time of tape delay).

Watch your Tone A touch of the Infinite foot-switch will freeze the reverb decay, and this is where the ability to also adjust the aforementioned reverb pitch in semi-tone or scale-based stems is handy. The Tone section Low and High Cut controls let you tailor the overall timbre and decay characteristics of the chosen reverb, but with the option to also engage a post-reverb low-pass filter, and the Voice section adds pitch-shifting to either the reverb input or within its regeneration loop (for rising/falling pitch ‘shimmer’). You’ll also find the Glimmer and Drive buttons for altering the harmonic spectrum and adding saturation.

Currently no way to clock internal MOD-section LFO to external MIDI clock

The NightSky isn’t quite done yet though, as it also includes an 8-step sequencer (that can be clocked via MIDI) for stepping through different decay pitch settings, and with further MIDI control allowing you to send and receiving real-time tweaks, or even ‘play’ the Size/Pitch parameter using MIDI notes.

FM VERDICT

9.0 A powerful pedal that excels at creating ambient drones and experimental soundscapes, catering for synth-based sources well 91

FM | TESTBENCH

Pulsar 1178 The Urei 1176 is one of the most vaunted compressors in history thanks to its super-fast attack times, but also for its famous all-buttons-in trick. The stereo version of this classic FET hardware was the 1178,

and married those super-useful features with the ability to work on two sides of a stereo signal at once. Pulsar’s 1178 takes what producers loved about the 1178 (and 76) to digital territory. All the classic features are present, including a simulation

of that all-buttons-in effect which smashes the signal. But Pulsar have also added mid/side capabilities, a selectable saturation stage, full gain reduction metering, and an entire EQ to work your magic on the compressor’s detection circuit.

Starting to compress > The 1178 has no Threshold control unlike many compressors. Instead, you push up the Input gain to send the signal harder through the compression circuit, and then back off the Output gain control to compensate the level again, keeping an eye on right-hand meters. There’s an onboard Power switch to bypass the compression action while keeping levels the same. The two matching control strips act for the left (top) and right (bottom) of the signal, and are linked by default.

< Attack and release The 1178 – just like the 1176 – is a FET compressor capable of extra-fast attack times, up to 20ms. Pulsar’s 1176, like the original, gets to its fastest extent by turning the Attack knob up higher, not lower. The Release dial has this same inverse travel, but it doesn’t go quite as fast. You can get a real handle on how quickly your Release is letting go of the signal using the top-right digital gain reduction meter. There are more Attack settings in the Sidechain panel, which we’ll check out later.

Saturation styles > Pulsar’s 1178 features an additional Saturation section, which lets you select from four modes to imbue the signal with analogue goodness. Tape mode simulates the imperfections of recording to tape; Triode mode takes on the sound of a Class A tube ampliﬁer with an emphasis on odd harmonics; Warm is a subtler distortion that smooths out higher frequencies; and Clip gives you a rougher digital clipping effect. Each style of saturation uses the Calibration screw below to raise or lower its application. 92

Testbench | Reviews A FET accompli Urei’s 1176 and 1178 used FET (Field Effect Transistor) components, which led to both having remarkable quick attack timings – as low as 20ms. If this wasn’t a distinguishing enough feature for Urei’s compressor family, there was another special property: when all four Ratio buttons were pressed in together, these compressors would exhibit extreme gain reduction behaviour, affecting the timings of the compression action as well as the depth and strength.

< All buttons in Let’s talk Ratio control. A very 1176 feature, you can select four standard compression ratios or go with the all-buttons-in selection. This emulates the trick of pushing in all the ratio buttons on an original 1176 or 1178 FET compressor, smashing the signal in a compression action, also affecting the attack/release timings. Thanks to the onboard Mix control, the All button gives extreme parallel compression, blending the original and processed signals.

