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welcome
It’s tempting, given that this is issue 299 of Computer Music, to start getting excited about ‘the big one’ next issue, but I’ll try and leave that for another four weeks or, if you can’t wait, until the last page of this issue. I’ll just say that 300 issues for any magazine these days is well worth celebrating and we’re doing it in style. Onto this issue and one of the reasons I got into music making in the irst place was, I admit, for the gear. A powerful computer throbbing amidst a studio packed full of delightful hardware was the order of the day… that is until the computer became powerful enough to swallow up said hardware. Now, though, hybrid studios are all the rage – the best software with choice, bespoke hardware – and if that’s your dream, or if you need a decent space to record real instruments or a band, you’ve come to the right place! In this issue we’re talking home studios, acoustics and home recording, with lots of practical advice to convert any spare space you might have into a decent recording setup. With a little planning and hopefully the advice in our features, you should be able to make your music space just that little bit more ‘pro’. OK, I’m getting excited about issue 300 now and I can’t not go on about it. Expect a mountain of classic samples, and a special edition free DAW plus a tutorial on creating a complete tune with it. I’ve given way too much away already, so just enjoy this (and the next!) issue.
“I got into music because of the gear. I admit it”
Andy Jones Editor
andy.jones@futurenet.com
contents
ISSUE 299 OCTOBER 2021
Cover feature
42
/experts Reviews
42 SONGWRITING
RECORDING STUDIO BUILD YOUR OWN
Everything you need to know about creating space for music making p16
18 HOW TO BUILD A STUDIO
The complete guide to creating a music space
28 ACOUSTICS IN DEPTH
We go in deep into this most important of subjects
33 BEDROOM VOCAL RECORDING
How to make perfect vocal recordings in your home
/ 15 Questions with
… a Bristolian ensemble and South American superstars 12 ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE
46
Dave Clews ofers up another ‘leading’ tutorial
44 SYNTH MASTERCLASS
Dave Gale creates the perkiest of sounds on Zebra
46 VOCAL GUIDE
A brand new series on best practice vocal production
54 BACK TO BASICS: EQ AND DYNAMICS A new series of tutorials in which we visit some of the fundamentals of music production
Interview
66 TRACKTION WAVEFORM PRO 688 ARTURIA FX COLLECTION 2 708 OT TOM HOLKENBORG PERCUSSION 728 XILS LAB KAOX 738 TOONTRACK EZ CINEMATIC PADS 748 AUDIO IMPERIA SOLO 768 SAMPLE REVIEWS 788 6 BEST GUITAR PLUGINS
Essentials
48 SANDUNES
Sandunes’ Sanaya Ardeshir is enjoying an upward momentum that has bought her sound to the attention of everyone from Abletonto Warp, Bonobo to Red Bull…
6 NEWS 624 SUBSCRIBE 96 BACK ISSUES 98 NEXT MONTH
48
68
Pete Cunningham from the Bristolian collective who blend styles and tech for a unique sound
94 BOMBA ESTÉREO
Simon Mejía from Columbian megastars Bomba Estéreo has a unique studio perspective we could all learn a little something from…
94
4 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
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downloads
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free plugin RIFT FILTER LITE CM
82
How to download and install this amazing free plugin and Minimal Audio sound packs See p82 Instructions at File Silo (p81)
88
A funk ‘n’ disco sample special with two new packs and four classics On the DVD or downloadfrom File Silo (see p81)
free samples FUNK: NEW AND CLASSIC
free videos EXPERT GUIDES & RIFT!
93
Download our Expert Guide videos plus a tutorial on Rift Filter Lite Download via File Silo (see p81)
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An all-new PDF detailing our complete Plugin Suite of instruments and efects Download from File Silo (see p81)
plugin suite THE CM PLUGIN SUITE
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 5
> news
AIt’s been double whammy from UVI a slow news period but luckily UVIhavesaved the day… They say that summer is a slow time for news in the world of music production and that you can very possibly you can blame the Europeans for taking most of August of for their holidays (the lucky things). This year has been no exception as our news inbox has slowed to such a crawl that we actually welcomed the regular essay of a press release from Spitire – more on that later. It’s not been an entirely news-less period though and, luckily, our favourite Parisian software developers UVI managed to release not one but two products before packing the budgy smugglers away for their annual holiday shindig. First up is their PX Sunbox, which is a recreation of the 1999 SunSyn, a hardware synth that was made by the German company, JoMoX. This was an an 8-voice polyphonic analogue/digital hybrid synth with a morphable 4-pole true analogue ilter. Its distinctive design included a groundbreaking modulation matrix which, get this, allowed for 4096 possible routings – which is pretty impressive given its hardware physical limitations. UVI’s take on it involves over 30,000 samples to create 450 presets but with a
Asteroid ofers out-of-this-world percussion while PX Sunbox is a new take on a rare 1999 hardware synth
fully editable architecture to allow you to create your own sounds as well. Features include ADSR amp envelopes, multimode ilters, pitch shifting and advanced stereo modes, LFO and step modulators, two arpeggiators, and efects. “PX SunBox delivers what we think represent the most unique, charactered, and sometimes epic sounds,” UVI explain. It will set you back a very reasonable €79, is available now and it runs in UVI’s Workstation and Falcon. Asteroid is UVI’s second ofering, what they call a “cinematic rhythm and efect designer”. It features seven “deeply-
tweakable” layers that can either be individual percussive voices or stacked together to create huge and dramatic hits. Sounds come by way of a library containing acoustic and electronic drums, orchestral percussion, special efects, foley, and found sounds. There’s a lot of processing on hand “for incredible sound design potential” plus a 128-step sequencer with performance controls. Asteroid is, they say “an endless source of inspiration for music, ilm, games and more”. It is €149 and available now. We’ll get them both in for review asap. And thanks for rescuing our news UVI. uvi.net
Digital Performer updated
DP goes up to 11. Why are so many DAWs at v11? Answers on a postcard please…
6 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
It’s the major DAW you might not know much about unless you live Stateside, but the much lauded Digital Performer has just been updated to v11 (like pretty much every DAW, right?). New features include Articulation Maps, MPE Support and an update to Nanosampler, the DAW’s “go-to virtual instrument for creating unique beats, instruments and sounds”. There’s also support for macOS Big Sur and Apple silicon Macs and better integration with hardware from Novation, NI and more. motu.com
news <
App watch
Groovy new Abyss synth from Tracktion
We don’t associate Tracktion with releasing synths – we usually lazily just lump the Seattle-based DAW developer in with their rather fabulous Waveform (and look out for a special edition of that for free next issue!). But actually they do some very decent instruments including Collective (a samplebased instrument that we might also be giving you for free next issue) and now Abyss, an intriguing new addition to their instrument lineup. Abyss was created by Peter V, who is a ‘mathematician, AI veteran and musician’, although probably not necessarily in that order, and as well as featuring powerful modulation, what really sets Abyss apart from your run-of-the-mill VA softsynth is its presentation of sound as colours. In fact it “focuses on the ‘art’ rather than ‘numbers, providing an inspiring new way to create complex sounds,” it says here. But don’t think this is some hippy trippy instrument, as it has the makings of something very powerful. There are 2000 ‘sound colours’ that can be modiied with spectral processing; modulation with 13 sources and 23 destinations, efects
We report on the latest developments in phone and tablet music making It’s going to get 10/10 as it has the word ‘Dawesome’ on its UI
processing, two ADSRs, three LFOs and even a VA-style ilter. Which sounds like a good set of options for creating lots of varied sounds. And following the hippy trail, there’s also something called ‘sound suring’ for selecting sound colours. We’ll have whatever they’re having. Abyss is available in AU/VST3 formats for both Mac and Windows and costs $129 although there is an intro price of just a very speciic $77.40. We’ll have a review soon. And did we mention our Tracktion giveaway next issue yet? tracktion.com
Shaper 2 K-Devices has tweaked its Shaper efect, a
selproclaimed “audio destroyer”that runs as an AUv3 plugin. Version 2 gives you several modules or this purpose: a glitch gate, a waveshaper, a transorm module, a resonator/short delay and a low/high pass filter. These can be ordered however you like, sothe potential or creative destruction is pretty limitless. What you won’t hear is a lot owarmth – Shaper 2 aims to giveyour sounds “a digital edge” rather than an analogue cuddle. Shaper 2 costs $6/£6. apps.apple.com
I can feel it, loading in my DAW tonight, (oh lord)
SSL have announced not just a new LMC+ compressor plugin but a new ‘eCommerce platform’ on which you can buy it (a website to you and I). LMC+ is a “signiicantly enhanced” version of the SSL Listen Mic Compressor from the 4000-series console. In case you’re wondering what we’re alluding to in the headline, the original LMC was a ‘secret weapon’ among producers back in the day and responsible for the classic 80s drum sound used on In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins. (See, we don’t just throw this news together.) SSL say, “the LMC’s ixed attack and release curves were discovered to be eminently suitable for
Nektar’s new Impact
drums and many other applications”. LMC+ is a Mac and PC plugin that will run on all major DAWS and costs $119. And as we’re plugging away our future issues in the news this month, we might as well lag up a special 80s issue (out in two issues’ time) that doesn’t feature a tutorial on the Phil Collins drum sound. solidstatelogic.com
with transport control, track selection, After last month’s new cricket bat – OK it was volume, navigation and 14 assignable RGB the SE61 keyboard – Nektar are on something buttons, and on the live front have features on a roll and have now announced the new including a new real-time Key Repeat engine GXP range of controller keyboards, which is for “creating inspiring rhythmic elements”. designed for both studio and live use. There Prices are pretty decent too: $190/€190 are three keyboards in the range – 49, 61 and /£170 for the GXP49, $230/€230 /£200 for 88-notes – all of which have full sized, semi- the GXP61 and $300/€300 /£265 for the weighted keys with velocity and aftertouch. GXP88, which is particularly good money for As you can see, they look pretty streamlined a full sized 88-note. Available now. but do feature “advanced” DAW integration nektartech.com
SoundSaw It must be a destructivekind o month, as
Igor Vasiliev has also released an iOS sound mangler in the shape o SoundSaw. This easytouse efect is designed to give your instruments or vocals a noisy, lofi, chiptuney sound, and promises to add high levels o harshness. Forthe benefit o those with a more sensitive sonic disposition, light distortion and saturation all within its remit,too. SoundSaw runs standalone and via Audiobus/InterApp Audio. $5/£5. motion-soundscape.blogspot.com
Chow Kick Meet Chow Kick, which sounds likethe
name o an energy drink ordogs but is actually a ree iOS kick drum synth (it runs on desktop platorms, too). Based on physical modelling o old drum machine circuits, this ofers a tweakable pulse shaper and resonant filter. It can also be ‘tuned’ with incoming MIDI notes to match the key o your song. It runs as an AUv3 plugin and is ree (but do tip them!). chowdsp.com October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 7
> news
Get with the programmers
Not one but three programmers! A maximum turnout from our giveaway stars, Minimal Audio… How did you get into music software? MA “We all started making electronic music about 10 or 12 years ago. We’ve played shows and festivals around the world. We studied music technology, Minimal Audio focusing on programming, sound design, and production. We created Minimal Audio to further our passion for audio.” Tell us a bit more about Minimal Audio MA “We are a small team of musicians, developers and designers that came together to create products we love. We’ve all worked together on various music projects. Minimal Audio is the product of everything we’ve learned about music tech, sound design, and production.” What makes your software stand out? MA “Our philosophy is to create cutting-edge software which is accessible and rewarding; to push the envelope while keeping things fun and easy. An essential part of our process is making sure that our software works in many diferent contexts. So Rift can take on various roles: from subtle distortion efects to groove creation and complex multi-efects.” What are your standout plugins? MA “Rift is a unique distortion, morphing ilter, and physical-modeling feedback efects plugin, centered around a bipolar distortion engine that allows you to add efects to each polarity of the waveform and manipulate how they combine. It’s great for creating animated harmonic movements when combined with modulation sequencing. It keeps you in the low and feeling creative, an efect that can reshape sounds into rich, animated grooves. It is perfect for diferent instruments and styles — from warm, lo-i to over-the-top destruction. If you’re feeling stuck, you can intelligently randomise parts of the plugin to quickly develop new ideas. Rift Filter Lite takes the morphing ilter from Rift and makes complex ilter movements accessible. Sculpt sounds with 24 custom ilter types: from morphing to phaser and more. The Spread control creates huge stereo efects and the pitch snapping system tunes the ilter resonance to whatever notes you like. ” What audio tool would you like to see developed? MA “Software that uses machine learning to help musicians get creative and willing to try new things.” Any advice from working in the software industry? MA “Work with people who inspire you to create the best products you can. Your team is everything.” What’s the future of music production? MA “A better connection between software and the creator through seamless UX, accessibility and advances in new technology such as AI.” What do you guys have coming up? MA “Updates for Rift and Rift Filter Lite and a massive sample pack of high quality cinematic sound. Then more efects, sound packs, expansion packs, and eventually an instrument.” minimal.audio
Ben Wyss, Jacob Penn and Nathan Wexler
“It’s a simple approach: we just make stuf we enjoy using”
8 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
A piano story part 1
We might be bemoaning a lack of news this issue but there’s certainly no lack of piano news. First out of the blocks are Native Instruments who have teamed up with Galaxy Instruments to produce Piano Colors. The not-very-colourful Kontakt instrument combines audio “recorded using a variety of unorthodox tools and materials including mallets, drumsticks, rubber, screws, and multiple EBows” with a deep modulation section to produce “the most unique collections of grand piano articulations on the market”. It was created by Uli Baronowsky, the designer behind NI’s Noire and costs $€199 or £179. Out now. native-instruments.com
A piano story part 2
Spitire have announced another collab with Abbey Road and another piano instrument (following their Mrs Mills one a couple of months back). The Jangle Box Piano is part of the Spitire’s Originals series and is modelled on the famous Challen studio piano which was used by The Beatles on The Fool on the Hill plus Magical Mystery Tour and White albums. “Jangle Box Piano puts another unique piece of Abbey Road Studios music history on computers... owned by Sirs or otherwise!” the press release bizarrely says. It is cheap though, just 29 of your pounds, dollars or Euros. spitireaudio.com
Saucy vocals anyone?
Native Instruments get their second outing in the news this issue with Glaze, thankfully NOT another piano instrument but instead a new “high-gloss” vocal instrument. It features 148 presets comprising vocal licks, stacked chords, bass and pad sounds. They were all created with a variety of live vocalists and recorded by legendary engineers Curtis “Sauce” Wilson and Rochad Holiday (Ne-Yo, Ariana Grande, Will Smith and Dr Dre). Glaze is part of NI’s Play series of instruments, designed to deliver great sounds with minimal fuss. They are pretty good value too, this one costing £44 and available now. native-instruments.com
From soft to hard
A software magazine we may well be, but we do like it when software companies start making hardware that emulates software, as it kind of goes against the grain. IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube XGEAR pedals each feature 16 diferent efects, taken from the most popular AmpliTube software models plus all-new reverb and delay algorithms. The range is, IK say, “bringing IK’s industry-leading efects out of the computer and onto pedalboards”. So that’s hardware modelled on software modelled on hardware. It’ll be software versions of these hardware pedals next month. Maybe. amplitube.com/xgear
> news
years back Our monthly shake-of-thehead at our younger selves’ news choices… How do you make a hit record? It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves at some point, and we gamely attempted to provide an answer in October 2011 ( 169) with a little help from DJ Fresh, Black Noise and Michael Woods. At the time, Fresh had just had a number one hit with Louder, and he would soon repeat the trick with Hot Right Now, which featured a little-known singer by the name of Rita Ora. Whatever happened to her?
“We showed you how to “kick the 120bpm habit” with our ‘tempo mental’ feature”
In our CM Focus feature, meanwhile, we celebrated the rise of moombahton – inevitably, this quickly morphed into the likes of moombahcore and moombahsoul before being pronounced ‘dead’ by someone or other – and we showed you how to “kick the 120bpm habit” with our ‘tempo mental’ feature. The burning question of the day was ‘what is linear phase EQ good for?’ – people just wouldn’t stop talking about it, honest – and one reader asked if a new technology known as Thunderbolt was one that musicians should care about. If you owned a Mac, the answer would turn out to be a resounding yes.
How to make a hit: rather than our usual mumbo jumbo we used hypnotic graphics to show you how
10 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
Free deesser from a brand new developer
Yes it’s the freeware bit of the mag and time to welcome another new plugin developer in the form of Techivation and their debut release T-DeEsser. It is, you guessed it, a deesser which is “designed to T-DeEsser from Techivation looks pretty cool and will repair audio without reduce those esses for you… for free causing artefacts”. Deessers reduce sibilance, an almost inevitable occurrence in the worlds of singing, voiceovers, and dialogue recording. T-DeEsser features a large processing dial on a rather cool looking UI, plus controls for frequency bands, Intensity and Sharpness. And all for free. techivation.com
Ins & outs
THE RHODES GOES ON The sound of the Rhodes electric piano remains as popular as ever, but the brand itself hasn’t had such a high proile of late. However, it’s now under fresh ownership – by Loopmasters boss Matt Pelling – and it looks like new Rhodes pianos might be on the horizon.
