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April 2017 / CM241
SERUM
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welcome At the time of writing, I’ve just landed back on UK soil after attending the 2017 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California – and boy, what a show it was! Unusually rainy weather aside, it was incredibly inspiring to see the music software world representing so strongly, with plenty of new instruments, effects, controllers, audio interfaces and more announced for the coming year. Cop our news roundup from the show floor from p10. Of course, although we all love drooling over new music-making toys, it’s far more beneficial to get to grips with the powerful tools already sitting on your hard drive. Similarly, mastering every feature of at least one versatile synthesiser will vastly expand your sonic palette and help develop your unique musical identity. So to this end, triple-header: we’ve brought together the ultimate Power Synth Sessions (p22), a trio of in-depth tutorial courses breaking down three of the universe’s most powerful softsynths – Xfer Records Serum, u-he Diva and Vengeance-Sound VPS Avenger. Every tutorial and technique has an accompanying video lesson and preset file – and we’re also throwing in an extra collection of synth presets for Massive, Sylenth1 and more! You also get a talk-tastic formant filter effect from software pros AudioThing (p56); a frighteningly futuristic Dystopian Drones sample pack (p106); and 70 more VST/AU synths and effects (p108). You’d better get stuck in!
“Vastly expand your sonic palette…”
Enjoy the issue
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Issue 241 APRIL 2017
contents
Cover feature SERUM
AVENGER
DIVA
POWER
SYNTH
SESSIONS Master the universe’s three most powerful virtual instruments, p22
50 Producer Masterclass 50 SPEKTRE We head to the duo’s studio for a technique-packed Ableton Live session and video
Interview
Features Get to grips with your free AudioThing filter plugin
61 UNORTHODOX mix TRICKS
Detroit’s techno godfather on the Belleville Three’s anticipated reunion
A cluster of mixing tips that shouldn’t work… but do!
Reviews
67 CUBASE 9: THE
90 u-HE REPRO-1
GUIDE
Master the new features of Steinberg’s updated DAW
92 IK MULTIMEDIA MODO BASS 94 CABLEGUYS TIMESHAPER
/experts Your guides for the ever-expanding world of production are here Sharpen your stave skills with Dave’s guide to the clef
78
Resound offers up his pro approach to gain staging
82 Essentials
96 ARTURIA MINILAB MKII
10 news
98 ACUSTICA AUDIO SAND fab4
16 what’s on your hard drive?
99 MELDA MBASSADOR
48 SUBSCRIBE
100 SONIMUS TUCO COMPRESSOR
74 back issues
101 AUDIFIED U73b Compressor 2
78 s tudio strategies:
14 freeware news
59 NEXT MONTH 114 BLAST FROM THE PAST: e-mu EMULATOR
103 MINI REVIEWS JST Tominator, BFA Grindhouse, Kush Omega Transformer 458a and 13 sample pack reviews
80 dr beat: Inject rhythmic life with groove shadows
92
82 KEVIN SAUNDERSON
56 THE ORB CM
76 easy guide:
90
80
4 / Computer Music / April 2017
114
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Get awesome formant filtering with this month’s software giveaway – find out exactly how to use it on p56
See this issue’s entire video content on the next pages
SAMPLE PACKS
DYSTOPIAN DRONES 500 royalty-free drones, atmospheres, soundscapes and more in WAV format – grab them on p106
TUTORIAL FILES VOL. 42
DYSTOPIAN DRONES
LOOPMASTERS CM241 This issue’s premium-quality samples, compiled from a handful of the soundware kings’ biggest and best packs, p107 PLUGIN COLLECTION
CM Plugins Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on p108
Tutorial files A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials This digital content has been thoroughly scanned and tested at all stages of production, but as with all new software, we still recommend that you run a virus checker before use. We also recommend that you have an up-to-date backup of your hard drive before using the content. Future cannot accept responsibility for any disruption, damage and/or loss to your data or computer system that may occur while using this magazine’s programs and/or data. Consult your network administrator before installing any software on a networked computer. If you have problems using our Vault download system, please contact computermusic@futurenet.com.