< Mid/side and stereo detection These switches open the 1178’s stereo options: Between the Input and Output knobs, you can switch the unit into Mid/ Side mode instead of the regular Left/ Right, taking control over the centre of the audio or everything stereo. By unlinking the channels, we control Input, Output, Attack and Release for the Mid and Side signals separately. Between the Attack and Release dials, the SC switch chooses if the detection circuit listens to the channel separately, together, or swaps them over. Sidechain EQ > Most are used to some ﬁltering functionality on a compressor plugin. By removing some of the lower frequencies from a compressor’s signal path, it reacts less to kick drums and bass information, reducing harsh pumping. Pulsar 1178 goes further, with an entire sidechain EQ to carve frequencies out of (and into) the signal once it hits the detection circuit. So you can emphasise the compression of a snare, de-harsh cymbals, and control where compression is emphasised.

< More metering As well as old-school VU-style meters, with their needles bobbing up and down to the tune of the left- and right-side gain reduction, the 1178 also gives you modern digital metering. LED-style meters for in/ output let you monitor both channels on the way in and out, and check gain reduction. And you’ll notice that 21st-century gain reduction graph, helping to visualise the compressor’s release behaviour and the difference between hits as they happen.

FM | SOUNDS & SAMPLES

Roland Patch Collections – various synths $19.99 each

(or included with active Roland Cloud subscription)

RolandCloud, the online shop and subscription service for Roland software is featured occasionally in these pages, but usually with regards to their synths and drum machines (of a software kind). As well as emulations of their classics (in the so-called Legendary range), the Roland line-up includes a host of other drum, synth and playback engines. However, Roland are also constantly releasing new sounds and patches for them. Let’s focus on those for a couple of Juno synth and the TR-909 drum machine…

First up, we have ‘French House’ for the Juno-106. There are only 32 patches in this pack, but they cover some key tones in the genre. Most successful here are hefty sub basses and driven leads that make good use of the built-in overdrive and distortion effects. ‘Synthwave’ for the 106 ups the preset count to 64, and enters more familiar Juno territory, with an excellent array of varied mid-’80s tones. However, for the purists out there, Roland have just brought back the Juno-106 factory patches in the shape of ‘The Original 128’

collection. You will find a few classics here, but mostly you’ll be marveling at how many recreations of conventional instruments were included – flutes, trumpets, recorders and other orchestral sounds fill plenty of the slots, and are largely destined for obscurity (other than as historical artefacts of a forgotten era). This pack is charming, and with the odd gem, but, largely, it’s more or less for completists only. Interestingly, there is also a Juno-60 ‘Synthwave’ collection, and this favours a more dark and

brooding approach which works well – though it would have been good to see more variation (and possibly some percussion-based tones). The ‘Cyber City’ collection continues in this vein (and might have benefited from inclusion in the synthwave pack, as I’m not quite sure what is meant by “the municipal cadence of downtown living” description attached to it). On the drum front we have ‘TR-909: This Is 909’, a set of 32 patterns and kits covering some of the core styles that helped the 909 find its place in musical history. Notwithstanding the fact that you have to load patterns and kits separately into the TR-909 plugin (and not aided by some inconsistent naming), there are some decent beats here. These represent a good starting point for those who are new to drum programming or wanting to get a vibe going quickly – though it is a shame that not all patterns make use of the eight variation slots. Where they do, it becomes easier to see how a full drum track can be created. At $19.99 each, these patch collections might feel somewhat overpriced, though for active Roland Cloud subscribers, these are all decent (and free) additions. Bruce Aisher rolandcloud.com

VERDICT 8.0

Sounds & Samples | Reviews

Frontline Producer –

American Road Trip £29.95 The Frontline cowboys and girls head out west, with this geetar strummin’, groovy toon hummin’, trip to the wild frontier. This time their sample wagons are circling the sounds of Stateside country rock. And this collection has some mighty ﬁne pickin’. Across the 593MB of fun and funky loops, you get some sweet acoustic riffs, driving bass twangs, down and dirty organ tinkling, and the kind of wailing six-string playing that would make ZZ Top blow their lid. Tempos build from 61-124bpm, and plenty of styles that inspired and shoot out from this broad genre of vintage Americana, are covered. Blues to bluegrass, and their distant, electriﬁed cousins, all make an appearance. And so should you. Y’all check it out now, you hear? Roy Spencer