END OF TERMS MADNESS When the Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance suggested that outdated audio language like ‘male/female’ and ‘master/slave’ be replaced, they likely expected backlash. Still sad to see, though – who’d have a problem with ‘plug/ socket’ and ‘primary/secondary’?
THE EMULATION GAME A team of devs recently revealed that it’s working on a ‘synth emulator’ plugin capable of loading ROMs from the likes of the Access Virus, Clavia Nord Lead 3 and Waldorf Q. The only problem is that – as with old video game ROMs – sharing them is highly illegal.
WE ARE NOT AMUSED Muse Group, which recently acquired the hugely popular open-source audio editor Audacity, recently denied that the software’s new privacy policy facilitated ‘spyware’. Muse blamed “unclear phrasing”, and that they’d adjust the wording.
WATCH THE SOUND Readers may enjoy the new six-part Apple TV+ series Watch The Sound, in which the sometimes bequifed Mark Ronson explores the relationship between music and tech, aided by Paul McCartney, Questlove, King Princess, Dave Grohl, Ad-Rock, Mike D and more.
GONE TO CD Maybe not the inal nail in the coin for the CD, but news that UK supermarket Sainsbury’s is to stop selling them still had news outlets in bits. The fact that the store will still sell vinyl – which the CD was supposed to replace – adds a platter of irony.
news <
Hardware vs software – what won?
In issue 298 of Computer Music we asked if you could tell the diference between hardware and software synths. You answered in your droves – here are the results! In the September issue of Computer Music we lined up three hardware classic mono synths – the Moog Minimoog, ARP Odyssey and Roland SH101 – with their software and (where possible) iOS emulations. We put audio from three examples of each of the three synths on FileSilo and asked you to identify which was which. The results were fascinating in that no one managed to guess the true source of every sound – some people did get a lot correct, but most people were way of with their guesses. Of course, having digitised all of the audio and put
it online for you to download, you could easily argue that we evened up the playing ield and you weren’t really listening to ‘proper’ analogue vs digital, but if you take that argument to its natural conclusion, you’ll end up going round in circles. The answer really is that it’s all relative and a great sound should still sound great against another sound, even when uploaded.
MINIMOOG
ROLAND SH-101
ARP ODYSSEY
A = TAL 101 B = Roland 101 Plug-out C = Vintage Roland SH101
Simple Lead folder A = Oddity 2 B = ARP Odyssei C = ARP Odyssey hardware
Classic ARP Lead
A = Roland 101 Plug-out B = Vintage Roland SH101 C = TAL 101
Square folder
Duo Bass
Saw folder
3OSC (2+1) folder A = Model D iOS B = Arturia Mini V C = Minimoog
Bass rif
A = Arturia Mini V B = Minimoog C = Model D iOS
Filter sweep
A = Model D iOS B = Minimoog C = Arturia Mini V
Saw folder
A = Minimoog B = Model D iOS C = Arturia Mini V
Shark tooth folder A = Arturia Mini V B = Minimoog C = Model D iOS
Square folder
A = Minimoog B = Model D iOS C = Arturia Mini V
Conclusions then? Well, it’s not exactly a scientiic study but the
general consensus is that the software sounded
3Filter rif folder
Filter sweep folder
A = Vintage Roland SH101 B = TAL 101 C = Roland 101 Plug-out
Saw folder
A = TAL 101 B = Vintage Roland SH101 C = Roland 101 Plug-out
Saw/square + sub folder
A = Vintage Roland SH101 B = TAL 101 C = Roland 101 Plug-out
every bit as good as the hardware with the GForce Oddity softsynth and Korg iOS app particularly scoring very well with many people believing they were the hardware. Who’d have thought a magazine called Computer Music would have concluded that? Anyway for everyone who had a go, the actual answers are presented here. And we had such a good response from it that we will continue the feature and next time will be lining a Sequential Prophet-V and Roland Jupiter 8 up with their iOS and softsynth equivalents.
A = ARP Odyssei B = ARP Odyssey hardware C = Oddity 2
A = ARP Odyssei B = Oddity 2 C = ARP Odyssey hardware A = Oddity 2 B = ARP Odyssey hardware C = ARP Odyssei
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 11
15 questions with…
throwing elements of that city’s rich and varied history into a melting pot of styles and fusions. ‘Experimental jazz’ is one label, only the results are much better than that sounds, and have already drawn praise from the national press and landed the band two BBC sessions…
With Ishmael Ensemble’s debut album, A State Of Flow, garnering praise from The Guardian, Mojo and The Wire and landing the band sessions at Maida Vale for Gilles Peterson and Tom Ravenscroft, the pressure was on for its followup. Luckily, new album Visions Of Light is just as wide-reaching and ambitious and looks set to only increase the band’s success. The ensemble is led by producer and saxophonist Pete Cunningham, with Holysseus Fly on vocals, Stephen Mullins on guitar, Rory O’Gorman on drums and Jake Spurgeon’s on synths. Their sound takes all sorts of elements from the rich musical history of their home city of Bristol and mixes it up with experimental jazz leanings and a very decent helping of tech... 12 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
1
Tell us how you got into music Pete Cunningham: “I first got into music through my parents’ record collection. All the classics: Dylan, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Joan Armatrading, Nick Drake etc. We didn’t have a TV so we would just sit around and listen to records on a Sunday evening. I used to listen or hours, picking apart the arrangements and noting each instrument. The first music I discovered or mysel was Placebo, Radiohead and Green Day, which led me to the guitar. I got an Epiphone Les Paul rom one o my brother’s riends and a Danelectro distortion pedal. I had a riend who was a drummer and he asked i I wanted to join a band. One o them, Jake Spurgeon, now plays bass and synths in Ishmael Ensemble. I was 8 and he was 12!”
2
When did you get successful? PC: “It’s always been a balancing act between producing, remixing, perorming live and DJing. It all started to align about three or our years ago. The release o the debut Ishmael album A State Of Flow in 2019 was a turning point. We were suddenly booked to play across Europe or enough to actually pay ourselves.” is your overall philosophy? 3 What PC: “Record everything! I’ve oten ended up using the first take o solos or vocals as there’s definitely hidden magic in there that doesn’t reappear second time around. It’s also got to be un. No matter how serious a piece o music is, i the musicians aren’t enjoying themselves it shows in the final recording.”
drofkcA ilahK ©
ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE Ishmael Ensemble is a collective of Bristolian musicians,
ishmael ensemble / 15 questions with < us about your ‘computer music’ 4 Tell production history? PC: “At 14 the school had just refurbished its music department and had some early iMacs. The teachers had no idea so me and a few friends would spend hours chipping away on Logic until we worked out how to chop samples and program beats. A cracked copy of Cubase did the rounds and I was able to take my tinkering home. The next step was getting an M-Audio soundcard that could record mics into the computer. I was able to record saxophone, guitars, voice and even drums which gave a purpose to the hours I’d spent jamming with friends. I could turn it into anything which was thrilling as a teenager and still is!” us about the rest of your studio 5 Tell PC: “I have a WEM copicat tape delay that I picked up for £100 at a house clearance that ends up on everything. I also love cassette tape and have our guitarist Mullins’s Yamaha MT400 multitrack recorder that I do a lot of processing and pitch manipulation on. For making noises, I have a Novation BassStation which is super fun and easy to get quick results with, a Roland SP-404 SX for chopping and playing samples and an Arturia Drumbrute Impact for programming and sequencing drums.” are your favourite plugins? 6 What PC: “A lot of the Logic plugins are great. I use EXS24 for playing with recordings and noises I’ve made or found. It’s super quick and intuitive. I also use the Pedal Board a lot; basically loads of fun and allows for very quick madness. I use guitar pedals in my live setup a lot, so it’s also been a good way of preparing and playing for that. I also love the organstyle Rotor Cabinet and Scanner Vibrator. I often use these on big groups of horns or guitars as I ind it adds a sort of cohesive movement that can help gel layers together. They’re also great for adding a Phaser efect to hihats or washy cymbals, again just a subtle movement goes a long way. I was introduced to a few new bits by the engineer I worked with, Ali Chant. The Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 is incredible compared to any EQ I’ve seen and the Aberrant DSP SketchCassette II is a super fun plugin for adding grit and hiss and only £15!” do you tend to start a track? 7 How PC: “Usually by recording an out of tune melody or terribly beatboxed rhythm very quietly into my phone at 3am. I used to try and remember ideas that keep you up at night but never succeeded so I’ve taken to tiptoeing into the bathroom in the middle of the night to record them. Either that or just playing with
“Arrange fast. It’s more eicient than being stuck in a 4-bar loop” chopped beats and drum hits in Logic. I work with a lot of diferent vocalists, so I’ll often throw something out there to people, get a scratch idea for a hook or verse then develop it from there. If it’s an instrumental I’ll do a similar thing but with either Jake or Mullins. I try to start arranging as quickly as possible. It’s more eicient than getting stuck on a 4bar loop that never goes anywhere.” do you know when a track’s done? 8 How PC: “Working with an engineer on this record was a massive help when inishing tracks. Having someone that isn’t emotionally attached or happy to be a bit cutthroat when editing is helpful. It doesn’t always mean something’s bad, just that there was something better or it wasn’t needed. When working with vocalists there’s an added pressure to make sure they’re happy. Generally though, if you can live with it for a week or so and nothing’s nagging you, it’s probably inished.” you have any production tricks? 9 Do PC: “Drones! I love ambient and drone music so even if it’s an uptempo or quite erratic track there’ll always be something in there pretty much sat on one note. This is usually layered saxophone or Mullins’s guitar, looped or just overlapping. I’ll then record these to tape and pitch them down or do a similar thing in logic if I’m feeling lazy. I ind this creates a nice bed to start from. It’s also a great way of keeping your ear interested whilst working on the early stages of a track which would otherwise just be some raw drums (or horrible voice notes!).” collaborations on the new album? 10 Any PC: “I love collaborating, especially with vocalists. I’ve struggled with words so watching someone come up with lyrics that create a mood always amazes me. A lot of the people are good friends from the Bristol scene; Holysseus Fly is the main vocal contributor but has become a key member in the live band – an incredible pianist and singer and has such a powerful presence on everything she touches. Chris Hillier wrote Morning Chorus and Visions of Light with me. We’ve known each other since school and he’s been someone I’ve looked up to musically. Alun ElliotWilliams aka Tiny Chapter
and Bethany Stenning aka STANLÆY are two collaborators I worked with for the irst time. We’ve played with each other live so it wasn’t an unnatural move to the studio.” on your gear wish list? 11 What’s PC: “I’d love a distressor. We recorded a lot of stuf through that on this record and it sounds great. I guess I should also get a proper Tascam reel to reel to realise my tape loop fantasies. I’d love a Minimoog and Therevox ET; they both have such unique sounds.” advice for playing live? 12 Any PC: “There’s a temptation to rely on loops and prerecorded playback when performing electronic music live. This seems like the safest option, but it leaves things open to go wrong. If you mess up a part on an instrument you can just carry on playing regardless. If a laptop or sequencer crashes there’s often no way of riding it out. I also think it’s far more entertaining to watch people play instruments live, even at the expense of it not sounding exactly like the record, than someone on Ableton just triggering pristinesounding stems.” about studio advice? 13 What PC: “Go in with a plan! It’s amazing how quickly time lies so set realistic goals and imagine that everything will take twice as long. The irst three hours are spent miking up drums by which time everyone’s ready for a cofee break! Also make time for playing with stuf, random messing can make for the best parts.” from working in the industry? 14 And PC: “Stick to your guns. If you enjoy the music you make then chances are someone else will too. And make sure you get a lawyer to look over any contract before signing!” have you got planned? 15 What PC: “Aside from touring and promoting, I’m always in the studio working on new music some of which will see the light of day soon.” The new Ishmael Ensemble album Visions Of Light is out now. Check ishmaelensemble.com for live dates and tickets
HEAR MORE
Morning Chorus bit.ly/CM_MChorus Songs For Knotty (EP) bit.ly/CM_knotty WWW
The Logic Pro X Pedalboard helps Pete get his head in the game for his onstage setup
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October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 13
> cover feature / build your own studio
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BUILD YOUR OWN STUDIO It’s time to turn your music space aspirations into a true, living reality as we show you how to convert any space in your home into a fully-functioning recording suite…
If we’re honest, part of the reason – OK a BIG part of the reason – that we got into music production in the irst place was the idea of sitting in front of a big mixing console, imagining we were a top-line producer, recording the biggest band in the world. Of course, computer music making has meant that the need for such a big studio has decreased – and indeed many top-line studios have sufered as music technology marches onwards. But this doesn’t mean that a dedicated space for making music is not important, and that is what our main cover feature, well, covers, this month…
Computer music making does allow you to do everything in the box, but there are several reasons why you could and should think ‘outside of the box’ for music production. Firstly, having a dedicated area for music making in your home gives you a place to create. It needn’t be an expensive construction either, as you can quite easily house everything you need in a spare room, garage or extra bedroom. So the following features explain what you can do to an existing space to make it more production perfect, more recording ready. And talking of recording, as soon as you move out of the box into the world of recording
18 21 How to build DIY acoustic your own studio guides We start this DIY issue with a general overview feature on everything you need to consider when converting a bog-standard space into a recording space, and then setting it all up correctly.
In the irst of two looks at that most important of recording subjects, acoustics, we look at the DIY approach to making your own absorbers and relectors. But don’t worry if you are not DIY handy because…
vocals and instruments, you need to start thinking ‘studio’ in terms of acoustics, singing, relections and sound-prooing, so our features cover all of these subjects. Where possible, we also give you several cost options, so that creating your own studio space needn’t be too expensive. With acoustics, for example, we cover both the DIY aspect (p22 on) and then third-party and cost-free approaches in a more in-depth way (p28). So go ahead and enjoy the features and hopefully they will inspire you to create your own studio space – one which is dedicated to maximum creativity.
28 33 Room acoustics Bedroom vocal in depth recording We then go in deep with acoustics, moving on from the DIY options already covered to third-party solutions and some simple tweaks you can make to your recording environment for much better recording results.
Vocals are the most important aspect of any song (aside from instrumentals of course!) but you can make great vocal recordings in your bedroom studio. Here’s a complete guide to perfect vox.
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HOW TO BUILD A HOME STUDIO We show you how to turn your humble abode into a recording studio, complete with control room
It’snever been easier to whip up greatsounding tracks, particularly if you’re into electronic or heavily sample-based music. EveryDAW on the market today ships with an extensive collection of ready-made loops, hits, pads and rifs, not to mention all those bundled synths and samplers. And then, when you’re happy with your mix, there are plenty of truly incredible plugin efects available that can give you a loud, shiny master, sometimes using just one knob. If you’re an electric guitar or bass player looking to put tracks together in your more rockin’ genre of choice, though, you’re probably more interested in capturing the feeling you get from your treasured collection of amps and pedals being played for real. And things are even more complicated for drummers, acoustic instrumentalists and singers. In short, if you’re an instrumentalist and you’re looking to really capitalise on your talents and training in the production of your own tracks, there’s no avoiding the terrifying world of sound engineering. You know… with microphones. There was a time when you had to go to a studio to record – and at great expense, too – but now we have the option of doing it all ourselves. Since you’ve bought this magazine, you’ll 18 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
probably have some kind of home setup already in place, and will have picked up a few tricks for getting the best out of it. Today, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to mics, audio interfaces and speakers; we have powerful computers to run the show; and we can get hold of reasonably priced software to address almost any production issues that might arise. Nonetheless, when we see our favourite recording artists at work on TV or YouTube, we can’t help but yearn to be in one of those super-posh studios. So, what’s so great about studios anyway? It’s just a bunch of rooms with some gear in them, right? And if we have the gear, why can’t we turn our homes into studios? It’s a given that studios have good mics and preamps, and all manner of extraneous toys to play with, but it’s actually all the other stuf that makes them such wonderful places in which to record. Our irst attempts at home recording are often disappointing because the sound can be crap – it can feel like there are a never-ending stream of annoying things trying to sabotage the session. Take noise, for example. It’s a problem – both keeping it out and keeping it in. Dirty signals can make recording electric guitars a nightmare. When you set up for a session for the irst time, you inevitably end up searching for just one
more female XLR-to-quarter-inch jack adapter. And why are the guitar signals so weedy, and where did that buzz come from? Studios, of course, have cupboards full of useful stuf for solving just these problems, because they’ve been there time and time again.
Audio feng shui Apart from all the peripheral requirements, the
main hurdles in the home studio are the rooms themselves. Good studios are masterpieces of acoustic design, whereas our own rooms contain all kinds of acoustic gremlins that can make it diicult to get a good recording – and even more diicult to hear it properly. In this feature we’re going to look in detail at the problems you’ll encounter recording at home, and take you through some in-depth solutions. Starting with the most important space of all – the control room – we’ll show you how to get the optimum monitoring setup and solve the most common acoustic problems. We’ll debunk some myths, reveal some trade secrets and show you, step by step, how to make basic acoustic treatments that don’t involve gimmicky software or useless bits of sponge. And if you don’t want to go DIY, we have more acoustic options on p28. Now, the control room.