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video Every tutorial feature in this issue comes with pro video guides. Go get them right now from our Vault download area
POWER SYNTH SESSIONS
Go deeper with three epic instruments Read the full article on p22
Xfer SERUM
>
1 Gnarly growl with wavetable modulation
2 Creating custom wavetables
3 Sampled Noise oscillator rave chords
4 Turntable scratch FX in Serum
5 Realistic shaker loop using Noise osc
6 Insane drum loop sequencing with LFOs
7 DIY bass with drawn wavetables
8 Retro sync bass with oscillator warp
9 Twisted synths with LFO loop points
10 Epic textured pads using chained effects
11 MIDI-triggering Serum FX
12 Moving formant effects
1 Mixing Diva modules for pitched percussion
2 Epic trance riffs with the digital oscillator
3 Voice detuning for analogue synth sounds
4 Classic Moog bass using filter overdrive
1 Polyrhyhmic layered arps
2 Programming the Drum Machine
3 Trancegating with the step sequencer
6 The random function: instant chaos
7 Making a stacked supersaw synth
8 Building a complete groove in VPS Avenger
u-he DIVA
>
VPS AVENGER 5 One-finger chords with voice stacking
4 Build a modulated pad/drone hybrid
>
5 Using Zones to modify a patch
6 / Computer Music / April 2017
video To download all these videos onto your PC/Mac, just head along to vault.computermusic.co.uk and register this issue Producer Masterclass*
THE ORB CM Set up and use this issue’s free formant-filtering plugin, and see what it can do in this video Read the full article on p56
CUBASE PRO 9 Get onboard with its newest features in these vids Read the full article on p67
SPEKTRE The techno duo take us through the making of their tune Middle of Everywhere in Ableton Live Read the full article on p50
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3/4 Sampler Track basics and advanced tweaks
7 Sending a drum loop through Retrologue 2
5 Um cumquam rem nonseque verspist dent to register new issues andde 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, but is made available via internet streaming. See page 51 for details.
April 2017 / Computer Music / 7
video Grab this issue’s videos via Vault download – see p5 for details unorthodox mix tips We rip up the mixing rulebook across these ten video tutorials Read the full article on p61
1
Roll it in glitter
2
Squash the master
On the attack
3
Stereo bass
4
Plugin abuse
5
Cranking up the vibes
6
7
Punch above your weight
8
Cut and run
9
Rooms with a view
10
EASY GUIDE
/experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist field every month
Read the full article on pxx 8 / Computer Music / April 2017
STUDIO STRATEGIES
Clipped your wings
DR BEAT
the clef
Gain Staging
Groove shadows
Brush up on your notation skills with this quick theory lesson
Keep it in the green and your tracks can really benefit – Ilpo explains all
Find out the right way to create clashing reverb beds for drum parts
Read the full article on p76
Read the full Readon the full article p78 article on pxx
Read the full article on p80
> news
New releases • comment • industry happenings
The new releases at NAMM 2017 Bitwig Studio heads up the huge stories from this year’s industry show The release of Bitwig Studio in 2014 meant that, for the first time, neo-DAW Ableton Live had some direct competition. Here was an upstart DAW straight outta Berlin, combining brazen recreations of Live’s signature elements with its own innovations, such as the brilliant Unified Modulation System, and a polyphonic automation feature, Note Event Expressions. Our 9/10 review in 203 concluded that “Bitwig Studio is a fantastic, forward-thinking DAW in its own right – and this is only version 1!” Well, it’s time to prepare our testbench once again, because Bitwig Studio 2 has arrived! The range of Devices has swelled, with a whopping 24 new Modulators, including Random, Select-4 and Math. New audio Devices are Spectrum Analyzer, Pitch Shifter, Phaser, and Treemonster, an “organic zerocrossing amplitude controlled ring modulator with a life of its own”. For note processing, there’s Multi-Note (a “chorder"), Note Echo, Note Harmonizer, Note Latch, Note Length and Note Velocity. The new MIDI CC and MIDI Program Change units should be handy for controlling external MIDI hardware, and the DAW can now transmit MIDI timecode. But what if you’re more into barmy CV-controlled analogue goodies? Well, the ’wigs have got your back with HW Clock Out, HW CV Instrument and HW CV Out
As well as new features galore, Bitwig Studio 2 has had a subtle visual makeover
– these send CV clock, note and control signals respectively. Many pre-existing Devices have also been refined for version 2. Most notably, Polysynth sports new oscillator and waveshaping modes, improved unison, and a high-pass filter. Other additions include fades/crossfades, VST3 support (including per-note expression, which most DAWs outside of Cubase don’t support), slicker tool-switching,
a front-end Dashboard screen, notification system, and more. A new license model has been adopted, provoking heated forum discussions. Bitwig Studio 2 costs $399 (upgrade, $169), including free updates/upgrades and priority support for 12 months. The software will work after this point (it’s a perpetual license), but you’ll need to renew your plan for further updates. It’s out February 28. URL www.bitwig.com
Logic Pro X 10.3 Fancy a MIDI controller built into your laptop? Logic Pro X and Touch Bar make it possible
