HOW TO USE
SYNTH 1
SPECIAL
KILLER
GUITARS
ISSUE Every tutorial uses FREE plugins!
March 2015 / CM214
THE BEST SYNTHS | MIX TOOLS | CREATIVE FX | UTILITIES + MORE!
U LT I MAT E Build a pro-quality FOR drum ’n’ bass track FREE!
FOR Mix killer rock and metal guitar tones FREE!
Get professional FOR weight and punch FREE!
2GB PACK
FREE PLUGINS
SAMPLE
BEAT MACHINE cm Authentic hip-hop beatbox from DopeVST
AMAZIN EXCLUSIVG GIVEAWA E YS FOR PC+M AC
DRUMSHAPER Instant drum mixing effect from HoRNet
RESONANCE SOUND
60+ expert video GUIDES!
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welcome HOW TO USE download
Wherever you see this icon, there’s downloadable content such as videos, software, samples and tutorial files. See the Contents on the next page for how to download. Tutorials featuring this icon make use of our own Plugins – find out all about them on p20.
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Welcome to this very special edition of Computer Music magazine, wherein we celebrate the finest free music software available in 2015! Forget wasting your precious production time downloading, installing and testing out endless plugins to see if they’re any good – we’ve done all that, and we’re here to tell you which ones are essential for today’s discerning producer. Ready to power-up your plugins folder with the very best cost-free synths, effects and utilities around? Flip to our Ultimate Freeware 2015 showdown on p38! But can you really make expensive-sounding, professional-level music with plugins that cost nothing? Yep, and to prove it, I challenged our production experts to use free plugins for all their tutorials this issue. That’s right – every tutorial you see in this issue will use plugins that are either freely downloadable from the net or included with this magazine as part of Plugins suite! our incredible Elsewhere, none other than exEditor Ronan Macdonald has joined the esteemed panel of Experts with his new regular tutorial slot dedicated to all things rhythmical, Dr Beat. So, get your groove on and…
Enjoy the issue
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Lee du-Caine Editor
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Issue 214 MARCH 2015
contents
Cover feature
Producer masterclass 57 B REAK
ULTIMATE
2015 Want to fill up your hard drive with the world’s best free music software? We’ve put it all in one place, from p38
Get into the studio with the DnB guru to find out exactly how he gets his analogue-inspired sound
Tutorial
61 DnB TRACK-BUILDER
The free plugin experience continues as we put together a stomping drum ’n’ bass number with nowt but free instruments and effects
Tutorial
67 HOW TO USE SYNTH1 Discover the music world’s most legendary free synth and get straight up to speed with its control-set
Experts 80
asy guide: e borrowed chords
82
designer Sounds: spacey dub stabs
84
GEEK TECHNIQUE: Get phat for free
86
Tutorial
Interview
73 Killer GUITARS
88 SANDER KLEINENBERG
Ten techniques for ripping rock and metal guitar tones – all with our free Plugins!
dr Beat: The Purdie shuffle
Reviews
Essentials
94
steinberg cubase pro 8
26
n ews
96
Cytomic The Drop
30
what’s on your drive?
98
plugin boutique virtualCZ
32
burning question
100 Sound radix Drum Leveler
34
Subscribe
102
55
next issue
Vengeance Essential FX 2
PLUS 17 MORE products reviewed
4 / Computer Music / March 2015
108 Back
Get his back-story and find out where he’s off to next
114
BLAST FROM THE PAST: Roland TR-606
This issue’s exclusive free content from Computer Music
download two free plugins A kickin’ drum ROMpler and the perfect processor to complement it – unpack them both from p10
Tutorial videos 62 high-quality videos to guide you through our tutorials. Wherever you see the below icon, there’s a video version to watch
SA MPLES A massive 2.5GB pack from Resonance Sound is yours with this issue. See what’s in it on p16
Tutorial files
CM Plugins
A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials
Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on p20
Download Our fantastic software, samples, videos* and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access, head to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time to register new issues and download more content. Charlie ‘Break’ Bierman deconstructs Temptations. See how he brought it into being on p57
* The Producer Masterclass video is not currently available as a download, though a solution to this is being worked on. Apple Newsstand readers can still watch the video via built-in internet streaming – just hit the Play Video button on the page.