VERDICT 9.0

Splice Explores – Vocoder Vapors $7.99/mo

Sample Magic – Future Soul 3 $7.99/mo

Audiotent – Sector £37

Felix Weldon – Jazz Drums 3 £17.95

Bent and bonkers batch of bleeps and blips from the demented sample library of sound designer, sv1. This otherworldly, sometimes underwatery, selection of unplaceable loops and liquidy layers, makes for a crate unlike any other. It’s hard to tell what comes in one end of this process – metal scrapings, the scufﬂe of shoes, hinges and other household items, perhaps – but, by the time they get processed and pulled through the audio FX chain of this twisted individual, they plonk out the other end with a character all of their own. Sometimes unnerving, sometimes kinda beautiful. But, always interesting, and sure to reset the tone of any tracks you pour them into. Roy Spencer splice.com p

For their latest volume in this prescient series, the SM team glance deeper into their crystal balls to see what the future holds for this most funky and front-facing of genres. And it looks like the smart money is still on R&B-laced loops, fusing hip-hop and trap swagger, with lo-ﬁ alternative soul, and hazy LA downtempo electronica. The dusty and delightful kits, hits, and one-shot bits, in this melodic collection are matched with MIDI, and some super malleable Serum and Astra presets. All the other beats and treats are saturated lovely with a nice neon glow and, with the right forward-thinking from you, should ﬁnd a future home in your next (or next, next, next) track. Roy Spencer splice.com p

Ready to take your techno into darker, more industrial territory? This sample library will show you how. Once inside, you’ll be greeted by petrol-smoke thick bass clouds, dented oil drum kicks, and crude and bubbling synth lines, to turn your hair green. It’s the perfect collection of modular grooves to ignite your creative fluids. Everything’s been expertly designed to spark new ideas. There are hundreds of fiendishly sculpted drum loops to wade through plus heavily refined chords, textures, and rhythms, to pollute your tired old tracks with. (And they should slap a warning on the tooth-loosening array of subsonic rumble loops, too). Roy Spencer audiotent.com

Once again, master sticksman Felix Weldon steps up with another great crate of loops for you to pick apart for your own ends. And the getting is good. These kind of drums have always been a sought-after commodity, especially in the hip-hop and drum & bass communities. The rolling patterns, crisp snare and ride work, and those oh-so-splashy grooves, can give you all you need to make a monster drum break – if the source material is this dope. Across the 362MB of tub-thumping content you get a wild variety of swings, tones, and energies to get amongst. There’s toppy cymbal and brush loops, steady-as-a-rock snare workouts, and other tight playing, locked in at 140bpm. Get chopping! Roy Spencer

VERDICT 8.0

VERDICT 9.0

VERDICT 8.0

Get creative with | Ableton Live

Generate new musical ideas in Ableton Live PROBLEM: How can I make things more creative when I’m playing layered instruments?

inding new ways to interact with sound whether it be directly in a note editor or via a MIDI keyboard/control surface can sometimes be the solution to a creative block. Ableton Live offers some extremely useful MIDI effects and instrument routing options that allow us to customise and expand the way we play our favourite instruments. In this tutorial we will create an Instrument Rack that contains two instruments stacked on top of each other and use Live’s Note Length MIDI effect to alternate between each instrument as we play notes on our

controller, resembling a very simple call and response method. The two instruments can be contrasting to one another or complementary. As we play on the controller/keyboard, held notes will play the ﬁrst instrument and released notes will play the second. This ping-pong-style technique is a fun way to play with the timing between two instruments. By adapting the amount of time we hold our notes for, we can trigger simultaneous, layered instruments or completely separate instrument parts with varying gaps in between, all by interacting with a single key.

Start with an empty Instrument Rack and drag in two instruments, each on their own ‘chain’. The chains represent our instruments’ unique signal paths, just like a channel strip. Incoming MIDI is split and sent to both chains, triggering the same notes on both instruments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark Towers is an Ableton Certiﬁed Trainer specialising in MaxforLive programming. He builds unique software devices such as generative sequencers and works as a developer for Isotonik Studios. More info at marktowers.net

Repeat the previous step for the second chain but this time change the ‘Trigger’ option to ‘Note Off’ as well. This inverts the note triggering, meaning that an incoming note-off will now trigger a note-on followed by a scheduled note-off.

You now have two alternating instruments, playable at the same time. Holding a note triggers the ﬁrst instrument, letting go triggers the second. The length of each note is ﬁxed, meaning we can hold a note and focus on when we let go to trigger the second instrument.

