Music magazine by hongcrazy

ACUSTICA AUDIO

ZEDS DEAD The genre-defying duo talk tech

Febuary 2017 / CM239

INSTANT

Get that elusive outboard warmth and character directly in your DAW! GLUE & COHESION AGEING SYNTHESIS

VINTAGE HEAT RETRO SUmmING

SONIC DIRT & GRIT NOISE LAYERING

18GB

ADVANCED TUTORIALS

MULTIBAND MASTERCLASS TECH-HOUSE WITH JACKY MASTER BUS MAGIC ALL WITH VIDEO!

DOWNLOAD

NEW YEAR

PINK CM

Sculpt and sweeten signals like a pro with this analogue-modelled EQ from Acustica Audio! FREE SOUNDWARE

3GB SAMPLES

Sleazy stabs, funk licks, jazz chords, slick rhodes and more

FREE PLUGIN COLLECTION

INSTRUMENTS

AND EFFECTS

FOR PC & MAC ON THIS DVD

No DVD drive? No problem! Full download also included

FREE PLUGIN

MIXING

WORKOUT Get your tracks in shape for 2017

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DoWnloaD See page 5 to find out how to download this issue’s exclusive content

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welcome Whether it’s the smooth saturation of magnetic tape, the smoky summing of a hardware mixing console, or the warm girth of a retro synthesiser, the elusive sound of ‘analogue’ will never die. Physical circuitry can give instant imperfection, flavour and cohesion. Nevertheless, more and more producers and mix engineers (including me) are selling their valuable outboard gear, as DAWs and plugins can provide that magic sound at a fraction of the price, in a portable, recallable form. But to backwards engineer the studios and signal paths of old, you need the knowledge. So no matter if you’re an oldschool purist or a digital obsessive who prefers Massive over Moog, skip to p22 to find out the essential tricks and techniques for dialling in the ultimate sonic heat, glue and character. To keep the temperature up, you also get a gorgeous EQ plugin from analogue-modelling experts Acustica Audio. From smooth boosts to creamy cuts, it looks and sounds the part – head to p52 for more. It’s a bumper month for software reviews, too (p85): Rob Papen Predator 2, Steinberg Cubasis 2, FabFilter Pro-R and XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color are all experts. reviewed and rated by our And check out our EQ and compression cheat sheet, which comes in wall chart form – a handy reference guide for anyone’s studio! Until next month, we hope you…

“That magic sound at a fraction of the price…”

Enjoy thE issuE

for PC, Mac, Android, iPad & more www.zinio.com

ioS APP SToRE

GooGLE PLAy

for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch

for Android & Chrome for PC/Mac

www.computermusic.co.uk/cmdigital

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Joe Rossitter Editor

issue 239 FEBRUARY 2017

contents

Cover feature

Producer masterclass

INSTANT

Get the warm sound of classic outboard gear in software, p22 44 JACKY

The Geordie tech-house hipster invites us to his Ibiza studio for an exclusive sesh

/experts

Free Plugin

Feature

52 pinK Cm

57 2017 mixing worKout

Your guides for the ever-expanding world of production are here every month to show you the way

studio stRategies: MasteR bus Magic

Acustica Audio’s supreme analogue-modelled EQ is yours for free this issue

easy guide: diatonic cHoRd substitutions

dR beat: bossa noVa

Tutorial

Interview

63 muLtiBAnd mAsterCLAss

78 Zeds deAd

Target frequencies, split signals and get creative!

Reviews

Essentials

Rob papen pRedatoR 2

news

steinbeRg cubasis 2

FReewaRe news

FabFiLteR pRo-R

wHat’s on youR dRiVe?

XLn audio Rc-20 RetRo coLoR

Roundup

oeKsound sootHe

neXt issue

103

bacK issues

pLus 16 more produCts reviewed

4 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Pump up your mixdowns with our 20-step program

We talk tech with the genre-busting pair

114

bLast FRoM tHe past: aKai Mpc60

DownloaD Get our software, samples and videos via Vault download

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

On your PC or Mac, go to vault.computermusic.co.uk, then either register for a new Vault account, or log in if you already have one.

Click ‘add a magazine’ in the top bar, select the issue you want to add to your Vault (eg, this issue is 239), and answer a few simple security questions.

Go to ‘my vault’ to see all your mags – click a cover and use the links to download! You can download as much or as little as you like.

DVD + DOWNLOAD

DOWNLOAD EXCLUSIVE Tutorial videos High-quality videos to guide you through our tutorials. Wherever you see the icon on the left, there’s a video version to watch

pinK Cm See and hear Acustica Audio’s incredible EQ plugin put through its paces in our pro video tutorial, p52

sample packs GANGSTER STINGS

500 samples – sleazy stabs, criminal chords, jarring strings, sinister swells and more, p106

See this issue’s entire video content on the next pages

Tutorial files A folder full of audio examples, synth patches and project files to help you follow our tutorials

LOOPMASTERS CM239

This issue’s stack of premium-quality samples, compiled from a handful of the soundware kings’ biggest and best packs, p107

Cm plugins Our exclusive collection of free plugins for Mac and PC. See what’s available on p108

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.

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 5

video Every tutorial feature in this issue comes with pro video guides. Go get them right now from our Vault download area INSTANT

Turn up the heat to make your tracks snap, crackle and pop with our video-packed guide Read the full article on p22

DownloaD

1 Replicating an analogue chain with plugins

2 Getting signals out of and back into a DAW

3 Aping analogue gear using basic filtering and EQ

4 Stacking saturation for a fat and punchy mixdown

5 Essential noise layering tactics

6 Sending sounds back in time – extreme retroisation

7 Emulating the personality of analogue synths

8 Synthesising pitchwavering analogue chords

9 Tips on using analogue effects

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

6 / ComputeR musiC / February 2017

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 45 for details.

video To download all these videos onto your PC/Mac, just head along to vault.computermusic.co.uk and register this issue Producer Masterclass*

JACKY We tracked him down to his Ibiza studio to see him pour over his track Apache in this exclusive video

piNK Cm

Viewing instructions on p45

Unwrap classic EQ tones with this issue’s plugin giveaway from DSP maestros Acustica Audio Read the full article on p52

muLtiBAND mAsteRCLAss Process in bitesize bands to get greater flexibility Read the full article on p63

1 Bringing balance with multiband processing

plugins reloaded / make music now < > Step by step

11. Piano and vintage synth sounds

focus > CURVE 2 CM

We turn our attention to this versatile, inspiring synth, the latest Plugins family addition to the

download Download Curve 2 CM, the videos and tutorial files at vault.computermusic.co.uk

6 Splitting a signal into separate bands manually

CM PlUGinS TUToRiAl BAnk

VIDEO TUTORIAL

Satson… and on… It can’t have escaped your attention that we’ve used the Satson CM plugin on almost every track in our tune. There’s a good reason for this: It’s awesome! Satson CM emulates the sound of a hardware mixer channel and it’s designed to be placed on every track in your mix, to lend its subtle signature sound to, well, everything. It’s light on CPU and can make pretty much any track sound warmer and more rounded. The plugin can also help to smooth out the sometimes-harsh sound of digital synths. Driven harder, Satson CM can provide some authentically vintage sounding distortion effects. The gentle high- and low-cut filters give us a quick and easy way of thinning out muddy lows or rolling off tinny highs, and you can switch off the drive function if you just want to use it for the filters. For a closer look at Satson CM take a look at our YouTube video at www.bit.ly/Ov2WMF.

> Step by step

We’ve got almost all the musical ideas we need to create a full tune, but we need to spice it up with extras and ‘ear candy’. First, let’s process a piano patch so that it sounds a bit like it’s been sampled from an older tune. We start by loading a MIDI track panned 9R with a patch from the Keys»Gran Piano preset in Alchemy Player CM.

We EQ the piano in quite a distinctive way in IIEQPro, using the curve shown here, cutting off the low frequencies and adding a big boost at around 8kHz, for a thinned out, vintage kind of sound. The piano sound is finished off by Satson CM, with the Gain increased to +4 and High Pass set at 400Hz to lose even more low end.

We play some chords into the track (Piano.mid) and copy some over from the strings track. The piano sound is quite short, so we raise the Release to 70%, to lengthen it, making it more suitable for our track. We also turn the Delay Mix to 0 to knock out off the inbuilt echo effect.

Next, a vintage synth lead line (Glide.mid) from PolyKBII CM, which boasts some truly great analogue-style sounds. We choose Lead»All»LD Soaring Glider JRM and play in a melody line using the pitchbend wheel to add interest (Glider.mid). We add Satson CM with -3 Gain, 750Hz High Pass and 16kHz Low Pass, enabling the tighter 12dB/oct mode.

12. Risers and effects with Alchemy Player CM

VIDEO TUTORIAL

We’re going to need a few one-shot percussion FX to sprinkle throughout the track, and a really simple way to create them is to load Alchemy Player CM on a new track and select the Drums»Four Way Drum Morph preset. Add KR-DelayCM set to PingPong mode and 1/4 beat Sync Delay time. A Feedback and Dry/Wet level of 40% is perfect.

We take the easy option for the reverb, using ReverberateCM’s Cathedral preset, with the Dry/Wet at 10dB Wet to create some big, splashy hits and crashes. An instance of Satson CM set to 400Hz on the High Pass dial removes some of the more boomy elements, which could conflict with the kick drum and bass.

There’s a good white noise riser sound in Alchemy Player: Sound Effects»Breakdown Booom. This patch uses four different layers, so we use the X/Y 1 matrix to manipulate it. Dragging the control to the top right of the panel means that only the white noise sweep layer of the sample is played. In the track, we can use volume and pan automation to add interest.

To help you get the most out of our immense plugin collection, we’ve assembled the Plugins Tutorial Bank, containing over 100 guides and tutorials for our Plugins, specially selected from past issues. You’ll find Getting Started PDFs and videos for most of the individual plugins, along with

tutorial PDFs and videos on using Plugins for sound design, mixing, and even creating entire tracks. You’ll find all of this as a handy download in our Vault – go grab it now and start getting more out of your plugins! vault.computermusic.co.uk

December 2012 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 47

February 2017 / ComputeR musiC / 7

video Grab this issue’s videos via Vault download – see p5 for details NeW YeAR stuDio WoRKout Get your tracks ripped in no time with our simple exercises Read the full article on p57

1 Tighten up, top and bottom

Slimming the middle

Check your reflections

4 Get broader the right way

5 A bulge that can really impress

6 Automate to accentuate

Any takers for shapers?

Join a group

EASY GUiDE

/experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist field every month

Be like your gym heroes

STUDio STRATEGiES

Sculpt the sides

DR BEAT

DiAtoNiC mAsteR suBstitutioNs Bus mAgiC

BossA NoVA

Dave reveals which chords of the scale you can swap as you wish

Get this spicy Latin style right in your DAW’s piano roll

Read the full article on pxx 8 / ComputeR musiC / February 2017

Read the full article on p72

How to keep your head while mixing into a chain of processors

Read the full Readon the full article p74 article on pxx

Read the full article on p76

> news

New releases • commeNt • iNdustry happeNiNgs

Steinberg Cubase 9 Long-requested features finally come to the well endowed über-DAW The power of Steinberg’s awesome Cubase DAW is undeniable, but recent updates have left some users wondering about the direction of that power. For producers using Cubase day-in, day-out, the continued lack of seemingly obvious features like a basic sampler, decent dockable window system and mixer undo have become an increasingly cruel running joke. It’s 2017, for crying out loud! Where are those essential features…? Well, they’re right here, in the brand new Cubase 9, along with more exciting additions! Cubase 9 comes in three flavours – Pro (€579), Artist (€329) and Elements (€100) – which all sport the new Lower Zone. This is a fixed pane to house the mixer, editor window, etc. It’s also where you’ll find controls for the new Sampler Track, which affords easy chromatic play of samples and an integrated library, Caleidoscope. We’ve lamented the lack of mixer undo in practically every Cubase review in living memory, and with good reason. Just imagine the pain of bringing a mix to the brink of perfection… only to accidentally roll the mouse wheel as the cursor passes over the mixer, sending EQ knobs and level faders flying. Now you can revert to an earlier state with the Pro/Artist-only mixer undo/redo history. New for Pro is Frequency, an eight-band EQ with linear phase mode, mid/side

With mixer undo/ redo, integrated sampler and Lower Zone pane, Cubase 9 could be a dream upgrade

support, Auto Listen, Spectrum Display and “reference keyboard”. All editions get reworked Maximizer and AutoPan effects, while Brickwall Limiter, Compressor, Expander, Gate and Envelope Shaper get a graphical makeover. Other additions include plug-and-play USB support for Windows; the

Production Grooves library for Groove Agent SE 4; and Audio-Ins for routing audio into a VST3 instrument’s sidechain. Cubase 9 is out now, and an in-depth expert review is well under way – don’t miss it in our next issue, 240! URL www.steinberg.net

FL Studio Mobile 3

Treat your pocket to a pint-sized slice of Image-Line’s popular DAW

10 / CoMputer MuSiC / February 2017

The new version of Image-Line’s touchable DAW is out now for iOS (£10.99), Android (£13.49), Windows App (£11.59), and as a plugin for the desktop edition of FL Studio (Free). Designed for recording, sequencing, editing, and mixing on the go, this mini-DAW now features a scalable, vector interface for all platforms; unlimited instruments, effects, tracks and routing; and two new IAP synths: Groove Machine Synth and Transistor Bass. Projects are compatible, so you can begin a song on one device and finish it on another. URL www.image-line.com

news <

trackers & Demoscene Bringing a classic tracker back from the dead, a chain song and a trip down under

Stamp PSP’s sonic footprint on your tracks with stompFilter

PSP Audioware stompFilter The impressive stompDelay (which itself spawned the ace cmDelay included with this very magazine) now has a sibling: stompFilter, a filter plugin packed with creative options. The filter itself features 12 and 24dB modes, resonance, saturation, and a single control to smoothly blend between low-, band- and high-pass responses. For

modulating filter cutoff and output gain, there’s an LFO and an envelope follower, and the latter can also modulate the former. Additional goodies include output saturation and limiting, a Freeze mode for holding the current filter cutoff frequency, and dry/wet blend. Out now, stompFilter costs $69. URL www.pspaudioware.com

Cableguys TimeShaper & more new Shapers

With their range of plugins based around draw-it-yourself LFOs, envelopes and waveforms, Cableguys’ new TimeShaper ($44) effect lets you apply those famous custom modulation curves to playback speed. The idea is that you control time and pitch “just like a DJ scratching vinyl”, resulting in stutter, reverse, scratch, tapestop, glitch and repeat effects. They say it’s good for everything from breakbeat rearrangement and easy house build-ups to unique FX design. Even more mind-bending: it’s multiband, with separate curves for bass, midrange and treble! The whole thing runs inside ShaperBox, a new “creative effects rack” where you can stack it with other Cableguys Shapers for “elaborate, multilayered effects”.

IK Multimedia Modo Bass In a logical next-step, the Italian DSP supremos behind virtual amp mainstay AmpliTube have launched a virtual bass

Other new goodies include FilterShaper Core ($34), a streamlined filter based on FilterShaper 3; WidthShaper ($24), a multiband stereo adjuster; and the updated VolumeShaper 5 ($34) and PanShaper 2 ($34). All of these run inside the aforementioned ShaperBox – and they’re all out now. URL www.cableguys.com guitar. Completely sample-free, Modo Bass ($300) uses physical modelling to recreate 12 bass guitar sounds, including timeless Fender tones, the Music Man StingRay’s hi-fi punch, and the plucky growl of a Rickenbacker 4003. Pluck, slap and pick playing styles are available; 20 pickups can be mixed, matched and moved; and even string properties can be tweaked. There are 7 stompboxes and two bass amps to further sculpt the sound. Also new is IK’s Fender Collection 2 ($150), a suite of officially endorsed Fender guitar and bass amp sims. Both products are out now. URL www.ikmultimedia.com

Two issues ago we brought you news of the updated ProTracker v2.3D clone by Olav ‘8bitbubsy’ Sørensen. It was jolly exciting in its own right, but it now also seems Olav has a clone of Fasttracker II on the go. This new project aims to recreate the last ever version of FT2 (the leaked version 2.09, rather than the stable 2.08 which most

“The first composer writes 30 seconds or so and then hands it onto the next person in line…” people used back in the late 90s), in all its glory, for Mac and PC. A great deal of the legwork has already been done, including implementing the all-important easter egg, the ‘Nibbles’ Nokia-esque snake game, as per the classic tracker we remember fondly from our youth. Visit 16-bits.org/ft2.php for more details. The concept of the chain song is something we’ve long loved – several composers working on the same piece of music in serial. The first composer writes 30 seconds or so and then hands it onto the next person in line, and so on until the track is finished. One of BitJam’s recent podcasts (#208) is The MegaSong, an excellent example of the concept, which makes for very interesting listening. www.bitfellas.org demo of the month Flow State by Onslaught It’s not only the famed Neighbours street tour that draws the crowds to Melbourne, Australia; this year’s Syntax demoparty in the same great city has just celebrated its tenth incarnation, and thundering into first place (although out of only two entries, admittedly) with a rather spiffy 40KB number, is Onslaught. Packed with stunning landscapes, liquid paint effects and more, all set to a gorgeous minimal Leftfield-style soundtrack, Flow State is well worth your time. bit.ly/FlowstateDemo

Flow State impressed at Syntax in Melbourne

February 2017 / CoMputer MuSiC / 11

> news

Get with the programmers We catch up with the long-time purveyor of “creativity pills for electronic musicians”…

SampleScience

Pierre Parenteau

Tell us how you got started with SampleScience. If you could give one ‘mission statement’ for the company, what would it be? PP “15 years ago, SampleScience was the pseudonym for my sample-based electronic music project. With time it became my company name – interest in my sample libraries and plugins has always been a lot larger than for than my musical output. People on KVR are also familiar with this name, so I kept it to avoid confusion. SampleScience’s mission is to provide new inspiring sounds and plugins to modern music-makers. As a musician myself, I’m always seeking new, ‘unheard’ and weird sounds. This is what I’m trying to provide.”

Most of your products revolve around drum sounds… but not all of them. Can we expect to see more drums in the future? PP “A follow up of Pastoral Tones is in the works. It’s called Hexagon Sun, and like Pastoral Tones it’s inspired by the sound of Boards Of Canada. I’m also working on Thales Model II, the follow up of my first successful plugin Thales Model I. It features computer sounds from the 1950s and 1960s, which are quite hard to find, and require a lot of research and patience.” We reported on the Orion Sound Module when you first launched it. A free ROMpler for royalty-free sounds – what gave you the idea? PP “I got the idea from an Arte television program about patents and copyrights. In the USA, there are companies that specialise in buying patents and suing people that use these patents without their permission. However, the problem is that it limits the access to patents that are useful to society as a whole. So I thought to myself, ‘There are lots of public domain sounds given to the community that I could professionally edit and provide in one convenient plugin.’ The concept for Orion Sound Module was born!”

“The problem is that it limits the access to patents that are useful to society as a whole”

Then there’s Famirom – NES drums! Did you sample the sounds directly from the NES? PP “Famidrums is more of a conceptual project; most of the sounds have been computer generated to sound like they were sampled from a NES. To fake the original sounds, I used an accurate NES sound chip emulation and resampled various analogue drum machines through it. Compared to the real thing, there’s no audible difference.” What’s next for SampleScience? PP “I’m working hard on more elaborate sample-based plugins. Hexagon Sun is taking more time to develop than expected, because I’m using tape machines and real analogue synths as the source sounds to sample. Also, I want it to be big, containing up to 200 sounds. We’ll see how it goes! “I do love drum machines, so plenty of new conceptual drum machines will be released in 2017. I’m looking to create the kind of stuff that has never been done before!” URL www.samplescience.ca 12 / CoMputer MuSiC / February 2017

Heavyocity Punish

Heavyocity step outside their comfort zone with Punish, their first effects plugin. Emulating the tried-and-tested analogue effects chains employed to massage and finesse their sound design odysseys, Punish comprises five effects sections: Compressor with Console, Modern and Classic modes; Saturation featuring Vintage, Modern and Tube styles; Transients, Equalizer and Limiter. There’s also the central Punish knob, which is essentially a macro knob that can control multiple parameters with a single sweep. Punish costs $249 and is out now. URL www.heavyocity.com

JST Tominator & Toneforge Guilty Pleasure

When mixing drums, the background wash and crash of cymbals being picked up by tom mics can be a particular problem, but it’s one Joey Sturgis Tones hope to solve with Tominator ($59). Instead of turning the entire signal down/off like an expander/gate, a filter rolls away the treble following the initial transient impact. Also new from JST is Toneforge Guilty Pleasure ($89), “a series of meticulously crafted virtual guitar and bass rigs designed to take you from direct guitar input to a final-mix guitar tone”. Both are out now. URL www.joeysturgistones.com

Korg iWavestation

A true 90s legend, the original Wavestation’s big new feature was wavesequencing, used to jump or cross-fade between in-built sampled waveforms to create morphing blends or rhythmic percolations. Other highlights were the vector joystick controller and treasure trove of now-classic presets. Now you can stick it in your back pocket with the new iWavestation iOS app. The original’s sound and featureset are welded to a completely new interface, allowing “speedy and intuitive sound-shaping which were previously impossible”. It’s out now for £24.99. URL www.korg.com

Acustica Audio Lime

The amazing minds behind this issue’s gorgeous Pink CM equaliser have squeezed out another colourful and fruity processor, Lime. The centrepiece is the main Lime channel strip, comprising preamp simulation, filters, four-band EQ, and a compressor with dry/wet mix and external sidechain. You also get separate plugins of the preamp, EQ and compressor sections. As with other Acustica products, Lime’s sound is captured from real analogue hardware, and we understand that top-flight Neve consoles are the sonic source this time. Lime is out now, priced €199. URL www.acustica-audio.com

years back We introduced some nowlegendary soft synths to the world in our 109th issue

It might’ve lost wood, but MiniLab MkII has gained RgB pads

Arturia MiniLab Mkii This portable 25-key MIDI controller now features a smaller footprint, with the pitch/mod touch strips having moved to the upper panel. We’re assured that the quality of every last component has been upgraded, from casing to keybed. And sorry retro lovers: Arturia have given the MkI’s sexy wooden end cheeks the chop. The eight velocity/ pressure-responsive LED backlit drum pads are now fully RGB-capable, while other controls included 16 encoders (two clickable), footswitch input, and the usual octave buttons. MiniLab MkII costs £90. URL www.arturia.com

Ins & outs ThE hALO EFFECT Ever struggled to learn a piece of music? Halo Neuroscience thinks that technology could be the solution, with their ‘neurotechnological’ Halo Sport headset promising to ease the process by sending electrical charges to your brain. For $750. BATTLE OF ThE SyNThS If you’ve ever argued with someone about which synth is the greatest, we’d recommend that you get hold of GForce’s Vintage Synth Trumps 2 card game, which enables you to pit classic instruments against each other across 12 categories. You can buy a set for £7 plus P&P. ThE COIN-OP CONTROLLER We love MIDI controllers and we love old arcade games, so what could be better than the Miclop Ctrl Boy, a MIDI controller that looks like an arcade game? The project was about to go on Kickstarter as we went to press this month.

JAILhOUSE ROCkSTAR As if being arrested and taken into custody wasn’t bad enough, one Canadian police force has announced it’ll carry out a form of musical torture when picking up drink-drivers: being forced to listen to Nickelback in the back of the car. Finally, a real deterrent.

It’s one thing for a hardware synth to become a classic, but a software emulation? Native Instruments’ Yamaha DX7-inspired FM8, which we reviewed in February 2007 ( 109), has certainly become something of a legend in its own lifetime, so maybe the next logical thing to do would be to go full circle and make a hardware version of that. Our Burning Question asked if Linux was becoming a mainstream musicians’ OS – a decade later, we’d say that it still falls into the cult category – and we got

“We got our first look at reFX Nexus” our first look at reFX’s Nexus, which would go on to become the king of ROMplers (in EDM circles, at least). We also spoke to the sound designer and engineer on Madonna’s Confessions tour, speculating that “now the word is out, we might start to see computers being used in the live environment a whole lot more.” We’d say we got that one right, but it was hardly a controversial prediction, was it? Finally, does anyone remember our back page feature from the era? The spoof ‘Compumusician’s Museletter’ looked back at what was going on in the world of computer music 20 years previously. Who would have thought that we could have got away with running a regular column based entirely on having a chortle at yesteryear’s technology?

NOT-ShOCkINg MP3 NEWS ‘Research’ recently indicated that listening to MP3s makes you “less happy” than you would be if you listened to uncompressed audio. But look a little closer and you discover that the MP3s used for testing were of the low bitrate sort that no one’s used for 15 years. (NOT) A vERy gOOD yEAR We can’t say that we’re too sad to see the back of 2016, not least because we lost so many great musicians. We spent far longer than we expected writing our heroes’ obituaries; here’s hoping for less of that next year.

We can’t really give all the credit for the ‘computer music revolution’ to Madonna

February 2017 / CoMputer MuSiC / 13

> news

freeware news It’s an extravaganza of esoterica this issue, with a looper, an oddball effect and even an open-source environment to roll your own instruments!

Hart HISE So you’d like to create your very own plugins? HISE gives you the power to do just that! Here’s a freebie in every sense of the word – one that’s sure to beget even more free plugins. You see, HISE (for Hart Instruments Sampler Engine) is an opensource platform that allows users to build their own virtual instruments. Available as a standalone program or as a VST or AU plugin for both Mac and Windows, HISE offers the unusual ability to compile your patches as VST, AU and even iOS apps, complete with custom interfaces. Even if HISE didn’t provide such killer compiling tools, we’d be inclined to headline simply by dint of the fact that it’s a powerful and flexible sampling and synthesis environment in its own right. The sampling functions are deep and include such niceties

Even if it couldn’t export plugins and iOS apps, HISE would be an awesome audio playground!

as SFZ, machFive, AIFF import (complete with metadata from KeyMap Pro), looping, crossfading, dynamic sample map switching, and customisable voice start behaviour. Synth lovers will dig the additive, wavetable, subtractive, and FM synthesis, MIDI and modulation options abound, and there are plenty of effects, including

convolution reverb, EQ, filters, delay, phaser and chorus. Scripting is on offer in the form of JavaScript, allowing you to customise instrument behaviour, design your interface or build your own audio effects. This is heady stuff, but there’s an online manual and tutorials to get you started.

hise.audio

Audio Blast Instalooper

Tangent Edge Instruments Squeaky Chair

Airwindows Airwindows en masse!

Hot diggity dog, do we love loopers! And we’re not the only ones – there’s a vibrant community of loop-based musicians out there trading tips and techniques in the quest for the ultimate audio-onaudio experience. And they’re going to love Instalooper, a free looper with a clutch of cool effects in tow to sweeten those evercircling sonic cycles. It’s a dizzying blast to latch the various onscreen controls to a MIDI controller for realtime fun. www.audioblast.me

Yes, you read that right! This sampled ‘instrument’ surely marks one of the most outlandish ROMpler ideas we’ve seen to date. Sampled from a rotating stool chair whose screw thread hasn’t even been offered a courtesy lube, SC [is it significant enough to get an abbreviation?] can be loaded in Kontakt, GarageBand, EXS24, and SFZ formats. According to its developer, Squeaky Chair is “Really hard to play and it never sounds good.” Your move, music community… tangentedgeinstruments.com

Last ish, we singled out a few of Chris Johnson’s Airwindows plugins for special notice. Little did we know he was just getting the ball rolling! In the interim, he’s unleashed no less than nine additional plugins, including SurgeTide, Distance, Point, Drive, Phase Nudge, Pyewacket, Density, Lowpass and Highpass. The plugs are all free, but for crisps’ sake, get over to the guy’s site and slip him a few bucks via Patreon to show him you appreciate all the hard work! www.airwindows.com

CLASSIC FREE SOFTWARE Green Oak effects If you’re a Mac user and the name Glenn Olander isn’t known to you, it should be. The developer behind the now-legendary free cross-platform Crystal synthesiser, Glenn went on to play a key role in shaping some of Spectrasonics’ most popular instruments, including the blockbuster Omnisphere.

14 / ComputEr muSIC / February 2017

In the beginning, though, Glenn was long known for his Mac-based freeware, with effects plugins for both OS 9 and OS X. Green Oak’s Delayifier, Chorusifier, and Excitifier graced many a Mac user’s plugins folder back when third-party effects for OS X were still thin on the ground. www.greenoak.com

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Martin Gore Depeche Mode’s main songwriter loves working with Logic, but he prefers using the real deal apple logic pro X “I’ll admit that I’m a creature of habit, and the main reason that I’m still using Logic is laziness. I’ve been using it for ages and any change would be too much of an upheaval. Is it better than all the others out there? That, I can’t answer; all I can say is that, having lived through the reel-to-reel years, the arrival of DAWs changed everything!”

FaBFilter pro-Q 2 “The advantage of using modular – and vintage modular – synths is that you don’t need to mess around with the sound as much as soft synths. So, when I do add a plugin to my setup, it has to bring something to the table. The Q 2 is quick, but it’s also truthful… it does what it says it’s doing on the screen.”

innerclock SyStemS Sync gen “I’m a huge fan of the new Eurorack modular synths, and that’s where most of my ‘synth’ noises come from. There are a lot of them in the studio, and I need something that’s going to keep everything in time. This is the one piece of software I really couldn’t live without.”

“Mind you, it did take you three days to record one sequenced synth line!”

2caudio aether and B2 “Obviously, when I first started making music, reverbs were all hardware, and over the years, I got used to that quality, hardware reverb sound. Recently though, software has started to catch up, and the 2C plugins are some of the best out there. These two work very well together and you end up with a ton of creative effects as well as seriously impressive reverbs.”

Sound radiX 32 liveS “This might seem like a silly plugin to pick as one of my favourites, but there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to pull up something and being told it won’t run on your current system. That never happened with MIDI/CV. Mind you, it did take you three days to record one sequenced synth line!”

depeche mode’s Video Singles Collection is out now www.depechemode.com

/ burning question

samplemagic.com

What are your tricks for getting an analogue sound in software?

David Graham

“I got reviews that thought I was using analogue gear – I just used very light distortion, taken to the point where you can just hear it and then rolled back a touch. I took off a little high end with EQ, and lastly split each ‘vintage’ synth part across two MIDI tracks, deleted some notes from one and the rest from the other, and then tuned one track up about 6-8 cents, and the other one down by the same. The warm, dirty sound combined with the wobbly tuning did the job.”

Gerry O’Hara

“Take a line out, put it through valve preamp or old tape recorder, back in on another track, and Bob’s your uncle. I also put kick drums through a Marshall stack and mic up the cabinet – wowza!”

Marcos Willats

“Mixing in a track of noise at a low level will give the illusion of tape noise, and with the right combination of EQ, compression and distortion can sound

convincing as an effect. For general warmth, tape saturation plugins, usually at their default setting, on all or most stems and groups, or simulate the low-end head bump with EQ.”

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Brian Williams

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“Warmth. A tape saturator/ emulator will work wonders for fattening up the bottom end. Slate VTM is a beauty to get the snare to pop whilst giving it that classic character. Many times, simple EQ moves like taking out some top can produce a warmer timbre too, reminiscent of old vintage gear and/or tubes. A nice reverb, like Bricastic M7 impulses, will go a long, long, way, too!”

£34.90 DOWNTEMPO Illustration by Jake

Ian Goold

“Modulate detuning between oscillators, drive filters and add harmonic distortion with whatever plugins you have, compress liberally, and warm it up a bit with an additional low-pass filter. I like to add a very subtle fast slap delay with two barely audible repeats and a very subtle short-decay reverb to emulate a room sound.”