Apple’s DAW gets a smattering of cool new features for free, the headline being support for the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, giving you touch control over volume and Smart Controls for a selected track; a Navigation View and a Performance view that turns the Bar into a keyboard or drum pads. Other additions include Track Alternatives, Selection-Based Processing for applying plugin chains to audio; 64-bit summing; true stereo panning; tweaked visuals; and more. URL www.apple.com
10 / Computer Music / April 2017
news <
App watch Teenage Engineering PO-32 Tonic
The diddy PO-32 drum synth can share sounds over the airwaves with Sonic Charge Microtonic
The quirky Pocket Operator range from Teenage Engineering has a new addition: PO-32 Tonic, a pocket beatbox not just based on but also compatible with Sonic Charge’s ace Microtonic VST/AU drum synth. PO-32 features 16 sounds, 16 punch-in effects, and a sequencer that can chain up to 64 16-step patterns. As we witnessed firsthand at NAMM, sounds designed in Sonic Charge Microtonic can be transmitted as data through your computer’s speakers as a burst of noise, and received by the PO-32’s microphone, essentially “faxing” the patch to the device acoustically. Very cool. PO-32 costs £85 on its own, or you can fork out £135 to purchase both the diminutive hardware synth and the Microtonic plugin. URL www.teenageengineering.com
We report on the latest developments in phone and tablet music making Two well-established iOS music-making apps have been grabbing the headlines again recently, the first of which is Apple’s own GarageBand. Updated to version 2.2, this now includes the Alchemy synth that was so cruelly snatched away from iOS users when Apple purchased Camel Audio. It now behaves just like any other GarageBand Touch Instrument, comes with more than 150 Apple-designed presets, and sounds as good as ever.
Clash of the clouds Just like the unexpectedly grey skies covering Anaheim this year, several clouds appeared on the NAMM horizon – three, to be precise. First, the Roland Cloud (price TBC) announced at last year’s NAMM is almost here. You get access to Roland’s existing soft synths (SH-101, SH-2, System-100 and System-1); sampled acoustic instruments (just Tera Piano for now) and Anthology Series (again, only one offering at present: Anthology 1987, a sampled D-50). Sample mavens Loopmasters launch Loopcloud this quarter. Free of charge, it hinges around an application for managing samples, MIDI files and presets, syncing them across devices, and directly dragging them into your DAW. Initially supporting packs purchased from Loopmasters, future updates will add a store and the ability to upload your personal library.
Eventide Fission
The first of Eventide’s so-called Structural Effects, Fission splits the incoming signal into transient and tonal components before applying effects to each independently, giving you control over how you’ll process attack and sustain portions of incoming signals. The Structural Split panel lets you define precisely how the signal is divided, using controls like Smoothing, Trans Decay and Source Type. For the actual effects, processes that can be applied to transients include Delay, Tap Delay, Dynamics, Phaser, Reverb and Gate+EQ, each with its own settings to dial in. On the Tonal Effects side, you have options like Delay, Compressor, Pitch, Chorus, Reverb, Tremolo and EQ. It also seems like certain aspects can be triggered by the character of the transient’s onset, such as a pattern of echoes produced by the
Finally, not to be outdone in the cloudbased stakes, Samplephonics present Noiiz ($29/month, $199/year), a cloud subscription service giving access to the company’s entire catalogue of samples, along with the Noiiz plugin for auditioning sounds inside your DAW. URL www.rolandcloud.com URL www.noiiz.com URL www.loopcloud.net
Tap Delay. Fission’s released date and price are TBC, but look out the review. URL www.eventideaudio.com
The GarageBand update also heralds the arrival of a redesigned browser (this makes auditioning and choosing sounds much easier), multi-take recording, and new vocal and mixing effects. The interface has been tweaked, too, making the whole experience feel that much slicker and more serious (in a good way). It can even import bounced versions of Logic 10.3 projects, enabling you to work on them while you’re on the move. Version 2.2 is free if you already have the app, which costs £3.99/$4.99 to buy outright. www.apple.com It was one of the first notable iOS music production apps, but we’ll confess that we’d rather forgotten about Intua’s BeatMaker until it was announced that version 3 is on the way. Maintaining its predecessors’ padbased workflow, the update will give you access to what looks like a pretty powerful sampling engine on each pad, and it’ll be able to run AU and Inter-App Audio, too. There’s also a scene mode for live jamming and remixing. BeatMaker 3 is coming in the second quarter of 2017. http://intua.net
Fission gives you a whole lot of options for how to process transient and sustaining parts of a sound
April 2017 / Computer Music / 11
> news
Get with the programmers This new developer is taking on the practice of de-essing a signal in a very different way
oeksound
Olli Keskinen
What’s your background in music and in programming? How did oeksound get started, and how would you describe the company’s philosophy? OK “Compared to your typical developer, I’m quite a young guy, with a background and university-level education in both music technology and programming. Work ranging from creative coding and DSP algorithm consultancy to FOH engineering, together with excessive amount of time spent with Matlab, give me an interesting edge in DSP. oeksound is about using that edge: solving well-defined and laborious problems, while hiding the ugly stuff under the hood.”