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The all-important control room It’s essential to get your control room right first, then sort out your recording rooms. I your monitoring environment is rubbish, how can you expect to make good judgements on the sounds you’re recording in other rooms, let alone try to mix and master it all when it’s recorded? Our quest or good monitoring and great-sounding rooms is thwarted by the unholy trinity o anti-bass, honk and reflection. Fortunately there are sonic equivalents o garlic, holy water and silver bullets to help stave of these evil orces, which we’ll show you in the ollowing walkthroughs – and these techniques apply equally to both control rooms and recording spaces.
Bass nodes and modes Rectangular rooms inevitably sufer rom
standing waves or ‘modes’. These are a bigger, badder version o what happens when you blow over a bottle and make it resonate, or sing in the shower and find a particularly loud note that seems to fill the space. A normal-sized room will have X and Y dimensions that are long enough to correspond to long-wavelength bass and subbass requencies (300Hz and below), and being
“The bass response is invariably at its weakest at the halfway point of a rectangular room”
amongst the resonance o these low requencies results in an inaccurate listening environment and, ultimately, a mix with a bottom end that sounds totally diferent when played anywhere else. Imagine you can see two big, luminous sine waves hovering in your room when you play a low bass note on your synth; one lengthways, one widthways. I you move around the room these requencies will appear to be louder at points where the sine waves are peaking, and quieter where they trough. There will also be points where the two diferent requencies will meet and interere with each other, causing exaggerated peaks and troughs, and i your listening position happens to be in one o these places, you’re going to end up with a highly compromised sound – either too much or too little o the modal requencies. As well as that, loud, high-pressure anti-nodes occur near hard walls, and are oten the reason why you might hear more bass on the soa at the back o the control room than in between the speakers. This all creates a very uneven bass response that in turn causes an unbalanced listening environment.
It doesn’t matter how much pointy foam you stick to the walls of your control room, only proper bass absorbers will solve the issue of overbearing modal frequencies – luckily, though, it’s easy to make them yourself!
you will need bass absorbers. A perusal o the websites o manuacturers like Real Traps and RPG will reveal some great and efective products, but they can be prohibitively expensive. A single 50500Hz low-requency absorber can cost £300 or more – and you might need six o them to deal with your issues! It’s not difficult to make your own versions o all this stuf, though. Low-requency absorbers work by vibrating in sympathy with the low requencies and are mostly constructed rom metal and high-density oam or rubber. From old BBC documents to public patent inormation rom the Fraunhoer Institute, it’s all there i you look. We already have, and here we’ll show you how to make your own dual-unction treatment panels using sheet steel, rubber and the amazing MelaTech melamine oam (quite expensive but worth every penny). These will handle both low- and mid-range absorption. You Tune your room Finding a good listening position can solve your can’t make your own microphones or speakers, but with a couple o hundred quid you can make bass problems, but it may be that the modal your own acoustic treatments. Admittedly, you requencies o your room are just too boomy. may need the assistance o someone who This typically happens at around 65Hz and The 38% rule understands basic DIY, but all o this is doable Most domestic rooms are rectangular and sufer 125Hz. Unortunately, no amount o oam, egg – we know, because we’ve done it. boxes or mattresses will solve this problem – rom these bass issues, but on the other hand, it’s easier to target problems in a predictable room, so you’re actually probably starting rom a airly positive position. The bass response is invariably at its weakest at the halway point o a rectangular room, so listening at the centre o a square will be disastrous. Fortunately, we can use the ‘38% rule’ to find a position in the room where we’re least likely to encounter bass nodes or intererence. This rule says that a point 38% into the length o the room is most likely to ofer an intererence-ree listening position. I you measure 38% in rom both ends o your room, then, you’ll get two options. Some engineers also do the 38% calculation on the width o the room, which gives our starting positions at which to place the chair. See the walkthrough over the page or more on this.
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> cover feature / how to build a home studio > Step by step 1. Find your listening position
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The first step is to use a mic and a spectrum analyser to see what an even bass response looks like. Put your best condenser mic a couple o inches away rom one o your speakers and use your DAW or a synth to send a sine wave test tone at 500Hz to that speaker only. Set up an input channel or the mic in your DAW and mute it.
Freeze the spectrum analyser display. You should see that the bass response drops away evenly. Typically, you might find the slope beginning at around 100Hz and dropping of 10dB by around 60Hz, then gradually plummeting nearer 40Hz. This will vary hugely depending on your mic and speakers, but we’re looking to see an even slope or comparison purposes.
Draw a plan o your room and measure out the 38% points. Measure both length and width to give our possible options or our new listening position. (O course, some o these points won’t be practical.) Once you’ve ound a likely spot, move the mic there and put a speaker where it would be i you were monitoring rom that position, then repeat the sweep and measure process.
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Set the test tone and input level o the mic so that the level meters at around -12dB. Insert a spectrum analyser on the input channel, set it to ‘peak hold’ and slowly sweep the test tone rom 500Hz all the way down. Take your time so that the analyser has time to register each requency, and repeat the sweep two or three times.
Now move the mic to your proposed listening position, reset the tone to 500Hz and boost the mic input so that it still meters -12dB. Insert a second spectrum analyser and repeat the sweep procedure. Now reeze this second curve and you’ll probably see a ew lumps and bumps in the journey rom 500Hz down to 20Hz. I the trace matches Step 3, you’re sorted. I it’s lumpy, find a new position.
Ater trying a couple o options, hopeully you’ll have ound the place with the smoothest bass response curve. I there are any persistent humps you’ll need urther bass/broadband absorption, but this will be the best listening position bass-wise, and you should build your control room around it. The next thing is to get your speakers correctly placed.
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Speaker positioning
Before we correct the bass, our speakers should be placed so that the tweeters are at ear level and the woofers are not exactly halfway between the loor and ceiling. The speakers should form an equilateral triangle with an apex just behind your head. Using the 38% rule is a trade-of between physical symmetry (good for stereo imaging) and bass response (good for tonally balanced mixing), so check how good the ‘phantom centre’ is in your new position by listening to a vocal. It should sit bang in the middle. If your high-frequency difusion is up to scratch, you shouldn’t have too many problems. The more solid your speaker stands, the better. Hollow metal stands aren’t great, since they can remove your bottom octave – if yours are hollow, at least ill them with kiln-dried sand. Breeze-blocks are great, but should be wrapped in clingilm and fabric to prevent dust shedding.
And don’t use foam speaker pads – speakers work more eiciently when they can’t move. Every time the cone moves, the cabinet tries to move as well, so preventing the cabinet from moving makes the speaker more eicient. Don’t make a bad situation worse by adding loppy foam into the mix!
Correcting bass response Most small and medium-sized rooms end up
with a couple of problem areas, typically down at 60Hz and a little higher at 150Hz. If we’re going to ix these, it’s time we introduced MelaTech properly. Made by H&H Group in the UK, MelaTech is a high-density open-cell melamine foam that boasts powerful and even broadband absorption from 125Hz to 250Hz upwards. Best bought in 100mm-thick panels or big, pre-cut blocks, MelaTech will deal with all
“Before we correct the bass, our speakers should be placed so that the tweeters are at ear level” your high-frequency relection problems and is going to be a vital component in building our bass treatments. We’ll also be needing some pre-cut 2mm-thick steel plate (which should be easy to obtain from any engineering company), and
> Step by step 2. Making and mounting control room bass correction panels
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First we need a way of mounting our heavy panels on the walls. By using batons rather than ixing everything directly to the wall, we can minimise ‘wall trauma’, keeping partners, parents or landlords happy. Use captive ixings/T-nuts to attach long threaded screws to the batons, then ix the batons to the walls using rawl plugs and screws.
The rubber makes an undesirable relective surface, so let’s use a big piece of 100mm-thick MelaTech to cover it. This will also mean we’re covering two issues in the same amount of space, as we’ll have a bass absorber and a broadband mid- and high-frequency absorber in the same place. Glue a drilled aluminium plate to the MelaTech, as shown. Evo-Stik works well, but be sure you have good ventilation!
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Drill holes in your 1200x600x2mm steel panels through which to hang them on the long screws. Push them right back to reduce stress on the screws. Next, hang sheets of rubber of the same size so as to dampen the steel, taking away its reverberation. A piece of wood glued to the rubber can prevent curl if necessary. The steel plate now resonates down in those problem areas, helping to cancel excess bass.
Here’s the whole dual-purpose treatment panel. Ideally you should have some like this and also some that are double the width (1200x1200x2mm) to make sure you’re acting on a wide range of lowend frequencies. These panels are ideal on a wall behind the listening position, or to each side in order to ‘take out’ nearby walls. Cover them with fabric and they’ll look nicer!
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> cover feature / how to build a home studio some 3mm rubber sheeting. These will come together to make panels ofering good bass correction, while the MelaTech will help us fix the honk and reflection. You can buy purposemade difusor panels designed to break up honk and reflection, but these are more expensive, and a load o shelves filled with books and bits and pieces will do just as good a job, i not better. Putting MelaTech on the ceiling and bass absorber panels to the sides, between us and the speakers, will efectively make those walls disappear by ensuring that the high requencies rom the speakers get to our ears ree o reflection rom above and the sides. I you don’t want to ollow the DIY guides here, then we have more acoustic solutions in an in-depth eature rom p28 where we discuss both ree and more expensive (but maybe a little more proessional) options.
Make sure your speakers are solidly mounted on some form of immobile stand if you want them to be properly efective
> Step by step 3. Killing control room ceiling and floor reflections
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More MelaTech or similar, but this time in chunky shapes. Wherever you end up sourcing your open-cell melamine oam, it’s worth buying it ready-cut. A steady hand and a breadknie will get the job done, but unless your going to cover it, it’s definitely better to get it pre-shaped. Shapes like this one are great or removing floor-to-ceiling flutters and tightening the stereo image. Here’s how to attach them…
Use 200x100mm aluminium plates as your magnetic fixings. Again, Evo-Stik will do the job, but or the very best join, use a glue gun and then a hot iron on the plate or a minute or two, and leave to dry overnight. I your ceiling is high enough, use a long screw on the magnet, making a 200mm gap between the MelaTech and the ceiling. This increases efficacy, as sound hits the MelaTech, goes to the ceiling, and then goes back through the MelaTech again.
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Use a plasterboard fixing like this one to screw a circular neodymium magnet to the ceiling. This is by ar the easiest way o getting your oam up and down, and i you accidentally knock it with something, it’ll move rather than get holed. The magnets also enable positional adjustment, o course, so you can easily move your shapes next door into your ad-hoc vocal booth!
Last but not least, the flooring. I possible, use a thick underlay and wool twist carpet. As well as sotening the room, it’ll be very comy! Add to that an extra rug underneath the chair and you’ll have pretty much eliminated floor-to-ceiling problems. The general rule with home rooms is that they’re never great acoustically, so the idea is to kill the reflections completely.
> cover feature / how to build a home studio
Noise in the recording space With the control room sorted, it’s time to consider the recording room. All the treatments discussed for the control room apply equally to the rooms we want to actually make noise in. Let’s be honest: you’re never going to achieve a large, neutral, ambient space in the average home, so unless you have a hall with a minstrel gallery, you need to aim for dry. The issue that usually irst springs to mind when thinking about making a studio space at home is soundprooing. Unfortunately, unless you’re purpose-building a control room or live room and you want to spend a fortune and render the space pretty much unusable as a part of your house, there’s very little you can do about this. Double and triple glazing will do a good job of keeping out general noise, but it’s almost impossible to keep 100% of noise out (or in) unless you’re physically isolated from your surroundings. Low frequencies will arrive in your room by physical transmission from outside, and nothing you can stick on your walls is going to make any diference – you just have to work around it. If you live in a lat or a terraced house, you might want to think twice about attempting to set up anything more than a small control room
with some high-quality headphones for your musicians. Sometimes even the physical sound of someone playing a keyboard can be a nuisance to neighbours living on the loor below. We know that from experience… Windows are often cited as a weak point, and all you can really do is shut them tightly, use thicker glass, or seal them (with mastic, say) if it’s safe to do so. If the window is in a recess, you could try cutting a 100mm-thick MelaTech shape (we don’t have shares in MelaTech) to it snugly in it, but this will only earn you 12dB of reduction at most. Using tightly itting ire-doors with acoustic seals can also help a bit. Whatever you do, avoid the following totally useless sound isolation treatments – not only because they don’t work, but also because most are ire and/or health hazards. Egg boxes Carpet on the walls Furniture foam on the walls Cavity wall insulation Fibreglass insulation panels on the walls Plywood or MDF on the walls Rubber matting on the loor Any kind of ‘soundprooing’ paint!
Noise reduction software and hardware Alongside the proliferation of computer-based
home studios, we’ve thankfully also seen a vast improvement in the quality of noise reduction software. Waves XNoise and ZNoise are great for tackling broadband noise like computer cooling fans, while iZotope RX and Accussonus Era are very useful for dealing with everything else including planes, trains, birds, creaking chairs and kicked mic stands. Used with care, these tools really can help solve noise pollution. If your studio is a one-room afair (that is, just a control room), you’re obviously going to ind it very diicult to record soft vocals or acoustic instruments in there – especially picked acoustic guitar – without also capturing the sounds of your computer’s fans. It’s well worth, therefore, getting your computer into a diferent room if you possibly can, or just out into the hall. USB and other extenders are afordable, and make it easy to ferret that noisy gear away. You can also do a fair bit to quieten your computer. Macs are pretty quiet, by and large, but if you ind yours is spinning too much, it’s generally because you have too many apps running. PCs are much easier to modify, and if yours is making a racket, it might not be too diicult to replace your stock CPU cooling fans with another cooling systems. You’ll often ind gaming PCs itted with liquid cooling systems, for example, and kits can be bought like the Corsair one (left). And many make your PCs look cool (OK colourful) too!
Many gaming PCs use liquid cooling to keep the stress down and, in this case, the garishness up. Look, we’re not a gaming magazine. These look like a set of children’s turntables to us…
Noise reduction tactics There are some awesome bits of software out there that can help you sidestep many of the traditional noise and loudness problems that are intrinsic to recording live musicians, particularly in a home environment.Even in a wellsoundproofed building, you can still hear a band playing, especially at night. A drummer hooing a kick drum alongside a hefty bass amp powering a
15-inch cab is always going to make an undefeatable racket. So, if you don’t have one already, make it a priority to get hold of a high-quality amp/cab simulation software suite such as Native Instruments Guitar Rig, IK Multimedia AmpliTube and the like. If you’re a Logic Pro user you’ve already got some good options in Amp Designer and Bass Amp Designer. These can give your bassist and guitarist a
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really great sound, enabling them to perform to the best of their ability while you capture their performance via DI. You could always re-amp it later if the sim doesn’t do it for you – in the daytime, maybe? Another realistic option – particularly for rock and metal bands – is a MIDI drum kit (the Roland TD series, for example) combined with a drum ROMpler like FXpansion BFD, perhaps with
some real cymbals and hi-hats thrown in for good measure. This shouldn’t upset anyone (apart from maybe the drummer) and could actually get you a better result than recording a real drum kit – not the easiest of tasks in the average house. This won’t be so good for soft, more expressive playing, but if that’s the vibe you’re going for, then a softly played real kit may well be a viable option anyway.
> cover feature / how to build a home studio
Earthing
As soon as you start sending a signal from one device to another, it becomes susceptible to all kinds of interference that can show up on your track as unwanted buzz, izz and hiss. The most common sort is earth hum. In a perfect setup, all your audio equipment would be grounded at a single, very efective earth. That way there would be no current lowing in conductors and cable shields, and consequently no current introduced into circuits and signals. Your home probably has reasonable earthing, but the actual earth points can be numerous, shared between houses and sometimes a good distance away. Installation may not be up to ‘broadcast’ standards, and the distribution of power in your house may be on ‘rings’, which can cause further problems. The best thing you can do to keep your audio clean is to use only balanced connections
wherever possible. Connecting mics to audio interfaces using XLR-to-mono-jack cables is simply not allowed, we’re afraid, and mono jack leads are for connecting guitars, pedals, amps and unbalanced instrument outputs (such as old synths) only. If you’re serious about recording, this is an unbreakable law. For all microphones, you must use balanced XLR cables. Balanced connections use three wires: ‘hot’, ‘cold’ and ground (earth). On an XLR, these are pins 2, 3 and 1 respectively, while on a TRS jack they’re tip, ring and sleeve. The cold wire carries no signal, but will pick up the same interference as the hot wire. When one is electronically phase-reversed, the noise cancels itself out, leaving a clean signal. Guitars, pedals and amps are more problematic to connect over distance, and prone to earth hum as they can’t take advantage
of balanced connections. The walkthrough on this page shows how this can be dealt with.
Earth lifting To solve earth hum, it’s standard practice to ‘lift’
or disconnect the earth (ground/pin 1/sleeve) at the input of an audio interface, for example. This can be done on an individual cable, on a loom or across a section of your patch bay. Be sure to label wherever you’ve lifted an earth, though, as while it may get rid of any hum, it could also allow diferent interference in. Great care should be taken with lifting earths on guitars and ampliiers; electrocution is a real possibility. Use a specialist unit for earth-lifting guitars if possible (again, see the walkthrough below). It’s not the most exciting thing to blow 200 quid on, but it’ll make your home recording experience much more pleasant – and safe.
> Step by step 4. Especially for guitars – clean signals over distance
1
This is the transmit end of a bufered line driver system: a powered unit with a high-impedance instrument input. The irst step is to plug the guitar into the input. If the guitarist is in the control room, a DI output can be taken direct from the transmit box to your DAW for later re-amping or processing through an amp sim plugin.