A dreamlike excursion into an expansive world, ‘SM111 Downtempo’ celebrates the on-going conversation between Ambient, Chillout, Trip-Hop and Electronica.

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roundup

roundup Early DAWs

Version 1 editions and ancestors of today’s greatest software FruityLoops Paving the way for today’s FL Studio 12

Cubase 1 No VCA Faders or Sampler Tracks here

Cakewalk sonar 1 The first incarnation of today’s Sonar, following on from the ‘Cakewalk’ software 18 / Computer musiC / February 2017

roundup <

reason 1 The rebirth of Rebirth shown at the 29) birth of Reason (pic from

emagic Logic Good luck getting a Drummer track in this one

Digidesign sound Designer The 1984 forerunner to Avid’s modernday DAW

Ableton Live 1 V1 of the fresh-faced DAW looks surprisingly familar…

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 19

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> make music now / instant analogue

INSTANT

ANALOGU E Forget cold, sterile mixes – give your digital signals the ultimate warmth, depth and life with our guide to faking hardware sonics in software

22 / Computer musiC / February 2017

instant analogue / make music now <

The modern world went digital-mad in the 1980s. It was the era of digital watches, pocket calculators, compact discs, and videogames everywhere: in the arcades, on your home computer, and on the LCD slab in your back pocket. And in music production, ‘digital’ was the ultimate buzzword, selling synths, effects, samplers, and recording systems in their millions. Producers were falling over themselves to replace noisy, unreliable analogue gear with pristine digital kit. Tales abound of classic vintage tape machines, mixing consoles, valve compressors and EQs simply being tossed in the trash to make space for this next-gen equipment. Digital just had to be better than analogue, right? On paper, it was… Over time, however, music producers and fans alike felt that something was up: digital could actually be too perfect, too clear and, at its worst, kind of cold, harsh and lifeless. You might well recognise these symptoms in your own mixes. Classic analogue recordings, on the other hand, had vibe, warmth,

presence and authenticity in spades – exactly what producers strive for and listeners crave! So is it time to remortgage the house and invest in analogue synths, vintage beatboxes, a car-sized mixing console, and a tape machine that looks more like your granny’s cooker then a 21st century studio piece? The answer is, of course: no – all you need is the computer you already own, and this, our no-nonsense Instant Analogue guide! Today’s top producers know how to use their DAWs to combine digital clarity with analogue phatness, realism and punch, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. We’re going to explain just what ‘that analogue sound’ is, and let you in on easy techniques to add just the right amount of it to your mixes. We’ll show you how to use the best analogue-style plugins, and how classic mixing methodology can help get the most from them. You’ll even discover how to integrate real hardware into your DAW-based mixes. Now fire up your DAW and switch on the air conditioning – it’s about to get hot in here…

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 23

> make music now / instant analogue

Wires and circuits We’ve all heard the claims that digital audio sounds ‘too perfect’, ‘harsh’ or er… ‘too digital’. By comparison, analogue is ‘warm’, ‘punchy’ and ‘fat’. But why is this? And can one ever sound like the other? Let’s find out… Within its limits, digital is a practically perfect system for representing signals. For 44,100Hz audio, all frequencies up to half that point (22,050Hz in this case) are perfectly represented. With audio processed at 32- or 64-bit floating point quality, and saved to 24-bit files, signals can be superloud or incredibly quiet with no practical loss of quality. When digital audio is copied, routed, passed through a transparent process (eg, a plugin set to 100% dry), or simply adjusted in level, the quality remains intact. No noise is added. No frequencies are removed. Dynamics and transients are unaffected. It’s a near-perfect medium. When digital sounds are generated or processed, digital aliasing can occur. This occurs when frequencies would be generated that exceed the system’s range;

“All analogue circuitry adds background noise … there’s no way around it” instead, they’re ‘reflected’ back down the frequency spectrum. Developers go to great lengths to avoid aliasing, which is partially responsible for the ‘harsh’ sound of digital, though using the right plugins and following best practices practically eliminates it. Now let’s look at a typical analogue signal chain – see the diagram on the following page. Imagine that the analogue synth is producing a basic saw wave. First, the components in the synth are not perfect, so the source waveform is not an exact saw to start with – and from there it just gets worse!

Every component in and old-school analogue setup would add its own imperfections to the final signal

All analogue circuitry adds background noise, caused mainly by the constant motion of electrons in the equipment. It’s basic physics, and there’s no way around it. So the output of the synth will already have a little noise, and the electronics in each successive piece of equipment will add to this. Likewise, some analogue gear can pick up hum from the alternating current of your mains power supply – 50Hz in the UK and Europe, 60Hz in the US. Each circuit may also affect frequency content, such as rolling off treble or adding a bass hump. In addition, all analogue circuitry adds subtle distortion and even phase distortion. These are subtle changes, but they all add up. The medium of tape adds further hiss, frequency bumps, distortion and dynamic squashing. Tape speed varies slightly but constantly, causing tiny timing/pitch wobbles called wow (slow) and flutter (rapid). Now factor in drum machines, microphones, and analogue effects, and their associated signal paths. Each brings

Some like it hot: how distortion evolved Professional audio gear is designed to give acceptable noise and minimal distortion at appropriate signal levels. By keeping levels throughout a real signal path around 0dBU, the producer should get good results. Even so, producers were desperate to keep noise levels down, so they would often intentionally run signals ‘hot’ to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Most analogue gear breaks up and distorts in a pleasant way, and this characteristic eventually became associated with classic production. So what is distortion? At its simplest, when a signal is played too loud, the excess is chopped off or ‘clipped’. A sine wave’s smooth top and bottom would be flattened off, making it more like a square wave. This process introduces harmonics, in the same way that ‘squaring off’ a sine wave does. 24 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Analogue distortion comes in a variety of flavours and characters. Early electronic gear used valves (aka tubes), which are associated with producing even and odd harmonics. The 1950s saw valves superseded by the more compact solid-state transistors, which emphasise odd harmonics when distorted, sounding sharper and more aggressive. Valves aren’t used in consumer electronics anymore, but they still have a place in guitar amps, preamps, and vintage-flavoured effects. Tape lies somewhere between valve and transistor, producing stronger odd harmonics. While distortion is a technically accurate term, we often use the terms saturation or (over)drive instead, referring to mild and moderate amounts. In music production, ‘distortion’ is usually an aggressive effect – think metal guitars and gabber kick drums.

more dirt, hiss, hum and distortion. If you run out of tape tracks, you’d have to bounce them down to a spare track, adding another layer of permanent hiss and tape grit. Ironically, early digital gear can also contribute to an ‘analogue’ sound. This is in part down to the low sample rates and bit depths we associate with old-school music, but also due to the analogue circuitry in the input/output stages. With all that going on, you can begin to understand why analogue sounds the way it does – just imagine everything our synth’s saw wave has been through by the time it finally hits the speakers! In contrast, in your DAW, you can synthesise a saw wave that’s perfectly preserved all the way to the final output. It might be ‘better’ on paper, but in practice, a mathematically ideal saw wave isn’t always pleasing to listen to. The good news is that there isn’t an intrinsic reason why digital can’t sound like analogue – we just need to take steps to intentionally make it sound that way!

instant analogue / make music now < Emulating the analogue signal path in a digital world So how can we go about emulating the quirks of electrical circuits in our DAW? Well, with the aid of the circuit diagram on the right, let’s start from the top… We’ll cover the imperfection of old synths in a few pages’ time, but put simply, oscillator drift, performance limitations and characteristic filter types all play a part. Even digital instruments outputted lower-bit-depths signals, and their electronics would create noise and hiss. A multitrack tape machine would add yet more saturation, and inconsistent tape movement would lead to very slight pitch and timing changes. We’ll show you how to nail the effect using tape emulation software. Analogue mixing desks would introduce saturation and crosstalk (ie, signal bleed between channels). With the number of complex connections made here, electrical noise is a likely addition, and there are plugins designed to replicate this on every channel of a mix, as well as the master bus. By using plugins to emulate a signal path like this, you’ll dial in the cumulative warmth and cohesion of the analogue studio. In the tutorial below, we’ll show you how to easily add authentic vintage vibes to a whole track using common software tools.

> Step by step

Synth

Microphone

Sampler

Drum Machine

Preamps Multitrack tape machine

Mixing desk EQ

Level

Pan

Sub group

Sub group 2

Master bus

Mastering chain (EQ, compression etc)

Every component in an allanalogue studio imparted its own sonic stamp

Mastering tape machine

1. Instant analogue: replicating an analogue chain with plugins

TuTorial

Files

Load the tracks beginning “Robo…” onto audio tracks in a 120bpm project and set the master output to -12dB to avoid output clipping, as we’re going to be running our tracks pretty hot. Solo the Synth track and add iZotope’s free Vinyl plugin, which emulates the degraded, noisy sound of old vinyl records.

By turning only the Mechanical Noise and Electrical Noise sliders up to -29.5dB each, we introduce tape-like noise and circuitry hum. Notice how the vinyl simulation also rolls off some of the highest frequencies, which is desirable here. Unsolo Synth and copy Vinyl to every other track in the mix.

Add our own Lindell Audio 6X-500 CM to every track for preamp saturation. For more transient clipping, place it before Vinyl and drive it harder – try it on the hi-hat with Output at 0.5 and Gain at 9.5. Finally, on the master bus, we add iZotope Ozone 7, with Vintage EQ to compensate for the (upper) treble presence lost by Vinyl, and Vintage Tape on default settings.

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 25

> make music now / instant analogue

Real analogue sound on the cheap Get genuine dirt in your signal path with these simple outboard solutions > Technique 2. Get signals out of a DAW

Here’s how to take a digital signal out into the real world through your audio interface

> Technique

The synth market isn’t just filled with top-end gear – give one of these budget options a try. Korg’s Monotron range can be found for about £39, and their Volca range is modestly priced, too. Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators are about £40, and Arturia’s MicroBrute competes with high-end plugin synth prices. And then there’s eBay, where secondhand prices mean that you can pick up gear for cheap.

> Technique

Most DAWs provide some means of routing selected signals through any additional outputs on a given interface – and Ableton Live users have a dedicated plugin. Open a Live project with a couple of audio channels.

Currently, track 1 is routed to the main outputs. In the browser, find the plugin called External Audio Effect and drag it into our first channel. It goes quiet because our new plugin has no output assigned.

On the device, locate the Audio To dropdown. We select an output, to send the signal out from our interface. You can use the same plugin to route processed audio back in, then reverse phase and compensate for latency.

26 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Cheap analogue synths

It’s always sum thing

An analogue sound is caused by the interactions of real electrical circuits, right? So why not get yourself a few? A basic mixing desk will subject your signal to several stages, whether you activate processing on them or not, and an eight-track console from a few years back will have depreciated in value quite a bit. Slam your whole mix through one, or if you’ve got the interface outputs, stem out some or all of your tracks to the desk.

> Technique

Speaker in the house When you’re looking out for the sound of analogue, it’s hard to find a better source of reality than the air around you. Grab a speaker (or two, for stereo signals), or a guitar amp if you have one, and play a signal out of your computer while recording the result back into your DAW on a new track. The new waveform will have been imbued with tiny changes caused by the circuitry of the speaker, and from the air in the room. This also feeds your signal through the analogue circuitry and character of whatever speaker you use, and captures the realistic effect of your sounds in a reverberant space. Blend the result with the dry signal for instant vibe, character and personality!

instant analogue / make music now <

Multisampling an analogue synthesiser Here’s a great way to expand your range of hardware without actually expanding your range of hardware. If you can get your hands on somebody else’s excellent analogue synth – perhaps one owned by a friend, a rental unit, or a rare gem within a professional studio – it’s quite possible to clone it! Turn the filter up to maximum, and record samples of long key-presses from as many keys as you possibly can. Isolate and loop the sustaining sound, and with these raw oscillator samples then loaded into a sampler, you can recreate the instrument’s tone. You might have to do some work to properly replicate filters and envelopes, though. For an even more sophisticated clone, check out SampleRobot 5, which is specifically built for the task of capturing instruments, helping to automate the sample looping and mapping process.

Bring the noise Sure, we can use plugins to add a layer of noise to a track (see p33), but why not record actual analogue noise? In the Tutorial Files, you’ll find a recording of some transformer hum, sampled from an ancient tonewheel organ (Hammond.wav). This is another way to get some instant analogue grime, and it’s easy to capture your own collection of noise sounds. The cheaper the kit, the noisier the result!

Can you pedal? When a studio engineer wants some magic analogue mojo, he might reach for a rackmounted device costing thousands. A guitarist, on the other hand, is happy to lob a quick ’n’ dirty distortion pedal, sputtering spring reverb, or crappy, crunchy compressor into their signal path. If you own any pedals, you can do the same thing on your tabletop via your audio interface. Most stompboxes operate in mono, so you should be advised to sum any stereo tracks before sending them out. Also, guitar effects expect a high-impedance signal, so you may have to adjust incoming and/or outgoing levels to make sure the electrical signals match up inside the cables. And again, be sure to get the signal back into your audio interface using the high-impedance (Hi-Z) ‘instrument’ input jack, too.

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 27

> make music now / instant analogue > Step by step

3. Aping analogue equipment using basic filtering and EQ

It can be tempting to ladle on every last analogue-modelled plugin you’ve got in the quest for a warm and punchy mixdown… but you can push your mix in that direction with simple EQ and filtering tricks inspired by analogue gear. Start by loading the WAVs named “ProgFunk…” on audio tracks in a 132bpm project, then loop them (this demo isn’t in 4/4 time)

Now copy both the Satson CM and the EQ to the Bass channel, to give it the same flavour. We don’t need Satson CM to be quite as aggressive on the bass, so set High Pass to 1 and Low Pass to 9. The bass track sounds good, but it’s focused more on the upper midrange than it is on serious bass frequencies, so let’s tackle that next…

The drums in this mix have too much treble information, so add a Satson CM to the Drums track and set Low Pass to 7 to smooth away the top-end digital harshness. Set High Pass to 2 to tighten the low end, controlling the excess sub flab. Satson CM’s gentle 6dB filters are perfect for these tasks, and we’ll be using them subtly throughout the mix.

Add another IIEQ Pro CM on the bass track. This time we’ll recreate the famous low-end trick associated with vintage Pultec EQ units. Set Bands 1 and 2 to Low Shelf, both at 200Hz, then boost with 1 and cut with 2 by 10dB. The result is… a flat EQ curve that does nothing to the sound! Kinda pointless, right? Now hit the Series button to switch to Parallel mode.

The drums are more focused, but we’d like to unify the bottom end with the bass guitar. Using graphs of tape machine frequency responses, we can mimic them using EQ. There are plenty of graphs at endino.com/graphs – we base ours on the Ampex MM1200 2-inch 16-track, using a high-pass at 46Hz with a Q of 0.90, and an AnaPeak band at 140Hz, -2.0dB, 2.4Q.

The bands create a sub bass boost and a lower mid cut, giving huge perceived bass and warmth. You can adjust settings separately to hone the effect. Copy Satson CM and the tape-curve IIEQ Pro CM from the Bass track to the remaining tracks (including the master), then finalise with your favourite analogue-style EQ, tape sim and compression on the master bus.

Five of the best analogue-style EQs

SoundToys Sie-Q

N/A » N/A » $149 Clearly not content to slap their name on yet another 1073 or Pultec clone, Soundtoys’ first EQ plugin recreates the w295b EQ module from a 60s Siemens Sitral console. Improvements include fully sweepable gain rather than stepped selections, and adjustable drive for adding juicy analogue saturation.

www.soundtoys.com

Slate Digital Virtual Mix Rack

214 » 9/10 » $199 No roster of analogue EQs would be complete without an SSL-alike, and FG-S is one of the finest, found in Slate Digital’s Virtual Mix Rack package. It works just like the real thing, with a high-pass filter, low and high shelves switchable to bell shapes, and two midrange peaking filters. Powerful, clean and musical.

PSP Audioware ClassicQ

N/A » N/A » $69 Developers might be fixated on recreating gear from big-name brands like SSL, API and Neve emulations, but Polish DSP veterans PSP picked out a British Amek EQ as the inspiration for ClassicQ. It features saturation and a switchable transformer simulation for subtlesounding low-end bloom.

Sonimus Burnley 73

cm226 » 10/10 » $59 The Neve 1073 is one of the all-time greats, comprising a preamp with incrediblesounding drive and powerful, muscular EQ. With a spot-on sound and smart modern additions like band bypass, pop-up parameter labelling, and level-compensated drive, this recreation from Sonimus is hard not to recommend.

N/A » N/A » $99 An off-shoot of the main Kush brand, Sly-Fi’s ‘triple-mode’ EQ is inspired by the sound of two classic API hardware equalisers, switchable with the A/B setting. A third mode, UBK, does away with the stepped frequency and gain selectors, allowing completely smooth adjustment. The star of the show, though, is the sumptuous saturation.

www.slatedigital.com

www.pspaudioware.com

www.sonimus.com

www.slyfidigital.com

28 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Sly-Fi Axis

> make music now / instant analogue

Saturation in the mix Saturation is a defining factor in ‘that analogue sound’. It can make sounds fat and beefy, smooth and warm, or crunchy and edgy. Placed strategically on single tracks and buses, it can produce a more cohesive mix. The most obvious effect is the addition of harmonic content, most easily heard on sounds that don’t have much to begin with, such as subby sine basses. By adding upper harmonics, a deep bass that vanishes on smaller speaker systems magically becomes audible. Generally, transistor distortion adds sharpness and crunch, and valve and tape are associated with warmth. Sharp transients can be bothersome, but saturation can effectively control them. Used gently, it can invisibly reduce peaks, gaining headroom, while stronger settings audibly soften and ‘smoosh’ transients while retaining – even emphasising – lower punch and impact. Try it on ticky hi-hats for an audible example.

> Step by step

It’s often best to add saturation early in the signal chain

Saturation is also a form of dynamic control, attenuating loud parts of the signal. Tape in particular has squashy, compression-like qualities, as do some valve saturations.

Each saturation device affects harmonics, transients and dynamics differently, and getting to know yours will help you pick the right one. For example, transformers saturate more at low frequencies. Since transformers are found in the input and output stages of much classic gear, the accumulation of distortion can significantly warm your bottom end. Where you place saturation can make a profound difference. There are no concrete rules, but it generally works well at the start of the chain, perhaps after corrective EQ. For heavier saturation, placing compression first gives more consistent distortion. Saturation placed on group and master buses can add cohesion, but beware that more complex input signals result in increased intermodulation distortion, which is pretty unmusical. This is why single notes distort nicely while chords generate mush and noise.

4. Stacking subtle stages of saturation for a fat and punchy mixdown

By using multiple stages of gentle saturation throughout a mix, you can add firmness, density and texture. Start by loading the WAVs “HipHop…” onto audio tracks in a 95bpm project. Let’s start with the bass – solo it and you’ll hear that it’s basically a sine wave. There’s an extra four bars on the bass track containing one sustained note, which we can use as a test signal for frequency analysis.

Now solo the snare track and add Soundtoys Decapitator to it. Despite the brutal name, it gives great preampstyle saturation if you don’t overdo it. Set Drive to 5 and click through the five distortion Styles (A, E, N, T and P) to hear their differences – hear how they respond dynamically, too. We like mode T, a triode valve sim – pull Drive back to 2.5 for a more subtle effect.

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On the bass track, add an analyser plugin like Vengeance’s Scope CM in Spectrum mode to see the single harmonic of the bassline. Add 6X-500 CM before it and increase Gain as shown. This preamp transistor distortion adds odd harmonics. Now bypass it and do the same with Premix CM – we can see that this valve sim adds plenty of even harmonics, too.

The distortion has had two undesirable effects: the snare is louder and its transient not as punchy. To fix it, pull Output down to -4dB to compensate for the level change, and pull down Mix to 85% (click the knob labels to show their values) to blend some of the dry, undistorted signal back in. This parallel distortion technique is very useful for preserving punch.

Next we try Slate Digital’s Virtual Tape Machines, which adds a strong third harmonic, along with tape artefacts like hiss. This one works best for us, with Input set to +15dB. Even this fairly mild saturation benefits our bassline, as the added harmonics make it audible on sound systems that can’t fully reproduce the deep fundamental tone.

On the kick drum, we use Decapitator once again, with Drive at 3, 85% Dry/ Wet, and Style A, modelling an Ampex 350 tape preamp. Next, route tracks 1-5 to a group bus so we can glue them together with more saturation with Slate Digital’s Virtual Tape Machines, with Input at 9dB. For a final touch, we use a tape emulation on the master bus. The end result is a deeper, fatter, more analogue mix.

instant analogue / make music now <

analogue saturators A dozen of our favourite plugins for bringing warmth and character to the signal path

Soundtoys

Universal Audio

$199 This brutal box of wave-chopping tricks houses five unofficial emulations: an Ampex 350 tape preamp, Chandler/EMI TG Channel, Neve 1057 input channel, and triode and pentode modes from Thermionic Culture’s Culture Vulture.

$299 Via the power of Universal Audio’s UAD-2 DSP system, Thermionic Culture’s modern-day hardware classic offers UAD users all-valve saturation. The plugin also sports a dry/wet mix function that the original unit lacks.

Decapitator

Culture Vulture

www.soundtoys.com

www.uaudio.com

Vertigo Sound

Klanghelm

$299 Developed by Brainworx, this recreates Vertigo’s $8000 saturation station in software, available natively and for UAD. The VSM-3, with its tubelike FET Crusher and gritty Zener Blender, is aimed at serious mixing and mastering uses.

€22 This bargainous plugin, with its rich, warm sound, could be the producer’s equivalent of a winter heating bonus. It’s almost four plugins in one, and each saturation mode – Tube, Digi, Fuzz and Desk – has its own graphics and controls.

Vsm-3

sDrr

www.uaudio.com

www.klanghelm.com

Slate Digital

Softube

$149 Let the virtual reels spin as you choose between 16-track (recording) and 2-track (mastering) machines, two tape formulations, three bias settings and two running speeds. It’s dead easy to use and sounds as tapey as can be.

FREE As simple as can be, and free to boot. With that eponymous shiny knob dialling in saturation amount, the only other thing to decide is whether to flick that switch right beneath it, which excludes bass or treble from the processing.

www.slatedigital.com

www.softube.com

XLN Audio

D16 Group

€80 All you need to retroise any sound, including six distortion colours. TubePair adds traditional tube glow and body; Iron adds transformer girth; Crunch does as its name implies; while Heavy, Zap and AirPressure offer more creative options.

€39 While it was designed primarily as a guitaroriented processor, Redoptor is surprisingly configurable. We’ve had great success using it to heat up synth sounds, drums, vocals and pretty much everything else.

www.xlnaudio.com

www.d16.pl

PSP Audioware

Sonimus

$49 A mini-classic from PSP’s nifty MixPack2. You get three tape and three valve distortions, plus a digital distortion option. The Low enhancer is a secret weapon for reshaping and beefing up the low end, while High softens runaway treble.

$39 Britson recreates the characteristics of a Neve 8014 console for impressively smooth results. To create audible distortion, you’ll need to use a gain plugin before it to drive it harder. Hit the Fat switch for more distortion.

Virtual tape machines

rC-20 retro Color

mixsaturator2

saturation Knob

redoptor

Britson

www.pspaudioware.com

www.sonimus.com

iZotope

u-he

£369 Features the new Vintage Tape – great for mixing and mastering alike. Don’t overlook the Exciter’s valve, tape and transistor modes – reduce it to one band and engage Oversampling for a more authentically analogue experience.

$155 Whether or not you choose to use the associated features of tape deck emulation (flanging, speed control, compansion and more), Satin produces excellent saturation aided by input gain and choice of tape types.

ozone 7 Advanced

www.timespace.com

satin

www.u-he.com February 2017 / Computer musiC / 31

> make music now / instant analogue

Analogue console emulation with plugins Every piece of analogue hardware imbues a signal with warm imperfections as a result of the electrical components within, so when a collection of musical signals arrive at an analogue mixing desk, with its channels upon channels of signal modification devices, all leading to more channels of the same, you can bet it’s gonna add even more character! Input trim and drive lead to insert hardware paths, back in through EQ circuits, compression configurations, auxiliary sends, to outboard effects and back again. Once signals hit the faders, sound can bleed from channel to channel (known as crosstalk). Pretty much all pre-digital pop music was mixed on a hardware mixing desk of some description, so it’s hardly surprising that the familiar sonic nuances of certain desks have become a sought-after effect. As computing power has grown, and track counts have skyrocketed, a more accurate strategy is now used to replicate the complexities of mixing desk circuitry…

Bus driving

By placing a console emulation plugin on every track of the mix, and another on groups or master buses, we can replicate the web of interractions to be found in a real mixing desk. Much of the magic of analogue consoles is down to the cumulative effects of slight discrepancies between multiple channels. We’re not talking about channel strips that combine preamps, EQ and dynamics into a single plugin, but rather the subtle non-linear, saturating effects of transformers, line amps, crosstalk and other distinctions that occur from channel to channel. It might be hard – or even impossible – to detect the flaws on an individual channel, but when it’s all combined together, the subtle effect will

There’s a lot of circuitry in that there desk, and none of it is perfect, adding to the classic analogue sound

often become apparent. Some plugins, like those from Sonimus, also offer output compensation to keep the overall level nice and steady, even when you’re pushing a lot of gain through each stage. As technology advances, we imagine this mixer-style summing DSP will be built directly into your host software’s virtual mixer, bypassing the need for fiddly plugin setups. Console-makers Harrison already integrate the classic sonics of their mixers within their Mixbus DAW; while Studio One 3’s Mix Engine FX technology is gaining plenty of ground.

Sonimus offer different types of plugin to simulate a desk – one for individual channels, and one for the bus

SlATe dIGITAl VIrTuAl ConSole ColleCTIon Comprised of two plugins – one designed to be used per-channel, the other designed to be placed on the master buss, Slate’s VCC takes its cue from five legendary (and carefully unspecified) analogue tube and solid-state consoles. With a minimum of controls, and almost imperceptible individually, they add up to a classic studio sound. www.slatedigital.com 32 / Computer musiC / February 2017

$2 99

$8 0

$1 49

Three great channel summing plugins

PreSonuS CTC-1 ConSole ShAPer

WAVeS non-lIneAr Summer

Just announced as we were going to press this month, CTC-1 is the second of PreSonus’ Mix Engine FX processors for Studio One. When added to a bus (whether a group or master), CTC-1 applies noise, crosstalk and drive to both the individual channels and the bus itself. It’s said to emulate the sonic behaviour of a choice of three consoles: “classic British, vintage tube and custom” models. www.presonus.com

Like the others described here, NLS comes in both channel and buss variants. In this case, the plugin allows the user to choose between on of three meticulously modelled mixers – Spike Stent’s SSL 4000G, Mike Hedges’ legendary TG12345 MkIV (pulled from Abbey Road and used on The Dark Side of the Moon) and Yoad Nevo’s custom Neve 5116. www.waves.com

instant analogue / make music now < > Step by step

5. Essential noise layering tactics

Three of the best vinyl and noise plugins

AudioThing Vinyl Strip

Back in the day, producers were desperate to remove the ever-present noise outputted by analogue equipment, but nowadays the lack of it can expose a sound as overly pristine and ‘digital’. The solution? Blend analogue hiss, hum or noise signals (or all of the above) alongside your shiniest sounds to fake an analogue aesthetic! We’ll start with this digital-sounding track.

This technique isn’t rocket science: drop a sample of noise onto an audio track, load the noise sample into a sampler for MIDI playback, or insert a dedicated noise-outputting plugin on a track (see to the right for three of our faves). Use the track’s volume fader to mix the noise in to taste – find the point where it’s not too overpowering in the mix, but is missed when muted.

226 » 9/10 » $55 This well-equipped channel strip is a must-have tool for injecting old-school flavour and vibe into your channels. Of Vinyl Strip’s six reorderable modules (which include drive, compression, sampler crunch, tone tilting and reverb), our favourite is the fully stocked Vinyl section, for mixing in customisable vinyl noise and crackle into the mix.

www.audiothing.net

Vengeance-Sound VPS Vinylizer

A consistent stream of noise can sound jarring, so help your noise interact with drums and rhythmic material. In this example, the peaks of the main drum beat are triggering subtle sidechain compression over the noise, giving it gentle movement. For cohesion, route the channel into your drum bus, so it gets processed with the rest of the beats.

There’s just something about the warm, dusty sound of a sample ripped from vinyl! To make this clap sound like it’s been lifted from a record, we use the clap’s MIDI note to trigger a vinyl crackle sample layer (taken from 217’s Layering Toolkit pack). The rhythms within pops and clicks can add flavour to a groove, so move the sample start point around until you find the perfect snippet of skip.

214 » 9/10 » £85 (bundle) Part of the Vengeance-Sound’s VPS Essential FX Bundle 2, this virtual ‘ageing’ toolkit places a plethora of noise-outputting generators at your fingertips. Dial in noise hum, rumble, crackle and scratches; customise tone and density; and even change the speed of your virtual record, and switch between line/phono inputs.

www.vengeance-sound.com

iZotope Vinyl

As we’ve mentioned, different types of noise used to build up and compound due to the combined analogue signals and circuits in an all-hardware studio. So, for a truly analogue-sounding mix, pile up different types of noise signals on various channels. We’ve added a hum signal into the mix using iZotope Vinyl.

Here’s a riff from our Bazille CM synth, and an analogue hiss signal from AudioThing VinylStrip. A gate plugin is loaded on the hiss channel, and the riff signal is fed into the gate’s sidechain input. The gate quickly opens over riff transients, adding tiny bursts of noise at the start of each note, ‘ageing’ the modern sound.

N/A » N/A » FREE Throw this fantastic freebie on a track to place it onto a virtual record deck, complete with all the artefacts associated with the medium. You can crank up your warp speed, hum, dust, wear, mechanical noise and age, meaning that you don’t have to use it just for simulating the quirks of the vinyl medium. Vintage vibes incoming!

www.izotope.com

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 33

> make music now / instant analogue > Step by step

6. Sending sounds a century back in time with extreme retroisation

Let’s go all-out and send a pristinely recorded production more than a century back in time. Music production was in its infancy, and recordings were made acoustically, channeling sound waves down a funnel or tube to vibrate a mechanical cutter pressed on the rotating cylinder or disc. Playback used the same principle, but in reverse – there were no microphones, mixers, amps, or speakers!

Next, we’ll recreate the poor dynamic range and distortion performance of wax and shellac mediums. Add Premix CM before Philta CM (placing it after would reintroduce frequencies that the filter has shaved off), and increase Gain to 3 o’clock, setting Output to 9 o’clock to compensate. To give the loop more presence, you can boost the Mid and High knobs to taste.

To get started, load OldLoop 1.wav in an 85bpm project and loop it – we’re going to use free Plugins to recreate those turn-of-the-20th-Century vibes. First things first: put a monoising plugin (such as DeeMonitor with Mid at 0%) on the master bus, as the first recordings were strictly mono.

Mechanical audio playback is prone to wow and flutter – variations in playback speed affecting timing and pitch. We can recreate this with a modulated delay line. Add PSP Audioware cmDelay before PreMix CM. Click its Dry label to disable the dry part of the sound, and click the Filters label to turn off the filters. Set the Delay Time to 5ms and FB to 0.

Bass and treble were practically nonexistent in antique recordings. To mimic this, place a Philta CM next on the master bus with Lowpass at 3000Hz and Highpass at 300Hz. Set both Slopes to 48dB for a brutally sharp cutoff. You may need to fine-tune the exact filter settings to suit the sound source, but this is a good starting point.