Soothe, your first plugin, is a “dynamic resonance suppressor”. Is this the same as a dynamic EQ or de-esser? OK “In terms of use, Soothe is a close relative to a dynamic EQ or a de-esser, but under the hood, it’s a spectral processor that reacts to resonant signal components. So basically it’s an automatic notching EQ that will fix the whistling and harsh frequencies based on their intensity, and with minimal user input.” What inspired you to create a tool like Soothe, seeing as there are already lots of de-essers on the market? OK “User interaction with Soothe was designed to feel familiar to anyone who’s used de-essers – you just set the threshold and frequency range. But when an energetic mid- or high-frequency spike crosses the threshold, Soothe suppresses that frequency alone, and won’t affect the adjacent frequencies. This way you don’t lose the clarity or the top end of the material. So even when used as a de-esser, I think the versatility and possibility to control even the mids with minimum hassle is quite unique.”
“We’re now improving Soothe’s algorithm to make it more versatile”
What kinds of source sounds does Soothe work best on? OK “Soothe is great at taming the harshness and build-up of frequencies that’s often present when close-miking audio sources – be it vocals, acoustic or electric guitar, woodwinds or violins. Due to the chaotic radiation patterns of the instruments, and multiplied by the pickup patterns of the microphones, nastiness is likely to be present when sticking a microphone few inches from a sound source. Soothe is at its best when used as the first line of defence to treat these problematic sound sources, saving the mixing engineer a lot of time and frustration trying to get the stuff to sit in the mix, especially with the lead parts.” What else can we expect from oeksound in the next year or so? OK “The first version of Soothe is just the beginning, and there’s a lot of room for improvement. We’re now improving Soothe’s algorithm to make it more versatile, extending the workable frequency range lower and reducing the CPU-hit – especially on the higher-resolution settings. So a lot of maths ahead. Also, the R&D for Soothe’s spectral framework has opened an interesting set of applications and processes that we’ll be checking out.” URL www.oeksound.com 12 / Computer Music / April 2017
KV331 SynthMaster One
In our review of the last major SynthMaster revision, we had to concede that it could be “the one and only synth you’ll ever need”. However, that hasn’t stopped the developer KV331 Audio showcasing a smart new off-shoot, SynthMaster One, at NAMM. Not a mere cutdown, it offers features that are not found on the big ’un: wavetable synthesis, along with new waveforms, noise algorithms, wavetables and 500 fresh presets. The initial release should be at the end of February and will be in VST/AU formats, with AAX and iOS versions said to be coming “this spring”, and the plugin should be $79. URL www.synthmaster.com
Slate Digital VRS-8 & ML-2
The big news from Steven Slate’s crew is the VRS-8 audio interface, billed as a “Virtual Recording Studio”. The device features eight channels and a custom Low-Latency Native (LLN) chipset, which promises a round-trip time as low as 0.7ms (at 96kHz). You can plug any mic/line device into the VRS-8, but each channel incorporates Slate’s VMS Ultra Linear preamps, designed for use with their VMS microphones, allowing you to apply numerous mic models in software. Price and availability are TBC. URL www.slatedigital.com
Tracktion Waveform
With the Tracktion DAW returning to ownership of Tracktion Corporation in recent years, the software’s name has been downplayed somewhat, now a mere letter, T. NAMM 2017, though, saw the company reveal “a new DAW to replace the T-Series” – in other words, Tracktion/T is now Waveform. The new version remains a single-screen affair but adds a dedicated mixer page and “a new suite of powerful plugins”. It’s also now compatible with the dinky Raspberry Pi mini-computer, as is the company’s synth, BioTek. Waveform will cost between $99 and $200. URL www.tracktion.com
Media Overkill Waverazor
With its retrofuturistic interface that looks more like KITT’s dashboard than a plugin GUI, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Waverazor is all about retro-digital sounds. On the contrary, Media Overkill claim their debut synth for PC, Mac and Linux employs “a new form of synthesis to produce biting leads, glitched-out basses, cinematic pads and everything in between”. Taking centre-stage is a large oscilloscope to visualise your waveform-warping tweaks. Parameters can be animated together with “an array of performance controllers”. It’s out on March 1 for $75. URL www.mok.com