video
Get the videos on your PC/Mac: vault.computermusic.co.uk
ULTIMATE FREEWARE 2015
7 Ebit expliqu Dessintures nimpore
8 Aliberibero molupta quidelliquod quo
Synthesisers
We’ve trawled the internet for free music software, thrown away the chaff, and highlighted only the finest gratis goodies out there. 9 Tur sa qui ant, See inctamet labo.them in action in these videos
Mixing tools
1 OBXD by Datsounds
1 MFreeEffectsBundle by MeldaProduction
2 Crystal by Green Oak Software
2
DC1A by Klanghelm
3 Triple Cheese by u-he
3
IVGI by Klanghelm
4 TAL-NoiseMaker by Togu Audio Line
4
SlickEQ by TDR VOS
5 Tyrell N6 by u-he 6 Dexed by Digital Suburban
5 Nova-67P by vladg-sound 6 A1StereoControl by Alex Hilton 7
Creative effects 1
Glitch by Illformed
Utilities 1
SPAN by Voxengo
Linux 1
Linux tour
LFX1310 by Luxonix
8 bx_cleansweep by Brainworx 9
BitterSweet v3 by Flux
2 Super Destroy FX by Smartelectronix
10 TAL-Chorus-LX by Togu Audio Line
3 Argotlunar by Michael Ourednik
11
6 / Computer Music / March 2015
Read the full article on p38
SonEQ by Sonimus
Samplers 1
TX816Wx by CWITEC
video Producer Masterclass*
DOPEVST BEATMACHINE cm
HORNET DRUMSHAPER
ULTIMATE PACK CM
Retro-style hip-hop beats are yours with this issue’s free drum machine instrument for PC and Mac
Tighten and process drum parts in a snap with this ready-rolled mixing processor
Dive into this monster sample pack from Resonance Sound
1
Synth Essentials CM
BREAK 1 Getting started with DopeVST BeatMachine CM
2
Read the full article on p14
Crafting a dance track
Read the full article on p16
We’re in the studio for a look at his minimal monster Temptations Read the full article on p59
DRUM ’N’ BASS TRACK-BUILDER 2 Building a hip-hop beat with BeatMachine CM
Read the full article on p61
Put together a whole DnB banger using only free plugins – follow along as we show you how
1 Building a DnB beat with free samples and plugins
2 Jazzy DnB electric piano from free plugins
3 Slick DnB leads with Dune CM and free effects
4 Lush, layered DnB pads and strings
5 Big, bad DnB sub bass with free plugins
6 Working vocals into a DnB track using free plugins
7 Arranging a slick DnB tune made with free plugins
8 Mixing and mastering a DnB track with free plugins
9 DnB Track-Builder - Full track playthrough
3 Rugged house drums with BeatMachine CM
4 Using BeatMachine CM to craft authentic DnB drums
Read the full article on p10
* Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault, though Apple Newsstand users can watch the video via built-in internet streaming.
March 2015 / Computer Music / 7
video Get the videos on your PC/Mac: vault.computermusic.co.uk HOW to USE
SYNTH1 Ichiro Toda’s free Nord Lead 2 tribute is still going strong. We’ll show you how to use it in these vids
1 A tour of Ichiro Toda Synth1’s oscillators
2 Looking at Synth1’s voice panel
3 Using Synth1’s multimode filter
4 Synth1’s amplitude and filter envelopes
5 Understanding Synth1’s LFOs
6 Exploring Synth1’s effects
7 Using Synth1’s arpeggiator
8 Synth1’s customisation options
9 Synth1’s banks and programs
Read the full article on p67
Experts EASY GUIDE: borrowed chords
Designer sounds: spacey stab
GEEK TECHNIQUE: phat for free
DR BEAT: the purdie shuffle
Dave Clews shows you how to spice up chord progressions easily
InsideInfo crafts a cool, atmospheric synth stab using only free software
Pump up your sounds and get extra punch with Owen Palmer
Ronan Macdonald shows how to program a legendary drum beat
Read the full article on p80 8 / Computer Music / March 2015
Readthe thefull full Read article on p82 article on pxx
Read the full article on p84
Readthe thefull full Read article on p86 article on pxx
video Get the videos on your PC/Mac: vault.computermusic.co.uk
KILLER GUITARS Don’t fret! We’ve got ten techniques to get terrific rock and metal guitar sounds from free software Read the full article on p73
download
1 Basic recording approach for tight, heavy guitars
2 Double tracking guitars for huge stereo width
3 Tactics for dealing with double tracked guitars
4 Quad tracking and dual amp setups
5 Tightening heavy guitars with an overdrive pedal
6 Using EQ to control guitar amp frequency spikes
7 Limiting palm-muted peaks in heavy guitars
8 Adding reverb and final rhythm guitar mixing
9 Adding wah to lead guitar with a filter plugin
10 Dual delays for a bigger lead guitar tone
Our fantastic software, samples, videos and tutorial files are now available to download! To get access to this content, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk on your PC or Mac’s web browser. You’ll be asked to register and answer a few simple questions to prove that you’ve got the mag. You’ll then be given access to our content! You can sign in any time to
register new issues and download more content. For more info, see our Vault FAQ: bit.ly/cmvaultfaq * Please note that the Producer Masterclass video is not available as a download via our Vault, though Apple Newsstand users can watch the video via built-in internet streaming.