Now turn LFO Depth up to maximum, and dial in the LFO Rate to set up a slow wow or a rapid flutter as you prefer – we set it to the maximum value of 15 for flutter. Pull LFO Depth down when you’re done – 75 is enough for us. If you want wow and flutter, just use two cmDelays in series, with different settings.

POWER TIP

>And in reverse order…

What retro recreation would be complete without noise, clicks and pops? Put Vinyl 1.wav and Tape 1.wav on new tracks, disable any tempo-synced looping/warping options, then loop or duplicate the clips. The idea is that the loops do not restart with each bar, as real mechanical noise would be unpredictable. Adjust the tape and noise levels your liking.

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We use sidechain compression to make OldLoop1 duck with each of Vinyl 1’s pops and clicks, and to make Tape 1 duck in response to OldLoop1. Have fun running other sounds through this processing chain and trying different tape/noise loops. Don’t forget to dial in plugin parameters such as filter cutoff frequencies to suit your sound source.

You may have noticed that we created most of our retro processing chain in reverse order, from end to beginning. This is because the processing is so extreme that we need to hear how each stage will be affected by the next in the chain as we’re dialling it in. For example, you might select a noise loop full of sizzling trebly hiss and bassy hum that sounds great on its own, but once you apply aggressive top-and-tail filtering, those elements will be all but silenced. Therefore, you’d need to audition a few loops with the filter in place to find ones that cut through the processing.

instant analogue / make music now < Ageing synthesis Why, oh why, do we so love that old gear? What elusive secrets lurk between those polished wooden end cheeks? Part of the magic is in how the human ear and psyche responds to imperfection. The natural world is far from perfect, so we tend to hear sonic perfection as uninteresting and sterile. Computers are brilliant at doing the same thing in exactly the same way, ad infinitum. Not so, a circuit board full of analogue components. While your software audio editor might be able to generate a sawtooth, square, or triangle waveform, they will all be perfectly, precisely boring. A Minimoog, on the other hand, produces waveforms that only vaguely resemble their names. Saws are slightly spiky and square waves sag, while triangles have the menacing sweep of a shark’s fin. More importantly, they’ll never sound quite the same way twice. And these wobbly waveforms are just the beginning. They must be passed through mixing and amplification circuits that saturate and distort, and filters that are anything but surgical. For example, more often than not, adding resonance would seriously undercut the low frequencies – so much so that the lowpass filter on some classic synths would have better been described as a band-pass filter!

> Step by step

7. Emulating the personality of analogue synths

Much of the character of analogue synths comes from their unstable oscillators. An analogue oscillator is always active, even when it’s not heard, so every note played will likely begin at a different point in the waveform’s cycle. Some digital synths – such as KV331’s SynthMaster CM – allow you to ‘free’ their oscillators.

The keyboards on most legendary analogue synths were little more than glorified on/off switches. Even those capable of detecting note velocity weren’t very good at it, so most players chose to ignore it. For authenticity, then, make sure your synth isn’t responding to the velocity of the notes sent to it… or send all notes at the same velocity.

Old synths were noisy, and got even moreso as they aged. Crackling jacks, scratchy pots and primitive circuits could kick up quite a mess. While you’d be nuts to want to recreate the effects of an intermittent slider, you could give your synth’s noise generator a nudge in order to add a bit of background hiss.

Many of the things we discuss there also apply to emulating analogue synths. For example, you can use distortion or even exciters to add some interesting harmonic imperfections to your analogue waveforms. If you use modular synths, you can insert these effects before the filter to give it something to chew on.

Three of the best free virtual analogue synthesisers

ToGu AudIo lIne TAl-u-no-62

dISCodSP oB-Xd

IChIro TodA SynTh1

Roland’s cut-down line of single-oscillator synths of the early 1980s helped bring polyphony to the masses while carving out a unique and much-vaunted sound all their own. The Juno-60 was arguably the best of the bunch, and is here lovingly recreated in digital form. All of the original’s key features are here, including a beefy sub-oscillator and that rich Roland chorus. www.tal-software.com

Initially developed by 2DAT and Soshi Studio, OB-Xd is, as the name suggests, an emulation of Oberheim’s legendary Oberheim OB-X and OB-Xa, instruments with the raw analogue power to cut through the mighty metallic din of bands like Rush and Van Halen. This free and open-source plugin sounds big, brash and ballsy, and you can now customise the GUI, too. www.discodsp.com

This recreation of the Nord Lead 2 is the most popular freeware synth out there. It’s a twooscillator deign with frequency, pulse width and ring modulation options, sync, plus a two-stage envelope. PC users get it in 32 and 64-bit versions, while Mac only offers 32. We did a huge How to use guide on Synth1 back in issue 214, so if you haven’t got your head around it yet, you’ve got no excuse now! bit.ly/ITSynth1

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> make music now / instant analogue > Step by step

8. Synthesising pitch-wavering analogue chords

Let’s reverse-engineer the imperfections of an old analogue synth and create warm, retro chords using Plugins and a little know-how. Call up Synapse Audio’s Dune CM on a new MIDI track in your DAW, hit its Bank B button to initialise the synth, and drop Retro Chords.mid onto this MIDI channel to trigger the synth. Plonk a limiter on the master bus to prevent clipping.

Our patch’s pitch now has a subtle ‘beating’ character, yet its timbre is still rather bright and digital-sounding – but instead of reaching for an obvious EQ or filter, let’s use the fantastic PSP cmDelay (again, free in Plugins) to add a bit of darkness, pitch modulation and analogue warmth. Load up a new instance on the Dune CM channel.

For ambience, load a fresh cmDelay on a new aux return track, then send the Dune CM channel to the return by 0dB. Deactivate cmDelay’s Dry signal, then set a 130ms Delay Time and Feedback (FB) of around 88. Pan the main synth channel slightly out to 6L, then pan the delay return channel to 35R. Voila simple, retro-style width without any glossy widening techniques!

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The oscillator section’s Osc Mix knob is fully anticlockwise by default, giving us a simple single-oscillator sawtooth. First, we’ll use an LFO to slowly modulate the pitch of this oscillator, to emulate the unstable pitch drift and inconsistency of an analogue oscillator. Head into the Mod Matrix 1>12 tab, then set row 2’s Source to LFO 1, an Amount of -10, and a Destination of Osc 1 Fine.

As we only want to hear the wet signal, click on the Output » Dry header to deactivate the dry signal. Now we’ll shape the chords’ tone with cmDelay’s high- and low-pass filters – by default, these are band-passing our sound a little too much, so dial back the low-pass knob to 20Hz and high-pass to 10kHz. Push Input Gain up to 4dB to level the output against the unprocessed signal.

As we’ve explored elsewhere, hum and noise layers are great for adding the illusion of real analogue flavour within a mix. Drop Hum and Fizz.wav – a combined audio bounce of system hum and an analogue noise floor – onto a new audio channel. Route the chords and noise to a new group channel, remove the chords’ delay send, then pipe the entire group to the delay aux by 0dB.

This pitch modulation is way too fast, so head over to the LFO section and set LFO 1’s Rate to the minimum 0.1Hz. This LFO is currently set to a Sine shape, which is a little formulaic – switch the shape to the bottom random type for more unpredictable pitch wavering. Next, turn the Noise oscillator’s Level up to a subtle 6% for slight top-end sizzle.

The tape delay-emulating cmDelay features an LFO for modulating the Delay Time, which in turn modulates the pitch of the delays – an effect we can use to add further subtle pitch ‘warbling’ to our synth chords. Crank up the LFO Depth knob to 80, then set a fast Delay Time of around 0004. Now alter the LFO Rate to taste – we like a setting of between 0.5Hz and 1Hz. Very Boards of Canada!

For some gentle gluing saturation, insert HoRNet’s Graffio CM on the group, and set Saturator Gain to 8dB and output Level to -3dB. To finish, we’ll load Satson CM after Graffio CM before pulling its Low Pass knob back to 3 o’clock, removing any trace of treble and digital harshness. To finish, A/B between the init Dune CM patch and the final sound to hear the obvious ageing!

instant analogue / make music now <

Ageing synthesis: the filter

Three fabulous analogue-style filter plugins

Cytomic The Drop

214 » 10/10 » $99 The Drop is a one-stop shop for vintage filters. Cytomic have modelled the filters from two Roland synths (the SH-101 and Juno-6), Moog’s Prodigy, Korg’s MS-20 MkI and MkII, the Oxford Synthesiser Company’s OSCar, and their own state-variable filter. You get two at a time, and loads of drive to make them grunt, growl and scream

A filter isn’t just a filter – different hardware employs different designs

> Technique

www.cytomic.com

Focus on the filter

Not all filters are created equal, but a few are bona fide classics. There is, of course, Moog’s famous transistor ladder circuit with its characteristic resonance and steep 24dB cutoff. Roland’s TB-303, with its aggressive squelch, is often misidentified as an 18dB filter but is in fact also a 24dB job, albeit one that relied on diodes rather than transistors. Likewise, EMS’ legendary Synthi A and VCS 3

made use of diodes to fashion a recognisable tone. Ditto for the Steiner-Parker filter, now experiencing something of a renaissance thanks to its use in Arturia’s Brute range. Each of these designs are beloved for their individual character, but all of them share the warm, sometimes gritty and subtly unpredictable behaviour identified with vintage analogue circuitry.

UAD Moog Multimode Filter

138 » 10/10 » £149 Get the best of Robert Moog’s classic filter designs, along with that used on Moog’s modern Minimoog Voyager synthesiser in one slick UAD-powered plugin that adds drive and an LFO for creating interesting, evolving timbres. As is usually the case for UA, the emulation is dead-on, and it’s even got the official go-ahead from Moog themselves.

www.uaudio.com

Moog Filtatron

> Technique

Just passin’ through

Though low-pass filters are universally revered, many instruments also include other types. Roland and ARP both paired their low-pass filters with a high-pass variant, effectively creating a band-pass filter in the process. Some modern synths, such as Elektron’s Analog Four, offer dedicated

low-pass filters and another multimode filter that might include high-pass, low-pass, band-pass and notch filters with a choice of cutoff slopes. Instruments like these offer more sound-shaping power and push the signal through yet another analogue circuit, providing even more of that retro mojo.

159 » 9/10 » $7.99 Is that a Moog in your pocket, or are you just ‘appy to see us? Moog have made a significant splash in the world of portable computing devices with their Animoog and Model 15 apps. Before those modern classics, there was Filtatron, a low-cost Fooger-style filter for iOS. Built-in sampling and extensive MIDI control top off a righteous relic.

www.moogmusic.com

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 39

> make music now / instant analogue

5 of the best oldschool effects

> Step by step

9. Tips on using analogue effects

Audio Damage Ratshack Reverb

N/A » N/A » $29.99 Many a young American muso got their first taste of effects with the Radio Shack’s Realistic brand reverb unit. A desktop device with four sliders, it was actually an analogue delay box, and Audio Damage have created this keen simulation as a tribute.

www.audiodamage.com

Part of the sound of vintage analogue recordings comes from the limitations of old gear. A finite number of tape tracks meant that many tracks were recorded in mono. In fact, some ancient consoles offered only left, right, and middle pan positions. We can use plugins like Brainworx bx_solo to mono-ise a track.

Old-school engineers weren’t afraid to commit effects to tape. We can give our tracks a slathering of tape saturation using a tape simulation plugin. There are plenty of high-end models to choose from, but this convolution-based effect from CDSoundmaster does the job nicely – and does it for free.

iZotope Trash 2

187 » 9/10 » $75 Ostensibly designed for guitarists, Trash 2 sounds great on just about anything you plumb through it. Use it to add a hint of analogue warmth or to utterly destroy your signal. It’s packed with over 60 distortion algorithms.

www.timespace.com

Softube Spring Reverb

N/A » N/A » $99 Before digital reverbs hit the scene, gigging musicians had to use spring reverbs, in which suspended metal springs vaguely simulated an acoustic space. Softube have recreated the metallic sound of those old built-in effects in this cross-platform plugin.

www.softube.com

Flangers, phasers and chorus effects are all popular ways to add some excitement to a track, but most modern plugin variants take advantage of stereo panning to beef up the sound. Most vintage effects – particularly those aimed at guitarists – were mono. Keep this in mind when attempting to create that vintage analogue tone.

Speaking of flanging, it’s worth noting that the very name of the process is derived from the effect of physically applying pressure to the tape on a reel as it spins through the recorder. Some flanging may occur naturally when using tape, so you might try adding a subtle flanging effect to your tracks to instantly age your ‘tape’.

ValhallaDSP ÜberMod

177 » 10/10 » $50 A storehouse of time and pitch-based analogue effects, ÜberMod can be used to generate everything from convincing bucket-brigade analogue delays to thick, gooey choruses, reverse reverbs and a bunch of things you’ve probably not yet imagined.

www.valhalladsp.com

Blue Cat Audio Blue Cat’s Phaser

N/A » N/A » FREE Though not modelled after any specific hardware, this has been designed to recapture the thick analogue sound of those old boxes. Get everything from subtle shifting to vertiginous 32-stage maelstroms, for free.

www.bluecataudio.com 40 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Hard panning has fallen out of favour over the years, often seen as a gimmick used to recall stereo-ised versions of early mono records made by the fab four – yet you can achieve some nice vintage sounds by hardpanning a wet delay or reverb signal opposite its dry counterpart.

Back in the days of 8- and 12-bit drum machines, engineers would often run their (inevitably mono) signals through analog fuzz boxes to give them a bit of life. It’s easy to do the same thing with a good distortion plugin. Restraint is key, though – you don’t want to notice the distortion… just add the tiniest colour for thickness.

> make music now / instant analogue

Get analogue on a budget with Plugins every issue of Computer Music comes with our huge suite of VST/Au instruments and effects, including plenty of analogue-style superstars. here’s where to find those circuit-bending emulations hiding within your huge collection

summing things up for heAt: sAtson Cm

you may have seen Sonimus’ Satson and Britson plugins over the last few pages. These and our own version, Satson Cm, were meant to be used per-track and combined on your master bus to subtly suggest the cumulative effects of analogue mixing Put a Satson CM on every track or use it as a one-off effect for adding brash distortion desk circuitry. They’re designed for subtle, underthe-radar warmth, but we’ve often used a single Satson Cm to add extra drive to a signal by pushing up the Gain. use utility plugins before and after to customise the drive amount, plus in and out levels. 42 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Use DeeMonitor CM for vintage mono effects

reign it in with Deemonitor Cm

This simple utility gadget from Dotec-Audio offers a handful of convenient monitoring tools that are designed to help you get a better mix. Among them are three different speaker simulations, including those based on Genelec, Auratone and Yamaha NS-10 monitors. The Auratone simulations are great for imparting a less-than-pristine image to your mixes. You can also use DeeMonitor CM to solo left and right channels. Going further, this plugin can also act as a mid/side utility – great for ‘monoising’ sounds. When the Mid slider is halfway, the balance is unchanged, but pushing it up favours the stereo (sides) signal, and pushing it down leaves only the mono information (the mid portion of the signal).

AuDiffex stA enhAnCer Cm

Before computers democratised recording, many would-be engineers turned to the humble four-track cassette Portastudio. These all-in-one recorders crammed four tracks onto 3.81mm of tape. Needless to say, the high-end response was less than stellar! As a result, many a home recording was forced to employ processors like the Aphex Aural Exciter to inject some extra high frequency harmonics into their tracks before committing them to tape. The effect was a slightly distorted, exaggerated high end that (sort of) made up for the signal loss. It’s worth a shot recreating the effect using modern exciters and enhancers, such as the lovely vintage setting to be found on Audified STA Enhancer CM.

Enhance highs in dull recordings with STA Enhancer CM

ACting on impulse

Convolution reverbs are among the most advanced effects processors available. Unlike traditional algorithmic reverbs that employ lots of jiggerypokery with delay lines to simulate acoustic spaces, a convolution reverb makes use of sampled ‘impulse responses’ to model the acoustic response of existing spaces or hardware devices. They needn’t be restricted to reverb – by their nature, convolution processors can emulate any linear effect that can be sampled. As such, they have become a very popular means to gain access to the sound of rare or expensive equipment.

instant analogue / make music now <

05 Get API character from 6X-500 CM, even if you’re just using the preamp

preAmp pleAsures

API-style modular effects are all the rage these days, putting a wide variety of reasonably priced high-end studio hardware within reach of the bedroom producer. So familiar have the ‘500 series’ modules become that they’re being issued in virtual form. Case in point: lindell Audio and their plugin 6X-500 Cm, a software recreation of the company’s own hardware preamp and eQ combo. use it to add some analogue drive to any track. Gorgeous!

07 Could convolution be the solution to artificial ageing?

As luck would have it, our own Reverberate CM, from LiquidSonics, lets you lob in any impulse you can find (and you can find plenty online). Toss in a response from a favourite vintage preamp, analogue console or tube EQ for some instant vintage voltage.

pulteC mAgiC

It’s the classic trick that helped make the Pulse Techniques Pultec EQP-1A a legend: simultaneously boosting and cutting the same frequencies. It sounds counterproductive, but because of the shape of the Pultec’s boost and cut curves, they don’t cancel each other out, instead working in tandem to tighten up and emphasise selected frequencies. It’s really special on kick drums. Use our own Program EQ CM to try it for yourself. Another famous Pultec trick? Don’t EQ – just run your signal through that gorgeous tube circuit!

Need a Pultec EQ? We’ve got one in

Plugins!

Graffio CM offers three slammin’ flavours of distortion

inCreAse the Aggro!

RP-Distort CM, Tek’it Audio CrossDr CM, Audio Assault’s GrindMachine CM, Mercuriall U530 CM. All of these plugins offer maximum distortion destruction that can be used to simulate everything from overloaded mixer preamps to guitar amps pushed beyond breaking point. But distortion needn’t be restricted to guitar tracks – slap any one of these plugins across your drum mix for incendiary beats, or throw ’em into an insert on your vocal tracks for some throat-shredding 80s Industrial screamfests. Make ol’ Uncle Ohgr proud!

is there An eCho in here?

PSP Audioware have long been masters of analogue emulation, and their mastery is on full display in PSP cmDelay. As effective a delay as it may be, it turns out that we can kill the echo and simply drive signals into its tapestyle limiter for some magnificent magnetic magic. Try it and you’ll be amazed at how your tracks spring to life! Mind you, you shouldn’t forget that it’s still an excellent echo box when you need one.

KiCKing the hornet’s nest

HoRNet’s Graffio CM is a fantastic Swiss – or rather Italian – Army Knife for distorting your signals in a wide variety of ways, offering bit reduction, saturation, and an exciter in one sleek package. It’s the latter two that’ll arouse your inner retro-fetishist – they can be a bit over-the-top, so a light touch is recommended, but the results will be bursting with vintage vibe. Try it on individual tracks or give a light sprinkling to an entire mix.

thump ’n’ pump

Ignite VST have provided us with a dynamite dynamics plugin in the form of Vice One. This righteous red rocker is a kitted-out compressor that can help tame wayward dynamics. It also offers a superb analogue-sounding signal path that can be tapped when things are beginning to sound a little too in-the-box. It sounds as expensive as it looks, but lucky you, you get it for free!

Rob Papen RP-Distort CM is a full-on distortion toolbox

De-ess to impress

Toneboosters’ Sibalance CM is a sweet de-esser with a few tricks up its sleeves; one of those tricks is a nifty setting for removing the harsh high end in a full mix. This works on overly brash or digital-sounding individual tracks as well. We’re particularly fond of throwing it over the top of brittle drum overheads and ear-piercing analogue drum machines.

the soft pArADe

You probably already know that clipping a signal will cause it to take on the characteristics of a square wave – it flattens the wave during the loudest bits. Soft clipping, on the other hand, creates a less brutal flattening of the wave – the corners are roundedoff, if you will. This commonly occurs when overdriving an analogue circuit and can be pleasant to the ear in small doses. D16 Group’s Frontier limiter offers some lovely analogue soft clipping. If you haven’t tried it, get on it!

Soft clipping is added to Frontier’s limiting talents

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 43

Producer Masterclass

Jacky

The rising tech-house star has taken the club scene by storm with his bass-heavy tracks, so we headed to his Ibiza studio to discover how he makes his floor-filling tracks

44 / computer music / February 2017

producer masterclass / make music now <

Living the DJ dream in Ibiza Although his first release only dropped in 2014, Geordie giant Jacky Maughan has quickly become a mainstay of the tech-house scene. And it’s not just down to luck – his ‘overnight’ success, with support of huge DJs like Sasha, Roger Sanchez and Huxley, and slots at clubs like Eden and Sankeys Ibiza, is the result of plenty of hard work. Jacky left his secure full-time job to throw himself into production, and moved to the party island of Ibiza to get closer to the dance music scene… and that’s exactly where we caught up with the young producer. During the blistering Balearic summer, we tracked Jacky down to find out a few of his studio secrets, and to learn how he went from spreadsheet jockey to ascendant DJ in the space of a few short years.

“I was so buzzin’ I couldn’t sleep that night! … a year after that I decided I didn’t want to work in the bank!” Computer Music: So how did you get to where you are today? A lot of people start out on ‘real instruments’, and some take a while to get their first glimpse of awesome music hardware… so where did it really start for you? Jackie Maughan: “Well, when I was nineteen, I used to go to my uncle’s studio all the time,” Jacky begins. “He’d been

producing for about fifteen years at that point. The studio blew me away because my uncle had a 303, a 909, loads of Korg synths, a Kaoss Pad… all these really cool synths and stuff. He was showed me how everything worked, and that’s when I knew that I wanted to get into it. “I decided to invest in my own decks, which I’ve still got now – some Numark belt drives. You had to shrink the belt down occasionally with hot water, because it would get a bit loose with the tempo! After that, I got some Pioneer CDJ-400s, and six or seven months after that, I started putting on my own parties.” : So you’d been bitten by the bug and you knew the right people… but it’s tough to be able to put all your effort into music. Were you juggling between your nightlife as an aspiring DJ and the daytime persona? JM: “I was working for Barclays at the time, and I put a party on for friends and people at work at Bar Beyond in Newcastle. It wasn’t busy, but I had about 50 or 60 friends come, and I was so buzzin’ I couldn’t sleep that night! We did another one after that which flopped, but at that point I started to learn to produce with Ableton Live. About a year after that I decided I didn’t want to work in the bank! “I knew producing was something that I wanted to do, so I took it on myself to go to uni. The thing was, I didn’t have an A Level in music, so I couldn’t get on the course that I wanted to do – so I had to do an Access to Higher Education course in music. You don’t get any funding from the government, so I had to do three jobs – including DJing on Mondays. I had to be in college every Tuesday at 9am, so every Monday night I only got about three hours sleep!”

: … but you were probably more determined to put the effort in on the course as a result. Did it pay off? JM: “Yeah, in the end I got a place on a foundation degree course afterwards.” : Degree-level courses can be a bit controversial. Often, people say they need to be so academic that you end up learning far more theory than practice. JM: “The stuff I learned was relevant, but the problem was that I didn’t actually get to use Ableton, which was what I wanted to use. We were using Logic, so I did a lot of self-teaching using YouTube. After a couple of years, I had a choice: stay at Newcastle College to do a music enterprise course which is what my uncle did – it’s based around building your own business in the music industry – or make dance music and DJ. “I decided to go to Leeds Met to do a Music Technology course, and because I got a first in the foundation, they let me jump straight onto the last year of that course.” : So did the workload start ratcheting up at that point? Or did you manage to get some good practical opportunities? JM: “I did some work placement for Abbey Road, which was mint, and also made live CDs for Wet Wet Wet and Boyzone at gigs in Leeds – both were absolutely wicked! I got a first, and tried to get about four or five jobs working in a studio, but I didn’t really find that having the degree helped my career prospects. “Doing the courses was useful, because I got to use my spare time, so the experience did help, and during the time I was at uni I got my first release, which really motivated me!”

WatcH tHe ViDeo Jacky shows us how he made the atmospheric title track from his Apache EP in Ableton Live, dispensing valuable production wisdom along the way. Watch the video on your PC or Mac at this URL…

bit.ly/CMjackyPM February 2017 / computer music / 45

> make music now / producer masterclass

Arranging Apache

The secret spray One of Jacky’s sends is called Spray. “I designed this to give the track more energy, especially within the breakdowns and the buildups.” The Spray effect is an Ableton Reverb, with the Diffusion Network set up to attenuate lows and boost highs, creating something like a blast of white noise when a full-frequency signal is sent to it. Jacky groups most of the tracks in the project to a group, and the send level is automated up at the end of each breakdown, creating an intense wash before the drop. The send level drops to zero before the drop so that the kick and bass can punch through.

Harmonising and stereoising the vocal Another method Jacky uses to build energy in the arrangement is to add layers of vocals. “For me, I don’t tend to use long, drawn-out vocals or actual spoken word. With my style of music, I tend to find that little short samples or tiny little cut-up vocals work a lot better. It gives it a bit more of a drive,” says Jacky. “I tend to build them like a pyramid, so the first one

46 / computer music / February 2017

will come in, and then the next one will work in harmony with the first. For the big breakdown, I’ve got two more little vocals in here – I’ve got the same vocal, but I’ve panned one left and one right. It plays once on the left, then twice on the right. That gives the track more of a stereo feel, especially if you’re listening in headphones.”

producer masterclass / make music now <

Silent sidechain triggers Jacky takes the unusual approach of having not one but two silent triggers in his project. One is a rigid 4/4 kick pattern, the other is a copy of the audible kick drum part plus some extra kicks. “The reason I’ve got two different ones is for the pads. I don’t want the pads to use the same pattern as the kick drum, so I’ll sidechain the pads to the normal 4/4, and I’ll sidechain the bassline to the exact same pattern that I’ve got on the kick drum, which means the kick drum and the bassline won’t be clashing at any point.”

Jacky’s top five studio essentials

Apple MacBook Pro

“I tend to be travelling quite a lot, so my MacBook is ideal for producing on the go. I’ve boosted the RAM up to 16GB, and I’ve also recently thrown in a solid-state hard drive so that Ableton Live runs a lot more smoothly.”

apple.com

Synth breakdown “I don’t tend to use a lot of synths. My tracks are mainly driven by the drums and the bassline. but I do use synths – particularly in breakdowns. I used to listen to a lot of trance, so I like to have a big euphoric breakdown.” Jacky selects Rob Papen Blue’s SquarePhase Lead preset, which is high-passed with a 24dB filter at 100Hz. Live’s Auto Filter is used to bring it into the mix with an automated lowpass filter. This opens up until the drop, at which point the synth part finishes.

Beyerdynamic DT 150

“I swear by these cans, and have done since I started producing. They have a great frequency response and are very comfortable over prolonged periods of time. They’re also very affordable, and you can buy individual parts for them, so no need to ever replace the full thing!”

beyerdynamic.com

Akai Professional MPK mini mkII

“I love this keyboard! With 25 keys and pads, both velocity-sensitive, accompanied by eight knobs and a four-way thumbstick, it has everything you need. You can also slip it in your backpack – perfect for producing when you’re on the road.”

akaipro.com

Roland TR-8

“I absolutely adore this drum machine. I don’t think I’ve got the full potential out of it, but so far I’m in love. It’s so much fun. Maybe too much – I’ve found myself playing around for 30 minutes without recording a thing!”

roland.com

Sprinkling on the ear candy Not one for monotony, Jacky keeps his tracks compelling with sound FX and edits: “I do like to use quite a lot of weird sounds and effects. It just gives the track a lot more of an interesting feel, especially for the listener in the club. I find with dance music, being quite linear with regards to the drums and 4/4 beat, it can sometimes get a bit boring if you don’t add some extra sparkly bits on top. It doesn’t have to be anywhere in

particular – it could be before the drop, after the drop, in the middle of the verse…” In this case, Jacky places an FX sample from a Vengeance sample pack before a drop, and cuts out the majority of the other tracks while it plays. “That gives the effect a lot more impact. If you add weird sounds and effects and pull everything else out, it kind of goes off, especially if you’re playing at peak time in a nightclub.”

Akai Professional APC40

“I’ve had this controller for years, and it’s perfect for recording on the fly and getting arrangements down live. It’s a bit old now, but I find it such a versatile bit of kit. It’s not going anywhere!”

akaipro.com

February 2017 / computer music / 47

> make music now / producer masterclass

Jacky made the move from a 9 to 5 job to a life in Ibiza

Getting signed, blowing up, moving on The breakthrough moment for Jacky was scoring a release on tech-house hero Steve Lawler’s label VIVa, which helped him get more gigs and ultimately move to Ibiza in pursuit of more DJ work. Computer Music: So how did the crucial VIVa release come about? Jacky Maughan: “I sent Santé, who has releases on VIVa and all sorts, a track on Facebook, and he was like, ‘I need this track.’ This is an artist I’d been looking up to for years, so for him to say that was a massive motivation for me. I was living in London after uni but couldn’t get a studio job and was working in an Apple Store. The hours were quite long and the shifts were sporadic as well – sometimes I couldn’t actually make gigs, so that was annoying. After about six months, I got a job working as an insurance broker in the city, and the hours were a lot better. In May 2015, I was sent a video of Steve Lawler playing one of my tracks at a festival in Newcastle. I couldn’t believe it. “I tweeted him with the video my mate had sent me. ‘I can’t believe Steve Lawler played my track in my hometown and it went off!’ The next day he tweeted me back ‘It’s my favourite track of the year, let’s get you a release on Viva ASAP’. I remember running around the house screaming like a little girl – it was so overwhelming! At that point I was like, ‘Right, this is it, I’ve got to finish some tracks and make sure I’ve got some really good material to send him.’ 48 / computer music / February 2017

I was working a full-time job, and time was of the essence, but I also wanted to make sure I could spend time with my girlfriend and see my family and friends.” : So you had to squeeze the music in somewhere – how did you fit everything together in the end? JM: “Sometimes I’d get up in the morning and make music between 7 and 8am before I went to work, and when I got to work I took my laptop with me so I could make music during my breaks and when I ate lunch… and at night I’d get back on it! I’d have a few nights off for socialising, then at the weekend, if we didn’t have plans, I’d just make music all the time – I had the motivation to get this EP done. “It took me four months to make this four-track EP because of how little time I had. My work rate is a lot better now, because I’m not working full-time I can

“I remember running around the house screaming like a little girl. It was so overwhelming!”

polish a track off in two or three days and be happy with it. I remember vividly what happened when I sent off the tracks: I was at work, I sent them over at two o’clock on the Monday, then at two minutes after two on Tuesday, I got an email back from VIVa saying they wanted to sign all four tracks for an EP. When it came out, things just snowballed from there!” : So how did you pluck up the courage to take the leap to music as a full-time job? JM: “I just knew I wanted to be serious about this, and I needed to do it. The fees I was getting for DJing weren’t substantial, and I wasn’t getting that many – maybe two or three times a month, so money was really tight. I did have to compromise on a lot of stuff – I didn’t really go out, and I treated music like a 9-5 job. Before, when I was making music at night, I couldn’t spend it with my girlfriend – now I’d make music through the day and we’d have the evening to ourselves, and it took a lot of stress out of our relationship. “Ever since then, I’ve been producing music in the house as my full-time job, and it’s going really well. We moved to Ibiza in May. If you want to be a bit serious about it and get your face out there, you’ve got to be going to the parties and meeting people. It’s one of my favourite things, so just to be out here and going to parties and meeting all the DJs – getting your face out there. It’s priceless.”

producer masterclass / make music now <

Group filtering

20:47

Crafting beats, sculpting kicks and choosing claps

01:22

Like most dance music producers, Jacky tends to start his tracks with the drums. “I’ve been a drummer since I was eight or nine years old, so I find the rhythm section quite important to get right before I move on.” Jacky generally processes his drum sounds with an Ableton’s EQ Eight, a Compressor to shape dynamics, and then another EQ Eight for finetuning after the compressor.