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3
This is the receive unit, and it lives at the other end of the house, next to your amp. This particular unit also lets you take two amp feeds from a single signal and drive two amps at the same time without worrying about an earth loop between the two – a feat that can be diicult to achieve at the best of times.
4
26 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
A balanced XLR cable takes a clean, boosted and balanced instrument signal as far as you need it to go in order to reach the ampliier. You can even join XLR cables together without fear of interference creeping in. This particular system uses its own signal type; you couldn’t plug the other end of this cable into a mic input!
The Gig Rig Humdinger (£109, thegigrig.com) is a simpler and more economic solution for signal cleansing and dual-output operation. If, for example, your guitarist wants to be with the band rather than in the control room, the Humdinger enables you to feed and record an amp, and take a second feed for a DI or amp sim at the same time. Boring, maybe, but very useful for home recording.
how to build a home studio / cover feature < > Step by step 5. Six home studio construction tips
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5
Empty, closeable cardboard boxes can really help clean up the lowfrequency response of a room. They’re just closed volumes of air that will resonate at those key frequencies – the bigger the box, the lower the frequency. This trick is often discovered by accident when unpacking new monitors – ever wondered why they sound worse when you tidy away the packaging?
Domestic walls tend to be painted plasterboard, which has a natural sound that you could only describe as ‘quacky’. Patio doors and windows are equally unhelpful. Luckily, your home studio already contains just the thing for diminishing these unpleasant relections: a duvet. Use cable ties on curtain poles or rails, and try and get the duvet a few inches away from walls if possible to maximise its efect.
One of the problems with killing the relections of our rooms is that we then can’t get any natural ambience into the recordings we make in them. If possible, stick a mic in the bathroom or kitchen – these will be bright and bouncy-sounding rooms – then record your drums or amp in an adjoining room, with the doors open. Delay this ambient signal by a few milliseconds for extra ‘size’.
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A rolled-up, stiish rug around the kick drum delivers dual beneits. First, it can augment the low resonance and ‘note’ of the drum and help boost the bottom octave; and second, it acts as a physical barrier, so you can wind some serious top end in on your kick mic without adding high-frequency kit spill.
4
Moongel pads are small, sticky gel rectangles that you can stick to drum heads to reduce unwanted ringing and general lappiness. Most good studios will have some, but a square of jelly from your kitchen cupboard or local shop (any lavour will do) will be just as efective in helping to get that perfect snare sound.
6
Sometimes, a surprisingly big sound can be made by a small ampliier. 1x12 combos or smaller are great for tucking away in cupboards or under stairs and miking up, so that they don’t bleed into your drum or vocal mics. The perfect place is a wardrobe illed with clothes – good isolation and no nasty room relections.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 27
> cover feature / room acoustics in depth
ROOM ACOUSTICS IN DEPTH
28 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
room acoustics in depth / cover feature <
We’ve just looked at some DIY acoustic solutions. Now some simpler and more ‘pro’ routes to turn your abode into a studio While we’ve just covered some acoustic basics and DIY options in our main How To Build A Home Studio eature (rom p18), room acoustics is such an important subject that it deserves its own, more in-depth piece – and other solutions. That’s simply because the space you play and record in will play a key role in the sound o your projects, but this act is oten overlooked by budding music producers, especially those more accustomed to making music using virtual instruments and pre-recorded samples. And i you’re planning to bring anyone else into the equation, they’ll probably benefit rom having a ew square eet to perorm in. With spaces come acoustics, and that means ambience, reverb, echo and general sound relections, all of which will colour the sound. This isn’t a big deal if you like to get up close and personal with your favourite mic. But move that mic back a bit and the room and instrument will begin to combine to form the overall sound picture, and at this stage you’ll want that room to enhance, rather than detract from, the sound. Needless to say, the variables are endless and the science behind it all can be complex. If you take a look at pictures of a pro studio you’ll see all sorts of acoustic techniques at work in any one room, and there are plenty of underlying factors, such as room dimensions and building structure, that inluence the sound of the space as well. Even so, one thing you may spot is that studio control rooms often have a lot more acoustic treatment than the recording or ‘live’ spaces (yes, the clue is in the name). That’s because control rooms are designed to create a lat frequency response for wide-ranging monitoring levels at a speciic listening or ‘sweet’ spot. Live spaces, on the other hand, are usually designed to ofer a combination of ambient reverb, surface relective sound, atmosphere and space for a few or many more performers. This may seem like pie in the sky territory as you approach a vocal recording in a small room that also doubles as your control room, oice or even bedroom, but the distinction is important. The bottom line is, all spaces have their uses. In a typical house you’ll ind everything from dead bedrooms to lively tiled bathrooms, and reverberant hallways to wooden-loored living rooms. So before you even start thinking about treating or modifying your spaces, listen to how they sound in the irst place.
Acoustics primer OK, here’s the science. Acoustics revolves around sound waves. A sound wave is
simultaneously a longitudinal and compression wave and it needs some kind of medium to travel in, such as air or water. Without this (in a vacuum) it won’t get very far, and as you probably already know, in space, no one can hear you scream. The wave itself has typical wave-like properties, including amplitude (loudness) and frequency (pitch). When you ‘hear’ the wave, it vibrates your eardrum, and this is transferred via the middle ear to the cochlea and then the auditory nerve. Just as with other nerve stimuli, the brain then interprets that information (eg, ‘that’s not in tune’). Average human hearing is limited to frequencies in the range 20Hz to 20kHz, but instruments and recording gear can easily operate beyond these limits. So far so good, but things are complicated by the way the sound travels around a room. When it hits a surface, some of the sound energy is lost through a process of absorption (and typically converted to heat and vibration), but most of it is relected, so that it continues its journey until it hits another surface. The problem is, our ears (as well as microphones) will ‘hear’ a sound source directly, and from a number of these relections. Early relections could arrive around the same time as the direct sound, sounding like a bunch of quick short delays, while others may be far more scrambled or difused with a much longer ‘feedback’ (reverberant ield). It’s the combination of these relections that gives a space its acoustic character, and this can vary from amazing (a church) to pretty unpleasant (a tiled bathroom).
Treatment and design Theory is one thing, but we all know that in
practice we can produce music in even the most unusual spaces. What this inevitably means is that there’s plenty of room for trial and error and making it up as you go along. But empowering though that undoubtedly is, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, so here’s some practical advice for treating your own space. Without a doubt, the most signiicant device you can add to a space is the absorption panel. Unfortunately, producing a panel that can successfully (and evenly) absorb frequencies across a full frequency spectrum is impossible. So as a compromise, we have to use panels that suit some frequencies better than others. Typically you’ll encounter broadband panels (which cope with low mid frequencies upwards) and bass traps (low frequencies speciically). You may also come across far more speciic devices, such as the Helmholtz Resonator, designed to remove a very narrow frequency
RealTraps’ ree ModeCalc application maps out the modes based on the three room dimensions
Problem areas In addition to creating reflections and difusions, a room’s size, shape and construction all have the potential to cause some annoying problems. Top o the list are room modes. In the simplest terms, these occur when a requency’s wavelength exactly matches the dimensions o a room, creating what’s called a standing wave. This ‘natural requency’ becomes amplified. As an example, two parallel walls 12 eet apart will create a standing wave at roughly 94Hz. In addition to room modes, you can also experience problems with boundary reflections, where a direct sound wave combines with a reflected one. This efect can happen perectly in phase, perectly out o phase or anywhere in between, and to human ears, it will make certain requencies sound appreciably louder or quieter. The good news is that both situations are only really problematic at lower requencies (which have longer wavelengths). The bad news is that the problems can be quite marked, making particular bass notes ar too loud, or alternatively, causing them to disappear completely. To give you an idea o the requencies that could be problematic in your room, there are a number o reeware mode calculators. A good starting point is RealTraps’ ModeCalc (PC only). RealTraps also have a useul application or pinpointing boundary reflections. See our main eature or more on bass modes and nodes (rom p18) realtraps.com
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 29
> cover feature / room acoustics in depth band. Thankfully, lots of manufacturers now make all sorts of panels and some can be quite afordable. Or go DIY! See ‘DIY Absorption Panel’ on p31 and our other guides from p21. Difusers are another treatment option. These can help small spaces sound less claustrophobic. To be fair, you’re unlikely to worry as much about difusers, purely because they may have a less signiicant impact than a few strategically placed bass traps. However, there are plenty of easily installed and cheap options available. Positioning treatment panels is a combination of practicality, purpose and science (and has been the cause of more than a few headaches). Typically, in a listening room you’d put broadband absorbers on the walls either side of and behind the listening position. For bass traps, the corners (both top and bottom) are a good starting point. Difusers can be used in any remaining gaps. Obviously in a live space things become a bit more lexible, but the same principles apply.
Cheaper, home solutions Acoustic treatment is big business, not least
because all sorts of open spaces, oices, factories and workplaces are required to meet guidelines. However, in your own studio, you’ll probably already have some very useful items, and it may be simply a case of repositioning them or using them in the correct way.
Sofas, often found at the back of studio control rooms, can serve a useful function acting as bass traps. Add a few people and they’re even better! In a home environment, a strategically placed sofa or two can help tame low frequency modes. The average bookcase is a natural difuser, with its combination of vertical items (books, CDs and so on) and the horizontal shelves themselves. Obviously, given that they come in all diferent shapes and sizes, results may be variable, but if you just want to introduce some extra spread in an empty room, don’t rule them out. The CD rack, meanwhile, may have seen better days, but like the bookcase, it makes an excellent cheap difusion device. And smaller ones can be wall mounted. A good set of heavy curtains can tame the high and mid frequencies in your studio room (and give you a bit more privacy), while no discussion of recording at home would be complete without mention of the humble duvet. This quilted bedding can act like a super-thick acoustic curtain, and you can easily hang one in a strategic place, such as behind a performer. Don’t expect miracles, but if you want to tame mid and high frequency relections, then duvets are incredibly useful.
Soundproofing So far, our discussion has centred on treating
the acoustics of your room. Now we’ll touch on
“Probably the most annoying noise pollution is produced by bass frequencies, which are transferred structurally”
A combination o proessional acoustic treatments and standard household urnishings does the trick here
Difusors like these ‘scatter’ a sound wave and can make a room sound more airy. Bookcases can do a similar job
the subject of soundprooing. If you’ve ever lived next door to a musician, you’ll know how important this can be. For our purposes, it also demonstrates the two-way nature of the problem: basically, if sound is capable of escaping your room or house, it can also penetrate someone else’s. Probably the most annoying noise pollution is produced by bass frequencies, which are transferred structurally. Mid and high frequencies, on the other hand, use the available medium (air), so leaving a window or door open can make an enormous diference to their transmission. At a professional level, dealing with these two types of acoustic isolation (while also factoring in the acoustic treatments we’ve already discussed) can be extremely complex. What’s more, the resultant spaces are often heavily upholstered and oppressive, with little or no natural light.
room acoustics in depth / cover feature < Assuming you haven’t just won the lottery, A DEAD ROOM things in your recording space will likely be a bit REINVIGORATING With so much emphasis on absorbers, you might think more modest. So what are the options? everyone was working in horrible-sounding, ringing Probably the easiest way to get a quick spaces. But it’s equally possible that your space may be improvement is to seal your doors and windows. too dead. Carpets, curtains and upholstery all kill of frequency relections, and it’s amazing how even Although double-glazing can improve isolation, high just illing a room up with stuf can deaden things. it’s often the sealed nature of replacement To reverse this, you could simply have a clear-out, casement windows that improves their throw open the curtains, or even leave the door open for some added ambience. You might also want to efectiveness. If you have older windows, consider introducing some relection closer to the consider DIY sealing strips, which can also help source. For example, if your loor is carpeted, around door frames, and don’t forget the gaps at sound consider positioning the performer on a sheet of the top and bottom of the door. plywood. Alternatively, position a sheet or two of wood behind them, using these ‘screens’ to relect sound Once you’ve done all this, you may ind that back towards the mic. typical ‘studio odour’ creeping in. If you can’t aford proper air conditioning, opening the doors and windows when you’re not making any used, including mineral wool insulation and noise is surprisingly efective. plasterboard. Having done all of this, you still need to make the room as airtight as possible, Isolating and achieving airtight seals on the doors can be Harder to achieve, isolation in the domestic environment should always start with the loor. annoying and/or expensive. You’ll still need to address all the acoustic Depending on your budget, everything from design elements already discussed, so it’s not placing your monitors on isolating mats, to uncommon during the planning stage of such a using a carpet underlay can help. Using a project to factor in ideal room dimensions. mineral-loaded barrier matting under the If DIY isn’t your thing, there are a number of carpet can also be useful, as well as sealing up companies that make self-contained isolation any gaps in the loorboards and skirt. Without booths – you may have seen these at a music trade show. Although they can be expensive they provide a quick solution. However, it’s worth mentioning that they don’t provide complete isolation, and will work much better when positioned inside an existing structure that already has going the whole hog and building a room within some level of isolation. Sound isolation shouldn’t be confused with a room, you may also beneit from building a acoustic design, and true isolation can be a loating loor, or a small loating riser for tricky business. In practice, unless you’re drums and amps. regularly recording loud bands or monitoring at Should that lottery ticket come good, you might want to consider the ‘room within a room’ very high levels, sealing your space and approach. Although it’s not always immediately reducing transmission at source will bring instant beneits. obvious, this system is the backbone of most As you can see, acoustics is a complex modern studio design. The aim is to isolate a science, but a little knowledge and application space by building an internal shell separated can go a long way towards making your home from the surrounding structure. In fact, doing a great environment in which to play and this completely is impossible; however, record music. addressing all the points where structural transmission can occur, and using plenty of mineral-illed cavities, can be pretty successful. Just like in a normal room, problems can be A professional alternative to ‘duvets encountered with windows and doors, and behind the mic’, the Relexion ilter often you’ll ind the windows get ditched will help deal with room ambience completely. The door issue is typically resolved by using a twin door system with a small air gap between the two. Built from the ground up, the starting point is a loating timber loor. This is basically a wooden frame ‘loated’ on some form of rubber barrier matting and in-illed with cavity insulation. Plywood is often used as the looring material because it’s strong and lexible (though expensive). The stud walls are then constructed on top of the loating loor, again using mineral wool inill, and dry-lined with two or more layers of plasterboard. A timber frame ceiling is then attached to the walls. The whole thing requires a serious amount of work, and aside from the isolation of the structure, much of the soundprooing comes from the large quantities of absorbent materials
“Everything from placing your monitors on mats to using a carpet underlay can help with sound isolation”
Constructing your own absorption panel may take time, but it can save you money
DIY absorption panel
There are times in music production when you have to become a bit of a DIY enthusiast. Constructing your own basic absorption panel is a pretty easy task, provided you have the right materials. Here’s a shopping list: 1 Planed timber or planks of MDF to make a frame. 2 Medium density cavity wall insulation slabs (not loft insulation) plus appropriate dust mask and gloves. 3 Acoustically transparent cloth to cover it with (something you can blow through should be ine). 4 Some screws, nails and ittings for holding the frame together and a staple gun to ix the fabric. 5 Hardboard to hold the slabs in place at the back. Start by making a frame with the timber and brackets. Lay the fabric out on the loor, placing the frame over the fabric. Pull the fabric back over the frame and staple it irmly in place, making sure it’s nice and tight. Put on your dust mask and gloves before laying the insulation slabs in. Finish of by nailing on the hardboard back. Alternatively, some companies make DIY bags to which you can add your own acoustic insulation slabs. If you’re simply looking for some absorbent slabs to place in corners, you can just bundle up a pack of medium density cavity wall insulation in some fabric, or even re-use an old bean bag. October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 31
bedroom vocal recording / cover feature <
THE BEDROOM PRODUCER’S GUIDE TO
RECORDING VOCALS
Armed with only a mic, a computer and a DIY ethic, we’ll show you how to record pro-sounding vocal tracks even in the most modest of environments Vocals, along with acoustic drum kits, are without doubt among the hardest musical components to record to a professional standard, particularly if you don’t have access to a professional recording space. Yet vocals are a vital element in a vast number of modern productions. Whether sung, whispered, spoken, shouted or rapped, a catchy vocal line can turn a fairly good track into a truly great one. It’s the one sound to which our ears are naturally attuned, and it tends to be the most dominant lead part in all manner of diferent tunes across a variety of genres. This all makes the process of recording the human voice absolutely critical.
Of course, there are many things that can be done to a vocal recording to give it some more depth, presence or sparkle, but the bottom line is that getting the recording right in the irst place is probably 90% of the battle. Recording singers and MCs used to be the preserve of full-blown commercial studios, with their dedicated vocal booths, rooms full of quality microphones and racks of high-end hardware processors. Nowadays, however, with some of the more afordable recording gear on the market, along with the sheer power of modern computers and just a little bit of DIY know-how on your part, it’s perfectly possible to get release-worthy results without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home.