March 2015 / Computer Music / 9
> download / dopevst beat machine cm
>Exclusive full software
DopeVST
Beat Machine CM
download Get the plugin, the video and the Tutorial Files on PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk
Build rugged, raw, retro-style beats with this heavyweight drum ROMpler packed with mix-ready hip-hop kits Classic sampled breakbeats are always a winner. Captured from a golden era in music, the recognisable grooves and timbres of drum breaks from the 60s and 70s are packed with funk, punch, groove, ambience and vibe – which is why they’re still used in pop, hiphop, DnB, house and countless other genres. Many producers, though, are put off by the effort and attention that sampled breaks demand: it takes time and care to source them, clean them up,
repitch them, slice them into separate hits and generally get them holding their own in the mix – never mind copyright issues. Thank heavens, then, for DopeVST’s Beat Machine CM, the latest addition to our CM Plugins roster. Simple on the surface but powerful under the hood, this MIDI-triggered beatbox is loaded with 50 pre-mixed, royalty-free kits in both single- and multi-output formats. Inspired by the timeless sounds of old-school hip-hop, the
PRESET MENU Click the preset name to view the drum kit list, or use the Previous/Next selection buttons
FADERS Set individual Kick, Snare, Hihat and Misc channel levels
10 / Computer Music / March 2015
experts at DopeVST have lovingly recreated that vintage vibe in the production of the kits; and with each one divided into Kick, Snare, HiHat and Misc parts, you can use individual drum hits or create entire grooves, as you see fit. Controls for each individual element’s level and pan, global pitch and level, plus global analogue-style spring reverb are in place on the front panel, and 50 MIDI patterns are also included. Beat Machine CM isn’t just for
REVERB Control the amount of global spring reverb applied
PAN Adjust the pan positions for the four channels
VOLUME Your master volume control
hip-hop lovers, either; it’s ideal for producers of any style of electronic music – house, techno, trap, grime, garage, DnB, dubstep, you name it. If the raw authenticity of Beat Machine CM’s sounds make you hungry for more, check out the full Beat Machine. It’s identical to the CM version, except that it ups the number of kits from 50 to 500, including 100 “producer signature” kits. Find out all about it at www.dopevst.com.
PITCH Transpose the whole kit up or down
KEYBOARD Displays incoming MIDI notes
dopevst beat machine cm / download < > Step by step 1. Getting started with DopeVST Beat Machine CM
Tutorial
Files
1
4
7
Download the DopeVST Beat Machine CM folder from vault. computermusic.co.uk, or copy it to your hard drive from the DVD with the print edition. The plugin is packaged in compressed .7z file format – to extract it, download a free .7z unpacker for your system. PC users can download 7-zip from www.7-zip.org; Mac users can grab 7zX at 7zx.en.softonic.com or Stuffit Expander from bit.ly/StuffItX.
Turn the DAW channel down to -6dB. Each of Beat Machine CM’s kits is divided into Kick, Snare, HiHat and Misc (usually an open hi-hat or cymbal) elements, each preassigned a triggering MIDI note: Kick to C1, Snare to D1, HiHat to E1, and Misc to F1. Punch these notes in via your MIDI keyboard or piano roll editor to hear them play back.
Let’s reduce the saturation. Turn the main Volume parameter back to around 1 o’clock, then turn the channel back up to -6dB in your DAW. Move the right-centre Pitch knob around to repitch the hits (and any rhythmic elements within the samples) for that authentic hip-hop ‘sampled’ vibe. The Reverb dial mixes in a master spring reverb effect for the whole kit.
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Beat Machine CM comes in 32/64-bit VST/AU formats for Mac, and 32/64-bit VST for PC. Once extracted, install Beat Machine CM on your system by copying the relevant file (.vst or .component) to your system’s plugin folder – see the accompanying text file for more details. You’ll want to save the MIDI files in the Beat Machine CM folder to your hard drive, too.
Beat Machine CM also includes 50 MIDI beats, each labelled with the optimum tempo for that groove. Load the first one onto the Beat Machine CM track, loop it and set the project tempo to 92bpm. Play the loop to hear a laid-back hip-hop groove. Use the Previous/Next arrows to cycle through the drum kits.