One of Jacky’s production trademarks is to employ extra kicks to add energy to his drops. In the case of Apache, five eighth-note kicks play after the drop, followed by another extra eighthnote kick before the start of the second bar. He auditions several claps over the kicks, and will experiment with layering in an attempt to get the right feel, but for this track he finds a single clap sample that works.

“I’ll tend to look through the bass patches, find one I like the sound of, then manipulate it to sound exactly how I want it to” Beefy bassline

In addition to using his big ‘All’ group for applying ‘Spray’ reverb to create a dramatic effect before the drop, Jacky uses filters to thin out the sound before bringing those frequencies back for maximum impact. EQ Eight is used for this effect, bypassed until the breakdown. When the breakdown plays the effect activates, with a 24dB high-pass filter cutting out the lows, and an automated 12dB low-pass filter that gradually takes out (then reintroduces) the highs. Upon the drop, the EQ is bypassed again, bringing the low-end back in. “This helps give the bassline a more dominant effect as well,” says Jacky.

reverb and delay

31:37

As well as the ‘Spray’ reverb send mentioned earlier, Jacky utilises three more return channels in Live, and he’s got a formula for these that he uses regularly. “On my busses, I tend to have the same ones each time. I’ll use the Focusrite Scarlett Reverb for just a standard reverb, and also two Ping Pong Delays (Ableton Live’s built-in effect). For the first one, it’ll be a 3/16 delay, and the other will be a 4/16 delay.” Jacky notes that the Ping Pong Delay moves the input signal around the stereo panorama, creating a wide effect, and he’ll often send a track to both Ping Pong channels to create an interesting rhythmic ‘bounce’.

14:30

Hats and percussion

06:43

To give his beats that groovy tech-house swing, Jacky uses Live’s Track Delay parameter to stagger some channels slightly later in time. “For hi-hats, I usually add a 10ms delay. When it comes to my snares, I’ll use around 20-25ms. This makes the track a lot groovier.” For Apache, Jacky makes a couple more percussion layers with Native Instruments’ Maschine, composed so that they don’t overlap with one another, creating a full (but not overly-busy) rhythm. He also adds a MIDI shaker part for added top-end energy, manually programming the swing by moving certain notes off the grid.

Big bass sounds are a crucial element of Jacky’s tracks “If you’ve heard some of my tracks in the past, you’ll know that the bassline is quite a dominant part of my music. I use a lot of Rob Papen VSTs, and here I’ve used SubBoomBass. I also use Blue, which has quite a variety of bass presets – I’ll tend to look through the bass patches, find one I like the sound of, then manipulate it to sound exactly how I want it to. I’ll tend to use the same presets, but for each track I’ll tweak it to give it an individual feel.” For Apache, Jacky uses the ‘080 bass: Past today’ preset, which is low-passed with EQ Eight, sidechained compressed using the silent kick channel as the source, low-end boosted with another EQ Eight, then low-pass filtered again with Auto Filter to remove any unwanted top-end added by sidechain compression.

next montH Tearout session with DnB legend Dom & roland

HeAr more

Chugger bit.ly/JackyChugger Get Down bit.ly/JackyGetDown

WWW

vivamusicltd.com soundcloud.com/jacky_music @jacky__music facebook.com/jacky.music.uk

February 2017 / computer music / 49

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February 2017 / COmputER musiC / 51

> free software / acustica audio pink cm

> Free software

Pink CM download

Get shockingly slick tone-shaping with this free plugin, Acustica Audio’s gorgeous analogue-modelled EQ Famous for their breathtakingly realistic virtual recreations of classic outboard mixing processors, Acustica Audio are the revered Italian developers behind Nebula, the popular convolution-style hardware ‘sampling’ plugin; and the gorgeous Acqua range of effects. One of the stars of the Acqua lineup, the API-a-like channel strip Pink, bagged a 10/10 in its review (issue 234), as well as a Performance Award and the prestigious Editor’s Choice Award. We sung its praises as “an indispensable tool for achieving world-class compression, EQ and analogue tone”.

InPUT TRIM adjust input level +/-24dB. The output gain is automatically matched to compensate

OVER Keep this light out of the red to avoid clipping the plugin’s internal circuit

Well, whaddaya know? For the latest Plugin giveaway, the Acustica Audio geniuses have pruned off the equaliser section from Pink to spawn this analogue-emulating toneshaper. Just like the EQ on its bigger brother, Pink CM (VST/AU/AAX) takes inspiration from the API 550A hardware EQ, providing four bands of jaw-dropping analogue boosting and cutting, plus a preamp stage for vintage vibe and character. “But I already have plenty of EQs!”, we hear you cry. Well, we’re sure you do, but Pink CM’s frequency sculpting abilities are a million miles away from your average sterile parametric

HMF Band Boost or attenuate +/-12dB at one of seven frequency areas between 800Hz and 12.5kHz

PREaMP On/OFF Toggle the preamp circuitry on and off

52 / CoMPuter MusiC / February 2017

LF Band Boost or attenuate +/-12dB at one of seven frequency areas between 30Hz and 400z

Get the plugin and the video tutorial on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

bore-fest. Broad-stroke boosts sound naturally musical and sonically satisfying, while cuts carve away unwanted tones with a smoothness you’ll love. Bass lifts add vibey weight to kicks and basslines, while high-mid and treble boosts inject sweetness and character into vocals and beats. With a streamlined set of controls, it’s an equaliser that places supreme sound quality, analogue flavour, good looks and ease of use over overwhelming complexity and an abundance of features. Is it obvious enough that we’re fans of this EQ? Get it on your covermounted disc or download it from our online Vault and install it. Now.

HF Band Boost or attenuate +/-12dB at one of seven frequency areas between 12.5kHz and 20kHz

LMF Band Boost or attenuate +/-12dB at one of seven frequency areas between 75Hz and 1kHz

OUTPUT Set the output signal level between -24dB and +24dB

acustica audio pink cm / free software < > Step by step Getting started with Pink CM

TuTorial

Files

To install Pink CM on your computer, download the latest installers from vault.computermusic.co.uk, then extract the zip file and double-click the installer for your system. The plugin comes in VST and AAX formats for PC, and VST, AU and AAX formats for Mac. As with the full Pink plugin, the developers recommend the latest multicore CPU and 16GB to 128GB of RAM for optimum computer performance.

Insert a new instance of Pink CM on the drum loop’s track. As you can see, the plugin’s slick interface is reasonably straightforward: over to the left is the Input Trim dial, used to set the incoming signal’s level; the centre four knobs provide the core EQ controls for the four main bands; and the Output level knob sits over on the right.

Now to the main EQ section, with its four independent bands: low (LF), lowmid (LMF), high-mid (HMF), and high (HF). Each band has a knob with dual controls: spin the centre circular section to select one of the seven available frequency values, labelled in pink on the outer edge; then turn the knob’s outer collar to boost or cut (+/-12dB) at your defined frequency.

Once you’ve installed Pink CM, two versions will be available to select from your DAW’s plugin list: a ‘regular’ version (named PINKCM), and a zerolatency version (PINKCMZL). The former is fine for most mixing tasks, while the latter is more suitable for recording and tracking situations – at the expense of increased CPU usage.

Let’s now examine each parameter in more detail. The leftmost Input Trim dial allows you to adjust the internal signal level, between values of -24dB and +24dB. When you change this value, you’ll notice that the output level is intelligently compensated to match the output level. Neat, huh?

Aside each band is a square blue toggle button, which acts as both a visual indicator/label for that band and as an on/off switch. By default, all four bands are bell-shaped, with a constant, broad bandwidth. But the low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) bands feature green shelf toggle buttons, which switch the respective band to a shelf when toggled.

Now let’s take a look at the plugin’s basic operation. We’re going to demo its features by shaping the tone of a basic sketch (Track Loop 126bpm.wav, which we’ve included in the Tutorial Files folder). To follow along, drop the audio file on a new audio track in a fresh DAW project, set the BPM to the figure in the filename, then loop up the audio.

Note that all of Pink CM’s parameters (except the toggle buttons) can be returned to the default position by Altclicking. Now punch the Pre toggle button, found under the Input Trim parameter, to change the look of the pink Input Trim dial and activate the input stage’s analogue-modelled preamp circuitry. Crank the Input Trim to push the input signal further into this circuit.

EQ boosts and cuts alter the perceived level of your source sounds, which can fool you into thinking a boost has improved your signal when it mightn’t have, so use the Output knob, which ranges from -24dB to +24dB, to set the plugin’s output level and compensate for level change.

February 2017 / CoMPuter MusiC / 53

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Once you’ve fallen in love with Pink CM, go get the full version. Pink is an A-list EQ, compressor and preamp combo that’s far more than just an emulation of the classic API channel strip. Their other Acqua plugins include deluxe mastering compressor Aquamarine3; supreme channel strip Sand; and legendary British channel strip Lime.

www.acusticaaudio.com 54 / CoMPuter MusiC / February 2017

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New Year

Studio Workout Frequencies sounding flabby? Dynamics getting you down? Get your mixes in shape once and for all with our 20-step program! Everybody loves a good winter holiday – the fun, the food, the lie-ins… and that’s totally fine, people! Nobody should feel guilty about taking a little valuable R&R time out of their studio program. In fact, many scientific studies conducted amongst our friends and colleagues prove conclusively that taking a little studio break is awesome for your mixdowns! After a few weeks of rest, you’ll feel primed to flex those faders, bench that bass and pump out some productions! But be honest – who wants to spend a few weeks working hard in January just to get our sound back to where it was at the end of

December? Why not use this fresh start to push our skills forward, build on our strengths and learn exciting new techniques? Our 20 five-minute studio workouts offer simple twists on essential mixing moves, scientifically engineered new studio supplements and some heavyweight shortcuts the pros don’t want you to know about! Ask yourself this: Have you always wished your bottom had more body; longed for better stereo balance; or held your head in shame while another producer proudly displayed their broad dynamic range? Then this is the program for you! Follow these simple steps for half an

hour a day and we guarantee your mixdowns will glisten in the halogen glow of your studio lighting, shine out of the speakers and make you the envy of your fellow producers. Seriously, these moves are tried and tested and guaranteed to deliver good results exactly as we describe them, but like any good workout, they can (and should) be tailored to your needs, so once you’ve incorporated them into your regular routine, be sure to mix things up a little and see how they can be tweaked to your own studio wants and needs. Okay, let’s strap on those inserts and get ready to pimp our mixdowns, 2017-style! February 2017 / Computer musiC / 57

> make music now / new year studio workout

Tighten up, top and bottom

The most widely-discussed way to guarantee extra mix clarity is to top and tail every channel in your mix with high and low-pass filtering. By chopping the extreme subs and highs that we can’t even hear, your equipment and ears are much better able to distinguish all the elements in between, making the remaining bass punchier and highs clearer. This tip is a common one – but how do you set up this filtering so you don’t thin out a signal too much? Apply these filters in the context of the other mix elements, of course (ie, not in solo)! As your track plays, move the filter’s cutoff just past the point where it removes too much of the signal, then gradually pull it back until you find the sweet spot where the sound still sounds ‘full’ enough. Also, don’t filter everything to extremes without using your ears – for example, highpassing a hi-hat at 300Hz might ruin its thickness and character, especially if you have a minimal, lo-fi, analogue-sounding mix.

Slimming the middle

The majority of mix elements contain some kind of midrange component (200Hz to 6kHz). As all the important elements – kick, drums, upper-bass, vocals, chords, synths, etc – sit in the midrange and compete for space, watch out for midrange buildup in the mix. Treat the midrange like a jigsaw puzzle: decide where to pocket each element, then use filtering, EQ notching/shelving and panning to help parts coexist. Reference your mix on small speakers (like the famous Horrortones or even your phone) to get a quick ’n’ dirty overview of the midrange balance.

03 Check your reflections Reverb is one of the most essential mix processors for adding space, width and character – but it can easily ruin a mix when applied badly. Here are three tricks to tidy almost any reverb via a send

Top and tail reverb with high- and lowcut filtering, leaving space for your mix to breathe while retaining the essence of the reverb. The classic ‘Abbey Road’ setting is a great default: cut the reverb signal below 500Hz and above 10kHz. Then, slowly lower the low-pass in the context of the mix, until you hear the best balance of character and clarity.

58 / Computer musiC / February 2017

For tight reverb that leaves space for transients, either increase the reverb’s pre-delay or add a delay plugin before it on the return channel. Match note values to fit the tempo of your track: 1/64 for tighter verb; 1/32 for bigger vibes. Delay is usually measured in milliseconds, though, so try bit.ly/TempoCalc if you don’t have the maths chops.

A great way to accentuate reverb size while preserving punch and clarity is to apply mid/side EQ to the signal. For example, cut the mid channel of your reverb return to clear out mono information, or cut away some of the side information if the reverb disappears when you sum the mix to mono.

new year studio workout / make music now <

Get broader the right way

Modern mixes are über-wide, but also clean and punchy. A major key to achieving both is taking charge of stereo effects. Synth patches have long been programmed with spectacular stereo effects – presets with impressive, OTT width can sell a synth, after all – but most of the time these wide sounds just end up adding confusion to a mix, especially when you have a number of them playing together. The same goes for many sounds in sample libraries, or samples from other people’s tracks. To take control, remove all stereo effects on synth patches and apply a monoising plugin as the first effect in the chain. You can also do this by soloing either the left or right channel, using a plugin such as Ableton Live’s Utility or our own Dotec-Audio DeeMonitor, found in Plugins. This is because summing the left and right channels down to a mono signal can reveal phase issues, reducing vital punch and body. Next, carefully add your own stereo effects such as chorus, panning, reverb and stereo-widening plugins such as Soundtoys MicroShift or our own SideWidener, building up your mix’s width with precision and accuracy.

a bulge that can really impress

Is the low-end of your kick sounding too thin? Perhaps your main hi-hat element is overly tinny and harsh? Or maybe the high- and low-pass filtering from our first tip is leaving your mix sounding a bit…well, ‘meh’. The solution? Re-focus the extreme highs and lows of a sound by adding a resonant bump at the filter cutoff point! This puts back a little ‘oomph’ at this frequency area. Simple!

automate to accentuate

In sparser sections of your arrangement, many of the remaining elements can sound louder than they do in the busier sections. This can mean that, when everything kicks back in for the all-important drop, those elements will suddenly sound quieter, which can actually lessen the impact of a big arrangement change – even though the overall level has gone up! It’s a useful habit, therefore, to use automation to reduce the level of some mix elements in sparser sections of your track. This often applies to musical elements like guitar or piano, but use your judgement. Apply your level automation using a gain plugin to reduce channel levels (1-3dB is usually plenty), then bypass them via automation during busier sections – it’s often more convenient than using channel volume automation, leaving your faders free for overall adjustments.

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 59

> make music now / new year studio workout

any takers for shapers? Today’s mixes are big, busy and punchy as hell – so be prepared to supplement your mix with transient shaping techniques!

Compressing multiple channels as one can add mix space and coherence. There are several ways to group signals for easy mixing and compression. One tactic is to group parts according to frequency (bass, low-mid, high-mid and treble); another, more popular method is to group channels according to type (lead vocals, backing vocals, drums etc). This allows similar elements to gel and move together, rather than having a messy mix full of sounds. Apply subtle compression to each group – a good starting point is a 4:1 ratio with medium attack and release, with the threshold set for 1-2dB of reduction.

09 1

If your drum transients aren’t cutting through, try a transient shaper to enhance the attack, then apply strong limiting after. By forcing the transient into the limiter, you can create punch and power that doesn’t mess with the sound’s headroom.

If you want key elements such as kicks and snares to punch through cleanly, it can help to move other sharp transients out of the way for them. Try attenuating other elements with sharp transients that occur at the same time, using level automation, sidechain ducking or a volume-shaping plugin.

60 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Be like your gym heroes

We all know how important it is to compare our mixes against professional releases, right? We can take referencing to the next level using Sample Magic’s Magic AB 2 plugin. First, apply a 12dB low-pass filter set to 300Hz after Magic AB 2. Next, assign separate keyboard or MIDI control buttons to the filter bypass and the A/B toggle button in Magic AB 2. Now use these two simple button presses to flick back and forth between your mix and the reference track, and to engage the low-pass filter – ideal for comparing the bass end of your track against the reference, as well as the entire frequency range.

10 On stereo channels and groups, use Flux’s free, mid/side-capable BitterSweet 3 – first to pick out and reduce transients in the side signal; then, using another instance, to target and accentuate the transients in the mid. This enhances mono punch and stereo separation.

Join a group

Sculpt the sides

Today’s radio mixes have tremendous punch and über-wide stereo width, while retaining crystal-clear separation throughout – so here’s a nifty mid/side processing trick to achieve this across your groups and/or master bus. To begin, add a mid/side EQ and cut roughly -3dB from the mid signal at around 500-750Hz. Following that, insert a multiband M/S limiter (or

compressor capable of 20:1 ratio). On the mid signal, create a band starting at 1.5kHz and upwards, then apply around 1.5dB of gain reduction to put the punch back in. Watch our video to see and hear this in action. This is very much an ‘icing on the cake’ effect, so only add it when the rest of your mix is working well. And if you’ve used this on the master but are having somebody else master your track, be sure to supply the mastering engineer with two versions: one with and one without the master effect.

new year studio workout / make music now <

10 quick mixercises for 2017 FADER Pull-DOwnS / Pull-uPS If you’ve mixed your track with compression applied to the master, disengage it, pull all your channel faders right down and set all of the levels from scratch, attempting to achieve the same balance as when you had the compression applied. Hint: you can, and it will be better for it! And even if you didn’t have compression applied, do this anyway!

DOn’T OvER-ExERT kIckS & SnARES For punchy kicks and snares that slice through cleanly without being too loud or harsh, start by adding a sidechain-enabled compressor to your bass (using kick and snare as the trigger). Set very fast Attack and Release times, and reduce the Threshold until you achieve 25-30dB of attenuation (ie, ‘a lot’). Now apply a high-pass filter to the sidechain signal and raise the cutoff (thus isolating the transient) until the kick/snare ‘crack’ cuts through without audibly affecting the bass level (usually above 1kHz). Now copy this setting to every musical channel in your mix.

ImPRESS wITH THE RIGHT TOP Getting hats to sit cleanly in a mix is essential to today’s bright, tight, phat mixes, but it can be hard to accomplish in a busy arrangement. For smooth hats that sit nicely without being harsh, begin with the following default EQ settings: a low-cut below 300-500Hz, 2-5dB notch cuts at 270Hz and 2.5kHz, a shelf boost of 1.5-3.5dB at 7kHz and a high-cut above 15kHz. This will accentuate the lower-mids and the high-end, allowing the hats to slot nicely into most modern electronic mixes.

QuIckly bulk uP bASS For dynamic bass with solid sub-frequency weight, apply a multiband compressor set to squash only 150Hz and below. By default, place this after EQ and other compression/ limiting but before any sidechain compression being used to pump the bass or duck for transients.

PuncHInG bElOw THE bElT For punchier subs, use a plugin to mono the signal below 100Hz on every single

Check your processing chains for EQ and compression, and see if swapping them around makes a difference

stereo channel in your mix (and your master). The cumulative effect is subtle but important.

SwAPPInG STRATEGIES Pro mixing engineers know that where you place EQ (before or after compression) has a big impact on the way the compressor reacts, but there’s a reason why in most channel strips the default is EQ first: the response is normally smoother and tighter. With the full mix playing, look through your setup, and in any situation where you have a compressor placed before an EQ, try switching them around. If your mix sounds a little cleaner, keep the change. Cumulatively, it will probably improve the mix.

TwO-HAnD ExPAnDER If you’re fond of EQ boosts to bring out certain sounds in the mix, instead try multiband upwards expansion to dynamically enhance the desired frequencies. Xfer Records’ free plugin, OTT (based on the popular OTT preset setting for Live’s Multiband Dynamics device), is great for this – slap it on, pull back the Depth, then adjust the other parameters to taste!

FOR THE SmOOTHER PARTS To enhance stereo width and mono punch, look for any stereo channel that’s not meant to be punchy (pads, backing vocals etc) and use a mid/side EQ to notch out 1-3dB around 750Hz-1kHz from the mid signal. This will carve space for the punchy mono elements and vocals in the mono signal and impart distinct identity for the stereo.

Put more attack into your bass end by thinking mono

Xfer’s OTT offers multiband up/down compression

270Hz on every single channel. And when not having your track mastered, do the same to your master. Even applied blindly this will improve 99% of non-pro mixes, creating definite space between bass and mid. For final tailoring, A/B with pro reference tracks to see if you need to put some character back in at this frequency on some channels (see tip 9 on the previous page).

lOw-FREQuEncy lIFTInG

STEREO SuPPlEmEnT OvERDOSE

Almost every non-pro mix suffers from the same complaint: insufficient separation between bass and midrange. This is surprisingly easy to fix! Go through your entire mix and remove -2-5dB at

Artificial stereo widening effects can add harshness. Wherever you’ve used one, try adding an M/S EQ afterwards, and apply highshelf attenuation at 10-12kHz to the side signal to soften the results. February 2017 / Computer musiC / 61

multiband masterclass / make music now <

MUlTIBand MASTERCLASS We’ll show you how to hit the target every time with these frequency-specific processors

download Watch every video and get the audio demos on your PC/Mac: vault.computermusic.co.uk

Different frequency areas have varying effects on our listening experiences: bass provides weight, treble provides sparkle and fizz, low midrange provides drive, and upper midrange provides bite. As our productions become more sophisticated, we come to recognise the role each frequency band plays in our work, and with that awareness, we learn the value of seeing each frequency area as a separate entity – part of the whole, but with separate needs and considerations. Whereas stereo widening of the upper frequency content of a sound might be beneficial, the same stereo width applied to bass might be disorientating. A long, warm reverb may suit the midrange well, but when applied to the treble, you could be left with too much ‘air’ or oversweetness. Multiband processors are the

answer – by splitting the frequency range before applying processing, we can make a surgical strike only where it’s necessary. Perhaps the most popular (or best-known) processor of this kind is the multiband compressor, which applies different strengths of dynamic control over each band. Multiband compressors are popular with mastering engineers, but they’re also adept at controlling individual mix elements with rich frequency content, such as drum groups or rich pads. Throughout this feature, we’re going to lift the lid on a broad selection of multiband techniques, both to help craft mixes and to assess their creative qualities. These tools can help launch new track ideas and make their presence felt early in the production process, whatever type of music you’re making. February 2017 / CoMpUTer MUsIC / 63

> make music now / multiband masterclass

Battle of the bands So when should you use a multiband compressor, exactly? As with all matters relating to production, the answer lies primarily with your ears… but understanding some mixing theory will help you make better choices. Take the example of multiband compression across a track’s master channel. Hard-hitting bass elements contain more energy than the rest of the mix does, and so these huge lows will trigger a ‘regular’, full-band compressor’s gain reduction first. When the lows are in charge of the whole mix, high-frequency content is the first victim. Sure, this ‘pumping’ or ‘ducking’ effect can be a useful thing, adding flavour to a dance track, but it’s often undesirable. With a multiband compressor, on the other hand, the dynamic processes applied to the top end of a mix can be applied independent of a

band affecting the bass, and as a result, the pumping side effects can be avoided. How many bands you need will vary from one situation to another. For example, if you’re compressing a drums submix, it might be advantageous to use two or three bands, each compressing different areas by slightly different amounts. On the other hand, a vocal featuring

“Having multiple bands can become exponentially more difficult to control”

excessively-sibilant high-mid frequencies may only require a single band of high-mid compression (using, say, a de-esser), which will leave the signal’s other frequencies untouched. Our advice? Don’t make life difficult for yourself by using more bands than necessary! A single stereo compressor is hard enough to set up for optimum results, so dialling in multiple bands can become exponentially more difficult. Although there are cases where you may need to pull out all the stops with multiband compression, we’d recommend you revisit the source sound if you’re activating lots and lots of separate bands. Whenever possible, set up both a stereo processor and its multiband equivalent to compare the performance of each processor side by side, to see if the multiband variant is giving you the result you want.

> Step by step 1. Bringing a track into balance using multiband processing

TuTorial

Files

This track has a nice, dark flavour, but the bass threatens to suck all the energy downwards. We want to enhance crackle and presence at the top while still preserving energy in the bottom end. Here’s a single band in FabFilter Pro-MB, operating between 53Hz and 190Hz. The Threshold is set low enough to level out the entire band, and Ratio is set at 3.9:1. We attenuate by 6dB using the Range dial, then boost the band output by 1.37dB.

We create a fourth treble band (purple). We want plenty of sizzle at the top of the mix, and this band contains the hi-hat and the upper harmonics of the ‘ticking’ loops. We drop Threshold to catch most of the content here, and use a Ratio of 3.63:1. We set Range at 1.5dB and boost this band’s Output level by the same amount.

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The low-mid contains plenty of content. It has bass and low arp ‘bite’, but it also features plenty of the melancholy synth lead – so we need to be careful. We set a fairly low Threshold, Ratio at 4.2:1, then a Range of -6dB to attenuate by that amount. To bring the volume up to the desired level, we increase this band’s Output to 1.5dB. You can hear an audio file of this band soloed in Tutorial Files.

Next, we match our Pro-MB frequency bands and crossover values in iZotope’s Ozone 7 Imager, which we’re going to use to increase stereo width. We narrow the bass band to make the bottom end mono-compatible, and keep the lowmids at their default setting. For upper width, the upper midrange and treble bands are widened to settings of 36.7 and 50.6 respectively.

Next, we’re focusing on upper frequency bands. We create an upper midrange band with a boundary threshold at 4.74kHz. The (pink) upper midrange is sitting nicely; we don’t want an overabundance of energy here, as the track is purposely quite dark, so we set a Ratio of 4:1, and Threshold to catch only the loudest peaks. We don’t need to add much Output here; around 0.5dB works well.

To complete our master processing, we call up FabFilter’s Pro-L limiter. We’re capping the Output level at -0.1dB, but we’re driving the Limiter quite hard by adding a little over 5dB of extra input Gain. Limiting can change a track’s dynamics a lot, so you might need to make multiband compression tweaks after setting up your output limiter.

multiband masterclass / make music now < Multiband compression on vocals Multiband compression can shape or suppress independent frequency regions of a signal, making it the ideal tool for controlling dynamic inconsistency across different frequency areas. The human voice is inherently dynamic across the tonal spectrum, so it makes sense that a multiband processor is often recruited for vocal processing duties, for both corrective and creative reasons. You’re probably already familiar with one type of vocal multiband compression, used to suppress harsh ‘ess’ and ‘tee’ noises. Some de-essers are just ‘regular’ compressors triggered by sibilant frequencies, but many de-essing plugins can also target specific frequency regions. In a corrective context, a vocal recording just might not be up to scratch. In this less-than-ideal situation, multiband compression is a great tool for flattening level inconsistencies that result from recording in a bad-sounding room. Vocal compression can also be used for stylistic reasons. In modern pop music, we’re used to hearing thick, tonally-even vocals that slice through the mix. By levelling out specific frequency ranges, such as the sensitive 2-4kHz area and the 200Hz ‘oomph’ regions, the vocal is given a consistency and depth that we’re used to hearing in our favourite commercial records.

> Step by step 2. Vocal cleanup with multiband compression

Here’s a vocal that we’ve mixed using a typical chain of plugins. An SSL E Channel strip is shaping tone and dynamics, while a Softube CL 1B is offering a little more compression, to even out dynamics and help the part sit in the mix. Boosting the Air band of the UAD Maag EQ4 adds treble brightness and sheen.

If you don’t own a dedicated de-esser, a multiband compressor can achieve the same result. To demonstrate, we’ll bypass SuprEsser and fire up FabFilter’s Pro-MB. We focus a band on the sibilant frequency range, and use a little compression to pull down the targeted frequencies when the level breaches the band’s threshold.

The EQ4 lifts the brightness of the vocal, but this also amplifies harsh ‘ess’ frequencies (ie, sibilance), so we set up the Oxford SuprEsser to deal with this. It’s a band-specific compressor that reduces the input signal within a specific band. We set it up to reduce the sibilant frequencies.

The vocal’s air is now balanced – we’ve added sufficient brightness without exacerbating sibilance – but this highlights the fact that the ‘body’ in the tone lower down isn’t as consistent. We address this by compressing this area with a second band, using set a longer Release Time for a more natural-sounding recovery.

> Step by step 3. Controlling bass sounds with multiband compression

When compressing bass with a compressor, low frequencies trigger gain reduction first, which can disrupt tonal balance. Multiband compression is the solution – we’re compressing the 0-105Hz area (red) with a Ratio of 4.5:1 and Threshold of -43dB. Carefully set slow Attack and Release times to avoid distortion – we go for 65ms and 92.8ms.

The dynamics of the low-mid region (orange) also needs controlling, so we set Threshold at -25dB and Ratio of 3.2:1. Attack time is quicker here, at just 2.2ms, while Release works well at 53ms. The gain reduction has made this region quieter, so a Makeup Gain of 2dB brings the band’s level back up.

The midrange band (yellow) complements the low-mids, but benefits from a touch of compression. We set Threshold at -48dB, and Ratio to 2.8:1; Attack is 25ms and Release is 94ms. Gain is set at 2.8dB to bring up the level. Check out Tutorial Files to hear all three bands in isolation, then together.

February 2017 / CoMpUTer MUsIC / 65

> make music now / multiband masterclass > Step by step 4. Creative multiband distortion and saturation

Here are three separate drum tracks – kick, snare and hats – that are all grouped to a bus. We set up FXpansion’s Maul multiband distortion on this bus, then we load the JFET model to the bass band, with Drive of 60%, and a low band frequency of 365Hz. Dry/Wet balance is 58% Wet, to slightly tame the effect.

We want to add aggression and sizzle to the mid band, so we select the Clip Rect from the Clipper options. We add plenty of Drive, but, as this treatment is so aggressive, we dial back the Wet balance to just 14%. With a duller tone and ‘body’ favoured over ‘bite’, this brings a warm, saturated aggression.

> Step by step 5. Breathing life into higher frequency bands

For the high band, we’re favouring a Bit Reduction treatment, which adds trashy grit to the high end. We use less drive on this band, to give more bite and a brighter overall tone. The effect is too much, so we dial back the distortion’s overall Dry/Wet balance to just 30% Wet.

Four more creative multiband uses > Pads often cover a broad frequency range. Separate a pad’s signal into its constituent frequency bands before introducing tonal movement using LFO-driven filtering – so each band’s tone ‘swims’ and moves at different speeds!

We start with a fairly simple five-part track – kick, bass, a stab sound (which also features a reversed version) and a descending pluck sequence. The track features an output channel strip consisting of EQ, compression and limiting, but a processing slot has been left empty before the output limiter.

We can randomise the upper-mid band’s processing with the Random button (one is available for each band). The iteration we’ve chosen creates some pleasing glitches, but it also introduces variation into the pattern, producing unexpected echoes and tone shifts. In Tutorial Files, you can hear both mid bands, with low and high bands muted.

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Into this space, we insert Melda MMultiBand Rhythmizer, which allows sequences of time, volume and filter data to be assigned to frequency bands. We set up a 4-band preset and assign Simple 1 to the low-mid frequency band. This produces a glitch in the rhythm assigned to this frequency area.