Add the Note Length MIDI effect to the ﬁrst chain and set its length to a desired amount. Now, whenever a note-on message is received, the device will trigger the note followed by a scheduled note-off, even if you still have the note pressed on your controller.

FM | GEAR GUIDE

NE W

EN TR Y

STANDALONE MUSIC MAKERS

Roland Verselab MV-1 £599 Full Review: FM371 | The vocal-centric Verselab is a workable solution for computer-averse producers, while integrating with the computer when you need it to.

Polyend Tracker £449

Akai MPC Live II £1,040

Full Review: FM357 Less esoteric than it ﬁrst

Full Review: FM358 A truly go-anywhere

appears, this is a well-designed sampler that’s

production experience – and now better

both fun and inspiring. Worth a look whether

equipped than ever. The Live II remains the high

you’re experienced with trackers or not.

point of the current MPC range.

Roland MC-707 $999

NI Maschine+ £1,099

Review: FM349 It lags behind some rivals on the

Review: FM363 There are some limitations, but

sampling front, but on the whole the 707 is a

Maschine+ delivers the core Maschine workﬂow

powerful and well-designed groovebox. A

in standalone form: inspiring, creative and fun in

welcome return for the company’s MC line.

the process.

AFFORDABLE MONITORS M-Audio BX3 & BX4 from £85

Adam A Audio di T5V £133

Full Review: FM369 Compact and convenient,

Full Review: FM335 The T5V delivers plenty of

M-Audio’s new BX monitors expand the appeal of

clarity, decent imaging and volume from a pretty

the range and do so at an incredible price.

compact footprint. A tidy package, all at a good price point.

Kali Audio LP-6 £147 These two-way speakers from relative newcomers Kali Audio offer exceptional sound quality at a very reasonable price. An excellent home studio option.

KRK Rokit G4 from £133

Yamaha HS5 £155

Full Review: FM348 With punchy delivery and

High-quality, accurate studio monitors offering

an abundance of EQ options, these are the best

solid power, imaging and detail at a very

Rokits yet, offering power at an accessible price.

reasonable price.

Gear Guide | Essential Tools For Music Making

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AFFORDABLE SYNTHS

Novation Circuit Tracks £360

IK UNO Synth Pro from £399

Full Review: FM369

Full Review: FM371

With two digital polysynths, four tracks of sampling and – new for this version – a pair of external sequencing tracks, there’s a lot of power here for the price.

The UNO Synth Pro shames some much more expensive instruments, with a whole raft of functions and features you’d expect to pay twice as much for.

Korg Wavestate £699

Arturia MicroFreak £279

Erica Bassline DB-01 €460

Arturia MiniBrute 2S £575

Review: FM353 The price is pushing what we’d

Review: FM345 If you’re looking to go beyond

Review: FM359 A powerful sequencer and

Review: FM328 The second coming of ’Brute

usually call ‘affordable’ but with 64 stereo voices

regular analogue synths and expand your sonic

plenty of unique features make this much more

sees it take on an expanded synth engine and

and a multi-timbral sound engine you get a lot

palette with an affordable creative tool,

than just another Bassline-clone.

semi-modular architecture. The sequencer-

for your money here. And it sounds great too!

MicroFreak should be top of your ‘must try’ list.

Korg Minilogue XD £565

Modal Cobalt 8 £579

Korg Nu:Tekt NTS-1 £99

Korg Volca FM £129

Review: FM341 The four biggest Prologue

Review: FM368 Another brilliantly

Review: FM351 Easy to build and fun to

Review: FM305 A great-sounding box of classic

features (Multi-Engine, user oscillator/effect

unique-sounding Modal machine! Very ﬂexible

program, the NTS-1’s ﬂexibility and

FM sounds. It might lack the polyphony of the

import, ﬁlter-drive and stereo-effects) in an

for its price and a powerful editor plus MPE give

expandability make it a mini synth to be

DX7 but, apart from that, the sound is bang on.

affordable form. Instabuy!

it futuristic appeal.

reckoned with.

Its motion sequencing is seriously powerful too.

focused 2S is our favourite.