Over the next few pages, we’ll cover everything you need to know about preparing your bedroom or spare-room studio for recording vocals or using the space you have created – or are just about to – from our feature on p18. We’ll give you tips on taming an overly reverberant space, crafting a homemade pop shield and minimising background noise, and the best ways to set up your mic, interface and DAW. We’ll also go over how to monitor during the recording process in order to get the best performance out of your vocalist. We’ll then show you how to ind the best sound, record multiple takes, and comp vocals using Ableton Live (but the tutorial works with any DAW). So, without further ado, let’s get vocal! October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 33
> cover feature / bedroom vocal recording
Your recording setup Before we begin recording, there are a few things that you can do to ensure that you get the best possible sound into your computer. These involve making some adjustments to your room, thinking about microphone position and minimising any unwanted noise so that it doesn’t end up on the recording. You’ll want to get as clean a sound into the mic as possible to give yourself maximum lexibility when it comes to processing your vocal recordings. The most important thing to do is to hang blankets across the wall directly behind the singer (using tacks is probably the quickest way of doing this), which will dull down any relections coming into the sensitive front side of the mic. This is done to limit the amount of metallic-sounding room reverberation that gets onto the recording – it’s always preferable to record as dry a signal as possible and add your own reverb later on with a plugin. You should try to pick a room that’s carpeted if at all possible, or if it isn’t, at least put a thick
Pop shields are pretty cheap to buy, but i you’re strapped or cash you can easily make your own
rug around the area where the singer and mic are positioned. As well as loors, walls and ceilings, windows relect a lot of sound, so make sure you draw the curtains, close the blinds or at least hang a blanket over any glass surfaces in your recording room. In fact, any lat surfaces are your enemy in this regard, so if you’ve got lots of blankets, towels or bits of bedding lying dormant in your airing cupboard, trot them out and cover as much of the wall space as possible, as well as the tops of any tables, desks and the like. If you’re short on such items, concentrate your resources on the area behind the singer’s head. If the room you’re recording in refuses to be tamed with the above methods, you can always try recording with a large blanket suspended over both the singer’s head and the microphone – this has the added advantage of preventing some of the relections coming down into the mic from the ceiling. However, you must make sure the blanket isn’t touching either the mic or the stand, as this will cause any movement of the blanket to be heard on the recording.
Placing the mic Your mic should be positioned away from any
walls and not too close to your workstation, as sound will bounce of these and be picked up on the recording. Then again, you don’t want to be right in the centre of the room either, as standing waves will play havoc with your recording. So, try to place your mic slightly closer to two of the walls than to the others, with the vocalist facing into the room and the majority of blankets (or whatever you’re using) tacked to the walls behind the singer’s head. Absorption panels such as the sE Electronics Reflexion filter (pictured) and Primacoustic VoxGuard protect your mic rom the room reflections that can ruin a great take
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The optimum position is probably furthest away from your desk and any windows, but sometimes this isn’t practical, so just try to minimise relections as best you can. How far vocalists should position themselves from the mic itself is entirely dependent on the material and their voice. A screaming metal singer should probably be at least a foot away from the mic, whereas a softer folk singer should be around four to six inches away. These are just guidelines, though, so feel free to record a few short test takes at the beginning of a session to ascertain the best distance for the particular track you’re working on. When recording a take, vocalists should aim to keep their heads as still as possible and not move their feet. It’s also best to sing just ofcentre into the mic, as most mics (depending on the pickup pattern) are extremely sensitive to direct sounds and any movement towards or away from the mic will be exaggerated from the centre. An experienced singer will often move their head back a little during a particularly loud section and move closer for a quieter part, but unless your vocalist knows their craft inside out, it’s best for them to remain as still as possible.
Word of mouth A pop shield is a must, as it will reduce the loud
plosive sounds of words beginning with ‘b’ and ‘p’ (caused by the singer emitting a blast of air). This will in turn help you out a great deal when it comes to the processing and mixing stages. Pop shields aren’t all that expensive to buy, but if you’re on a really tight budget, opt for the classic homemade solution of using some old nylon tights stretched around a frame made from a
bedroom vocal recording / cover feature < And on the software side…
The Bluebird mic that we used for our tutorial is a versatile, high-quality condenser and it’s got a snazzy art deco look, too
Your computer setup is obviously vital to recording a good vocal sound. First of all, you need the best audio interface you can aford, as this will have an impact on the overall quality of the signal being recorded. The two main things to consider are the preamps and whether or not you require phantom power (note that all condenser mics need either phantom power or an internal battery, whereas dynamic mics and the majority of ribbon mics do not). In this tutorial we’ve used a Focusrite Saire interface, mainly because it contains some great-sounding preamps, which are important for getting a decent signal with minimal noise into the computer, and has phantom power for our Blue Microphones Bluebird condenser. There are plenty of other fantastic audio interfaces on the market though, so shop around until you ind the right one for you and be sure to check out previous reviews at musicradar.com.
In the past, engineers often used hardware compressors to ensure that vocal signals didn’t clip. However, these have largely been made redundant for this purpose by 24-bit recording, which provides enough headroom to capture both very loud and very soft signals more than adequately. Remember that you don’t need to have the loudest signals at the upper limits of your interface’s input meters in fact, with 24-bit recording, it’s usually wise to keep the loudest sections around -12dBFS. If your system can only capture signals at 16-bit, however, you’ll need to set your levels a little more carefully, otherwise very quiet signals could be masked with noise and hiss. You should aim to have the signal level peak at around -6dBFS to provide you with a decent margin of error, just in case your vocalist accidentally moves closer to the microphone at the wrong time and ends up with a clipped signal, for example. Then, if there are some
particularly quiet moments in your track, you can always try recording them as separate takes and adjusting the input gain accordingly. Next you need to consider the bufer size setting in your DAW, as getting this wrong can cause problems with latency. With lower settings, the latency between a vocal line being sung and being heard back in the headphones will be minimal, although if it’s too low, the backing track and vocal recording may glitch every now and then. With higher settings, playback glitches should be eradicated, but the delay between singing a line and hearing it back in the headphones might be ofputting. Therefore, you need to get the bufer size as low as possible without causing any glitches. For the purposes of this tutorial we thought a bufer size of 188 samples was just about right, but feel free to experiment until you’re happy with the results.
Mic and singer setup coat hanger. Failing that, a kitchen sieve will also do a reasonable job. Another thing to watch out for is the proximity efect, where the bass frequencies will be wildly accentuated if a singer moves their mouth to within a couple of inches of the mic. Therefore, if you’re recording someone who keeps creeping forward during a session, try adjusting the distance between the pop shield and the mic so that they physically can’t get close enough to fall prey to this efect.
Screening for noise One additional option is to use an add-on screen
that its onto your mic stand and encloses the space around the back half of the microphone, such as the Aston Halo, Relexion Filter or Primacoustic VoxGuard. These enclose the space around the back half of the microphone, preventing some of the room relections from entering the mic from this angle. They can be relatively pricey, however. Alternatively, hanging a large blanket down from the ceiling or moving a tall piece of furniture (in turn covered with a blanket) behind the mic will help you get a drier sound into the computer. Lastly, try to minimise any unwanted sounds that may ruin a recording. If your computer’s cooling fan is quite loud, for instance, think about buying a few extension cables and moving your machine outside the room or at least as far away from the microphone as possible. And, more obviously, close all windows and doors, turn of any electrical equipment you aren’t using and place a ‘Recording’ sign on the outside of your
Pop shield 6–8”
2–3”
Condenser mic
Rotate mic angle
Reflection hotspots
Singer
Window
Mic Desk
It’s essential to place sound-absorbent materials in the spots marked in pink, but cover all of these if you can! Door
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 35
> cover feature / bedroom vocal recording
Testing, testing, one, two… Before we move on, there are a couple of other things to bear in mind. First of all, you need to create a good monitor mix, where the vocals can be clearly heard above the backing but are not so loud that they mask the other instruments, as this will make pitching near enough impossible. Also, for songs where the vocals come in before any tuned instruments, you should place a piano note before the start of the section to give you a starting pitch. And if there are any sections where the instruments drop out completely, you may need to make a dummy backing track to enable the vocalist to hear the rhythm and key of the tune – this can then be taken out again once the vocals are in the can, so to speak. You’ll often see singers in the studio wearing headphones with one ear of. This enables them to hear the backing track and the recorded vocal in one ear while still being able to hear their
natural voice in the other. They also tend to use closed-back headphones, which help to stop the backing track leaking onto the vocal recording. Of course, the most important thing is the performance itself, so disregard all of this information if another method will give you a better performance at the expense of some audio idelity. And when all is said and done, these rules can be broken. If you listen to Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful, for instance, you can actually hear the drum track leaking from her headphones at around 3m 45s, but the producer decided to keep this take because the performance was so good. Bono has been known to record his vocals with the band playing in the same room to help him give a more energetic take, and original Asian Dub Foundation vocalist Master D was can hear Christina Aguilera’s click track leaking known to monitor his takes through speakers to You from her headphones in Beautiful, but the performance help achieve his impassioned delivery. was so good that the producer decided to use it
> Step by step 1. Finding the best sound POWER TIP
>Using reverb and compression
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Here’s our track ready for some vocal magic. It was chosen because the arrangement and instrumentation are fairly simple, providing our vocalist with plenty of space in the mix for both lead and backing tracks.
Remember to rename all your tracks, as this will make things much easier later on. We’re now ready to record our irst take, so we arm the Vox 1 track. Our vocalist is about ive or six inches away from the mic for this one, and we decide to record the whole lead part in one go so that we can judge how it’s going to sound.
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Some vocalists prefer to have compression on their vocals as they’re recording, to tame their dynamic range and enable them to hear every nuance clearly. The same is also true for reverb, which will help a performance sound more natural. This is ine, but don’t add too much of either as it’ll adversely afect pitching, and never apply any such efects to the actual signal that’s being recorded (that is, via hardware processors or your soundcard), or you won’t be able to change things later on if you overdo it. Instead, place a plugin on the audio track itself, which can then be removed after recording.
We engage phantom power for our condenser mic, and as we’re recording in 24-bit, we get our vocalist to sing a few loud notes to check that our interface’s input is peaking around -12dBFS. We create a new audio track, set it to mono input and check that the vocals are clearly heard over the backing track in the headphones.
We get our vocalist to move closer to the mic this time – about two or three inches away – for a more upfront sound, which may suit this particular track better. This is also the time to make sure your vocalist is happy with the monitor mix. We then create a new audio track, mute the previous one and go again.
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It’s now time to pick which of the takes is working best. Listen back to each one in turn and get rid of any efects you’ve applied. After careful consideration, we decide that the second take (the one recorded closer to the mic) is the best in this situation – we’ll stick with this more upfront sound for all of our future takes.
bedroom vocal recording / cover feature < > Step by step 2. Recording multiple takes POWER TIP
>Stripping back
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Having decided that we prefer the closer vocal, we go for another take on a new audio track, making sure to mute the other vocal takes before recording. Alas, a very noisy motorbike outside our bedroom studio ruins the take, so we stop recording. We don’t delete this take, as some parts may still be usable when we come to compile them. We also label it so we don’t have to hunt for it later on.
At this stage of multiple takes, Live 11 users can engage the Take Lane feature which creates new tracks whenever you record a new take. Other DAWs have this feature too – it’s in Bitwig Studio 4 for example, and already present in Logic. We’ll assume you are either using this feature for multiple takes or just assembling them manually. It doesn’t matter – for either method we’ll end up with good results!
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At this stage you’ll probably have encountered most of the tracking problems you’re likely to come across and adjusted things to get a better vocal performance into the computer. One thing to bear in mind is that a mix can sometimes be overly full, with lots of instruments all playing diferent parts. If this is the case, think about muting certain parts of the backing track to provide the vocalist with a simpliied arrangement, over which it will be easier to pitch correctly – they’ll also be able to better monitor what’s being sung. Temporarily reducing any overly prominent echo or reverb efects on the backing parts can also help in this regard.
It can be frustrating not being in a completely soundproofed studio environment when recording vocals, but remember that most background sounds in your home will be undetectable in the context of a full mix. All you can do is minimise any potential problems – using a mic stand is preferable to holding the mic in your hand, for example. We go for another take on a new audio track.
We take a moment to check the irst few takes, just in case any clipping has occurred, for example – there’s nothing worse than recording multiple takes only to realise later on that none of them are usable! We’re pretty happy with things so far, but decide that more takes are needed. The ad-lib section at the end of the second chorus needs work, for instance, so we decide to record this bit separately.
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We focus on nailing the post-chorus section by recording it again on a new audio track and renaming it accordingly. To give our vocalist time to get into the rhythm of the track and ind the irst note of the phrase we want to get down, we start recording a reasonable distance before the ad-lib section begins.
POWER TIP
>Taking notes
When recording multiple takes, it’s a very good idea to go through your takes fairly regularly throughout the session and mark down the ones that you’re particularly happy with – you can rename tracks, use colour coding or write down notes on a piece of paper. This is to make the task of comping that much easier to handle, as it can be a real headache to listen through dozens of takes without some indication of which ones contain the best performances. The other advantage of doing this is that you’ll know which sections of the track need the most work.
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We record the new take, then listen back to check the results. Our vocalist seems to have nailed this section on this particular track, but you can feel free to repeat this process as many times as necessary to get every part of the song just right – if your vocalist is happy to oblige, of course! Having said that, some singers actually prefer to record their parts in this step-by-step fashion.
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Listen back again to make sure you have at least one or two good takes for each of the sections, then go back and re-record any sections that aren’t quite up to scratch. We’re satisied that we’ve got everything we need to make a good composite lead vocal from all our takes, either from manual individual takes or using Take Lanes, so let’s move on to that in the next walkthrough.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 37
> cover feature / bedroom vocal recording > Step by step 3. Compiling a lead vocal track
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Now it’s time to piece all of the best bits from all our takes together to create a ‘composite’ lead vocal. Again, we’ll show you how to do this if you are manually assembling takes and also using automatic comping features as in Live 11. Create a new audio track and rename it Comp Lead. This is where best vocal parts will reside, so it’s probably best to put this track above the other parts, just as we’ve done here.
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If you’ve recorded the whole song in one take, copy and paste your best overall take onto the new track – otherwise, copy and paste the best take of each section onto this track instead. Here we’ve taken the irst part of the irst take and the second part of the second to compile a ‘best of’.
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It’s worth zooming in to ensure that phrases aren’t accidentally cut in the wrong place. Now listen to the other takes in turn for each of the problem sections, remembering to mute the Comp Lead track whilst doing this.
POWER TIP
>The cutting edge
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This manual method can be a bit laborious but the automatic comping feature in Live 11 and other DAWs makes the process much easier. Here we’ve got multiple Take Lanes recorded in Live 11. You can audition each lane by clicking the speaker icon within each Take Lane.
Here we’ve gone a bit crazy just to show you how diferent Take Lanes can be sliced and diced to make a perfect whole. In reality you might have an entire section of a single take that is the best, or even an entire take.
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Try to leave as much space (or silence) around an edit point as possible, as it will make the job of comping easier and produce more natural results. It is possible to comp in the middle of phrases, or even words, but this is much more time-consuming and the results are not always as natural as you might like. Also, try to keep each syllable intact – cutting within a note will produce a very unnatural edit. Use your judgement in each case as to whether the comp sounds like it was all done in one take – otherwise, it may be worth re-recording some sections from scratch.
Now you simply draw across the perfect parts on each take lane. This will then comp together these best parts of each Take Lane and they will come together with what is hopefully the perfect comp’d audio take at the top.
Back to our manual vocal multiple take eforts and we’ve taken sections of three diferent takes to create our new complete Vocal Lead.
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Solo this Comp Lead track and listen out for any clicks between audio slices. If you hear one, zoom in on the area and use crossfading to smooth the transition (in fact, it doesn’t hurt to do this on every transition of the track). Either create a Fade (Opt>Cmnd>F) or use the ones automatically suggested between takes by clicking and dragging the pointers.
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42
Voice leading basics
Synth Masterclass
44
Perky synth sounds in Zebra
46
Vocal EQ production
Songwriting with Dave Clews
An all-new masterclass with Dave Gale
Vocal Production with Ashley Thorpe
Dave Clews has a leading tutorial on how to use voices in a chord to make a continuously evolving harmony Dave Gale gets perky to revealhow to recreateone of the most oft-used synth sounds of recent years We welcome Ashley Thorpe to Computer Musicto start a new series on vocal production October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 41
to songwriting
#14
Voice leading basics Take your lead from the orchestral world and add
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smoothness and complexity to your songwriting Defined as ‘the linear progression o individual melodic lines, voices or parts and their interaction with one another to create harmonies’, voice leading is a music theory technique rooted in choral and orchestral arrangements. In a nutshell, it involves breaking chordal parts down into individual voices, then making each voice flow rom chord to chord in a logical way. In, say, a string quartet, each player has their own part that, blended, make a continuously
evolving harmony. Voice leading needn’t be limited to backing vocals and string arrangements though – it can also make a big diference when making piano-based chord progressions and pad parts sound smoother. Being largely keyboard or guitar-based, a lot of modern pop songs don’t have to worry about how the individual notes in the chords they’re playing are moving. Using a MIDI keyboard to play synthesised strings, for example, it’d be easy to play the irst chord with three notes, the
Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio iles at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic
second with four, the third with six and the fourth with three. However a real string section would need players jumping in and out from chord to chord to accommodate those extra voices, which would sound uneven. The irst step in using this to smooth out your pad parts then, is to make each chord contain the same number of notes, corresponding to the number of players in your virtual ensemble. As we go from chord to chord, think of each note as belonging to one voice throughout.