We round things out with a ticky pattern for the high band. This benefits from a -4.0000 setting in the Scratch bar, making it unpredictable, whilst the Dry/ Wet balance is set at 75% Wet. When we bring all four bands together (hear it in the Tutorial Files), the bass retains its unprocessed solidity, while interest has been added to all other frequency bands.

> When dialling in multiband compression, be patient when setting attack and release times. The energy in different frequency areas means that sub bass frequencies will respond differently to low midrange and higher midrange frequencies, whether across a whole mix or over a single sound (a bass part, for example). > If you’re working with a stereo imager, apply different values to different frequency areas. Increasing the stereo width of frequency content below approximately 120Hz usually unsettles a mix; so narrowing a mix here often works well. Highmid and treble content can cope with much more stereo widening. > When working with fullfrequency percussive signals such as full drum loops or breakbeats, a multiband transient shaper (such as iZotope Alloy 2 or JST Transify) can be used to customise the punch and snap of specific parts within the signal. For example, boosting the attack of the midrange will give a snare’s body more crack, leaving the lows of the kick untouched.

multiband masterclass / make music now < > Step by step 6. How to split a signal into separate bands manually

We’ve got a track with a few elements and we want to set up frequencyspecific effects to a number of bands. Rather than using a multiband processor, we’re going to split our mix up manually. We start by switching off direct outputs from each mix channel, and instead send every track of our mix to four auxiliaries.

We’re going to start by adding a delay effect to the upper midrange. We use Waves’ H-Delay, set to a time of dotted eighth-notes (1/8). To ensure that the Delay taps only respond to and generate echoes within the chosen frequency range, we narrow the plugin’s filters to match the EQ assigned to this band.

At the moment, all of these auxiliaries are ‘full-frequency’, but we want to make each one fit a specific group of frequencies. We’re going to use four instances of FabFilter Pro-Q 2 EQ to create each of these bands. The first – Auxiliary 1 – is our bass band, which features a High Cut filter (with a 24dB/ octave slope) at 120Hz.

We want to add a splash of sheen to the top end, so we add UVI’s Sparkverb reverb plugin to this auxiliary channel. As with H-Delay in the previous step, a 100% wet signal balance will be too much, so we’re setting a Dry/Wet of 40%. This adds air and space to the highest frequencies in isolation, without muddying up any of the lower frequencies.

The low midrange band allows frequencies between 120Hz and 700Hz, while the third auxiliary’s EQ is for frequencies between 700Hz and 3.9kHz. The final band is for high frequency content above 3.9kHz. Immediately, we can balance the volume of each band by adjusting the auxiliary faders for each frequency group if necessary.

Just because we’ve separated bands, it doesn’t mean we can’t still use additional auxiliaries. From the low-mid band, we set up a new auxiliary, using iZotope Alloy 2 to provide more midrange drive. We can use this auxiliary’s fader to set the right volume balance. Lastly, we compress the bass band for fatness.

> Step by step 7. Designing your own multiband setups with Blue Cat MB-7 Mixer 2

Here’s the same track from the above tutorial – but this time we’re setting up Blue Cat’s MB-7 Mixer 2 at the top of the output chain. This automatically splits the input signal into four bands, allowing for frequency-specific mixing functionality, with volume, pan, stereo width and insert capability across four bands.

We insert iZotope’s Trash plugin on the upper-mid band, selecting the Subtle » 8th Note Wobbler preset. This adds a distorted treatment which throbs in time to the track, but only on frequencies which fall inside the 425Hz to 2kHz range we’ve set in MB-7. We add a little volume boost to this frequency band too, as well as a touch of stereo widening.

We add Sonic Charge’s Bitspeek in the low-mid band’s first slot for some pleasing crunch. We reduce Sample Rate to 22kHz, while detuning Pitch and setting a Tracking amount in tune with the key of the song. The Mix dial ensures the treatment doesn’t become too overwhelming. We increase Stereo Width in the treble band and set levels to taste.

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> make music now / multiband masterclass

multiband gems

These advanced devices give you expert control over different frequency bands – and sound great! softube

Transient shaper 218 » 9/10 » $99 This shaper allows for a frequency dial to set a boundary between Sustain and Punch portions of the signal, with you deciding whether each of these terms refers to low or high frequency content and adding or cutting volume to each.

www.softube.com

iZotope

alloy 2

iZotope

184 » 9/10 » £155 Offers a modular approach to sound design, with several offering multiband functionality. Its transient shaping, exciter, twin dynamics and de-esser modules let you split the signal into multiple bands and wreak havoc with them.

ozone 7

227 » 10/10 » £139+ This all-in-one processor is indispensable for both mixing and mastering. The Dynamic EQ module provides frequencyoriented dynamics control, but there are other multiband processors here, including the excellent Stereo Imaging module. www.timespace.com

www.timespace.com

Universal audio

Uad precision Multiband N/A » N/A » £189 UA have every stage of the mastering process covered, from Bob Katz’s Precision K-Stereo processor widening, through to this excellent five-band Multiband Compressor, which combines flexibility with a warm, open sound.

www.uaudio.com

Blue Cat audio

MB-7 Mixer 2 198 » 8/10 » €99 This remarkable and creative splitter/plugin hoster divides a signal into multiple bands and then provides you with a channel strip for each band. Better still, you can load up to four audio VST/AU plugins as inserts for each band!

www.bluecataudio.com

Joey sturgis Tones

Transify

226 » 8/10 » $59 Transify take takes transient design further by offering the usual attack and sustain controls across four independent frequency bands, letting you bring extra snap or length to snare sounds, whilst leaving kicks alone, for instance.

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FabFilter

pro-MB

200 » 9/10 » $149 A hugely flexible multiband compressor with a number of potential applications. Unlike many processors which have several bands set up by default, Pro-MB starts with an empty slate, encouraging you to create bands only where they’re needed. As a result, it’s as useful for de-essing as it is for dynamically processing even the most needy masters. www.fabfilter.com

multiband masterclass / make music now <

Meldaproduction

MMultiBandGranular 184 » 7/10 » €49 Apply granular synthesis techniques and construct new sounds across several frequency bands. This inventive plugin is perfect for creating swarms or clouds of notes, with each band benefiting from a unique sonic flavour.

www.meldaproduction.com

sonnox

envolution N/A » N/A » £85 A brilliantly surgical tool for both mixing and mastering, this frequency-dependent transient shaper gives you the ability to manipulate the attack and sustain of different frequency areas in isolation.

FXpansion

www.sonnox.com

Maul

186 » 9/10 » £79 A multiband distortion unit which lets you assign a different type of distortion or saturation to discrete low, mid and high bands. A dry/wet balance dial easily offers parallel configurations, while movement and modulation are provided via LFOs, envelope follower, noise and sample-and-hold modules. www.fxpansion.com

Meldaproduction

MMultiBandrhythmizer N/A » N/A » €49 A wonderful processor for adding timing, volume and filtering ‘glitches’ to discrete frequency bands in your mix. Up to six bands are available, to which sequences of data in each category can be added separately. Anything from subtle wonkiness to all-out ‘buffer override’ effects are possible.

www.meldaproduction.com

psp audioware

psp Vintagewarmer 112 » 10/10 » $179 This emulates analogue compression and limiting. Crucially, it enjoys adding warm saturation effects as its Drive dial is cranked up, with separate Low and High bands, selectable via frequency-selection dials. It works beautifully as a parallel processor as well as an insert effect.

www.pspaudioware.com

FabFilter

saturn 179 » 10/10 » £114 Multiband distortion for up to six frequency bands. A wide variety of distortion types are included, as well as a host of modulation options, which can introduce anything from subtle wobbling to full on glitchy mayhem.

www.fabfilter.com

softube

drawmer 1973

N/A » N/A » $249 Softube’s painstaking and wonderfulsounding recreation of Drawmer’s classic three-band compressor. Choose crossovers between bands, then shape each with the full range of dynamics parameters. There are some choice software benefits, too: dry/wet allows for instant parallel treatments, and stereo and mid/side options are available, too. www.softube.com February 2017 / CoMpUTer MUsIC / 69

tutorials <

Become a better producer every month with pro advice, expert videos and audio examples from our computer music gurus

72 Easy Guide

Music theory with Dave Clews

Choosing chords can seem like a strange art, but if you look at it using this method, things might well become a little clearer

74 Studio Strategies Advanced production with Ilpo Kärkkäinen

Beat and drum design with Ronan Macdonald

Mix bus magic

Mixing into a master-bus processing chain is not for the faint-hearted, but Ilpo’s got some words of encouragement

76 Dr Beat

Diatonic substitutions

Bossa nova

Get schooled in South American percussion soundselecting and programming in this Latin groove tutorial guide February 2017 / Computer musiC / 71

Dave Clews’

download

#48

Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at vault.computermusic.co.uk

Diatonic chord substitution Swapping a certain chord for another at the right time to keep our progressions interesting – but which chords will work best? If you’ve ever wanted a phrase perfect for impressing your mates down the pub with your amazing musical knowledge, you’d have to go pretty far to beat ‘diatonic chord substitution’. In reality though, it’s not that tricky a concept to get around, so let’s break it down into its constituent parts to figure out exactly what it means, and why it’s useful. In a musical sense, the term ‘diatonic’ means ‘belonging to’, so we’re dealing with chords

>Step by step

made up of notes that belong to the parent scale of the key we’re working in. For a lot of musical styles, the diatonic system is a great way to organise melodies and harmonies into patterns that are pleasing to the ear, but with such a limited palette of chords to choose from, we can end up settling for very… ordinary progressions. To counter this, songwriters throughout history have sought to inject variety into diatonic patterns by using things we’ve already looked at

in previous Easy Guides: altered, borrowed, extended, inverted or secondary dominant chords to name but a few. Another method we’ve not yet fully explored is chord substitution – in other words, replacing the expected chord with another that has the same function. When this replacement chord belongs to the same harmonised scale as the original chord, this technique is known as diatonic substitution. Let’s crack on and explore how it all works.

Diatonic chord substitution in action

TuTorial

Files

Let’s kick off by harmonising a major scale. We’ll start with… oh, I don’t know, let’s go for the C major scale, just for a change! Eight notes, from C to C, played on the white notes of the piano keyboard – C D E F G A B C. Regular readers of this column will be able to recite this in their sleep by now…

Major and minor diatonic chords can be said to belong to one of three main families. These are the tonic, subdominant and dominant families. The tonic family contains the tonic chord (I), iii, and vi – in C major, this means C, Em and Am. All these chords have an effect similar to that of the tonic – they resolve a piece of music. The tonic has a feeling of ‘home’.

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We harmonise this scale by stacking up alternate notes from the scale on each note to form three-note chords (aka triads). Because they’re formed using only notes from the parent scale, these chords are known as diatonic triads – and in C major, they are C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am and Bdim.

The subdominant family consists of the IV and ii chords – so F and Dm in C major. The basic effect of the chords in this family is to move away from the I chord. A diatonic substitution is nearly always a change in chord quality from major to minor or vice versa. This shift is one of the main reasons we’re substituting in the first place – to spice things up.

If we number these chords with Roman numerals as shown here – uppercase for major chords, lowercase for minor and diminished chords – it makes it easier to describe progressions that use diatonic chords without being tied to any specific key.

The remaining chords, V and vii°, fall into the dominant family. The V chord has a dominant function anyway, its basic effect being to move towards, or ‘resolve to’ the I chord. The vii° chord is essentially the same as a V7 (dominant seventh) without the root note, so this can also be assigned a similar dominant function.

easy guide / make music now <

recommended listening CalVin harris, My way

The chorus chord progression is Em - D - G - Am - Em - D - Am7. The Am7 substitutes for the G Am change second time around, giving a more interesting shape.

bit.ly/CHmyWay Clean Bandit, ROCKaByE

In the string outro, we’re expecting the fourth chord to be an Em. Instead, we get a C major. Diatonic substitution at work!

bit.ly/CBrockabye

So, when choosing suitable substitute chords for a diatonic substitution, the rule of thumb is to use chords that belong to the same family, and therefore perform the same basic function as the original. For instance, we can use either a iii chord or a vi chord to substitute for a I chord. Here’s a really simple I - IV - V - I progression in C major, (C - F - G - C).

The tonic family for a minor key b consists of the i and III chords, the subdominant family is made up of the iv, b ii° and VI chords and the dominant family b contains the v and VII chords. In the key of b C minor, then, that gives us Cm and E in b the tonic family, Fm, D° and A in the b subdominant family and Gm and B in the dominant family.

Dave Clews

Pro tiPs

In a studio career spanning almost 25 years, Dave has engineered, programmed and played keyboards on records for a string of artists including George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner and Estelle. These days, in between writing articles for and other magazines, he collaborates on occasional songs and videos with singer/songwriter Lucy Hirst, aka Polkadothaze. www.daveclews.com

Clash of the tritones

When you use diatonic substitution to reharmonise part or all of a progression, it’s important to watch out for how the new chords work with the existing melody. Swapping between major and minor chords inevitably carries a risk of creating an unwanted clash that spoils the effect. Keep an eye out for flattened ninth or tritone (six semitones) intervals between the chord tones and the melody, as these will cause the chords to take on a different function than intended.

Variety performanCe

The great thing about diatonic substitution is that it’s an easy way to generate compatible alternative progressions for different parts of a song. So instead of repeating the same four-bar phrase twice, you can use a diatonic substitution or two to extend the progression, and you’ll effectively distinguish the second half of your verse from the first.

Check out what happens when we replace the F major with Dm – the alternative chord in the subdominant family. The character of the progression changes because we’re swapping out a major chord for a minor chord, but the function remains the same – it still has a sense of moving away from the tonic and taking us in a new direction.

Here’s an example of a minor key diatonic substitution. This track has b b b the progression Cm - B - A - E beneath a melody that uses notes from the C minor scale. Since all these chords are found in the harmonised C minor scale, this qualifies as a bona fide minor diatonic progression, b b b represented by i - VII - VI - III. Let’s do some substituting!

So what about for a minor key? The chord families for minor keys are slightly different because of the different structure that a harmonised minor scale has compared to a major scale. Here’s a harmonised natural minor b b b scale, giving us i, ii°, III, iv, v, VI, and VII. In b C minor, this translates as Cm, D°, E , Fm, b b Gm, A and B .

Our second chord – B – is part of the dominant family, so let’s swap it for the alternative dominant chord, Gm. Likewise, b the third chord – A – can be swapped out for another subdominant family member, either Fm or D°. We’ll go for Fm option, as it works better with the melody at that point in the tune.

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 73

Studio

strategies with Resound

#04

Master bus magic

download See the video walkthrough on your PC/Mac at: vault.computermusic.co.uk

The idea of mixing into a chain of plugins on your master bus is a controversial one, but Ilpo’s here to share his tried-and-tested recipe Ilpo Kärkkäinen Ilpo – aka Resound – is a veteran drum ’n’ bass producer who’s worked with many of the scene’s biggest labels. As well as being an in-demand game soundtrack artist and mixing and mastering engineer, he runs a popular production blog focused on productivity. After 20 years in the game, Ilpo still has a passion for pushing the boundaries of production. www.resoundsound.com

For more than 15 years, I shied away from doing any processing on my master bus – I kept it clean as a whistle. But recently, a lot has changed, and I’ve become an advocate of mixing into a processing chain. It’s a different philosophy of mixing altogether, and one that definitely comes with a learning curve, but I wouldn’t have it any other way now. Before going further, I want to clear up a common misconception: there can be several different goals when processing on the mix bus, but mastering is not one of them. Mastering is a separate process that only takes place after everything else is ready. Any processing on the mix bus should be set up at the very early stages of your session. Think of it as a sonic stamp that gets imprinted on your music from the very beginning. It interacts with everything you do and guides you as you work. With a nice chain on that final fader, your mix becomes a living, breathing thing – more than the sum of its parts. Working like this also keeps you on your toes and helps maintain healthy levels as you mix. You’ll quickly hear the mix bus cramping up if you’re hitting it too hard.

“With a nice chain on that final fader, your mix becomes a living, breathing thing”

On the buses

The sonic goal of mix bus processing is to impart some tone, harmonics, dynamic movement, density, glue, spatial enhancement or loudness (heaven forbid) to your mix. There are different ways to go about it – when working on my own music, I don’t shy away from getting pretty aggressive when it fits the style I’m going for… but for many styles of music this won’t

work. It’s more common (and indeed often wiser) to keep it very subtle. I normally start with some form of analogue console emulation to add a bit of vibe. This is then followed up by compression to create some rhythmic movement. For drum ’n’ bass, which is what I usually make, I tend to prefer fast and precise VCA-style compression. Should I want to take things further, I might add an analogue-style EQ to slightly accentuate certain areas of the frequency spectrum and create a ‘colour’ I like. Perhaps I’ll even add a second, different type of compressor, and sometimes a tape emulation plugin too – it all depends on the musical style and feeling I want to go for with the mix.

Pedal to the metal

I cannot stress enough the fact that processing on the mix bus is an extremely delicate topic. The master output channel is where your entire project comes together. You have to know exactly what you’re doing or you risk ruining the entire mix – especially if you’re planning to slam it a little bit harder. You need a good-enough listening environment to make informed decisions; you must use quality plugins and develop a thorough understanding of them, so there’s nothing going on that you aren’t aware of. Use visual metering as a guiding tool to alert you of potential issues (see my Studio Strategies column in 236 for more on that). If you’re new to master bus processing, I encourage you to experiment liberally but execute conservatively. I’ll be the first to admit that this style of mixing isn’t for everyone, but if you’re anything like me, the chances are that you won’t go back after dipping your toes in!

Dual mono processing You can take your mix bus game further by applying dual mono processing with some of the plugins in your chain. Dual mono operation means you’re processing the left and right channels of the stereo signal independently, instead of mirroring the same processing for both channels as usual. The benefit is a wider and deeper stereo image, but there’s a real risk of creating imbalance and phase issues, especially if

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you’re hitting the mix bus hard. Once again we run into the same old advice: know what you’re doing, and be on the lookout for potential issues. Some plugins come with a ‘stereo unlink’ option, which instantly makes the plugin process audio in this dual mono configuration. For any plugins lacking that feature, you can set it up yourself – PreSonus Studio One, for example, has a

splitter tool inside the channel editor, and using this can make creating custom dual mono processing setups very convenient. With most other DAWs, you have to do some routing work by setting up an actual dual mono submix before going into your main stereo master bus. It might be a bit fiddly, but you could always build this dual mono submix right into your session template.

studio strategies / make music now <

>Step by step Creating a pro processing chain on the master bus

TuTorial

Files

Here, I’ll show you how to set up a mix bus chain, just like the one I use for my own music. The objective is to give our mix a little bit of character, density, and some subtle pumping movement. We’ll be using four plugins: Sonimus Satson Buss, OverTone DSP PTH2A-CM, a stock DAW compressor, and u-He’s Satin tape emulator.

I’ve chosen the PreSonus Compressor to create some pumping movement to the mix. It’s a very clean compressor with good controls, and lends itself well to these types of tasks. I’m using the internal sidechain Lowcut filter at 70Hz, to prevent the sub bass from triggering the compression too much. We’re getting better movement with the drums tripping gain reduction instead.

Sonimus Satson Buss emulates an analogue console sound. It’s simply sitting on the mix bus with the FAT mode switched on. It gives us a bit of lovely character and density. I’m using the VU meter to monitor how loud the mix bus is hitting – I want the needle to be hovering around zero when calibrated to -18dBFS.

I tend to use tape emulations as the last processor in my mix bus chain. In this case, I’m going with u-he’s Satin plugin – I’m using a fairly transparent RP Mastering Tape preset, tweaked to taste. Tape emulation adds another layer of slight harmonic distortion and a bit of compression to our mix bus.

The OverTone DSP PTH2A-CM is an emulation of the classic Pultec EQP-1A passive tube EQ. The act of running audio through the plugin is, in itself, enough to colour the sound slightly – I’m also using the EQ in very tiny amounts to give the mix a little bit of boost around 100Hz, and some extra crispness around 8kHz.

Finally, it’s good to spend some time fine-tuning the intensity of the processing. You can do this simply by experimenting with how loud you push the audio into the mix bus. The optimal intensity of processing depends largely on your material, style and preference. Now that the mix bus chain is set up, the mixing can begin!

External sidechaining on the master bus You’ve probably triggered a compressor using an external sidechain before… but have you ever thought of sidechaining the compressor on your master bus? Triggering mix bus compression with something other than the mix itself might seem counterintuitive; but this is a technique absolutely worth trying, no matter what genre of music you happen to be working with (OK – I probably wouldn’t do it with

classical music!) This technique offers almost endless creative possibilities to experiment with. The most obvious thing to try with most kinds of music is to sidechain the mix bus compressor using your kick drum. This can create solid movement, especially with mixes that have a lot going on. It doesn’t end there, though – if your song has vocals, try triggering the mix bus compressor

neXt montH Ilpo turns workflow sage and shows us how to organise

with the lead vocal track. This can create a super-powerful effect where the compressor begins to squeeze and energise the mix during the vocals and lets the track breathe more in between. Another great technique is to program a separate, silent ‘trigger’ signal, which is muted in the mix but piped into the master compressor’s key input, providing interesting results.

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 75

Dr Beat with Ronan Macdonald #26

Bossa nova

download See it in video and get the tutorial files on your PC/Mac at vault.computermusic.co.uk

The good doctor gets his chill on, Brazilian style Ronan Macdonald Having previously served as Editor of drummer’s bible Rhythm as well as Computer Music, Ronan is clearly the right man for this particular gig. He’s been playing drums for over 30 years and making music with computers since the 90s.

A slowed-down derivative of samba, bossa nova is a Brazilian style of dance music (in the traditional sense) birthed in the 50s, and one that’s found a place on the UK music scene, both in its own right and via early 21st century chill-out, in which it was pretty popular for a good length of time. It’s also earned notoriety in a broader social sense, thanks to the cheesy preset rhythm tracks built into 80s home organs by the likes of Casio and Bontempi. In this walkthrough, I’ll show you how to put together a bossa nova percussion ensemble using a custom kit built from sounds included in Ableton Live’s Factory Library. My project

tempo is set to 120bpm to make it easier to program and edit, but the ‘feel’ of the track will actually be 60bpm. In addition, I’ll also be recording all of my MIDI parts live – apart from the congas, which are going to be programmed by hand but then shifted slightly off the grid, note by note, giving them a more human feel. If you want to get your head further into bossa nova, I recommend starting with João Gilberto and Stan Getz’s definitive version of The Girl From Ipanema, which perfectly captures the genre in all its wistful delicacy – and, as it happens, hardly features any percussion at all!

>Step by step Programming and transferring authentic bossa nova beats

TuTorial

Files

First and foremost, the claves – a pair of short wooden sticks struck together. These define the skeleton of any latin rhythm by playing the pattern of the same name: clave. The clave used in bossa nova is probably the most identifiable element of the style, and you can’t really deviate from it if you’re looking for authenticity.

There are no hard rules when it comes to bossa nova congas – they just need to be heavily syncopated and weave around other parts without doubling up on accents more than necessary. I’ve gone for a constant 16th-note pattern using a combination of strokes that would be playable in the real world.

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Being directly related to samba, bossa nova features the same lopsided low end rhythm, supplied by the surdo – the latin percussion equivalent to the bass drum. It’s simple: hits on beats 1 and 3, preceded by quieter hits on eighth-notes immediately before both. The surdo is played quite gently, so keep velocities low.

Transferring this pattern to the drum kit is easy, since each part has an obvious equivalent. The cabasa swaps with the ride; the surdo maps to the kick; and the claves switch to a sidestick snare. The kick drum needs its velocity increasing, and a pedalled hi-hat on beats 2 and 4 gives the left foot something to do.

At the other end of the frequency spectrum, the cabasa is a metal cylinder with numerous strings of metal beads wrapped around it, which are rubbed around the surface to create a characteristic scraping sound. In bossa nova, the cabasa provides a 16th-note, hi-hat-style engine.

With bossa nova more closely associated with the home organs of the 80s, I’d be remiss in not demonstrating it in an electronic context. Here’s my bossa kit pattern triggering a TR-808 emulation. I’ve moved the ride cymbal to the closed hi-hat and quantised the part, to give it the requisite mechanical feel.

NEXT MONTH Making a drum kit using nothing but found sounds

> interview / zeds dead

Zeds dead Following the release of their debut album, the Toronto duo have decided there’s only one rule when it comes to making music: there are no rules!

Zeds Dead are difficult men to track down. has been chasing the Toronto-based production duo round the globe for a couple of months. Interviews were scuppered by clashing time-zones, sleep, illness and dodgy mobile phone signals, but we’ve finally tracked them down. Actually, we’ve only tracked down Dylan Mamid (aka DC, right); the other Zed, Zachary Rapp-Rovan (aka Hooks, left), is currently still sound-checking. “Sorry it’s taken so long, man,” explains Mamid. “The whole year has been pretty full-on. We always seem to be playing catch-up.” He’s not lying. Alongside the usual selection of DJ dates and festivals, the duo set up two festivals of their own – Deadrocks, Colorado and Deadbeats, Toronto – as well as releasing a debut album, Northern Lights. Calling the album eclectic is something of an understatement. Defiantly striding from glam pop to hardcore hip-hop, from festival anthems

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to underground weirdness, it boasts an impressive vocal guest list that includes Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Pusha T and Jadakiss. Computer Music: Was that always the plan? An album that covered every base? Or did it just turn out like that? Dylan Mamid, aka DC: “We didn’t want to limit ourselves. We wanted to include all the music we were passionate about. The real problem we had was keeping it down to 15 tracks. If it’d been left to me and Zak, we would have had maybe 50 or 60 tracks on there.” : And the different vocalists? Did you start out with the plan of featuring loads of singers, or did you just find yourselves spoilt for choice once you got going? DM: “C’mon… it would have been crazy to put together an album of all these different sounding songs and then have them all sung by one vocalist. These are all people we admire and

zeds dead / interview <

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 79

> interview / zeds dead

people we’re proud to work with. But the best thing is that they bring a bit of themselves to the song. We wanted to surprise people and we also wanted to surprise ourselves. We’ve got Rivers Cuomo singing on the album… a guy you don’t expect to find on a dance album. “I’d like to think that’s always been how we work, right from the early days. Music isn’t just about doing one thing or sticking to one set of rules. If we like something, we’ll try it. We’re not trying to be eclectic for the sake of being eclectic; we’re actually interested in all types of music, and we wanted the album to reflect that. “That’s one of the great things about how studio technology has changed… you’re no longer limited. You can explore the full scope of what’s possible. If you want a hundred different vocalists on the album, you can do that, too!”

“If you’re just making music to keep your audience happy, you’re making music for the wrong reasons”

: You could argue that, in 2017, variation is what an audience expects from an artist. If you churn out the same dubstep/bass/ electro/drum ’n’ bass single time after time, they’ll get bored. DM: “I think you’ve got something there. Dance music has splintered and changed into so many different sounds that it’s almost impossible to say, ‘We’re only going to make this kind of

: Passionate or not, some people still accused you of ‘selling out’. How do you react to that? DM: “What can I say? The criticism seemed unfair, but at the same time, I was kind of glad that it caused such a fuss. I wanted people to understand that we will try something new; I didn’t want to be in a position where we only delivered exactly what was expected of us.

music’. Yes, we came through at the height of dubstep in North America, but we didn’t just make dubstep. In fact, the people that stayed religiously with dubstep ended up rising and falling with that genre. “If you want a career that lasts, and if you really want to make your mark, you have to be open to different ideas. Not in a calculating, cynical way, because people will see through that. You have to do it honestly and passionately. That’s the key word for us: Passion.”

“I guess that, if you’ve been listening to an artist for a long time and they do something different, you can feel betrayed. But if you’re just making music to keep your audience happy, you’re making music for the wrong reasons. We make music to keep ourselves happy; that’s the only way you can make honest music. If people like it and we’re successful, that’s great, but I hope that, even if it wasn’t successful, we’d still do the same thing. “If you think that’s selling out, there’s probably nothing I can do to change your mind, but, personally, I think that the biggest sell out is when you’re just making music to be successful. You release the same thing over and over again because you hope it will get into the charts. “Musically, we’ve always been all over the place… and that’s how we like it.” : As a kid, were you the same? DM: “Absolutely. My musical tastes were influenced by my parents and, in particular, my dad’s record collection. He had everything from classic rock to soul, R&B, Stax, Motown, Hendrix… When you’re a kid, you don’t say, ‘Oh, I’m only going to listen to rock music’. Your imagination is open to anything. You hear a song and you think it’s cool, simple as that. When I discovered Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing, I remember thinking it was the most beautiful piece of music I’d ever heard. But then the first record I ever bought was Nirvana’s Nevermind. “Because of my parents’ attitude to music – they listened to it and talked about it all the time – I think I understood how much music could mean. I listened to the lyrics, I felt the emotion. That all sounds kinda vague and weird when I say it today, but I knew music was important.” : There’s a lot of difference between that start and where you are now. How did you get from Smells Like Teen Spirit to Zeds Dead? DM: “Every kid has to go through the rock thing, but when you get to high school, you start getting exposed to all sorts of other music. You get new friends, friends with older brothers. That’s where I met Zak. First came hip-hop; that’s what me and Zak bonded over. The golden era mainstream stuff, which then took us into some of the crazy underground tunes.”

Dylan’s come a long way from his first taste of MTV Music Generator (aka Music 2000) on the PlayStation

80 / Computer musiC / February 2017

: Hip-hop and rock do seem to be the starting points for a lot of US producers who end up in EDM/dance music/electronic music. DM: “Not every time! I’ve met producers who started off with the early raves and early dubstep, but for me, hip-hop made more sense than what was happening in the clubs. The crossover point was drum ’n’ bass. Because it was twice the speed of hip-hop, there were a lot of drum ‘n’ bass remixes of hip-hop records… the Fugees, Method Man. That gave me a gateway into this new world.

zeds dead / interview <

“From there, I heard dubstep. Because hip-hop had also taken me into reggae, I could then make the connection with dubstep. All the pieces started to fall into place. And I was so excited by what I was hearing that I automatically started listening to house, electro… I wanted to have it all.” : Did you go down the DJ route? DM: “Not at all – we wanted to produce; we wanted to make music. The problem was that we had no idea how to do it. Can you remember MTV Music Generator for the Sony PlayStation?” : Not often that gets mentioned in ! DM: “I loved it… I was obsessed with it. It was a video game that allowed me to pretend I was a producer. I must have spent a couple of years

“I realised it wasn’t gonna happen unless I sat down and made it happen”

on that thing, learning everything I could. I remember being blown away by the fact that I’d made a beat. My own beat! “Like every family, we ended up getting a computer, and that allowed me to take things a bit further. I think it was Acid, then FruityLoops. I was delving deeper and deeper into music, but it still wasn’t sounding like I wanted it to sound, so I decided to go to this big music/electronics show in Toronto. “Man, I was so naïve! I’d saved up a bunch of money, wandered over to one of the stalls and said, ‘I want my own studio’. It was a bit like when you go into a car showroom. All you want is a car to get you from A to B, but the guy sells you a Rolls Royce, with all the extras. You get the heated seats, the metallic paint job, the sunroof, the wide tyres, the tinted windows. I was this guy’s ideal customer. He just put a bunch of stuff on the counter and I bought it, thinking that I’d get home and have a hit record. “Ha ha! I struggled with Cubase for a while, but I ended up going back to FruityLoops. That’s when I realised it wasn’t gonna happen unless I sat down and made it happen. The long, long, long process of learning how to be a producer had begun.”