Now open the preset menu again. The first 50 presets have a [1] prefix, meaning that all four elements sound through a shared stereo output. The presets labelled [4], on the other hand, are the same sounds, but each routed through its own individual output.
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With the plugin installed, start a new project in your DAW of choice – we’re using Cubase 7.5 – and load Beat Machine CM onto a new instrument track. To select a kit preset, use the Previous/Next arrows on either side of the main menu, or click the top-centre menu to open a menu of all the available kits. Load [1] LickShotz.
Once you’ve browsed the sounds, settle upon the [1] N.O.Y.S. preset. Beat Machine CM’s individual hits can be levelled and panned using the faders and pan pots to the left. Double-click each volume fader to turn the hits fully up and you’ll hear them drive into the plugin’s output saturation stage. Turn the DAW channel fader back to -10dB to compensate for the gain in level.
Load [4] TheProjectz, drop 07-92. mid on the track, then activate the plugin’s multiple outputs in your DAW – consult your manual if you don’t know how to do this. Each element is routed through a separate output, making it easy to adjust each one in the DAW’s mixer.
March 2015 / Computer Music / 11
> download / dopevst beat machine cm
Putting Beat Machine CM into action! We’ve introduced you to Beat Machine CM’s features and basic operation, but the real fun comes when you put the plugin to use in your productions, of course. To illustrate the power and versatility of this awesome instrument, we’ve produced a handful of track ideas that take advantage of its phat, funky sounds. Beat Machine CM delivers professional, characterful hip-hop-style beats straight out of the box, taking the tedium and hard work out of breakbeat manipulation and
processing. Our first video demonstrates this with a basic hip-hop beat and a few musical loops. The plugin is no one-trick pony, though; house and techno tracks often benefit from the use of raw, rugged drum sources, so our second project uses multiple Beat Machine CM instances to build up a heavy house beat. Our final sketch utilises the vintage sound of the plugin’s drum samples at a faster, 174bpm tempo to compile a DnB loop with an authentic ‘sampled’ feel.
To hear audio examples of the three tracks, head to the Tutorial Files folder. We’ve also included a short video tutorial on each of the projects (found in the Tutorial Videos folder), in which we deconstruct the production processes used. Rather than just copy our examples, though, try applying the techniques discussed to your own projects – whether you use the preset kits in their entirety, or just their individual hits.
3. Rugged house drums with Beat Machine CM
2. Hip-hop beats with Beat Machine CM To build the drums in this basic hip-hop sketch, we’ve dropped one of the included MIDI patterns onto Beat Machine CM’s track, then loaded the [1] Booth Bully preset. Hip-hop beats like this tend to be kept rugged and raw, so we just gently dip the low-mid and high-mid frequencies with EQ. The snare in the main loop is mono, so a second Beat Machine CM is used to layer a subtle clap in over the top. This is widened with a short delay, high-passed, brightened with a treble lift, and limited to reduce its ‘snap’. To help the bass fit in the mix, we saturate it and apply a touch of high-pass filtering. The guitar riff is widened with chorus and, again, high-pass filtered. 12 / Computer Music / March 2015
Here’s a 123bpm house groove, each element made using a separate instance of Beat Machine CM. Two kicks are layered and grouped; EQ, compression and saturation tie them together. A closed hi-hat sits around the kick, and an open hat fires at the end of every bar. A ghost snare plays around the main snare for groove, and a thicker snare adds more interest at the end of every four bars. A heavily filtered, limited backbeat fills the groove out. The beats are grouped on a bus, where compression, transient enhancement, EQ and limiting apply final shaping and ‘glue’.
4. Using Beat Machine CM to craft authentic DnB drums With its breakbeat-style approach, Beat Machine CM is the perfect tool for drum ’n’ bass production. In this 174bpm project, we’ve layered up several instances of the plugin to create a drum track. Like classic breakbeats sampled from old records, Beat Machine CM’s hits have a fabulously ‘retro’ vibe, but can lack precision and snap. It’s nothing a little transient shaping or compression can’t correct, though. A kick and snare groove forms the backbone of the beat. The kick is pitched up, leaving room for a sub-bass. A touch of transient enhancement, gating and high-pass filtering
adds punch and cleans up the kick, while a treble layer adds top end sheen. Transient shaping adds snap to the snare, and a copy of the snare plays ghost notes between the main hits for a more interesting groove. A straight eighth-note closed hi-hat runs throughout, again with transient shaping. A smaller hi-hat embellishment adds interest. The reverb-soaked ride on every beat introduces ‘washiness’ behind the other elements. To finish, a full loop from a single Beat Machine CM is heavily processed and layered behind the other hits, for ambience.