>Step by step Smoother pad parts with voice leading
TUTORIAL
FILES
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Here’s a MIDI part playing a four-chord progression – C, Am, F, Em, but all chords are played in root position. This means that the root note of each chord is at the bottom of the stack – ie the lowest pitched note. This gives a disjointed sound, as we jump about the keyboard following the root note of each new chord and stacking chord tones up from there.
So where next? This is where voice leading comes in. Good voice leading practice usually looks for the smallest movement possible pitch-wise between the voices within the chords. So if each note in our irst chord is thought of as an individual player, what note could they each move to in the next bar to generate Am, the second chord in our progression?
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Starting with the C major chord, we have four voices to use to build this chord. However, each triad only contains three distinct notes, so we can use the fourth lowest voice to play the root note of each chord in the bass register. What we have here – CEGC – is known as a closed voicing, since all notes it inside one octave with no space in between them.
The chord tones of Am are A, C and E, so our current top note of C has a few possible choices here. It could go from C up two whole tones to E, down three semitones to A, or it could stay where it is on C to provide the third of the Am chord. This works well if we’re looking for as little movement between notes in each chord as possible, so we’ll keep it at C.
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Triads like this nearly always sound better played with open voicings, with notes spread over more than one octave, and decent space between. Let’s use what’s called a ‘drop 24’ voicing. Taking our closed voicing, number the notes down from the top 1,2,3 and 4. Then take notes 2 and 4 and drop them an octave. This takes us from CEGC to CGEC.
The next note down in our C major open voicing is E. We could shift this to A, but that’s a huge upward jump of ive semitones – not ideal! There’s also the option of dropping it down four semitones to C, but since E is also already in the chord of Am, this note can stay put as well, to make up the ifth of our Am chord.
voice leading basics / easy guide to songwriting < Dave Clews
PRO TIP CHORD VOICING VS VOICE LEADING
In a studio career spanning more than 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, he writes articles for and other magazines and websites, and is the author of Avid Pro Tools Basics. Follow him on instagram @electricdave67
If you treat every note in a piece as if it’s an individual voice like this, you can think of things in two dimensions, both vertical and horizontal. For instance, if you take a vertical slice out of a piece of music and view all the notes played at any given moment, you can see how all those notes combine to create the sound of the music in that single moment. This is what we mean by a chord voicing. However, if you track horizontally how each individual voice moves across time as you play through the piece, you’ll see that each voice creates a sort of melody line all of its own. This is what we mean by voice leading – the movement of each individual note from chord to chord.
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The next note down, G, could either go up a tone to A or down three semitones to E. We’ll send it to A, as it’s not only a smaller movement, it’s also the root note of the chord. We already have the third (C) and the ifth (E), so the addition of this A as the root note means that our triad is now complete.
The third note down from the top, A, can stay put, since it counts as the third of the F major chord, while the lowest note, being the bass note, has our permission to move the greatest distance pitch-wise, down a whopping four semitones from A to the root note of F.
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Our lowest note, the bass C note, can shift down three semitones to the root of the chord, A. This works ine because we’re using the lowest of our four voices to reinforce the root note of each chord, acting as a kind of built-in bass part.
For the inal Em chord (the chord tones of which are E, G and B), we could just drop everything down a semitone, but for a less obvious alternative, let’s revoice our chord slightly. Our top note, C, can drop a semitone to B, while the second note down from the top, F, can move up a whole tone to G to form the third of the Em chord.
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We move onto chord three – the F major chord. The chord tones of an F major triad are F, A and C. So going from the top down once more, our top C can stay where it is to provide the ifth of the F major triad, while the next note down, E, can shift a smooth single semitone up to the root note of the chord, F.
The third note down can go up a whole tone from A to B, while the bass note can follow the example of the top note and drop down a semitone from F to E. With all four chords now voiced, we can use the colours to visually trace the individual melodic lines taken by each voice in the part, revealing perfect, smooth voice leading.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 43
Synth
masterclass with Dave Gale
#05
Create a perky synth patch
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Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio files at ilesilo.co.uk/computermusic
Let’s explore one of the most identiiable synth sounds from recent years, residing in pop hits, electro classics and televised soundtracks The rise of the perky synth is a phenomenon that goes back about eight years or so, with one of its irst and most notable iterations being assembled by Clean Bandit. They exploited this sound, and many others like it, in their earlier recordings, which then in turn inluenced a raft of similar pop hits. However, the influence or this sound extends back even urther, to house and dance music o the 90s, where similar constructs were widely
used, on the hardware synths o the day. But it is the ease-o-use provided by synth plugins that brought the perky synth back to the ore, with use extending ar and wide. Many media composers ound themselves using the technique, but in a very diferent setting. Perect or suspense, tension and even subtle emotion, the use o this sound can be heard on soundtracks or shows such as the BBC’s Line of Duty. Through the addition o reverb, with a long decay tail and healthy
amount o pre-delay, the perky synth moves efortlessly rom pop to drama, and all beore you can say ‘Mother o God!’ So let’s dive deep into Zebra CM and create that classic tone, via two oscillators and some subtle pitch modulation. This new synth series is designed to show you some useful production techniques employing the free synths in the suite of plugins we give you each month at FileSilo. Download them now from ilesilo.co.uk.
>Step by step 1. Oscillator sync
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Let’s begin by opening our DAW and loading an instance o the Zebra CM plugin. We’ll start by initialising the patch, by clicking in the central display area, just below the Computer Music graphic. Select UH Initialize, as a starting point.
One o the characteristic elements o the perky synth sound is its apparent hollowness. This is created by using a square wave, or something relatively close to a square wave. Using Oscillator 1, move the Wave pot so that it reads 2.00 on the central display. This will ofer us a square wave tone.
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We need to reduce the oscillator waveorm rom dual to single, as this will ofer a more centred sound, in line with the sort o tone we require. We’ll do this on both oscillators in turn. This step reduces the number o aliased waveorms being played, presenting a purer and more classic starting tone.
We’re going to switch over to Oscillator 2 now, but to help us to hear what we’re doing, reduce the volume o Oscillator 1, and increase the volume o Oscillator 2. We actually want Oscillator 2 to be a shade louder, so aim or a 12 o’clock position, as opposed to the usual 12 o’clock position.
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To create some aural space, so that we can hear what we’re adjusting, let’s now reduce the volume o Oscillator 2 completely. This merely eliminates what we’re hearing via Oscillator 2, so that we can make adjustments to Oscillator 1, without urther distraction.
The sound we are creating exploits both oscillators, but our second oscillator will be doing the heavy liting, in terms o providing the distinctive element o our sound. We’ll start by moving the Wave pot to a readout o 2.80 on the central display. This provides a beautiul modulated square wave.
create a perky synth patch / synth masterclass < Dave Gale
PRO TIP HIGH AND DRY… OR WET!
Dave Gale is an Emmy award-winning media composer, producer and orchestrator, with an enormous passion for synthesisers, in all their forms. His varied composing style embraces everything from full orchestral and hybrid scoring, to fully electronic scores, employing synths wherever possible. He also happens to own some of the inest synths in existence but we’re not jealous, OK?
As can be heard on any track where this sound is employed, it definitely perorms best in a high pitch register. It’s an efective timbre, perect or rifs and melodies that can cut through a mix. Having built the patch, don’t orget that subtle tweaking will allow this sound to sit exactly where required in a track or a mix. The filter cutof may be toned up and down to suit, with the envelope 1 control o the filter being shared alongside the volume (amplitude). The quick decay and lack o sustain is all part o this sound. Without the sustain, it’s perect or cutting through, whereas a sustained pad might need to be mixed down to prevent it rom obliterating a vocal. Even so, there is another way to consider using this patch, so or a diferent angle, try the ollowing. Instead o using this patch to play rifs, use it in a more subtle and considered ashion, playing ewer notes or even chords. Add a lengthy reverb, via your DAW, with a generous pre-delay. This will have the efect o the staccato sound coming back at you, with an elongated reverberation. It creates a beautiul and efective backdrop, which will work well in more nuanced settings.
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The tuning of Oscillator 2 is going to be modulated, using Envelope 2. In order to apply this, we need to move to the tuning section associated with Oscillator 2 and apply Envelope 2 to the unassigned pot, on the bottom left of the tuning section. Do this by control/clicking or right/clicking the pot, selecting Env2 from the drop down menu.
We’re now going to move to the envelope settings and adjust envelope 2, which is the lower envelope. By increasing the Attack and Decay phases to around the 10 o’clock position, you will hear the speed of modulation of pitch alter. This can be set to taste, but this parameter setting provides a sensible starting point.
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We only need the slightest hint of modulation, so adjust the Env2 pot so that it reads 1.00 on the central display. This will give an efect that sounds slightly ‘woozy’, but we’ll tighten this up soon.
While we’re in the vicinity of the envelope section, let’s also alter Envelope 1. This will shore up the perky and short nature of our sound. Reduce the Sustain fully, while setting the Decay phase to around 10 o’clock, and the Release phase to a shade after 9 o’clock
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Envelope 2 is also currently being used by the ilter, and we don’t want it to be. We can change this easily by visiting the ilter section. Control/click or right/ click the Env 2 pot, and select Env 1 instead. Place the Cutof control pot at around 9 o’clock and the Env1 amount pot to a minimal amount, just to the right of the 12 o’clock position.
The inal thing to do is reintroduce Oscillator 1; if you recall, we reduced the Volume earlier, so we can now increase the Volume again, to a level of around 12 o’clock. You will now hear the modulation of Oscillator 2’s pitch, against the stability of Oscillator 1, for that classic perky synth efect.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 45
Vocals
masterclass with Ashley Thorpe
#01
Vocal EQ guide Are your vocals cutting through with enough clarity and power? Time DOWNLOAD
Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio iles at ilesilo.co.uk/computermusic
to welcome Ashley Thorpe to Equalisation is something that’s essential for a music producer to know, but easy to get wrong when you’re getting started. One of the common EQing mistakes I see my students making in their mixes is boosting frequencies on every instrument. Boosting in the right places is important, but knowing where to cut frequencies is more crucial. When you’re mixing, the key is balance. You want all of the instruments in your track to shine. While there are frequencies at which each
with some expert vocal advice
instrument sounds best, there are also some that’ll make instruments sound… pretty far from their best. And these need to be reduced or cut completely in order to make more space for other elements. For vocal tracks, the voice is your lead instrument. You don’t want to be ighting for space against a heavy electric guitar, or synth or drums. The key is knowing the strengths and qualities of the vocalist(s) you’re dealing with, bringing out these qualities with EQ (among
other tools!) and adjusting the other instruments to it. What are the vocalist’s qualities? The answer to this will determine where you need to boost. What other instruments are present in the mix? This will determine where would be best to cut to let these instruments breathe too. It’s good to have reference songs in the genre you’re working in. But it’s also important to know your own mix. This guide will give you tips on making the vocals shine in your mix.
>Step by step 1. The perfect balance
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Before we even get to equalisation, a quick word on organisation! It’s so easy for a mix to get cluttered. Organising your components for a mix will really help speed up your worklow. In my example, my vocal tracks are all in yellow (because the vocalist is mellow…). Humour me. But do whatever works for you to help you work more eiciently.
The three fundamental controls of an equaliser are: the centre frequency (the frequency range that will be afected, plus the starting points for low and high pass ilters); gain (the amount of cut or boost); and the bandwidth or ‘Q’ (which sets the width and slopes of frequencies being corrected).
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The other (non-vocal) components of the song have already been mixed separately in Logic Pro X and mixed down into a single track ‘01 Beat’. That makes it easier for me to just focus on getting the vocals right, knowing everything else is sitting pretty.
There are several diferent types of EQ. In this example I’m using a parametric EQ plugin. This is the most versatile type as it gives full control over frequency, bandwidth, amount to be cut and the amount of boost to be applied.
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You should have already done the admin parts of vocal editing before coming to corrective EQ and frequency removal. That is deciding which vocal takes you’ll be using, sequencing and editing on your timeline, making sure your clips have clean fades and that clicks or pops are removed.
Before attempting to make a irst rough balance, apply a high pass ilter to the EQ plugin on your vocal chain(s). This won’t change the character of your sound but it will make sure that there are no subsonic frequencies that will potentially interfere with the balance of bass or other instruments.
vocal eq guide / vocals masterclass < Ashley Thorpe
PRO TIP
Ashley Thorpe (aka Breezewax) is a producer and musician who has created electronic music for over a decade. He typically uses a mix of samples, ield recordings, synthesis and live instrumentation in his work which covers a variety of styles including hip hop, chill hop, neo-soul and RnB. He also works as a music facilitator and freelance audio engineer.
USING FREQUENCY ANALYSERS AS YOU EQUALISE When creating a balance in your mix, there is absolutely no substitute for your ears and what sounds good. But it can sometimes be very useful to see what’s going on as well and that’s where a frequency analyser comes in handy. I use a free plugin called Blue Cat’s Freq Analyst. It’s well worth grabbing and placing on your mix bus channel to see which frequency bands are the busiest. The visualisation reacts to your sounds in real time, so you can see exactly where you’ll need to tweak your instruments, whether it’s equalising your bass region to make up for a lack of low end or cutting a dominant instrument that’s masking other sounds in the same frequency range.
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The human ear doesn’t hear below 20Hz but frequencies are felt as vibration. Very low bass frequencies are between 20–40Hz. For vocals, you can easily set your high pass ilter from 40Hz. A good rule of thumb is to move the ilter up the spectrum until you start to hear the vocal/instrument change and then back of again.
Watch the amount of Q you use and gain you cut. Only the frequencies you want to reduce should be afected. Also check the instruments in the rest of your mix. Avoid the vocals afecting the clarity of other instruments: so also cut or scoop in frequency range where other elements need to shine, while prioritising your lead instrument: the vocals.
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Use parametric bands to remove any unwanted frequencies. There may be horrible tones or resonances that need to be cut. Some examples that I found in my lead vocal can be seen in the video (at ilesilo.co.uk) with commentary.
In my example, the vocalist is a midhigh range singer and the higher range of his voice really needs to come out. I’ve boosted in the high-mid frequency and high frequency bands. The ear is most sensitive to 2.55kHz so this section of the equalisation has had the most work. This region gives clarity and the right boosting can provide an ear-pleasing vocal tone.
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A good tip for inding these unwanted noises is to narrow your Q by increasing the numerical value. Then use the gain pot to boost to a high value and then use the frequency pot to sweep around the full spectrum. Where you hear any ringing, rumbling or unpleasantness, that’s where you should make a cut.
We also need to be careful as this is also the frequency region where sibilance can occur making ‘s’ and ‘t’ sounds harsh. I recommend using a de-esser tool for this many DAWs have their own. I like to use Sibilance by Waves, for an unmatched level of control over the extent to which these harsh sounds are iltered.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 47
> interview / sandunes
SANDUNES AGAINST THE TIDE deyaS ayiamuS © :otohP
With live performances that ‘reveal an appetitefor integrating the worlds of studio and stage’, Sandunes was on something of a roll pre-pandemic, having made a mark at many high proile festivals including Blue Dot, WOMAD, Roskilde and more. Howevershe’s used the enforced time and studio world to come up with her best EP yet, and continue an upward momentum that has brought her sound to the attention of everyone from Ableton to Warp, Bonobo to Red Bull…
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sandunes / interview <
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 49
> interview / sandunes After six critically acclaimed EPs – the latest, Nowhere To Stand, released on !K7 this summer – Sandunes is making waves way beyond her home city of Mumbai, India. Sandunes is the producer and pianist Sanaya Ardeshir and her music covers everything from the pop-inspired four tracks on the new EP through electronic jazz, right over to more leftield works, including an album of natural soundscapes which has raised money for COVID19 relief in India. Sandunes has also successfully been able to bring her musical output over into the live arena. notching up some very highly-regarded performances, including a Warp Records and Boiler Room-commissioned performance for Diferent Trains 1947 at London’s Barbican Centre, support slots for both Bonobo and George Fitzgerald, a tour with the critically acclaimed UK jazz drummer Richard Spavento, plus a string of high-proile festival appearances in 2019 including Blue Dot, Roskilde, Magnetic Fields and WOMAD.
Sanaya has also lectured for both Point Blank and Ableton and as an Ableton Certiied Trainer, taken part in the company’s loop Summit. Indeed so impressed were Ableton and Red Bull by the producer that they asked her to take part in the latter’s Searching For Music project which involved her creating samples and remixes by recording sounds in Mumbai for a bespoke sample pack which you can get from the Ableton website.
“[Using a DAW] meant limitless possibilities for the sounds that came through… My mind was truly blown”
so many artists out there, the live arena has largely been an empty one for the last year and a half for Sandunes. But again, like so many frustrated producers and performers, she’s channelled the time and creativity into new music: a new EP that is possibly her best work yet. Nowhere To Stand has a pop sensibility that is sure to increase a proile already at an international level, and well beyond anything Ardeshir expected as a child in India.