Kit list HARDWARE Custom PC Apple MacBook Pro Nord Electro 5 SOFTWARE Ableton Live Image-Line FL Studio NI Kontakt Xfer Records Serum LennarDigital Sylenth1 reFX Nexus Arturia V Collection D16 Group Toraverb Ohm Force Ohmicide

: You’re amongst friends. We’ve all been there… February 2017 / Computer musiC / 81

> interview / zeds dead

Don’t be afraid to imitate “I played a bit of piano and guitar when I was a kid, but when I first decided I wanted to be a producer, I had to face the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. So, I did the obvious thing and tried to copy the music I was listening to at the time. “Some people might call that cheating, but it’s a fantastic way to find your way around a DAW and to learn how to put a song together. And what always used to happen was that I’d end up with something that sounded completely different… I’d end up with my song. “There is one problem: modern sample packs. I downloaded a sample pack the other day and it was complete set of tools for anyone who wants to make a song like Skrillex. You could literally put the song together from those samples. In the shortterm, you’ll be very happy because you can sound like Skrillex, but, long-term, you’re going to find it harder to make music. “Even if those sample packs are available, my advice would be: limit yourself; make it harder for yourself. Limitation always breeds creativity, and creativity is the tool that will help you find yourself.”

DM: “There were resources out there, but nothing like today. If you want to make cool-sounding bass, all you have to do is look on YouTube, but back then, me and Zak were just throwing paint at the wall to find out which bits would stick. Making songs over and over again until they sounded OK. “When I go back and listen to that stuff, I can immediately hear what was lacking technically, but some of the ideas were pretty awesome. I literally had no idea about EQ, panning, where samples should be placed, or anything like that. I was marching forward in ignorance, creating these crazy pieces of music simply because I had no idea what I was doing. Pieces of music that I could never create today because I’ve learned all the rules about where beats should go and how the melody is supposed to work. “I guess that kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. With Zeds Dead, we try not to say, ‘We can’t do that’; we try not to make rules. We’re just making music and we have no idea where it’s going to take us. That’s how we ended up with an album like Northern Lights.” : People who start with FruityLoops often stay with it. It seems to inspire die-hard loyalty. DM: “We still use it for little bits here and there, but the main DAW is Ableton Live. I can’t pretend that I’ve tried every DAW, but Ableton just seems 82 / Computer musiC / February 2017

Zeds Dead have been around the reverb block, but D16 Group’s Toraverb is one they always come back to

to encourage you to get ideas out there. You can change stuff, timestretch it, lock samples together… everything is so quick. “A lot of the in-house plugins are pretty good, too. Operator is one of my favourite synths to play around with. I’ve got some wild basslines from that in the past, but as I’ve got to know it a bit better, I seemed to have calmed down. As well as all the crazy, over-the-top patches, it’s

also good for basic, solid basslines. “The Ableton reverbs are pretty cool, but it’s such an important part of the sound that we’ve looked elsewhere too. D16’s Toraverb has those great, rich, full-sounding reverbs, but you can also push it create some outthere effects. “We like distortion too, but we’ve learned to tread carefully.”

“We try not to say ‘We can’t do that’; we try not to make rules”

: Some of those early tunes do sound quite… full-on. DM: “They were. You want everything to sound in-your-face, so you put distortion over everything. But as we learned more about production, we realised we were constantly backing-off the distortion;

zeds dead / interview <

almost to the point where you can’t really hear it. What I often do now is put a small amount on things like kicks, snares or vocals… just to make it sound less perfect. “When you look at real instruments, you almost have the reverse problem. You do take after take until you get the ‘perfect’ version. We’ve been experimenting with real guitar and piano – two of the instruments that are difficult to recreate in the digital world – and it does work. As soon as you play a real instrument, it pulls you back from that shiny, digital world. “Even with the most basic of setups, you can create flawless, super-perfect mixes. When we were putting the album together, I realised that one of the biggest challenges was creating a great mix that also sounded realistic and… human. What I often think I’m doing is trying to make a song sound a little bit ‘wrong’. Does that make sense?” : Perfect sense. There has to be a market for this as a plugin. Imagine the swing function on Akai’s MPC, but it affects the whole song. All you need is a switch and a dial, a bit like an old-school compressor. The switch is on/off and the dial controls how rough everything sounds. Just a touch and you add a nice bit of raw distortion

with a tweak of the timing/tuning/ quantisation; it even fluffs the vocal a bit. Halfway round the dial, you sound like you’re signed to Ninja Tune, and full-whack is avant-garde jazz-metal played by a drunken pub band. DM: “I like the sound of that. You know the plugin I want to see on the market? Thought transfer.” : Hmm… nice! You have an idea and there’s a little gizmo that lays out your idea on the screen. DM: “Exactly. I’ve had some many song ideas that sound a certain way in my head, but when I put them into the computer, they sound completely different. This plugin immediately drops it into Ableton in a rough form, allowing you to sort out the final mix. “That’s the one direction where music technology can develop: how we actually interact with the music. That’s the final frontier. I hope we’ll see that one on the market in my lifetime.”

Hear more

Too Young bit.ly/ZDtooyoung Lights Out bit.ly/ZDlightsout WWW

Zeds Dead’s are wrapping up their fall tour in the US, on the back of debut album Northern Lights, which is out now. Check out their official site to buy the album and other Zeds Dead swag, including tshirts, hoodies, hats and more zedsdead.net

www.zedsdead.net soundcloud.com/zedsdead @zedsdead facebook.com/zedsdead

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The latest computer music gear tested and rated! Our promise We bring you honest, unbiased appraisals of the latest computer music products. Our experts apply the same stringent testing methods to all gear, no matter how much hype or expectation surrounds it.

What the ratings mean 1-4 A seriously flawed product that should be avoided

ROB PAPEN PREdATOR 2 Will we go wild for the second coming of Papen’s power synth?

90 Steinberg Cubasis 2

This product’s problems outweigh its merits

A decent product that’s only held back by a few flaws

Solid. Well worth considering

Very good. A well-conceived and executed product

Excellent. First-rate and among the best you can buy

Exceptional. It just doesn’t get any better than this!

See and hear the latest software in action in our MINUTES … 2 WITH ‘2 Minutes With…’ videos! Wherever you see the icon, head straight to your DVD, the Vault download area, or our YouTube channel for a rapid-fire showcase of that product’s essential features and sonic capabilities. youtube.com/computermusicmag VIDEO

94 FabFilter Pro-R

96 XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color

98 oeksound soothe

99 Universal Audio A/DA STD-1

100 Universal Audio API 2500 Bus Comp

101 Universal Audio Chandler Zener

Awarded to products that challenge existing ideas and do something entirely new

A product has to really impress us with its functionality and features to win this one

104 Soundware Reviews

If the product exceeds expectations for its price, it will receive this gong

In the opinion of the Editor, the best product reviewed in the magazine this month

February 2017 / COmPuTER musiC / 85

> reviews / rob papen predator 2 dUal WavE osCillators Mix two from predator 2’s 128-strong roster of waveshapes in each

EnvElopEs and lFos You now get four of each, and they can do more than before

FiltEr 2 Filter 2 now does everything Filter 1 does, bar distortion

aMp distortion the Multi distort effect is now built into the amplifier

arpEggiator very potent… and a bit annoying

EQ separate pre- and post-FX threeband EQ modules

X/Y pad Modulate up to eight parameters

Chord gEnErator Create user-defined chords of up to eight notes, with strum

VIDEO MINUTES … 2 WITH

UsEr WavEs draw your own waveforms and build eight-slot wavetables

Unison ModE Up to six voices of per-voice unison, with detune and spread controls

Mod MatriX 20 slots for your own routings

Rob Papen

Predator 2

£124

Nearly ten years after version 1, can the new incarnation of this legendary synth rekindle the magic of the past? It’s hard to believe that Predator – still Rob Papen’s (and coding wizard Jon Ayers’) most lauded synthesiser – is almost a decade old. Upon its release in 2007 (9/10, 112), it blew us away with its almost-single-screen interface, huge selection of waveforms, unrivalled effects and stellar sound. The longawaited Predator 2 (VST/AU/AAX) sticks with the same largely skeumorphic design and keeps all the main synthesis controls immediately accessible from the front. With its considerably expanded architecture, this results in an even busier interface than that of its predecessor. The layout remains perfectly logical and it doesn’t take long to learn your way around, certainly, but synthesis novices will have a hard time relating to it – which is where the new Easy Mode comes in…

Easy does it

Clicking the Easy Page button switches to a much sparser GUI containing just the most important synthesis controls, the X/Y Pad (see Deus X Papina) and the Variation feature, which enables a variable degree of 86 / ComPuter musiC February 2017

randomisation to be applied to the synth parameters and/or the FX section. Distilling Predator 2 down to just enough parameters for broad-strokes changes, Easy Mode gives beginners and live performers a friendlier, less cluttered environment in which to work. Back to the non-Easy (‘Advanced’? ‘Difficult’?) page, and while the majority of the Predator 2 GUI is fixed, Papen has thankfully conceded to modernity and the spatial requirements of his synth’s new and improved systems with the addition of a tabbed panel at

“Predator 2 also features the same 128 waveforms, but now each oscillator can host two at once”

the bottom, called the Multi-Page. Outside that, though, it’s a veritable ocean of knobs, between them controlling a great deal of synth…

One becomes two

Predator 2 is still a three-oscillator instrument, with a sub oscillator tracking each one an octave below, Oscs 2 and 3 syncable to Osc 1, and a variety of FM and ring modulation options onboard. The Spread knob dials in unison-style stacking, and the brilliant symmetry/pulse width modulation LFO is still built into every oscillator. Predator 2 also features the same expansive library of 128 waveforms, but now each oscillator can host two of these waveforms at once, with the Morph knob in between blending them in various styles, consisting of simple mixing, additive morphing, wavetable-style interpolation, and phase, frequency and ring modulation effects. You can also create a wavetable (or Wave Set, in Predator parlance) of up to eight waves in the User Wave tab (see Used and abused) and load that into an oscillator, in which case the Morph knob transforms into an index control, scanning

rob papen predator 2 / reviews <

“There are now two arpeggiators – A and B – each deployable individually or joined together for up to 32 steps of sequencing” through the waves in stepped, mixed or morphed manners. Of course, the Morph knob is accessible as a target inside the mod matrix, and all in all, Predator 2’s welljudged, transformative multi-wave functionality more than makes amends for v1’s lamented lack of wave selection modulation. It’s ace. Over in the Filter section, Predator’s previously simple second filter has been beefed up to match the main one, with the addition of all five hardwired modulation options, including its own ADSFR envelope. These two filters can also now be run in parallel, and they even offer a pair of Split modes for filtering the left and the right channels independently of each other. The massive menu of 27 filter types remains unchanged, but Filter 1 now has three pre-filter distortion algorithms, with the upper-harmonicenhancing Dirty joining the established Smooth and Edge types. A third filter has also been bolted on – a simple resonant high-pass with keytracking. The Play Mode section has been greatly diversified, with the separation of unison from the other functions, and a vastly improved Chord generator. Up to six unison voices are now available to every triggered voice, no matter which Play Mode is active, and chords of up to eight notes can be manually defined in the Multi-Page, complete with variable Strum (for spacing notes out, guitar strum style) and per-voice panning.

The X/Y Pad brings a compelling performance element to Predator 2, complete with motion recording and path editing

Deus X Papina Identical to that of RP-EQ (9/10, 225) but with the addition of an extra pair of assignment slots, Predator 2’s X/Y Pad serves as a spectacular modulation source, with up to eight parameters from throughout the synth assignable to its X and Y axes, and the depth of each assignment set independently. In Live mode, the red ‘puck’ can be dragged around with the mouse or automated in the host DAW. The real fun comes when you switch to Record mode, however, in which your movements are captured to memory as a ‘path’ for playback in Play mode. The replayed movement of the puck along this path is open to plenty of creative tweaking, including looping, speeding up and slowing down, syncing to host tempo, and quantising to path resolution, background grid and time.

Multi tasking

Build automatically generated chords of up to eight notes, with Strum separation, in the Chord generator

The Effects sections – one of Predator’s best features – has been left alone, and thus still gives you three slots to fill with your choice of 28 excellent modules, from reverbs, delays and modulation processors to dynamics and distortions. However, the Multi Distort module now also appears in hardwired form in the Amp section, bringing its 11 distortion types to Predator 2’s main architecture; and the Equalizer module may not see much action any more thanks to the superior new integrated EQ. This is housed in the aforementioned tabbed Multi-Page, and consists of two three-band parametric EQs – one pre-effects, one post – each topped and tailed with high- and low-pass filters. Edits are made directly in the display or using the knobs below, and even without any shelving options, the detailed frequency shaping introduced by Predator 2’s EQ proves supremely useful.

It can also be triggered polyphonically (each note starts its own path, all of them animated in the display), monophonically (one shared path that restarts with each new note) or in Free mode (one shared path that runs continuously, regardless of note input after the first). Impressively, you can even manipulate the path by dragging its constituent nodes around in Edit mode, which updates non-destructively to reflect the Point and Space Quantize settings. A well stocked menu of edit Commands provides a toolbox of handy processes, too, including Set to Circle/Square/Line, etc, Reverse, Flip, Rotate and Spiral, the last of which prompts for a number of ‘turns’ from which to construct an inward or outward twist.

Also found in the Multi-Page panel is the new Mod Matrix, wherein 20 ‘free’ modulation assignments can be made (v1 had eight) in Basic or Advanced mode, the latter adding to the Amount control with adjustable Upper and Lower range limits, and static Offset. In terms of mod sources, v1’s two LFOs and two ADSFR envelopes have been doubled in number to four of each, and blessed with the addition of such niceties as phase control and access to the eight User Waves for the LFO, and Pre-Delay and Repeat (1-16 and Infinite) for the envelopes. The Arpeggiator has been moved to the Multi-Page, too, where it’s bigger and a bit less fiddly. In fact, it’s now two arpeggiators – A and B – each deployable individually or joined together for up to 32 steps of sequencing. That’s a good thing, for sure, but the implementation isn’t pretty, as Join mode doesn’t automatically switch the view from one arp to the next as the sequence progresses. Ideally, we’d like to be able to see all 32 steps at once, but failing that, February 2017 / ComPuter musiC / 87

> reviews / rob papen predator 2

“Predator 2 is a thoroughly worthy successor to the original and we find ourselves even more in its thrall than we were in 2007” automatic switching between A and B is a must. Apart from that, Predator 2’s Arpeggiator is easy to use and very capable, with sequencing lanes for pitch, velocity, modulation, Tie, Slide and grid Offset, and an extensive list of arpeggiation modes. Another new feature that workflow-savvy sound designers will fall in love with is the ability to save and load presets for each section of the synth. Every oscillator, filter, effect, envelope and LFO, as well as the Arpeggiator, X/Y Pad setup, Mod Matrix, etc, can have its current status captured in a discrete file for reloading at any time – so, so cool. And speaking of presets, v1’s full vault of over 6000 patches has been ported over and encased in a better looking, more functional browser. It’s a jaw-dropping universe of sounds that hours can easily get lost in.

Eat me

Predator 2 certainly brings Papen/Ayers’ masterpiece up to date in a great many areas, while maintaining the essence of its one-screen ethos, but the interface feels a wee bit stuck in the past. There’s no drag-and-drop modulation pairing, GUI feedback on the movement of modulated parameters, or realtime waveform visualisation. Of course, no developer should feel they have to incorporate these things, and we appreciate Predator 2’s oldschool vibes, but animated waveforms and modulation feedback are unarguably helpful in an instrument that moves as much as this one. For a second-generation synth in 2017, they’re conspicuous in their absence. The X/Y Pad goes some way towards making up for it, we suppose. We’re also not totally sold on the extremely dark GUI – the grey on/off and Multi-Page tab switching buttons are positively bloody

Predator 2 includes three-band pre- and post-FX EQs with high- and low-pass filtering

88 / ComPuter musiC February 2017

Design your own waveforms with the intuitive graphical tools of the Wave and Partials editors

Used and abused Predator 2’s waveforms are generated by an additive synthesis engine, so it’s presumably no great conceptual leap to afford the user the ability to design their own through the wrangling of partials. And that’s exactly what Papen and Ayers have done. The User Waves tab of the MultiPage centres on a graphical editor in which waveforms are drawn with the mouse, either freehand or by dragging lines out to create ramps. You can load any of the 128 preset waves as starting (or, indeed, ending) points; there’s an optional quantise grid; and shaping processes (Stretch, Filter, Distort, etc) can be selected from a menu, tweaked with one or two contextual knobs (Low and High for the Filter Shaper, for

minded in their user-unfriendliness. There is, however, an alternative white skin in the pipeline that we’ve seen and can’t wait to switch to. And don’t get us started on the manual, which is infuriatingly incomplete – why are only three of the unison modes described? What do the two filter Split modes actually do? We could go on, but we won’t since we’re assured the situation is being addressed… Moaning aside, though, Predator 2 is a thoroughly worthy successor to the original and we find ourselves even more in its thrall than we were in 2007. It’s far more versatile and interesting, the GUI retains that instant, handson feel as much as it can without getting totally crazy, and – thanks to the new features, overhauled audio engine, awesome wave mixing and, er, wavetabling, and an effects rack that still qualifies as one of the best in the business – it sounds simply phenomenal, whether it’s belting out gut-punching basses, razorblade leads, ear-tingling pads or intricate FX. Resolutely reliable, sonically on-point, and enjoyably retro in its styling, you could say it’s the ultimate electronic music workhorse. Upgrade From v1, €49 Web www.robpapen.com

example), auditioned by clicking the thumbnail waveform, and baked in with a click of the Apply button. Alternatively, switching the editor to Partials mode reveals a zoomable view of the 128 amplitude and phase partials for the waveform, all editable using the same functions from Wave mode. You get eight User Wave slots to fill with your own harmonic scribblings, and the whole bank is made available to all three oscillators as a ‘Wave Set’ wavetable, scanned through using their Morph knobs. Copy and Paste between slots makes it easy to quickly create meaningful progressions, and the only thing missing is the ability to import short samples and have them converted to Wave Sets.

Alternatively Xfer Records Serum 213 » 10/10 » $189 Amazing wavetable synth Native Instruments Massive 107 » 9/10 » £129 Another classic due an overhaul

Verdict For Stunning sound Ridiculous number of presets Dual wave oscillators User waves and wavetables Much more modulation than v1 Against Modulation interface feels ‘old’ Arp Join mode is clunky Manual isn’t finished It’s Predator… but even better! One of the greatest soft synths gets a comprehensive makeover and improves in functionality, although the interface is a tad dated

9/10

> reviews / steinberg cubasis 2 MediA BAy Access all your sounds, presets and projects

trAnsport controLs well, it is a dAw, after all!

pitchshifting Apply up to two octaves of offline pitchshifting by tapping this button

cpU Meter Keep an eye on your system overhead with this handy indicator

dLp pick up two bargainous effects packs in the steinberg online store

tiMestretch Apply automatic or manual real-time timestretching to your audio clips

ArrAnge window Lay out audio and Midi clips in a traditional arrangement area

chAnneL strip A console-style channel strip with filtering, dynamics and saturation inspector tap a header to access its named parameters for the selected track

Steinberg

Cubasis 2 £40 This iPad DAW has been developing and maturing since it was first released – let’s see what’s new now that it’s reached ‘v2 status’ It’s been over three years since we last looked at Steinberg’s iPad DAW, and in that time, not only has Apple’s tablet become considerably better equipped in the processing and memory departments, but Cubasis’ main competition, Auria (10/10, 231), has seen the long-awaited addition of MIDI functionality, putting it at the head of the mobile musicmaking pack. With Cubasis 2 – a free upgrade for owners of Cubasis (8/10, 188) – Steinberg have overhauled their portable virtual studio in several key areas. Before we get into the new stuff, though, let’s take a quick tour of the app in general.

Back to ’Basis

Cubasis is a scaled-down version of Steinberg’s full-fat Cubase Mac/PC DAW, designed for 90 / Computer musiC February 2017

touchscreen operation and offering as many simultaneous audio and MIDI tracks as your iPad can handle. Three virtual instruments are included – the superb Micrologue ‘analogue’ synth (based on the desktop Retrologue), the Micro Sonic ROMpler

“It is, essentially, a scaled-down version of Steinberg’s Cubase DAW, designed for touchscreen”

(based on HALion Sonic) and MiniSampler (a very simple sampler). MIDI and audio are recorded or imported into a conventional arrange page, which is navigated and zoomed by dragging and pinching. A fully automatable mixer is built in, along with a decent roster of insert and send effects (greatly expandable via a couple of £3 DLP packs), all of which can be automated. Comprehensive manipulation of audio and MIDI clips is done in a resizable editor, and mixes can be exported in WAV, M4A, FLAC and MIDI formats. Oh, and as you’d expect, Cubasis projects can be imported into Cubase. A ton of new features have been introduced with the numerous point updates to v1 since our review, including all the aforementioned instruments, track freeze, support for multichannel audio interfaces and external hard

steinberg cubasis 2 / reviews <

“The biggest news with Cubasis 2 will be the introduction of real-time timestretching and offline pitchshifting” drives, a dedicated channel EQ, compatibility with Audio Units plugins (see Audio Units, right), and all manner of tweaks to the interface. Cubasis 2 feels like another incremental continuation on the same trajectory, adding yet more useful new goodies to its ever-expanding arsenal.

Quite a stretch

For many producers, the biggest news with Cubasis 2 will be the introduction of real-time timestretching and offline pitchshifting, using zplane’s ubiquitous elastique 3 technology. With one or more audio clips selected, tapping the new Stretch button reveals a choice of Manual and Auto options, and three algorithms – Mobile, Efficient and Pro – for balancing CPU overhead against sound quality. Tapping Auto instantly stretches the selected clip(s) to match the project tempo; although the fact that this only works with tempo-embedded loops rather limits its usefulness. Most of the time, then, you’ll be reaching for Manual mode instead, which lets you simply drag the ends of a clip to stretch it up to 999% of its original length or compress it down to 10%. Helpfully, timestretched clips are labelled in the Arrange window with an ‘A’ for Auto or the percentage of stretch applied for Manual, and undoing a stretch is a simple matter of tapping the Reset button. All in all, it’s a simple, beautifully implemented system that delivers excellent results. The new audio pitchshifting system – accessed by tapping the Transpose button with one or more audio clips selected – isn’t as viscerally thrilling as the timestretching setup, due to its non-real-time application. In Mobile and Efficient modes, you can repitch the source material up to two octaves either way in Octaves, Semitones and Cents, while Pro mode adds in Formant Shift and Formant

Audio Units bring authentic plugin functionality to Cubasis 2 – we just wish there were more of them

Audio Units One particularly important addition made just prior to Cubasis 2 was support for Audio Units instruments and effects. Audio Units in iOS work just like their Mac equivalents, operating as ‘plugins’ within the architecture of the host environment for a far more enjoyable and seamless experience than you get with Inter App Audio or AudioBus – as great as both of those are. They’re developed as extensions of regular apps, rather than on their own – ie, apps are made AU-compatible, not developed solely as AUs. All your installed Audio Units appear in Cubasis’ Effects and Instrument menus, alongside your IAA-compatible devices. Tapping one calls it up directly within Cubasis itself, where it appears in a fixed-size (about half the screen) area at the bottom (pushed up by the

Order sliders, for keeping vocals to their original gender or creating weird effects. Workflow-wise, Cubasis’ pitchshifting feels like a throwback to a bygone era in digital audio: set the sliders based on knowledge of the target pitch or guesswork, then hit the Apply button.

keyboard), delivering all the controls and capabilities of its full app equivalent, integrating perfectly with the sequencer (in the case of instruments) and mixer, and being generally great. The only snag is that, for whatever reason, the AU protocol hasn’t really caught on with iOS developers in as big a way as we’d hoped it would when it was first announced a couple of years ago. Whether it’s the hassle of converting the full-screen GUIs of iPad apps to half-screen alternatives, or just lack of interest, the fact that porting an app to AU clearly isn’t as simple as flicking an ‘AU-compatible’ switch in Xcode has proved a hinderance. Those who have made the effort, though, include Arturia, PPG and Klevgränd – kudos to them.

There’s no preview or auditioning, although thankfully the control window doesn’t disappear on Apply, so you can tweak your way to the desired pitch without having to call it up repeatedly. Again, with elastique 3 under the hood, the results are great.

Strip to the bone

If you’re only going to include one synth with your DAW, make sure it’s a good one – Micrologue certainly qualifies

Timestretching and pitchshifting are the main workflow-enhancing additions to Cubasis 2, but the new Channel Strip is the one that’s going to make the biggest difference to the overall quality of your iPad-based productions. Integrated into every mixer channel as a partner to the four-band StudioEQ (the two can be arranged in either order), this tidylooking console-style suite comprises four signal shaping processors ported over from Cubase, each with its own bypass switch. First in the chain is Cut Filter, for dialling in a low-pass filter from 50Hz-2kHz and a high-pass filter from 20Hz-2kHz. Next comes the Noise Gate, which goes beyond the one already February 2017 / Computer musiC / 91

> reviews / steinberg cubasis 2

“All the processes available in Channel Strip were already accessible through Cubasis’ main plugins” included in the main effects list with the addition of a sidechain filter for frequencyconscious gating. Then there’s the Compressor, which works at maximum ratio of 8:1, and features Auto Release and Make Up Gain. Finally, the Saturator is switchable between Tape and Tube modelling (the latter the crunchier and less dynamic of the two) and sports high and low shelving EQ. Although all the processes available in Channel Strip were already accessible through Cubasis’ main plugins, the convenience of having this quartet of mixing essentials in one place is undeniable – plus, the Compressor and Saturation sections sound better than their regular counterparts.

The best of the rest

With the marquee new features covered, let’s quickly wrap up the less headline-grabbing stragglers. Auto quantise snaps incoming MIDI notes to the grid as you record, but with the option of unquantising back to the captured timing immediately after the event should you wish. And a fair chunk of new sound content has been thrown in in the shape of 75 new Micrologue patches and a set of Mellotroninspired ‘Tape’ presets for Micro Sonic. The bundled drum loops have been upgraded to the lossless FLAC format, too. As we’ve suggested, relative to Cubasis 1.9.8, Cubasis 2 is very much an evolutionary step, not a revolution of any kind – but that’s testament to the extremely generous v1 point releases that have arrived steadily over the last three years, rather than any sort of underachievement on the part of this latest version.

A touch of class

Ultimately, whether you view it as a discrete punctuation point in a series or just the latest stage in a continuum, Cubasis 2 is a triumph

Cubasis’ parameter automation system makes it easy to bring life and movement to your arrangements

92 / Computer musiC February 2017

Spin FX is all about live performance, but you might find it useful for hands-in-the-air breakdowns

Spin doctors Standing out like a bit of a sore thumb among Cubasis 2’s otherwise fairly traditional line-up of signal processing modules, the new Spin FX effect appears to be built with live performance – not something we’ve ever heard of anyone actually doing with Cubasis – in mind. The top half of Spin FX is an X/Y filter pad, with cutoff on X, resonance on Y and a choice of high-pass, band-pass and low-pass modes. Below that, the colour-coded trigger buttons fire off a range of cycling rhythmic effects when held down, with their timing relative to the project tempo determined by the Time Grid buttons on the left. The red buttons trigger seven – cringe – ‘DJ’ effects, including

of software design. The interface is a pleasure to use on any size iPad, the DAW fundamentals of arrangement, editing and automation all being precisely tuned for touchscreen; and there’s no reason at all why you can’t get serious production work done with it. We’re not at all fussed about the included loops (in fact, we’d cheerfully delete them to get some storage back if we could), but Micrologue is wonderful, as are Channel Strip, StudioEQ and the DLP effects (go on – you might as well). The paucity of quality Audio Units is frustrating, of course, but that’s hardly Steinberg’s fault, and at least there’s IAA and AudioBus to pick up the shortfall. Cubasis 2 may not be quite as powerful as Auria Pro, but it’s friendlier, easier to get into, more fun, and capable of delivering everything the majority of producers will likely ever need in a mobile music solution. Whether you’re a Cubase user or not, if you own an iPad, Cubasis is worth every penny of its – in App Store terms – ‘premium’ pricetag. No longer just a capable on-the-go drawing board, it’s now a powerful DAW in every meaningful sense. Web www.steinberg.com

scratching, backspin and stop/start, while the adjacent green buttons cover stutter repeating (fractions) and stretching (2 and 4), and the three blue triggers loop the incoming audio. The left-most yellow button ‘trancegates’ the signal according to the Time Grid setting, and the right-most kills it entirely until released. Although ostensibly a DJ-orientated effect, Spin FX does have some ‘studio’ relevance in that it’s automatable, which makes it handy for filter sweeps, drops and other arrangement situations where a touch of live effects manipulation can be just thing for upping the energy. It’s also just plain fun to mess around with.

Alternatively WaveMachine Labs Auria Pro 231 » 10/10 » £40 Incredibly powerful iPad DAW Apple GarageBand 2 N/A » N/A » £4 Comparatively entry-level but well worth the asking price

Verdict For Pretty much a full-scale DAW Superb editing and automation Control Strip ups the professionalism Audio Units work well Responsive, well-designed GUI Against Can’t delete bundled sounds Pitchshifting isn’t real-time Version 2 really does feel like a miniaturised copy of Cubasis’ desktop cousin. A must for iPad musicians, doubly so for Cubase users

9/10

Future Music is the mag for the latest gear and how today’s cutting-edge music makers use it. We’ve been making the future since 1992. Make sure that you’re part of it.

> reviews / fabfilter pro-r DistanCe simulates movement towards and away from the source signal

sPaCe interpolates through a range of room models and sets the delay time

DeCay rate scale the base decay time from 50-200%

stereo WiDth Pull the stereo image from mono to super-wide

Brightness tilt the frequency of the tail from dark to bright with the Brightness knob

DeCay rate eQ Pro-r’s ingenious eQ-style decay time/frequency shaping system

CharaCter Bring early reflections to the fore and introduce modulation

VIDEO MINUTES … 2 WITH

Post eQ inspired by Pro-Q 2, this six-band eQ enables precision frequency sculpting

FabFilter

Pro-R

£149

With a simplified parameter set and an innovative tail shaping mechanism, can FabFilter’s latest plugin re-invent the ’verb? Given their propensity for bringing us groovy new spins on workhorse effects, it’s quite surprising that FabFilter have taken this long to get around to producing a reverb plugin. In the shape of Pro-R (VST/AU/AAX) though, here that plugin is, and while it’s every bit the FabFilter device in many senses, it also take an unusually reductive approach in certain areas, which is something that we’ve not really seen from the Dutch DSP masters before. Pro-R is billed as taking “a musical approach to reverb, offering user-friendly, non-technical controls”, but at the same time, and as the price tag makes clear, it’s squarely aimed at the professional producer. The big question, then, is whether or not those professional users are going to be happy having things like early reflection weighting, tail modulation, reverb time and room modelling distilled down to single multipurpose knobs, and how much 94 / ComPuteR musiC / February 2017

those knobs sacrifice detail and effectiveness in the name of ease of use. Plus, of course, whether or not it sounds any good…

The final frontier

Pro-R’s interface is classic FabFilter, with those immediately recognisable ‘fingernailed’ knobs, and the vast majority of the space taken up by a

“The Space knob is Pro-R’s most important control, combining the selection of ‘over a dozen’ room models”

colourful edge-to-edge EQ, which you can read all about in State of (the art) decay on the next page. As is standard with all FabFilter plugins of late, the vector-based GUI can be sized up to Large and Extra Large dimensions, and even made fullscreen, which users of multi-monitor setups will surely appreciate. Behind the EQ, the spectrum analyser shows the spectrum of the processed output signal, alongside your choice of input signal or decay time, the latter comprising a beautifully animated curve that falls and fades away as the tail decays across the frequency range. The big, centrally positioned Space knob is Pro-R’s most important control, combining the selection of “over a dozen” room models (unnamed but ranging from a closet to a cathedral) with the determination of the base decay time, from 0.2s to 10s. Transitioning from one model to the next is done absolutely seamlessly (which is why we can’t tell exactly

fabfilter pro-r / reviews <

“Working hand in hand with Space, the Decay Rate knob scales the reverb time by anywhere from 50 to 200%” how many there are), and thanks to the modelling and interpolation going on behind the scenes, the character and density of the late reflections always sound perfectly calibrated to the decay time – in other words, the closet sounds like a closet, and the cathedral sounds like a cathedral! Working hand in hand with Space, the Decay Rate knob scales the reverb time by anywhere from 50 to 200%, enabling customisation of the decay, and pseudodetachment of the model and tail length. Oddly, the Predelay setting is a numerical field at the very bottom of the interface that pops out a dial when moused over, with which to establish up to 500ms of separation between the dry signal and the tail. Also oddly – but in an unarguably good way – the Predelay is syncable to host tempo, from 1/64 to 2 beats. This immediately feels like something that all reverbs should offer.

Pro-R’s Decay Rate EQ lets you freely scale the decay time across the frequency spectrum

State of (the art) Decay Rather than provide the usual crossover for independent tweaking of low- and high-frequency decay times, Pro-R includes what FabFilter claim to be an industry first: the Decay Rate EQ. This takes the appearance of a six-band EQ in the main display (the blue one), more than vaguely reminiscent of their Pro-Q 2, but with the defined response curve raising and lowering the decay time across the frequency spectrum, rather than boosting and attenuating the volume level of the signal. Each band is switchable between high shelf, low shelf, parametric band and notch modes, with the Q widened and

Striking Distance

The Distance knob simulates near/far movement of the listening position relative to the source signal within the modelled space, by influencing the filtering of the early reflections and diffusion of the tail. Next to that, Character is another ‘macro’ style parameter, governing the modulation of the tail, prominence of early reflections and presence of extra late reflections. From 0-50%, it ramps up subtle modulation and starts to boost the ERs; from 50% up, it heads into gentle chorusing territory. At the far left, Brightness is a tonal balance control, darkening the sound by shelving higher frequencies down when turned anticlockwise, and brightening it by shelving them up clockwise. Over on the right, the Stereo Width knob transitions the output from mono at 0% through true stereo at 50% and dual mono at 100%, to sides-boosted ‘wider than wide’

FabFilter’s tooltip help system is all you need to get up and running with Pro-R

from 101 to 120%. The Mix knob sets the dry/wet balance, and can be locked for consistent preset auditioning.

Go Pro

Sonically, Pro-R is rich and evocative, equally at home generating super-sized Hollywood-style staging as it is airy, intimate vocal treatments. Despite being about as easy to use as a high-end reverb could reasonably be, it doesn’t come across as dumbed down. Indeed, the selfcontained but semi-abstract nature of the Space setting is refreshing, smoothly and effortlessly navigating a continuum from a very tiny space to a very big one without the need for supplementary buttons or menus. Despite their streamlined configuration, the other editables prove comprehensive enough to cover the gamut of traditional (as opposed to ‘special FX’) reverberations; and the Decay Rate EQ, Post EQ and syncable Predelay are simply brilliant. Obviously, there are deeper, more malleable alternatives out there, but Pro-R is an excellent studio reverb with a sound and flexibility that belie its almost non-existent learning curve. Web www.fabfilter.com

narrowed by rolling the mouse wheel, and the Y-axis representing the percentage of the Decay time stated on the Space knob. As intuitive as a regular EQ, the Decay Rate EQ enables supremely smooth, naturalsounding tails to be crafted with ease – we wish there was a global bypass button for it, though. The orange curve, meanwhile, is the Post EQ – a gain-compensated equaliser for the processed signal. Again, it’s got six bands, but the Decay Rate EQ’s notch option is replaced by 6-96dB/octave low- and high-pass filters. Very useful indeed.

Alternatively eaReckon EAReverb 2 228 » 9/10 » £90 Amazing reverb at an amazing price Eventide UltraReverb 213 » 9/10 » $199 True Eventide magic in plugin form

Verdict For Unified Space control works well Decay Rate EQ is great Post EQ is very powerful Tempo-synced Predelay Beautiful decay time visualisation Against You might occasionally wish for more control No global EQ bypass It might sacrifice some depth to achieve functional simplicity, but it works – Pro-R sounds awesome and is hugely enjoyable and rewarding to work with

9/10 February 2017 / ComPuteR musiC / 95

> reviews / xln audio rc-20 retro color Preset Browser navigate the packed preset library and use the main controls while auditioning

distort Module six distortion algorithms can be targeted with the Focus Filter

digital Module sample rate and bit depth reduction, plus filtering

Magnitude slider scales all the big knobs and the master section controls – great for sweeps!

Magnetic Module More tape emulation, this time applying three degrees of volume modulation

noise Module Fabulous vinyl, tape and other background noise types on tap

sPace Module a simple reverb with Predelay Flux sliders ramp up the chaos with these variable randomisation controls

VIDEO

Master section adjust input and output levels, stereo width, and apply basic eQ

Big knoBs set the depth, mix balance or level of the modules with these six dials

EDITOR’S CHOICE

MINUTES … 2 WITH

XLN Audio

RC-20 Retro Color

€80

A one-stop shop for all your old-school signal degrading needs, this imaginative new plugin is the antidote to modern digital coldness With the vinyl comeback in full swing and a tape resurgence hot on its heels, it seems the world at large once again values the warmth, wobble and wonder of analogue recording. XLN Audio’s latest effects plugin is designed to imbue instruments and mixes with a totally customisable blend of analogue and retrodigital character, via an attractive and intuitive interface that positively invites experimentation. RC-20 Retro Color (VST/AU/AAX) comprises a parallel bank of six modules, each delivering its own type of vintage processing. They can be individually switched in and out, and the row of big knobs at the bottom are essentially amount controls, the exact effects of which vary by module – wet/dry mix, noise level, depth, etc. Let’s go through the modules, left to right…

Bring the Noise

The Noise module synthesises 16 flavours of seamlessly looped mechanical, electrical, 96 / ComputeR musiC / February 2017

electro-magnetic and electronic noise samples. Two types of vinyl and two speeds of tape are at the top of the list, but they’re not actually the most interesting options. No, the real fun comes with the likes of ‘VHS’, ‘8-bit Home Computer’, ‘Studio Ambience’ and ‘Apollo Lunar Lander’. The Tone knob simply shifts the tonal balance of the noise, tilting towards high frequencies clockwise and low anticlockwise. The Follow knob increases the sensitivity of an onboard envelope follower, making the level of the noise rise and fall with the input signal; while Duck does the opposite, lowering the noise level as the input signal gets louder. There’s also the option to reposition Noise at the very end of the signal flow, after the Master EQ, so as to keep its output unprocessed by the rest of the modules. The animated display at the top shows the waveform of the noise. The Wobble module generates tape deckstyle pitch modulation with separate Wow and

Flutter LFOs, each with its own Rate setting – 0.1Hz to 4Hz for Wow, 6-20Hz for Flutter – and the two blended with the horizontal slider for gloriously wonky cross-modulations, as made visible in the animation up top. Wobble also features a Stereo mode, turning it into a rather lovely chorus effect.

Waste of Space

Distort is the simplest of the modules, offering six fantastic-sounding and versatile saturation algorithms taken from Addictive Drums 2 and Addictive Keys – valve, transformer, broken speaker and three waveshapers – and a Focus Filter for targeting the effect on a specific range of frequencies, bounded by the two sliders. Distort is a slightly incongruous module, in that it’s the only one without an animated graphic – all you get is a static representation of the type of distortion you’ve selected.

xln audio rc-20 retro color / reviews <

“We fell in love with RC-20 almost immediately. It’s just so much fun to mess around with” The Digital module applies sample rate and bit depth reduction, with a blend slider like that of the Wobble module, and a Smooth control for rounding off the rough edges should it all get too much. It also has a Focus Filter, but this time with a Cut option for ditching everything outside its frequency range. The animation perfectly visualises the effect on an illustrative waveform. The Space module is a pretty unremarkable reverb (a 12-note resonatory, in fact) that doesn’t sit particularly comfortably with its neighbours, but is nonetheless useful for dialling in a bit of ambience. Decay and PreDelay controls set the length and onset timing of the tail, and another Focus Filter hones the effect down to a specific frequency range. While it certainly doesn’t detract from the rest of RC-20 in any way, we’re just not sure why it’s there. The animation is also uninformative, visualising only the wet/dry mix. Magnetic is the volume-modulating equivalent of Wobble, simulating magnetic tape degradation. Again, two LFOs are mixed to a complex modulation output: a very slow one (the Wear end of the slider) and a faster one (Flutter, adjustable from 6-30Hz), both with a random element for chaotic irregularity. The Dropouts knob controls the intensity of more extreme volume drops occurring at random timings and durations. The Wear modulation and Dropouts can be generated in mono or independently for the left and right channels, and the animation reflects all of this beautifully.

Color us impressed

Each module also features a Flux slider, the particulars of which differ from one to the next, but all of which introduce random variation over time. With Distort, for example, pushing Flux to the right increases the amount of random overdrive modulation applied, while with Space, it randomly modulates the pre-delay.

The preset browser is packed with well-tuned patches, and lets you tweak the main controls while browsing

The master controls are also scaled by the plugin’s magnitude ‘macro’ slider

In, Out and all about At the bottom of the RC-20 interface, the master section provides a range of tools for shaping the signal coming out of the module rack and tweaking the final output. Both input and output Gains are adjustable (the first primarily useful for driving the Distort module harder), and the Width knob pushes the stereo image of the output from mono through ‘normal’ stereo to ‘sides-only’ with the mid component fully attenuated. The EQ section comprises Cut Filter and Tone controls. The Cut Filter is akin to the Focus Filters found in the Distort, Digital and Space modules, being a

At the top of the GUI, the Magnitude slider scales the six amount knobs and all controls in the master section from 0% to 100% of their set values, macro style. As well as being useful for adjusting the global depth of the plugin as a whole, this makes for a very effective automation target, opening up all manner of weird new takes on the classic filter sweep, amongst other things. We fell in love with RC-20 almost immediately. It’s just so much fun to mess around with, and the realism of its artificial ageing processes is staggering. It also boasts a superb preset library that syncs to XLN Audio’s cloud server for sharing with other users; and the ability to tweak the six big knobs and the Magnitude slider with the browser open is insanely handy. On the downside, the reverb is so-so, and it’s mildly annoying that the modules disappear completely when bypassed – just because we can’t hear them, doesn’t mean we don’t want to see them. But that doesn’t significantly impact on what is ultimately one of the finest effects plugins we’ve come across in a long time. From brightening, dulling and/or roughing up instrumental sources of all kinds, to sending full mixes back in time and performing spectacular real-time sweeps, RC-20 Retro Color is essential. Web www.xlnaudio.com

band-pass model with adjustable top and bottom cutoff frequencies, but with the addition of a choice of two rolloff slopes: one gentle, one steep. Next to that, the Tone EQ biases the frequency response towards the low or high end of the frequency spectrum in Tilt mode, or raises and lowers the midrange in Mid mode, as selected using the buttons to the right. Notably, all the controls in the master section are scaled by the Magnitude slider, making them much more than just static set-and-forget shaping parameters – which isn’t to demean their utility in that regard at all.

Alternatively u-he Satin 198 » 10/10 » $154 Best tape emulator in the universe AudioThing Vinyl Strip 226 » 10/10 » €55 Very similar concept, but focused on vinyl emulation

Verdict For Makes anything sound old Simple, stunningly effective processors Also great for creative effects Magnitude slider adds real-time element You won’t be able to stop fiddling with it Excellent browser and presets Against Space module seems a little superfluous Not only one of the best retro-ising plugins around, but also a powerful sound-design tool in a general sense, RC-20 is a wobbly, wonky, fizzy, soul-warming slice of awesome

10/10 February 2017 / ComputeR musiC / 97

> reviews / oeksound soothe

VIDEO MINUTES … 2 WITH

oeksound

soothe

€149

A dynamic EQ that does all – well, most – of the hard work for you, this plugin aims to clean up your vocals and other sibilant signals Described by its developers – Helsinki-based newcomers oeksound – as an “advanced de-esser” or “automatic dynamic frequency notcher”, soothe was originally conceived as a vocal processing plugin (VST/AU/AAX), but turned out to be effective on any signal suffering from harshness, narrow-band noise or excessive brightness – cymbals, electric guitars, brass, piano, acoustic fret noise, etc. Essentially an automatic, task-orientated dynamic EQ, soothe uses spectral processing to automatically detect and dynamically (ie, modulated by changes in input level) reduce what it perceives to be undesirable mid-high resonances in the source signal.

There, there…

The majority of soothe’s very pretty interface is taken up by what looks like an EQ but is in fact the ‘Frequency and Reduction Graph’. The blue area in the bottom half is a spectrogram that shows the reduction being applied in real time and inverts to undulate upwards when monitoring the detection circuit, which is done by activating the Delta button. The frequency response curve comprises three parametric bands, plus high- and low-pass filters, and works sort of like an EQ in reverse, in that each adjustable band sets the sensitivity of the automatic processing applied to its frequency range, rather than cutting or boosting

directly. Thus, raising the Sensitivity dial (giving the graphical appearance of a gain increase in the display) of a frequency band actually increases the attenuation of the detected resonances in that range. The width or Q of each band is adjustable, too, and it’s worth noting that boosting isn’t an option: you can dial the Sensitivity of a band right down to zero, but you can’t ‘flip’ the reduction to become an increase. The big Depth knob governs the overall amount of reduction brought to bear across the whole frequency range, and needs to be set to match the input signal. Care must be taken with it, though, as cranking it too far can easily start to open up unnatural-sounding holes. With 2x and 4x oversampling available for those with system resources to spare, and Normal, High and Ultra resolution options setting the refresh rate of the reduction filter (again at fairly hefty expense, CPU-wise), you can tweak performance to suit your system and the nature of the sound you’re working on. We were very impressed by the lack of artefacts even at minimum settings, though. soothe’s ability to file down the rough edges and neutralise sibilance in vocals and cymbals with minimal user input can be remarkable, the result being a thoroughly beneficial increase in clarity, air and presence. The reduction display clearly reveals where problems might lie, and the intuitive EQ-style controls make it incredibly

Stay sharp The Sharpness and Selectivity dials let you tailor the depth and width of the cuts soothe makes, and how relaxed it is with what it does and doesn’t qualify as ‘resonance’. With Sharpness at 0, the dynamic gain reduction occurs over broad, smooth, wide bands. As it’s increased, the bands become narrower, sharper and more numerous, until, at maximum, the attenuation gets surgical, with no crossover between resonant frequencies. Selectivity acts like a threshold 98 / Computer musiC / February 2017

for resonant peaks. Fully clockwise, only the most overtly apparent peaks are processed, but as Selectivity is lowered, less prominent resonances are brought into the ‘circuit’, too, ultimately delivering smoother, less targeted dynamic reduction. Below, the Stereolink dial determines whether processing is applied individually (ie, dual mono) to the left and right channels of a stereo signal, or equally to both based on the summed analysis of their contents.

easy to hone the automatic suppression. We did find the reduction a bit overzealous at the higher end of the spectrum at times, but that could always be countered using the low-pass band and/or wet/dry mix control. With other signals – guitar, piano, etc – a bit more effort seems to be required with placement of the Sensitivity nodes, but that’s presumably down to their less predictable, often polyphonic content. For anyone recording and mixing vocals, live drums and other potentially problematic midhigh-range instrumentation on a regular basis, soothe is a clever, powerful mixing tool that’s well worth checking out. Web www.oeksound.com

Alternatively Sound Radix SurferEQ2 237 » 9/10 » $199 Incredibly flexible dynamic EQ Tokyo Dawn Labs Nova GE 230 » 8/10 » €40 Quality dynamic EQ at a great price

Verdict For Easy to use Excellent automatic resonance detection Can sound very natural Oversampling to eliminate artefacts Gorgeous GUI Handy tooltips Against Can do damage if not applied with care This unique new take on dynamic EQ is a brilliant corrective plugin for vocals, cymbals and other parts – just don’t overcook it

8/10

universal audio a/da std-1 / reviews <

Universal Audio

A/DA STD-1

£149

This classic bucket brigade delay was everywhere in the 80s, but it’s making a comeback in virtual form for UAD-2 users The ADA Stereo Tapped Delay (STD-1) for UAD-2 and Apollo is a physically modelled vintage bucket brigade delay unit from UAD development partner Brainworx, officially approved by the original hardware manufacturers A/DA Signal Processors. But despite the delay tag, this isn’t your normal delay line… or even multitap delay! Rather, the purpose of STD-1 is to create short, multi-voiced, modulated delay effects – including doubling, chorus, ambience and short reverb. Its effects are achieved using six tap delays. These have unrelated (but set) delay times that can be modified collectively using the Fixed control; from x1 (1.3, 2.2, 4.6, 5.8, 8.3 and 11.1ms) up to x5 (6.5, 11, 20, 29, 46.5 and 55.5ms). Each tap can be sent to either the left or right output or bypassed completely. Delay feedback (Regeneration) can be sourced from taps 1, 3 or 6, and feedback Level is joined by a Hi Cut filter (900Hz to 10kHz). There’s delay modulation onboard (Sweep), and the Delay section includes not only an overall Mix control to blend the modulated (Sweep) and nonmodulated (Fix) signals, but also two connected LFOs, letting you use one to modulate the other. At the Output stage, STD-1 includes a separate effects blend for each channel (Mix L and Mix R), followed by an overall Output level; you also get input Level control and Mono-ising switch. The settings toolbar has two further

options: Regeneration Limiter and Noise. The first applies a soft-clip limiter to the feedback signal, and the second provides an adjustable noise floor (-inf to -60dB). Sounds like a very specific sonic prescription…

Spreading it around

STD-1 excels at adding subtle width and depth to sounds. For a processor with only a handful of controls (and only 30 presets), it can still offer a voyage of discovery. With feedback and modulation turned off, moving between two, four and six taps increases the width of sounds nicely. Likewise, shifting the Delay multiplier from x1 to x5 further increases width – although when doing this, we found it vital to use the Mix control to blend in the original signal, to prevent the stereo image becoming dominated by the shortest delay. STD-1’s Mono function is also ideal for assessing frequency cancellations. Using this helped us add mono-compatible width to all types of sounds: claps, hats, electric bass, keys, guitars and more. With snares and kicks, we like using the Regeneration to add a dash of resonant thump to proceedings. For other source sounds, blending in just a touch of modulation enhances the depth of the effect in a natural way. Close slapbacks and ambience effects were straightforward to dial in using the longest taps. We love how this effect is designed

Modulation in practice A key aspect of STD-1 is its capability for modulating signals. It can be used in subtle ways to great effect, of course, but starts to deliver some pretty interesting outcomes when you start pushing it to extremes. For a new take on guitar vibrato, we used the two short delay taps combined with a slow Sweep setting and a fast Sweep Mod setting. Blended in with the non-modulated signal and dry input, this wobbly effect was far less uniform than traditional vibrato.

Next, for an underwater special effect that works on percussive sounds such as picked guitar, we set the Regeneration to almost maximum, sourced it from tap 6, and turned the Hi Cut down low. Using just the two longest taps (5 and 6) combined with fast Sweep and slow Sweep Mod settings, and monitoring just the Sweep effect, we created an almost talkbox-like effect. These effects are difficult to describe, so we advise you have a play for yourself!

with tweakers in mind, despite its minimal controls. STD-1 is clearly an esoteric processor, but it still has a number of uses, and as a width enhancer alone, it can pull off some gorgeous, rich effects that you’ll struggle to achieve in other ways. Overall, we highly recommend that you catch this excellent plugin – just be prepared to get in there and customise the settings! Web www.uaudio.com

Alternatively Waves SuperTap N/A » N/A » $79 This old Waves favourite delivers a massive array of tap delay effects. UAD Cooper Time Cube MkII 140 » 9/10 » £115 UAD-2 users should also consider this emulation, which is great for doubling and short delay effects

Verdict For Great emulation of rare hardware Good for width enhancement Independent channel mix controls Twin modulation for great special effects Flexible regeneration Independent tap routing Against Clearly quite a niche plugin Certainly not your normal delay, this excellent (though niche) bucket brigade processor can add wonderful width and depth to sounds

9/10 February 2017 / CompuTer muSiC / 99

> reviews / universal audio api 2500 bus compressor

Universal Audio

API 2500 Bus Compressor £229 The Californian DSP giants port another well-loved outboard compressor to the UAD-2 platform. Will it thrust or bust? API’s 2500 bus compressor is a classic workhorse processor and is the latest fully endorsed emulation from Universal Audio’s in-house team. The 2500 is a modern VCA design, and while VCAs are often lambasted as clinical rather than characterful, the API sits shoulder to shoulder with equally revered VCA compressors such as SSL’s Bus Compressor and Neve’s 33609. In fact, the 2500 is one of the most flexible bus compressors available. The UAD emulation retains all the features of the hardware aside from the left/right ‘tilt’ tweaker (you can use your DAW’s pan pot to do this). The plugin’s layout is slightly different, and there’s an operating-level headroom tweaker (HR), and a Mix blend for parallel processing. The main compression controls (Threshold, Attack, Ratio and Release) are joined by manual or automatic Gain makeup, VU metering (gain reduction, input and output), and a well spec’d stereo linking option. But the 2500’s special ingredient is the suitably named Tone section. Here you’ll find three knee options (Hard, Medium, Soft) alongside Thrust, which modifies the detector signal, and Type, which sets the detector signal flow as either New (feedforward) or Old (feedback). The stereo Link section provides flexibility not only in the amount of linking (independent up to 100%), but also the frequency content that is linked. Here the Shape buttons, which have low-pass, high-pass and

band-pass options, provide yet more ways to fine-tune the nature of the linked sidechain.

Envelope shaping

The API 2500 is an incredibly flexible tool, and with knee set to Soft, Thrust set to Norm, and the Old feedback setting, it behaves very much like a classic bus compressor, with a low to medium ratio and medium attack delivering excellent mix glue and gain reduction of a few dBs. If you want to go further, there are many options. The superfast Attack times (30, 100 and 300ms) can help reshape the attack envelope of sounds, and this can be altered further with the Knee shape. What’s more, there’s a fine-tune option for the Release (Variable), good for tweaking envelopes of transients. With ratios up to limiting (inf), there’s plenty of scope to really hammer sounds. We found at extreme settings like these, New (feedforward) was the more responsive mode. All degrees of compression can be further influenced using the Medium and Loud Thrust modes. In both cases, a filter is applied to the sidechain, cutting lows and boosting highs (Loud is the more extreme setting), making the compression less sensitive to low frequencies and more sensitive to high frequencies. On mixes and subgroups, this helped us reduce pumping whilst retaining punch, and on individual sounds it added further reshaping

options, by curtailing high frequencies and retaining punch. Overall, it’s unsurprising that the API 2500 is a wonderful tool for mix bus and sub group duties, but it’s also excellent for individual sounds, making it one of the most flexible compressors you can buy. Another top-class plugin from the Universal Audio stable. Web www.uaudio.com

Alternatively Waves API 2500 118 » 9/10 » $299 This emulation is well established and is available individually or as part of Waves’ API Collection SSL Duende Native X-Comp 206 » N/A » £129 This highly flexible master compressor has great pedigree and is very easy to use

Verdict New for Old One of the key selectable parameters on the 2500 is the feedback (Old) or feedforward (New) topology, which influences whether the sidechain is taken before or after the gain reduction VCA. It’s often suggested that feedback designs are far more gentle and that feedforward designs more aggressive. Classic feedback designs like Neve’s 2254 desk compressor (and its rackmounted 33609 version), and feedforward designs like dbx’s 160 would seem to confirm this view. 100 / ComPuter musIC / February 2017

But there are many other influences on a compressor’s design and behaviour, and there are plenty of feedback style compressors (Urei’s 1176, for example) that can hardly be described as gentle or laid-back. On the API 2500, the feedback Type does influence the behaviour, making the circuit more responsive, particularly when compressing harder or transient-heavy sounds. But the differences are not always as marked as you might imagine.

For Very flexible attack and release Two sidechain topologies Mix blend In-depth stereo linking Thrust option Three knee shapes Against Nothing The API 2500 is a fabulous and extremely flexible compressor that’s been excellently emulated by the Universal Audio team.

10/10

universal audio chandler zener limiter / reviews <

Universal Audio

Chandler Zener

£229

If you’re after vintage flavour, a compressor is a great place to start, and this one can trace its pedigree back to Abbey Road’s 60s heyday New from Universal Audio, in collaboration with Softube, is the Chandler Zener Limiter. If you’re familiar with Chandler’s real-life hardware unit, you’ll appreciate that the Zener is an expanded version of their original Zener diodebased TG1 Limiter, and is thus based on the classic EMI TG console limiter, that rare breed of 1960s desks found at Abbey Road and other EMI establishments. The Zener was born when Wade Goeke at Chandler increased flexibility of the TG1 by adding extra knob positions (there are 11 positions for Attack and 21 positions for Release), as well as including the settings of the original TG1 (labelled in white). These details are carried over in the software emulation, allowing you to replicate both the Zener and the TG1. Additionally, there’s a Side Chain high-pass filter with five stepped frequencies, two Input operating levels (High and Low, with a 6dB difference), needle-style Gain Reduction meters, three compression settings (Comp 1, Comp 2 and Limit), and THD, which removes the limiter threshold from the circuit so you can use the plugin solely for saturation. Compression threshold is handled by the stepped Input control, and the post limiting Output control provides +/- 10dB gain in 1dB steps. Holding Shift gangs these together in an inverse configuration, which is handy. Further software-only extras include Linking of all controls, and Mid/Side processing.

Cream of the crop

The Zener is basically three compressor designs in one, with Limit and Comp 1 emulating the original TG limiter options, and Comp 2 a sort of hybrid of the two. This means that the Attack and Release settings are specific to each of the three modes. This becomes very apparent in use, with the Limit mode delivering very lively attack and release characteristics. At its fastest settings, this adds obvious distortion to picked electric bass, and easily nails the transients on snares and kicks. But even at these extremes, there’s still a warmth to the sound that’s very seductive, and easing back the attack and release settings just a little removes said distortion. For snappy snares, we favoured Comp 1 and Comp 2, with the latter delivering the more aggressive sound. Comp 1 is the most universal setting, and can tackle everything from acoustic guitar to electric bass and drum overheads. Even so, in conjunction with the Side Chain high-pass filter, the more aggressive Limiter and Comp 2 settings can be used far more extensively, as you can prevent the low frequencies from dominating the compression. To that end, in conjunction with the high-pass filter, all three settings make reasonable bus or sub group processors. For bus and mastering duties, the Mid/Side mode is also excellent, and it’s great to be able

to compress the mono part of the signal while allowing the stereo aspect to breathe a little more. For mastering duties, the only thing missing is input and output metering. All told, this is a rather fabulous emulation of a rather fabulous hardware unit, and aside from the steep asking price, and the metering limitations matching those of the original hardware, we really have no gripes. Web www.uaudio.com

Alternatively Waves TG12345 Channel Strip N/A » N/A » $249 For the full EMI TG experience, go for this channel strip emulation Klanghelm MJUC 224 » 10/10 » €24 This highly flexible Fairchild 670 can achieve TG-style limiting

Verdict Just distortion, hold the compression One rather excellent feature on the Zener is called THD (total harmonic distortion). This removes the threshold from the circuitry leaving the remainder of the circuit active, and allows you to take advantage of the Zener’s excellent saturation characteristics without compression or limiting. You may have spotted that the Input labelling indicates a couple of THD values at 0.04% and 2%, but even greater distortion can be achieved by increasing the input level into the plugin.

From spectral analysis, it’s clear the saturation is dominated by odd harmonics, adding a nice richness, and what you’ll hear is subtle then more obvious mid- to high-frequency enhancement as you drive the circuit towards clipping. If you want the best of both worlds (and have the available DSP, of course) one nice option is to chain two Zeners in series, using one just for compression and one just for the THD feature.

For Three different compression styles THD mode Mid/Sides option Inverse gang for input and output gain Side chain high pass filter TG1 settings labelled Against Limited metering Universal Audio continue deliver some of the best and most desirable emulations available and the Zener is as good as it gets

10/10 February 2017 / Computer musiC / 101

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> reviews / mini reviews

soundware reviews

A rapid-fire round-up of the latest and greatest sample libraries Raw Cutz

raw skillz £80 50 laid-back hip-hop projects for Ableton Live and NI Maschine 2.5, plus 50 ‘remix’ projects for Maschine, each comprising a fully loaded Drum Rack or Kit (drums, bass, melodics, etc), and a MIDI clip triggering it. The sounds are phat, beautifully produced and immediately usable. ‘Lite’ versions of the Live, Maschine or WAV libraries containing ten kits/projects or 220 samples can be bought for £10, and upgraded to the full enchilada at any time, but there really need to be Live- and Maschine-only versions, since most people won’t need both, particularly given the high price.

www.loopmasters.com n8/10n

Gothic Instruments

sculptor: massive Whooshes £55

Sample Magic

Future Beat £35 4GB of audio content powers this versatile library of Racks and loops for Ableton Live, aimed at producers of all contemporary urban genres. Ten ‘fixed’ Drum Racks cover a good range of hip-hop, trap and R&B flavours, but the Drum Rack Selector is the headline, enabling you to choose from 180 drum sounds to build your own kits. 85 Instrument Racks, meanwhile, mix over 40 multisampled synths (Roland Juno-6, Nord Lead 2x et al) with Live’s Operator and Analog instruments, and ten FX Racks reveal a wealth of processing options. Huge! www.samplemagic.com n

10/100

104 / Computer musiC February 2017

The follow-up to Sculptor (9/10, 234), Massive Whooshes enables the design of, well, massive whooshes in a scripted Kontakt 5 library lifted wholesale from Zero-G’s Whoosh Designer (8/10, 212). A ‘whoosh’ comprises discrete Attack, Peak and Decay stages, each based on one of 64 separately selected multisamples captured from all manner of real world and synthesised sources, with plenty of editing, effects and directional control available. Another winner from Gothic, and as a sizeable bonus, you also get over 2700 samples (5GB) created using it.

www.timespace.com n8/10n

Lack of Afro

Analogue soul 2 £30 Eight fully arranged construction kits from multiinstrumentalist and producer Adam Gibbons (and a team of session players), of a soulful, jazzy, rare groovy bent. The ‘analogue’ in the title doesn’t refer to synthesis – what we have here is a genuine live band: drums, bass (upright and electric), guitar, Hammond, Rhodes, piano, trumpet, percussion, etc. The performances are excellent and the production is warm and retro, and our only reservation is the necessary restrictiveness of the construction kit format – but there’s still lots here to dig into.

www.loopmasters.com n8/10n

Rhythmic Robot

spaceman £24 In recording the source samples for this 475MB Kontakt instrument, the Robots played the three exposed springs of the madcap Ekdahl Moisturizer spring reverb with various objects, including an EBow, brushes, fingernails, screwdrivers and cables, while messing with the onboard filter. The scripted engine wraps the whole lot up in an intriguing interface – including sub oscillator, harmonics generator, Contact and Mute controls, effects and much more – for an endlessly malleable sound design playground of sproings, sweeps, plucks and wobbles.

www.rhythmicrobot.com n9/10n

mini reviews / reviews <

Samplephonics

Loopmasters

KVNi: Bass Heavy Head splitters £35

Hard trap £30

This seemingly unassuming 450MB collection of hard-edged EDM and tech (cited influences include Skrillex, Zomboy and Oliver Heldens) loops (100-150bpm) and one-shots turns out to be a revelation. The basses lead the charge – fierce, muscular and aggressive – but the beats and percussion are great, too, while the melodics serve up a solid array of riffs, arps and leads. As well as hitting the mark in terms of quality, KVNI impresses with its diversity and sonic imagination.