“I grew up with access to pianos, records, and in the knowledge that my dad had very much wanted to play music for a living,” she recalls. “However, growing up in India at a time when there were barely any opportunities to make a living from being a musician, he became an engineer and wound up working in a steel plant in Jamshedpur, a small, industrial Indian town where I was born.” That didn’t – eventually anyway – stop Ardeshir’s musical ambitions, but it would take some exposure to electronic music and music technology to help propel them onto a new dimension and into a new country. “Piano lessons naturally evolved into college band competitions,” she explains, “and after being exposed to trip hop and synthesisers, I pursued a music production course in London. Being in a city like London was extremely horizon expanding and eye-opening, and that’s when I started producing my own work, roughly a decade ago now.”
Live to studio However, it’s not all been plain sailing as, like for
The tech route Of her introduction to the technology that very
much surrounds her these days, Ardeshir recalls: “I was rehearsing with a band for some cover gigs in a garage very many years ago, and the engineers from the studio next door asked me to come lay down some chords for a documentary they were scoring. It was the irst time I was exposed to a DAW and the idea of composing and arranging with the help of a screen and a multitude of devices. It meant limitless possibilities for the sounds that came through the speakers when I hit notes on a MIDI controller. My mind was truly blown, and that led me to discover Logic, Ableton Live, and a new modality of writing.” And now, while the Sandunes studio is probably much fuller than that initial setup in the garage next door, it also very much has that live stage in mind. “These days, the rig is a mobile one,” Sanaya explains. “My partner and I combined all the gear that would it in our car and have been travelling through South India for the last year or so. We travel with a UAD Apollo 8, an RME UCX (for a second workstation), a DSI/Sequential Prophet-6, a Novation Peak, Kilpatrick Audio’s Phenol synth, a ROLI Seaboard, and an Eventide H9 efects box. I also have a pair of Genelec 8030s that have been in my studio since 2011. “There are various MIDI controllers – Novation Launchpad X, Launchkey etc – a few Shure mics, plus some fun pedals, mostly Electro-Harmonix, although my favourite is the EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master. Finally we have a couple of bass traps from Ultra Acoustics and, most importantly, a power 50 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
sandunes / interview <
Mumbai inspiration
Red Bull have run a series of videos and podcasts where high proile musicians from around the world – including, coincidentally, Bomba Estéreo (also in this issue) – capture local sounds and talk about their inluences. Sandunes was asked to do one in her native Mumbai and to ‘take the chaotic sounds of the metropolis and meld them into a cohesive soundscape’. So impressive are the results that you can download a free sample pack of the experience from the Ableton website, as well as watching the full episode at Red Bull’s – both of which are fascinating insights into the Sandunes world and the Mumbai cityscape itself. Sanaya told Ableton: “I’ve never really made a piece of music entirely from found sound, so this was deinitely a new process. I expected to gather a lot of diferent textural and rhythmic information but I didn’t quite expect it to all be so usable or musical! The process of actually looking for sound in a relatively ‘normal’ environment has deinitely changed the way I hear things in my city. I feel like my listening has gotten re-activated in a way that I didn’t foresee.” October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 51
> interview / sandunes swapping actual horn samples for the brassy sounding patches on it! I’d recommend it for anyone that plays synths and needs to work in the box.” To the software… “Then there’s TALUNOLX,” Sanaya adds. And as eclectic as that list of hardware is, Sanaya is just as passionate about her plugins, “For a while it was my workhorse but I’ve only just stopped using it, for fear of overuse! I’m a revealing a varied set of top used apps on the huge fan of the Juno-60, and while this doesn’t Sandunes drive. really come close, it has a quality that seems to “I tend to use Soundtoys Little AlterBoy on things other than voice,” she begins, “and I ind sit nicely in a mix with some saturation, usually by way of Soundtoys Decapitator.” the results are almost always pleasantly Back to efects and Valhalla’s VintageVerb is surprising. On Nowhere To Stand, I wound up creating vocal samples from my collaborators in the Sandunes go-to reverb… for now: “I have it set up as the irst send on my template. I love almost every song, tweaking the pitch and the plates on it, especially the 1980’s colour. I formant controls on Little AlterBoy for some will usually route synths, vocals and even drums great results.” There are a couple of favourite – and possibly to it. More recently though, I have started to swap it out for FabFIlter’s Pro R.” over-used synths too. “I use Live 11 and these And FabFIlter get another inclusion with days my template for writing has several instances of Arturia’s Prophet V in it. I ind it is a Saturn as Sanaya explains: “As a producer, I have only recently gotten into distortion in a big way great starting point as the way it emulates the actual instrument is super inspiring, especially and Saturn has a lot to do with it! An extremely for laying down chords. I’ve even found myself versatile workhorse and a powerful sonic stabiliser as we’ve been working out of spaces with super frequent power outages.”
Wish lists
Does the Sandunes studio require any more gear on top of that impressive – and mobile – list? “Some Audeze LCD-X headphones so that remote work and remote mixing can feel a touch easier,” Sanaya replies. “Also, hardware distressors, perhaps the Thermionic Culture Vulture, would be real nice to have. Then maybe a Juno60, a WEM copicat echo, an RE-201 Space Echo... The list goes on!” And anything in terms of a fantasy piece of equipment? Something that doesn’t exist and probably even couldn’t exist? “A hybrid piano synthesiser!” Sanaya laughs, “where oscillators, envelopes and even ilter chips can interact with felt and hammers in real time.” Yep, that would be good…
ytteG :otohP
52 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
sandunes / interview < “Creating [the EP] was like an antidote to the uncertainty and stress the pandemic brought about” shaping tool, this one usually sits on my instrument busses, but I also sometimes use it as a return. Its multi-band features allow for an ininite variety of applications.”
To the music That’s the gear in the Sandunes studio and the
resulting music is just as wide ranging, all stemming from a philosophy that also tends to shift. Sanaya explains the current Sandunes way of thinking. “Recently, the way I think about ‘listening’ has changed. Not only as a key facet within the world of music and production, but as something that connects us to our environments, to each other and to ourselves. I’ve been working to bring more mindful and deep listening into my music making spaces, but also outside of those spaces. “We’re an extremely visual culture,” she continues, “and the last few years have only heightened for me the potential that activated listening hosts. So I suppose, in a way, my approach is one that prioritises the sort of listening that makes me feel extremely present, intentioned and engaged.” And how does this translate into the actual songwriting process? “I’m a pianist, so it’s very rare that I start by building beats or grooves,” Sanaya reveals. “Mostly it will be a chord progression on a synth, and then either a full arrangement for diferent parts – verses/choruses and bridges. Or I’ll build various loops – musical building blocks which I then move around with a lean and barebones synth version of the tune to build an arrangement. More recently bass has been the second element to hold it together and then I add drums and percussion.” We’re guessing though, with such a diverse sound, that there are no characteristic Sandunes production processes. Well actually… “I usually have various ‘ghost kicks’ playing diferent rhythms through my project,” she explains, “like some on the downbeat, some less frequently depending on what the synths are doing, and I sidechain diferent elements – if ever so slightly – so they have diferent rhythmic pulsations. This I ind creates a polyrhythmic feel for syncopated and layered synth parts, even if the efect is very subtle and can’t be heard too audibly.”
Creativity from uncertainty As we have touched upon, the most recent
Sandunes release, Nowhere To Stand, was born out of the last year and a half of studio coninement, as Sanaya adds: “It’s a piece of my heart and creating it was like an antidote to the uncertainty and stress the pandemic brought with it. It features the vocalists Half Waif, Sid
Sriram, Landslands and Ramya Pothuri. It’s been wonderful to work with voice again, after a really long period of creating instrumental music. My production process has shifted from loop-oriented music to a more songwriting approach so that vocalists have room to create, which has been a refreshing change. Although most collaborations unfolded remotely in the pandemic, it really feels like the artist is in the room with you when their voice is playing through your speakers.” Sanaya’s next project, perhaps unsurprisingly, looks set to shift those sands again: “It’s a piano music album,” she explains, “within the world of electronics and featuring a horn section, which we’re currently inishing mixing. There will also be more pop-leaning electronic music featuring voice and more collaborations!” The EP Nowhere To Stand is out now
HEAR MORE
Nowhere to Stand bit.ly/CM_nowhere Slybounce ft. Nicholson bit.ly/CM_Sly WWW
sandunesmusic.com instagram.com/sandunesmusic facebook.com/sandunesmusic
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 53
Back to
BASICS
You don’t need the latest and greatest plugins to get a polished-sounding mix. We show you how to get the most from standard EQ and dynamics processors
It’s a common misconception among new producers that anyone making decent-sounding music must be using hundreds if not thousands of pounds’ worth of high-end plugins. The reality is that many artists simply use their DAW’s stock mixing efects. The producer who knows how to get the results they want from basic equalisers, compressors and gates is much more likely to make quality mixes than the producer with a ton of expensive plugins but only a shallow understanding of how to use them. In fact, having too many plugins in your arsenal can be counterproductive: those who only have access to limited tools tend to learn to use those tools far more comprehensively. So, rather than spending a fortune on new efects, we recommend mastering the ones you already have to hand in your DAW irst. Not only will this help you to make better mixes now, but it’ll also enable you to make more informed decisions as to what types of sounds and features you 54 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
require if and when you do decide to upgrade. In these walkthroughs, we’ll show you how it’s possible to get the most out of the most basic EQ and dynamics processors. We’ll reveal how some plugins can be used for more tasks than you might imagine: for example, EQ can make it possible to boost the overall level of a signal by attenuating peaks in its frequency spectrum, a compressor can be used to control and enhance transients by turning up its attack time, and a gate can be used to tighten up percussion samples. By following these guides you’ll increase your understanding of these simple but powerful efects, and improve your ability to mould sounds into the shapes you desire. With this knowledge you’ll be able to achieve a far greater variety of results than you would relying purely on presets, and you’ll get better overall mixdowns as a result. We’re using Cubase, Live and Logic but the processes can be used in most DAWs. All audio examples are at FileSilo.
eq & dynamics / back to basics < > Step by step 1.ShapingdrumswithagateinCubase
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Noise gates were originally invented to reduce the overall level of noise in multitrack analogue recordings, but they’re still useful in the digital age for, amongst other things, shaping drum sounds. Create an audio track in Cubase and drag Clap.wav onto it.
Even at its default settings, the Gate gives us a much more natural sound, fading the tail of the reverb to silence. Let’s get a bit more aggressive with it. Turn the Release level down to 11. This gives us just a short clap sound. Now it’s impossible to tell there was ever a reverb on it in the irst place. (Audio: Short clap.wav)
Click the empty patch name slot to bring up the list of presets. Select Plate At 4sec and turn REVerance’s Mix level down to 15. This reverb is very intense, so it sounds pretty loud, even at this low level. (Audio: Clap with new reverb.wav)
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This clap has a lot of reverb on it – in fact, it’s so long that the sample ends before the reverb tail has inished! This clearly won’t do. To ix the issue, click the Insert tab in the Inspector, then the triangular disclosure button on the irst slot. Select the Gate efect from the Dynamics folder.
You can make the sound even shorter by turning up the Threshold level, if you like. Let’s set it to -14dB. Now we’ve got our shorter clap, there’s nothing to stop us adding our own reverb for a diferent sonic character. Add REVerence after the Gate efect in the Insert strip.
Add another Gate after the reverb, and turn the Release down to 61. Again, this tightens things up, giving us a more usable reverb tail. You can A/B the original and new versions of the clap by clicking the Insert strip’s Bypass button. As you can hear, we’ve completely replaced the character of the original reverb with a diferent efect. (Audio: Tightened reverb.wav)
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 55
> back to basics / eq & dynamics > Step by step 2.UsingcompressiontoenhancetransientsinAbletonLive
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As you can see from the snare’s waveform, its dynamic range is pretty low. The fat sausage shape at the start means the beat is indeed very loud, but what if you need more impact at the beginning of the sound? Add Glue Compressor to the track.
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We’ll use compression to lower the level of the sample, but only after the transient stage has passed. To do this, turn the Attack parameter up to 30ms. This means that the compression takes 30ms to reach its full efect after the Threshold has been exceeded.
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Turn the Threshold down to -27dB. On playback, you’ll hear that the sound has less perceived volume overall, but the transient at the start of the snare is now much more solid and satisfying. (Audio: Snare attack.wav)
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The Release knob determines how long it takes the volume level to return to normal after the signal drops below the Threshold. The longer this is, the longer the compression lasts. Turn it right up to 1.2s to get as tight a sound as possible. (Audio: Snare release.wav)
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Now turn the Ratio up to 10 to give us the most severe compression Glue Compressor is capable of. With everything set up, you can use the Threshold knob to ine-tune the balance between prominent attack and overall loudness. (Audio: Snare ratio.wav)
Compression isn’t just for reducing dynamic range and increasing average volume level – it can also be used to enhance the transients of your drum sounds. This is useful when you have a drum sound with the right character, but that’s lacking that initial hard attack. Launch Live and drag Snare.wav onto an audio track.
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eq & dynamics / back to basics < > Step by step 3.EQingbeatswithspectralanalysisinLogic
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When you’re dealing with a sound that has extreme frequency spikes – as some drum loops and breaks do – spectral analysis can help you locate their positions. Create an audio track in Logic and drag Funky jungle.wav onto it. Set Logic’s tempo to 140bpm.
Channel EQ’s analyser isn’t particularly conigurable, so let’s use something more suited to the task. Add Voxengo SPAN (free download from voxengo.com) after the Channel EQ, and use the horizontal bar at the bottom of its frequency display to zoom in on the high end of the frequency spectrum.
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Click the Audio FX button on the audio track in the Inspector, and select EQ»Channel EQ»Stereo. Click the Analyser button on the left-hand side of the Channel EQ’s interface, and when you play the project back you’ll see the audio signal represented visually behind the EQ curve.
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Using SPAN, we can see that the peaks occur at 9.4kHz and 12.2kHz. Return to Channel EQ and set two band EQs with Qs of 2.00 to take of 10dB at 9,400Hz and 12,200Hz. This tames the peaks, giving you more headroom to turn the channel up and make it louder in the mix. (Audio: EQed beat.wav)
Fourclassicequaliserplugins
DDMF IIEQPRO £27 The commercial version of DDMF’s IIEQPro includes all the great features of the CM Plugins version (such as serial and parallel routing options and 19 ilter modes, including several Butterworth ilters) plus more bands and a built-in spectral analyser. It’s also very reasonably priced. ddmf.eu
VOXENGO GLISSEQ $69.95 From the maker of SPAN comes this incredible equaliser that not only has the same powerful spectral analysis capabilities as SPAN, but also boasts program-dependent band response. This dynamic approach to EQ makes GlissEQ ideal for boosting highs and lows without making them sound harsh or muddy. voxengo.com
FABFILTER PRO-Q £124 One of the best all-round EQs on the market, Pro-Q is overlowing with awesome features. With up to 24 ilter bands, zero-latency and linear phase modes, intelligent solo mode for auditioning single bands, and undo/ redo and A/B comparison functions, it’s a real equalisation powerhouse. fabilter.com
WAVES REDD $249 Based on the EQ sections of Abbey Road Studios’ legendary mixing consoles, Redd delivers that classic 60s sound. As well as the simple EQ controls themselves, you also get Drive and Analogue knobs for dialling in the perfect level of vintage warmth. waves.com
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 57
> back to basics / eq & dynamics > Step by step 4.ParallelprocessinginLive
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Parallel processing is a technique whereby a processed (for example, compressed) signal is mixed with the unprocessed version of itself. In the case of compression, this would give us a balance of loud ‘wet’ signal and punchy ‘dry’ signal. Start by dragging Funky jungle.wav onto an audio track in Ableton Live.
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Drag Glue Compressor onto the track. The efect has a Dry/Wet knob, which means that we can mix some of the dry signal back in directly from the plugin itself. However, by setting up a parallel processing chain we can use multiple efects, which can then be mixed with the dry signal at the end.
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Set the Glue Compressor’s Threshold to -27dB, Makeup to 7dB, and Attack to 0.3. Add a Saturator after it, with its mode set to Sinoid Fold and its Drive turned up to 11.2dB. The processing we’ve added has boosted the peak level by a few dB, which we can check by bypassing the efect.
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To compensate for this, turn the Saturator’s Output down to -2dB. Now the signal peaks at around the same level as the unprocessed signal did, although the dynamic range has been signiicantly reduced, so it hits the peak level much more often. Now let’s create our parallel routing. Select both efects, right-click and select Group.
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This puts both efects in an Audio Efects Rack. Click the Show/ Hide Chain List button and a list of chains appears in the Audio Efects Rack. Currently, there’s only one chain in the Rack. To add another, right-click below it and select Create Chain.
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Now we’ve got our ‘wet’ chain with efects on it, and a new ‘dry’ chain for the unprocessed signal. As we’ve got two versions of the signal, the output of the track will be very loud, so turn both chains down to -6dB to halve their volume. You can use the Chain Volume parameters to balance the signals, and toggle the Audio Efects Rack’s Device Activator button to compare the parallel processed signal with the unprocessed version. (Audio: Parallel processed beat.wav)
eq & dynamics / back to basics < > Step by step 5.TighteningdrumloopswithLive’sSlicetoMIDIfunction
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Using drum loops or breaks is a convenient way to give your beats extra rhythm and character, but if they’re too loose or have too much reverb, they’ll need tightening up. Doing this manually can be iddly, so some DAWs have their own beat-slicing capabilities to make it easier. Drag Dub beat.wav onto an audio track in Live.