Although not especially hard, this 1GB collection of loops, hits, sampler patches, MIDI files and Massive presets certainly nails the trap. The requisite 808 basslines and kick drums, ’verby snares and ticketytick hi-hats are all in full effect, along with imposing horn builds, brooding pads, winding synths and all the rest of it. This is a tricky genre to do anything new with, so Hard Trap can’t really be criticised for being light on innovation – what we have here is a solid, well made resource for producers of trap, hip-hop and other urban styles.

www.samplephonics.com n9/10n

www.loopmasters.com n9/10n

Mode Audio

Big Fish Audio

multiverse £18

modern Country Vol 2 £110

14 80s-style construction kits, each comprising electronic drums, percussion and a panoply of synth loops (basslines, pads, arps, leads and chords), plus drum one-shots and tail samples, amounting to 385 samples all told. The compositional and production style is ‘soundtrack’ rather than ‘pop’, and the retro feel is utterly convincing, making Multiverse a nostalgic but somewhat niche offering. Despite that, many of the sounds are useful beyond their prescribed context, and the low price and inclusion of the triggering MIDI files make it well worth checking out.

A long time in the making, the sequel to Modern Country (8/10, 165) furnishes the media producer with 15 flexible construction kits in Kontakt and/or WAV/AIFF formats, the former enabling easy rearranging, mixing and processing of each one. Instrumentation includes drum kit, electric bass and guitars of all kinds (electric, acoustic, banjo, slide, etc), the performances are top-notch, and the production is edgier than last time. For those who need to put together authentic modern country choons in a hurry, there’s surely none better – if you can afford it.

www.modeaudio.com n8/10n

www.timespace.com n8/10n

Sample Magic

Samplephonics

Future electronica 2 £35

Wonky Dream pop £35

Thankfully a bit less confusing in its folder structure than its predecessor (7/10, 229), Future Electronica 2 continues down same the glitzy, sparkly R&B path. Again, the drums (which have enough sonic variation to keep them interesting but are very samey in programming terms) and music loops are presented in sets of stems, but this time there are a handful of separate bass and chord clips included as well. The ten Inspiration construction kits are fab, and Massive users will be delighted with the 124 presets to found throughout the library. Polished.

Off-kilter electronic pop with a chillwave tinge, the 412 samples in this inventive library are a joy to wander through. The paucity of bass loops (just 12) is disappointing, but the superb cornucopia of drums, keys and guitars more than makes up for it. Hopping between styles and tonalities, Wonky Dream Pop successfully finds its own musical space without sacrificing relevance or usability. A One-Shots folder full of field recordings, glitches, Boss DR-202 hits and more rounds things off nicely. Inspirational through and through.

www.samplemagic.com n8/10n

www.samplephonics.com n9/10n

Zero-G

Niche Audio

surface tension £56

Deep House & tech XL Collection £50

Drones and textures are the order of the day with this 2GB Kontakt 5 library of electric guitars played using a range of techniques and implements. Two samples are loaded at a time. LFO and AHDSR envelopes provide modulation of volume, pitch, filter and pan, and five effects slots each house one of 14 processors (EQ, distortion, delay, etc), with 60 impulse responses included. Boiled down, there’s really nothing new or unique here, but Surface Tension’s presentation is slick and the sounds it delivers are absolutely stunning.

556 loops produced by Niche using their own Deep Moods, Nu Tech (9/10, 235), Dynamic House and Dark Bass House (9/10, 232) Maschine/Live packs, plus all 962 single hits employed to do it. The numbers are actually a bit misleading, as you get full drum loops as well as kick-free versions of them and their constituent kit pieces as separate loops, between them comprising ten of the 17 folders. However, there are still lots of quality basses, chords, pads, synths, etc, not to mention that vast trove of one-shots. Epic.

www.timespace.com n9/10n

www.loopmasters.com n8/10n February 2017 / Computer musiC / 105

> dvd/download / samples

Exclusive samples

Gangster Stings Put noir funk into your tracks with this free pack of 500 sleazy stabs, jazzy horns and criminal chords Listen carefully, readers. You know this whole magazine thing? It’s just a front for our real operation: smuggling packages of copyright-free WAV files across the borders and into the hands of wannabe music-making wiseguys and good-for-nothin’ molls. But we’ve run into a bit of a snag, see – our two top earners, Cyclick and Groove Criminals, have got to shift these 500 samples before the end of the day, and we need you to unload them… sorry, download them. So we’re going to make you an offer you can’t refuse: take these samples off our hands, and go make some royalty-free music with them. When we want something back from you, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Cyclick

When we catch up with sample mogul Robbie Stamp to find out what’s in this pack, it’s with a sheet of glass between us. The idiot’s been arrested for copyright infringement – an occupational hazard in his game, really. “The gangster movie, whatever the temporal setting, uses a significant 30s American mafia instrumental tone to tell you one thing: ‘This. Is. Gangster.’ This pack is filled with jarring yet jazzy chords, made from high strings, muted horns, brass sections, and a piano that has that ‘tack’ edge. There are folders for Tempo Loops, sketchy Chord Hits, and cool Chord Loops, all

focused on getting you that seedy, psychopathic sound. And I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ more without my attorney present.” Make a collect call to Robbie at your earliest convenience: @CyclickBob

Groove Criminals

Oli Bell might be a made guy, but we’re getting suspicious that he’s ratting old uncle out to the Feds. Spending so much time around all that recording equipment must’ve given him ideas. We tied him to a chair so we can find out exactly how he made this month’s samples… “Without our own sleazy jazz horn section, we used a mixture of hardware synths and software to replicate the sound we were after,” screams Oli. “Lots of subtle volume and modulation automation was used to get that cool sound of a swelling brass section – I swear!” Oli loosens up once we start giving him a foot massage. Little does he know, we’re sizing him up for a new pair of concrete shoes. “The brushed jazzy drums are made from a huge collection of samples. There’s strings, vibes, and upright bass, too. We used our hardware spring reverb on lots of the samples, just to add a touch of grit and warmth.” A likely story. Oli Bell is now missing. We’re not sure what happened, but don’t try to tweet him. @groovecriminals

download Get these exclusive samples on your PC/Mac over at vault.computermusic.co.uk

503 eXClUsIVe samples 105 28 50 54 62 5 56 50 25

Chord hits Chord loops Piano loops Drum hits Mixed loops Multis Stings Violin loops Horn loops

Songwriter’s Toolkit Don your loosest jeans and your paint-covered vest, and dive into the singer-songwriter’s ultimate toolbox. Within, you’ll find diamondpointed drums, razor-sharp guitar chords and licks, heavy bass samples, and a spare bunch of keys (electric and acoustic) for when your twohour lunch break comes. This 1200-strong container of one-shots, loops and patches will help you express your deep-seated feelings of inadequacy through the time-honoured medium of the moany four-chord song!

106 / Computer muSiC / February 2017

1200 samples Including 93 Bass hits 385 Electric piano chords 302 Guitar chords 226 Drums 61 Keys

samples / dvd/download <

Bonus loopmasters samples! Get them on the 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

DVD or download from vault.computermusic.co.uk

Stranger Synths Dope Wax Beats Rockwell UK Drum & Bass Lo-Fi House Enormous Digital House Niche Audio Deep Moods Guitarristas

February 2017 / Computer muSiC / 107

> dvd/download /

plugins

plugINS guIDE

INSTRUMENTS Our exclusive collection of instruments and effects is included with every issue of Computer Music – it’s got all you need to make great music now! The Plugins collection is a suite of complete, limitation-free instrument and effects plugins. It’s an incredible resource, boasting more than 65 pro-quality plugins that you won’t find anywhere else, all for PC and Mac, in VST and AU formats. All of the included software is created exclusively for us by respected commercial developers such as D16 Group, AudioRealism, Ohm Force, KV331 Audio, u-he, Cableguys, AudioThing, XILS-lab, Vengeance-Sound, Rob Papen, zplane and more.

download AAs well as on our DVD, you’ll find all these plugins at vvault.computermusic.co.uk

HYBRID SYNTHS

Cableguys Curve 2.6 CM • Design-your-own-waveforms synth • New waveform capabilities for v2.6 • Phat 16-voice Unison mode • Based on Cableguys Curve 2.6 • AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.cableguys.de

Synapse Audio Dune CM

KV331 Audio SynthMaster CM • Dual wavescanning oscillators • Multimode filter and built-in effects • Customisable waveshaping distortion • FM/AM synthesis modes • Based on SynthMaster 2.5 • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.kv331audio.com

Klevgränd Enkl CM

• VA and wavetable oscillators • Powerful per-voice modulation • 12-slot modulation matrix • Based on the full version of Dune • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.synapse-audio.com

• Classic monosynth design • Modulation, arpeggiator and effects • Based on the full Enkl synth • AU/VST 32-/64-bit www.klevgrand.se

u-he Zebra CM

• Patchable modular synth plugin • Sequencer and Mapping Generator • Audio-rate modulation, Fractalizer • Based on the full Bazille • AU/VST 32-/64-bit www.u-he.com

frequently asked questions What is Plugins? Is it just freeware from the internet? No, and neither are the plugins limited or ‘crippled’. It’s a set of virtual instruments and effects created by some of the best developers in the business just for us – you won’t find this set of plugins anywhere else! Where do I get Plugins? As a download from our Vault (see p5 for instructions on how to access). How do I install Plugins? You’ll find specific installation instructions for each plugin in the How To Install file in the CM Plugins folder. What do I need to use them? A PC or Mac and a music program

(aka DAW) to host them (ie, ‘plug in’ to). You need a DAW that can host VST or AU plugins, such as Ableton Live, Reaper, FL Studio (PC), Cubase, Sonar (PC), Logic (Mac) or Garageband (Mac). What happened to…! As of 209, many Plugins have been upgraded to include 64-bit compatibility. The few older Plugins that remain 32-bit-only – such as Amplifikation CM, Rhino CM and KR-Delay/KR-Reverb – are now included in the 32-bit only subfolders. These plugins require either a 32-bit host or a suitable ‘bit bridge’ (eg, jBridge) for use within a 64-bit DAW. Still got questions? See the full FAQ at bit.ly/cmpluginsfaq

108 / Computer musiC / February 2017

• Blendable oscillator waveforms • Super-programmable step LFOs • Slick delay, reverb and chorus/phaser • Original synth designed just for CM • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.u-he.com

Enzyme CM • Scanned synthesis sound generation • Straightforward preset-based setup • Assign presets’ parameters to controls • Based on the full Enzyme synth • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.humanoidsoundsystems.com

u-he Bazille CM

plugins / dvd/download <

plugins reloaded / make music now < > Step by step

11. Piano and vintage synth sounds

focus > CURVE 2 CM

We turn our attention to this versatile, inspiring synth, the latest Plugins family addition to the

download Download Curve 2 CM, the videos and tutorial files at vault.computermusic.co.uk

VIDEO TUTORIAL

> Step by step

12. Risers and effects with Alchemy Player CM

VIDEO TUTORIAL

December 2012 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 47

! W e n CM Plugins TuTorial Bank To help you get the most out of our immense plugin collection, we’ve assembled the Plugins Tutorial Bank, containing over 100 guides and tutorials for our Plugins, specially selected from past issues. You’ll find Getting Started PDFs and videos for most of the individual plugins, along

VIRTUAL ANALOGUE SYNTHS

DRUM MACHINES DopeVST Beat Machine CM

LinPlug Alpha CM • Dual oscillators with blendable waves • Easy operation • Modulation matrix • Slick chorus effect • Polyphonic glide • Based on the commercial Alpha synth • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.linplug.com

• 50 ready-mixed royalty-free kits • 50 MIDI beats included • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.dopevst.com

with tutorial PDFs and videos on using Plugins for sound design, mixing, and even creating entire tracks. You’ll find all of this as a handy download in our Vault – go grab it now and start getting more out of your plugins! vault.computermusic.co.uk

OTHER

DopeVST Bass Engine CM • 45 authentic hip-hop bass patches • Three eras of faux-sampled material • Envelope and note controls • 50 MIDI riffs included • Based on the full Bass Engine • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.dopevst.com

AudioThing miniBit CM

AudioRealism ADM CM

XILS-lab PolyKB II CM

• Old-school-style drum machine • Emulates Roland’s legendary TR-606 • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiorealism.se

• Models the ultra-rare PolyKobol synth • Packed with mix-ready preset variants • Knobs assignable to main parameters • Based on XILS-lab’s PolyKB II • AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.xils-lab.com

brunsandspork Grooove CM • Load in two samples per sound and choose how they respond to velocity • 50 built-in Micro Kits to play • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.brunsandspork.com

Madrona Labs Aalto CM • Unique and powerful monosynth • Unusual oscillators with FM • Waveguide delay section • Intuitively patchable modulation • Onboard reverb • Step sequencing • Based on the full Aalto synth • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.madronalabs.com

SAMPLERS

XILS-lab XILS 3 CM • Modelled on the EMS VCS 3 modular • Authentic oscillators, spring reverb and ring mod circuits of the original • Added chorus and delay effects • Pin matrices to ‘patch’ the signal flow • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.xils-lab.com

• 15-waveform chiptune synth • Envelope, LFO, bit/sample reduction • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiothing.net

Kirnu Cream CM • Master arpeggios with this MIDI tool • Get more out of plugin instruments by controlling them with Cream CM! • Program and store complex patterns • Musical controls for rhythm and notes • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.kirnuarp.com

Loomer Cumulus • Granular sampler with sequencing • AU/VST (RTAS/Standalone 32-bit) www.loomer.co.uk

zplane vielklang 2 CM • Pitch-correct and retune audio • Harmonise melodies with ease • Algorithms by the experts at zplane • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bit www.zplane.de

Camel Audio Alchemy Player CM • 200 awesome ready-to-play patches • Loads SFZ patches – often included in our own sample collections! • Based on the full Alchemy synth • AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.camelaudio.com

Expert Sleepers XFadeLooper CM • Creative crossfade-looping sampler • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.expert-sleepers.co.uk

Rob Papen RG-Muted CM • Creates realistic funky guitar grooves • Sequencer, FX and modulation • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.robpapen.com

Squaredheads Nora CM • Input up to four notes, output chords and arpeggios across three octaves • Program velocities and store patterns • Based on the full Nora and Nora 2 • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit • Mac users require OS X 10.8 or above www.squaredheads.com

Eisenberg Einklang CM • Morph between a trio of oscillators • Envelope and timbre controls • Modulate tone with the LFO • Based on the full Einklang synth • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.eisenberg-audio.de

Monoplugs B-Step CM • Step sequencer for beats and chords • Easily creates chord progressions • Seven pages of controls to dial in • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.monoplugs.com

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EFFECTS EQ/ FILTERS OverTone DSP Program EQ CM

DDMF CM EQ Pack FEaTurED Plugin

miniBit Cm This retro synth from AudioThing should be your first port of call for chiptune bleeps and bloops. Featuring basic oscillator waves, LFO, envelope, plus a bitcrusher and filter, this synth harks back to the 8-bit days in sound and in style. The full miniBit features a sub-oscillator, filtering and more, but our version’s a chip off the old block. www.audiothing.com

• Two superb equalisers • IIEQ Pro CM: 19 filter types • LP10 CM: Linear phase mastering EQ • Based on commercial DDMF plugins • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.ddmf.eu

AudioThing ValveFilter CM

eaReackon CM-EQUA 87 • Smooth 3-band EQ • Switchable high/low shelves • Analyser, EQ tips, limiter and more • Based on eaReckon’s PR-EQUA 87 • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.eareckon.com

• Gorgeous filtering and drive • Low-pass filter circuit emulation • Vintage valve saturation section • Based on Valve Filter VF-1 • Settings randomiser and metering • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiothing.net

MULTI EFFECTS

Vengeance Sound Philta CM • Dual high- and low-pass filters • Four slope settings: 12/24/48/96dB • Resonance and width controls • Link function and notch mode • Based on Vengeance’s Philta XL • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.vengeance-sound.com

Ohm Force Ohmygod! • Resonant comb filter with distortion • LFO with sync • Output filter • AU/VST/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.ohmforce.com

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• Pultec-style vintage EQ emulation • Dual bass boost/attenuate controls; high-mid boost; high shelf cut • Tube amplifier circuit-only option • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.overtonedsp.co.uk

Subsonic Labs Wolfram CM • Pitchshifting, distortion, phaseshifting, panning, delay and filter • Flexible modulation • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.subsoniclabs.com

Inear Display Eurydice CM • Buffer override/repeat, delay, bitcrusher and filter with modulation • Custom signal routing • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.ineardisplay.com

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OTHER

DYNAMICS

D16 Group Frontier Toneboosters Barricade CM • Intelligent mastering-grade limiter • Dynamic response controls • Stereo options and versatile metering • Based on the full Barricade • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.toneboosters.com

Unfiltered Audio G8 CM • Get tight dynamics or creative effects • Includes advanced gating controls • Real-time waveform display • Use MIDI as a trigger or output • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.unfilteredaudio.com

• Superb mixing/mastering limiter • Choose detection and release styles • Soft Clip control for drive/distortion • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bit www.d16.pl

Auburn Sounds Panagement CM • Psycho-stereo toolkit plugin • Place sounds with Binaural Pan knob • Edit perceived distance and width • Instantly stereoise mono sounds • AU/VST plugin www.auburnsounds.com

Ignite VST Vice One HoRNet Fat-FET SKnote Snap • Boost or tame transient brightness • Brighten or dull a sound’s sustain • Uses two intelligently linked filters • Not based on any existing plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.sknote.it

• FET-style compressor • Similar to classic 1176LN Peak Limiter • Ultra-fast attack as low as 0.02ms. • Based on HoRNet MultiComp • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.hornetplugins.com

• Talented compressor plugin • Analogue or Digital response circuits • In/out and Gain Reduction metering • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.ignitevst.com

ANALYSIS

Joey Sturgis Tones & Boz Digital Labs SideWidener • Add stereo width to mono sounds! • Signal retains mono compatibility • Goniometer for stereo visualisation • 3 widening modes, plus Width & Tone • AU/VST/AAX/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.joeysturgistones.com www.bozdigitallabs.com

HoRNet DrumShaper eaReckon CM-COMP 87 • Slick, punchy compressor • Mix knob for parallel compression • Limiter to keep the output in check • Clear VU- and LED-style metering • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.eareckon.com

LVC-Audio Transector CM • Transient tweaking and saturation • Define and process envelope stages • Useful metering/display functions • Mix control for parallel processing • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.lvcaudio.com

• Instant EQ & compression for drums • Dial in effect amount and in/out gain • 7 algorithms for kick, snare, loops, etc • Based on HoRNet TrackShaper • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.hornetplugins.com

Blue Cat Audio FreqAnalyst CM • Pro-quality, feature-packed analyser • Numerous customisation options • Based on Blue Cat’s full FreqAnalyst • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit • RTAS 32-bit www.bluecataudio.com

Nyrv Agent CM • Create custom effects chains • Host your VST/AU plugins • Design your own interface • Based on the full Agent plugin • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bit www.nyrvsystems.com

audioD3CK SunRuys CM • Characterful bus compressor • Dry/wet mix and blend controls • Advanced options for serial tweakers • Based on the full SunRuys plugin • AU/VST/RTAS/AAX, 32-/64-bit audio.d3ck.net

Audiority TS-1 CM

Toneboosters Sibalance CM

• Flavoursome transient shaper • Set attack and sustain gain separately • Blend control for parallel processing • Based on the full TS-1 plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiority.com

• Pro-quality de-esser and de-harsher • Four modes for different use cases • Select reduction and Attack amounts • Based on the full TB Sibalance plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.toneboosters.com

Dotec-Audio DeeMonitor Photosounder Spiral CM • Musical, note-based spectral analysis • Useful for figuring out notes in audio • Based on the full Spiral plugin • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bit www.photosounder.com

• Emulate NS10, Genelec and Auratone 5C speakers in your DAW • Invert and Solo left and right feeds • Mid/Side balancing + Output gain • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.dotec-audio.com

Vengeance-Sound Scope • Spectrum view for frequency analysis • Oscilloscope for waveform monitoring • Stereo phase and level metering • Tons of advanced analysis options • AU/VST/AAX, 32-/64-bit www.vengeance-sound.com

February 2017 / Computer musiC / 111

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EFFECTS

download

Continued

DELAY/ REVERB

DISTORTION/ SATURATION

Cableguys Waveshaper CM • Graphically editable distortion curves • Design curves by dragging nodes • Syncable input vs output oscilloscope • Not based on an existing plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.cableguys.de

Audio Assault GrindMachine CM • Five amp and ten cab emulations • Three-band EQ plus depth and presence • Djentbox for tightening low tunings • Based on the full GrindMachine • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audioassault.com

GAs well as on the DVD, you’ll find all these plugins at vvault.computermusic.co.uk

Audio Assault BassAmp CM • Inspired by Ampeg bass gear • Gain and Deep controls for added drive • Three-band EQ plus Mix blend • Choice of two cabinets • Not based on any existing plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audioassault.com

LiquidSonics Reverberate CM • Convolution reverb • A selection of real-world presets • Import your own impulse response • Based on the full Reverberate plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.liquidsonics.com

Audiffex STA Enhancer CM • New for v1.5: CPU optimised, tube mode soft switch, new interface • Valve-style signal exciter/enhancer • Separate low/high enhancement • Choose from five tube circuitry modes • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.audiffex.com

HoRNet Graffio CM Sonimus Satson CM • Classic mixer channel emulation • Subtle warming saturation • Gentle, musical high/low filters • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit dsp.sonimus.com

• Flexible three-flavour distortion effect • Saturator module with DC offset control • Exciter with odd/even harmonics dials • Bit reducer to degrade your sounds • Based on the multiband Graffio plugin • AU/VST/VST3/AAX/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.hornetplugins.com

Acon Digital CM Verb • Simple-but-versatile operation • Five modes: hall, plate, studio, etc • Built-in high- and low-pass filters • Based on Acon Digital’s Verberate • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.acondigital.com

Kuassa PreMix CM • Subtle saturation to screaming drive • Three-band Baxandall sweetening EQ • A/B comparison function • Not based on an existing plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.kuassa.com

PSP Audioware cmDelay Mercuriall U530 CM

Rop Papen RP-Distort CM • Five crunchy distortion algorithms • EQ, dynamics, widener + modulation • Filter and parallel processing controls • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.robpapen.com

Lindell Plugins 6X-500 CM • Classic preamp emulation with EQ • High and low boosts for musical tone • Modelled on Lindell’s 6X-500 hardware preamp/EQ • Based on the full 6X-500 and ChannelX plugin • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.lindellplugins.com

Tek’it Audio CrossDr CM • Three independent bands of drive • Drive, Warp, Crush and Clip signals • Per-band Balance and Level • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.tekit-audio.com

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• Emulation of the ENGL E530 preamp • Fully customisable Clean & Lead circuits • Presence, Contour, Chorus & Gain • Changeable mic/speaker positioning • AU/VST, 32-/64-bit www.mercuriall.com

• Modulatable delay with LFO • Dial in delay time, filtering and width • Feedback and ping-pong operation • Based on the commercial stompDelay • AU/VST/AAX/RTAS, 32-/64-bit www.pspaudioware.com

plugins / dvd/download <

loading plugins in your daw Though there are a wide variety of DAWs, each with its own unique interface, there are similarities when it comes to loading up and using plugins, and most stick to one of two approaches. The first – as seen in Steinberg’s Cubase, Apple’s Logic, and Cakewalk’s Sonar – involves insert slots on a track or mixer channel. These are used in the same way as an insert effect would be used on a hardware mixer. In other words, the effect is placed ‘in line’ on that mixer or track channel. Plugins might be loaded in by use of a dropdown menu tree or rightclicking in the effects slot. Clicking in the insert or effects slot in some DAWs – Cockos’ Reaper, for instance – will reveal a dedicated browser from which the desired plugin may be selected. It’s common to stack multiple effects plugins together to form an effects ‘chain’, much in the way a guitarist might connect various stompboxes together to form a custom sound. In some DAWs, these effects chains may be saved and recalled at a later time. If your DAW uses a sidebar browser, here you can find your plugins displayed and possibly arranged into categories. The plugins may be dragged into the project and placed directly onto a track or channel. Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, Cakewalk’s Sonar and PreSonus Studio One can all open effects and even instrument plugins in this manner. On the subject of instrument plugins, we should discuss the different methods you might encounter when loading up instruments. As mentioned, sometimes they can be dragged and

See how to load plugins in eight different DAWs with our videos at the URLs below

dropped from a browser onto a specific track. However, many DAWs distinguish between instrument and audio tracks, so you’ll need to keep this in mind. Those that allow you to drag instruments in from a browser might offer the choice of using an existing instrument track or creating a new one. Some DAWs (Cubase, Sonar) allow you to open instruments in a ‘rack’ and then connect to them from MIDI or instrument tracks. Others (Logic) make a plugin menu available from the track itself.

We’ve prepared videos for eight major DAWs showing you the basics of loading plugins, along with a few handy tips you won’t want to miss: > Cockos Reaper – bit.ly/LPIreaper > Cakewalk Sonar – bit.ly/LPIsonar > PreSonus Studio One – bit.ly/LPIstudioone > Apple Logic – bit.ly/LPIlogic > Image-Line FL Studio – bit.ly/LPIflstudio > Steinberg Cubase – bit.ly/LPIcubase > Bitwig Studio – bit.ly/LPIbitwig > Ableton Live – bit.ly/LPIableton

Plugin folder locations So how does your DAW know where to look for your plugins? Actually, it might not. Mac users have it easy, as there are OS-specified folders into which plugins are installed. These folders can be found by going to your Library folder (if you can’t find it, go to the Finder’s Go menu, hold Alt, and a Library option should appear). find the Audio directory, and then the Plug-Ins folder within. There you will find more folders still. One will be labelled Components – this is where your AU plugins reside. Other folders will be found alongside it for VST and VST3 plugins. If you’re a Pro Tools user, you’ll find your plugins in an Avid or Digidesign folder. If your installers don’t automatically install the plugins into the proper folder, you should manually copy them into the relevant folders listed above. One caveat: there will likely be two sets of folders under two different Library locations.

If you’re using Apple’s OS X, all your VST, VST3 and Audio Units go into pre-determined locations

One is for all users, the other is for administrator use. If your DAW has trouble seeing a plugin, you might need to move it from one Library to the other, though the system folder is usually the one to use.

Uninstalling plugins from OS X usually requires little more than putting the Component or VST file in the Trash. Sometimes an uninstaller will be offered, though. On Windows, you can choose the location of your VST plugins folders. Some DAWs will create one when you install them, but both DAW and plugin installers will often give you an option of pointing to the plugin directory you’d like to use. It usually looks something like C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VST Plugins. Some plugins are delivered as only DLL files, and need to be copied to your chosen directory. Once you’ve installed your plugins, think twice about moving them. Some plugins rely on support files installed into the same directory. To duplicate plugins elsewhere on the drive, use shortcuts on Windows (right-click to create one) or aliases on Macs (Cmd-Alt-dragging). February 2017 / Computer musiC / 113

> make music now / blast from the past

blast

from the

past

The king of hip-hop production tools, the Roger Linn-designed MPC60 mapped out the path still followed by manufacturers today m

Akai MPC60 Some classic instruments seem to spring out of nowhere – unprecedented bursts of creative genius that shake the industry and leave competitors scrambling to keep up. Others, though, only appear after a long gestation period, growing in scope and maturity as the design is refined over multiple iterations. Such is the case with Akai’s MPC60, the now legendary drum machine-cum-sampler-cum-sequencer. It all started when Roger Linn – a struggling musician at the time – decided that building his own drum machine might be a viable alternative to the expensive preset analogue rhythm machines available at the time. An early dabbler in computers, he created a grid-based rhythm program to suit his needs. His chosen method of 8-bit sample playback for sound generation would change music forever after. The result of his labours was the LM-1 Drum Computer, released to a stunned music industry in 1980. A rousing success, it spawned two follow-ups: the LinnDrum in 1982 and then the Linn 9000 in 1984. This latter model has only recently been receiving the attention it was probably due, but at the time it was seen as something of a misfire. Big, buggy, but loaded with high-end features intended to appeal to a professional market, the Linn 9000 offered 32

tracks of MIDI sequencing, 8-bit sampling (with editing) and eighteen velocity-sensitive drum pads laid out in an almost-familiar arrangement on the front panel. If this sounds familiar, that’s because the Linn 9000 was – unintentionally – a dry run for the machine Linn would design for Akai, the company for whom he worked after the 9000 helped to sink his own outfit. Unlike the Linn Electronics incarnation, Akai’s MPC60 was a fully-realised and mature product. A tidier – and somewhat austere – front panel adorned with buttons and 16 velocity-sensitive pads, the MPC60 provided producers with thenadvanced features like MIDI, MTC and SMPTE sync, 16-voice polyphony, and upgraded audio quality in the form of the gritty 12-bit, 40kHz stereo samples that would put an indelible stamp on every beat made with the thing. Also instantly identifiable is that famous Linn groove. First developed for the LM-1, Roger Linn’s swinging shuffle function was used in every one of his beatboxes and helped make the MPC60 a classic among R&B and hip-hop producers. The original MPC60 was followed by a sleek but relatively unchanged MkII model in 1991, and countless editions since. Virtually every groovebox released in the past 30 years owes a

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tech SPecS Year of manufacture 1988 Original sale value £2999 Current price £800-£1150 Number made unknown

little something to the MPC60, and today its legacy is apparent even in software samplers and MIDI controllers. Before the MPC60, there were drum machines, samplers and sequencers. Roger Linn combined them all, adding intuitive performance controls, creating an entirely new kind of interface between man and machine that continues to inspire thousands of musicians and producers to the present day. Though Akai’s focus has been on software MPCs with dedicated hardware controllers, as we write this, rumours abound of new self-contained MPCs being released, and musicians around the world are collectively holding their breath – as are we.

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Three virtualised MPCs

AkAi MPC ElEMEnt/EssEntiAls

AkAi iMPC

OnE sMAll CluE POisE

A hybrid product from Akai themselves, Element consists of an inexpensive USB controller clearly carrying the legacy of the MPC line. MPC Element works with the MPC Essentials software or can be used with an unlocked copy of the higher spec’d MPC software for a fully realised MPC experience. Other hardware options are also available. www.akaipro.com

Akai conspired with Retronyms to offer iMPC for the iPad. Loaded with over 1200 samples, it provides the instantly recognisable MPC interface, albeit one based on their more recent MPC hardware. Though tapping out a beat on a glass screen lacks the tactile feedback of the real thing, iMPC is loads of fun for a steal of a price. www.akaipro.com

Like so many others both hard and soft, this Windows-only rhythm production instrument is clearly based on the look and feel of the Akai MPC series. Designed for quick and easy usage, Poise allows users to drag up to eight samples onto any of the sixteen pads. Basic editing is on-hand and a humanisation function helps defy the grid. onesmallclue.com

114 / Computer musiC / February 2017

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