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Right-click the clip and select Slice to New MIDI Track. A window appears, asking how you want it to slice the loop and which preset to use for the resulting instrument. The default settings of slice by Transient and Built-in slicing preset will be ine for our purposes. Click OK to slice the loop.
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Makeyourownslicingpresets Live’s built-in slicing preset is convenient because it enables quick access to the ADSR envelope controls of each slice, giving you an easy way to control a beat’s dynamics. The problem with it, though, is that it doesn’t have macro controls linked to each slice’s Transpose and Detune parameters, meaning that if you want to retune the loop you have to go through and adjust every slice manually! Clearly, this isn’t a very convenient solution, but thankfully it’s possible to create your own slicing presets with which you can set up eight macros as you see it. That’s enough to control the ADSR and both tuning
Live will automatically set the project tempo to 140bpm. Select the clip and press Cmd/Ctrl+L to set loop points around it. This loop is drenched in dubby reverb, but we can quickly get rid of that and tweak the loop in various interesting ways by slicing it to MIDI.
A new MIDI track with an Instrument Rack loaded appears below the audio track. Mute the audio track. Now we can tighten up the new version of the beat on the MIDI track by turning its Sustain down to -infdB. Turn the Decay down to 362ms for a super-tight version of the beat. (Audio: Tight dub.wav)
parameters, with two left over for other functions – volume and velocity sensitivity, for example. To make your own preset, create a new MIDI track and put a Drum Rack on it. Put a Simpler in the C1 slot, click the Show/Hide Macro Controls button, then the Map button on the device title bar to enter mapping mode. You can now assign macros by clicking a parameter, then clicking the Map button on a macro. Note that when you do this, the value on the parameter will reset to 0. When you’ve inished, exit map mode by clicking the Map button on the device title bar again,
and set each macro to the default value you want it to have. Finally, drag the Drum Rack into the User Library/Defaults/Slicing folder in Live’s browser. This creates a preset, which will be highlighted, prompting you to enter a name for it. Type in a name, press Enter, and boom – you’re done! Now, when you use Live’s Slice to New MIDI Track function, you’ll ind the preset that you just created in the list of Slicing Presets. You can ind all of our audio for these tutorials in the Tutorial Files folder at ilesilo. co.uk (under issue 299). October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 59
> back to basics / eq & dynamics > Step by step 6.CuttingorenhancingreverbwithLogic’sEnveloper
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Apple’s Logic Pro includes a unique and really quite powerful dynamics processing tool in the form of Enveloper. This can be used not only to tighten up the reverb on drum loops, but also to make them sound louder and boomier – ideal if you’re after a big, ‘live’ drum sound. Start by dragging Dub beat.wav onto an audio track and setting the project tempo to 140bpm.
This immediately gets rid of the reverb and gives us a really tight, dead drum sound. You can get diferent curve shapes by using the Time knob to the left of the Gain fader. Set the Time to 60.00ms and the Gain to -74% for a less severe reverb reduction efect. (Audio: Release curve.wav)
We can use Enveloper to treat the attack stage of each hit as well as the release stage. First, return the Gain fader on the right-hand side of the interface to 0%, then gradually turn the Gain fader on the left up as you play the beat back. Once you reach the 60% level you’ll really start to hear each hit become more pronounced. (Audio: Transient enhancement.wav)
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In the Inspector, click the Audio FX slot on the audio track and select Dynamics»Enveloper»Stereo. The plugin very efectively detects the transients in the loop, and enables you to control the tail of each hit using the Gain fader on the right-hand side of the interface. For starters, turn it down to -100%. (Audio: Tight dub.wav)
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Let’s use the efect to enhance the reverb now. Set the Time to 2000.00ms and turn the Gain up to 100%. As you can hear, this has a really drastic efect on the sound. The boominess is so loud that it’s going to clip the master, in fact, so set the Out Level to -9dB. (Audio: Boomy reverb.wav)
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It’s possible to dull the attack stage of the sound as well as enhance it. Turn the Gain fader down to 100% and it’ll sound like you’ve turned up the attack time of each slice. This is potentially useful when you want to layer one-shot drums with a loop to give them character but the transients of the loops clash with those of the one-shots. (Audio: Dulled loop.wav)
eq & dynamics / back to basics < > Step by step 7.High-shelvingdrumloopswithparallelEQ
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Using a pair of high-shelving EQs can be a very useful way to shape the high and/or low end of drum loops. To demonstrate this, we’re going to use DDMF’s IIEQPro CM, which you can ind in the CM Plugins folder at FileSilo. Create a new audio track in your DAW and drag Dub beat.wav onto it.
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Now click the Band 1 button and select Band 2. Set this band to HighShelf as well, and this time move the node to -7dB at 100Hz. The white line displays the overall efect of the two bands, revealing that by using two high-shelf EQs we’ve created a curve that we couldn’t have made using just one. (Audio: Serial high-shelves.wav)
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As well as using the Frequency and Gain parameters, we can also use Q to control the shape of the EQ – and IIEQPro CM’s Q can get pretty extreme. For example, by tuning Band 2’s Q up to 3.00 we can remove the low end of the reverb from the beat while simultaneously boosting the kick. (Audio: Boosted Q.wav)
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Insert IIEQPro CM onto the audio track. Click the Of button on the bottom row to pick an EQ type. Select HighShelf and an orange node appears at the left-hand side of the graphical display above. Drag this to the +5dB position at 2000Hz.
Click the Serial button on the right to switch to IIEQPro CM’s unusual Parallel mode. In this mode, each band works on a dry version of the signal rather than one that’s already been processed. This afects the overall sound of the EQ, illustrated by the change in the shape of the white line. (Audio: Parallel high-shelves.wav)
Finally, let’s try out IIEQ Pro CM’s all-pass ilter mode. In serial mode this doesn’t do a whole lot, but in parallel mode it has a quite dramatic efect. Select Band 3 and set it to APF. Now, when you sweep its frequency up and down, you’ll see that the overall EQ warps around its position – this is ideal for experimenting with diferent frequency responses.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 61
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1-4 A seriously lawed product that should be avoided
5 This product’s problems outweigh its merits
6 A decent product that’s only held back by a few laws
7 Solid. Well worth considering 8 Very good. A well-conceived
66 TRACKTION WAVEFORM PRO 11.5
Tracktion is one of the best DAWs, with a great free version that anyone can use. But how does the latest Pro edition pan out?
68 Arturia FX Collection 2
70 OT Tom Holkenborg Percussion
74 Audio Imperia Solo
76 Soundware Roundup
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
72 Xils Lab KaoX
and executed product
9 Excellent. First-rate and
among the best you can buy
10 Exceptional. It just doesn’t get any better than this!
73 Toontrack EZKeys Cinematic Pads
78 The 6 Best… Guitar plugins 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
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 65
> reviews / tracktion waveform pro 11.5 ACTIONS PANEL Select this tab in the Browser panel to get detailed editable parameters for the selected track and clip CONTROLS PANEL Click here to expand the foldaway panel revealing the full Properties, Menu and Master panels
AUTOMATION Assign, access and edit automation using the multilane feature
MENU In a break from tradition you’ll find the main menu at the bottom of the workspace as part of the Controls Panel
EDIT OVERVIEW For quick navigation and playback cursor positioning
MIDI PANEL Can be undocked or opened in its own section below the Arrangement panel
CPU USAGE Check usage or click to open a detailed breakdown of CPU assignment INLINE MIXER Waveform’s inline mixer offers direct, quick access to its modular rack environment
QUICK ACTION BAR Assign keyboard shortcuts or user macros to this handy customisable bar
MIDI TYPING Use your computer keyboard to play MIDI instruments
Tracktion
Waveform Pro 11.5 $259
PI
RASPBERRY
Could this latest update tempt you to try or even buy this excellent DAW? Waveform from Tracktion Software is a music production DAW that combines an innovative worklow with incredible value, and in recent years has grown immeasurably both in features and design. If you want to give it a try, there’s a very impressive free version (see next issue!) and you can also register for time-limited trials of the Pro application. The full package, Waveform Pro, has just received a signiicant intermediate update to version 11.5. It comes in three version – Basic, Standard and Extreme – and these ofer tiered plugin and audioware content. As before, it works on OS X, Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi and now has native support for Apple Silicon, making it one of the most cross-platform-capable DAWs available.
Go Pro Waveform Free already has some great features including the Pattern Generator, sequencerstyle Step Clips, computer keyboard MIDI
66 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
playback, custom macros and actions, bundled synths (4OSC and Micro Drum Sampler), automation and rendering. But if you want the full gamut of features, Waveform Pro is a must. The Pro edition has a core feature set, with the three versions diferentiated by their content bundles (see boxout). It also includes much of the typical stuf you’d expect in a premium DAW
“v11.5 includes one very significant change and that’s the option to run the new upgraded audio engine”
such as edit groups and audio to MIDI (Groove Doctor). There’s also integrated (ARA) Melodyne Essential, bundled Antares Auto-Tune Access, timestretch courtesy of zPlane’s Elastique Pro and, of course, full email support should you run into any problems. Last year’s version 11 added a host of neat features including the Arrange Track, which allows you to copy, move and lexibly restructure your track from one master track. It also added the Edit Overview lane for navigation, zoom and playback. A big change was customisation of the workspace, and the super lexible panel system includes undocking of the Mixer and Arranger panels, and setup for multiple screens including assigning one screen to open plugins. Custom layouts can of course be saved and recalled. Version 11 also added two Quick Action features. The Quick Action bar sits just above the transport bar and allows you to create
tracktion waveform pro 11.5 / reviews <
“Despite the burgeoning feature set, Waveform Pro still retains its innovative mojo” button triggers for shortcuts and macros, then save them as templates. Meanwhile the Quick Action Window allows you to create a simple panel more suited to touch screen use. For MIDI programming v11 added ive new tools – Arpeggiator, Note Repeater, MIDI Monitor and MIDI Filter and our favourite, Chord Companion with its extensive chord grid, integrated arpeggiator and randomisation features. Sandboxing is a feature designed to ringfence rogue plugins. This can be assigned to speciic plugins, with a small increase in CPU usage. Nevertheless, if you genuinely have no other choice than to run an unreliable plugin, at least it won’t crash Waveform. Processing options were also extended with numerous additions to the integrated AirWindows plugin pack, Artesan, taking its total to more than 180 individual plugins.
What’s new in 11.5? Despite it being an interim update, v11.5
includes one very signiicant change and that’s the option to run the new upgraded audio engine. This handles plugin delay compensation (PDC) much better, so auxiliary busses are now phase coherent; delay compensation is also much better within plugin Racks. It’s currently available alongside the original engine so you can compare the two. In addition to the improved PDC, CPU eiciency has also been improved. Next up, right click context menus are now more abundant and better organised, with multiple options added from the main menus. Said main menu tab has also been rejigged and you’ll ind the new layout and accompanying options (File, Edit, Options, Automation and so on) are more in tune with what you’d ind on other DAWs. Also, the script-running option is now listed as Actions, and in this menu you can set up the options that will be available on the pop-up Custom menu. On the subject of menus, the plugin selector menu has been improved and includes a favourites category. Waveform’s settings page has been
Most key windows can be undocked, positioned as required and layouts saved and recalled
Biotek 2 and Auto Filter are both plugins included with the Standard and Extreme Bundles
Content
Bundled content can really sell a DAW and knowing that a selection of instruments, plugins and sounds are reliably integrated means you can focus on creating rather than installing. Tracktion have spent time inessing this aspect of Waveform Pro and the three tiers ofer good entry points. If you want to add further Tracktion Waveform content on a piecemeal basis, that’s also possible via their Marketplace, and you can also get discounts by combining packs using their Bundle Builder. The Basic tier includes ive instruments with associated content – 4OSC, Subtractive, Drum Sampler, Multi-Sampler and the respectable S&S synth, Collective. There’s also one overhauled and reorganised with far more keyboard shortcut options available, including nudging of both clips and notes. Also, mouse settings are improved so it’s much easier to position the playback cursor, select clips (marquee-style) and easier to create ranges for editing. In fact, the editing options are slicker overall, so once you’ve chosen the modes that best suit you, your worklow should be more eicient. Further 11.5 extras include computer keyboard playback (mentioned above and available across all versions) and native support for Apple Silicon.
Final thoughts Despite the burgeoning feature set, Waveform
Pro still retains its innovative mojo. What’s more, although new users are still presented with a bit of a learning curve, the incremental changes have brought it much closer operationally to other DAWs. We also like the fact that its content and features are squarely aimed at music production. Once thought of as a bit of an outlier, with its extra customisation, a more industry standard feel and highly lexible workspace, there’s a real sense that Waveform Pro is truly coming of age. Web tracktion.com Info Basic $119, Standard $259, Extreme $749
Imagina drum kit loop pack. This is formatted so you can add it in multitrack form, which is a great option. Step up to the Standard bundle and you get one more Imagina drum loop pack and 16 excellent plugins courtesy of the DAW Essentials Collection. There’s also the great Biotek 2 sample-based instrument with its cool XY Ring editor. The Extreme package is a lot more expensive and much of this cost is the RetroMod Collection, a huge 2500 preset (40GB) pack of seven sample-based synth instruments sourced from Moogs, Junos, Nords and more. You also get one more Imagina loop pack, MOK Waverazor, Spacecraft granular synth and further synth expansion packs.
Alternatively
Ableton Live 11 294 » 9/10 » From £69 This performance-focused DAW also ofers tiered bundles and an enviable soundware catalogue Presonus Studio One 5 286 » 10/10 »From £85 Now also available via subscription, this DAW is very easy to use
Verdict
For Improved audio engine Customisable work space Three tiered purchase prices More intuitive menus Context-sensitive help Against Steep learning curve in places Waveform 11.5 tweaks the major advances of version 11 and throws in a new audio engine for good measure to deliver a solid intermediate update
9/10 October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 67
> reviews / arturia fx collection 2 ATTACK One handy software enhancement is a full choice of attack times
MID SIDES Process your stereo sources in either LR stereo or M/S mid sides modes
PATHS Balance the three parallel paths using their respective trims
DISPLAY Get handy feedback on the signal flow or currently selected processor
SIDE CHAIN Use the 3-band side chain equalizer on either internal or external side chain sources AUTO GAIN The EQ has a handy gain compensation option based on the amount of applied gain
Arturia
PHASE Choose from linear or minimum phase processing STEPPED CONTROLS On all plugins you can choose between stepped or continuous controls
PROCESSORS The four processors are modelled on classic and contemporary analogue designs
RANGE Use the software enhancement to set the overall amount of EQ curve applied
FX Collection 2 €399 Finding the right efects bundle can massively boost your creativity. But is this updated collection really made up o efects you’ll actually use? Arturia has steadily built a formidable library of hardware-inspired efects featuring modulations, delays, dynamics and beyond. These successfully emulate the originals and then supersize them with numerous software extras. Recent additions include the Juno-6 style Jun-6 Chorus and last year’s ‘3 modulations’ bundle which added Dimension-D chorus, Bi-Tron phaser and BL20 langer.
preamps, and those three bus efects. Among these you’ll ind emulations of typical classics such as the Urei 1176 compressor, Roland Space Echo delay and EMT 140 plate alongside rarer examples like the REDD V76 preamp and Grampian 636 spring reverb. We’ve covered most of these before, including the most recent modulations pack (10/10 288) so here we’ll focus on the new Mix Bus additions and the bundle as a whole (see box out).
these efects in a cost-efective package. The original 15 efects are now joined by the four efects mentioned above and three new Mix Bus focused processors – Bus Force, Comp Diode609 and EQ Sitral-295. So FX Collection 2 (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) now has an impressive 22 efects with four modulations, three compressors, three reverbs, three delays, three ilters, three
implemented in individual plugins, it’s less common to see a mastering processor built on the concept, but that’s exactly what Bus Force does. It splits a stereo signal into three parallel processing paths: Dry, Compression and Saturation with level and mute for each. There are four processing modules – Equalizer, Filter, Compressor and Saturation – pre-assigned to
New collection They’ve now turned their attention to updating Force of nature their FX Collection which bundles together all Although we see parallel processing
68 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
the paths, with all four available in the Saturation path, and some modules can be individually de-activated in those paths to make a total of 36 routing combinations. Finally, the summed signal passes through a Clipping stage and the whole thing is topped and tailed by Input and Output Trims. Confused? Don’t worry, a handy signal path graphic shows the active modules, their routing and the levels set. The same graphic also switches to provide analyzer feedback for whichever module you’re editing. Bus Force’s EQ and ilter are based on classic analogue designs from Pultec and Oberheim, with the compressor and saturation taking their lead from modern hardware by Overstayer. There are also global settings for phase (linear or minimum) and DC removal. Bus Force is an impressively lexible processor that combines a lot of the processing we like in a handy parallel format. Its uses go way beyond master bus duties and we loved the control available to
arturia fx collection 2 / reviews <
“With so many plugins available, it’s becoming harder and harder or devs to diferentiate their designs” create heavily saturated sounds which we could blend to taste. You’ve also got 50 or so presets that ably demo its more interesting sounds.
Retro classics Comp Diode-609 is a recreation of Neve’s very
popular 33609 compressor/limiter. Renowned for its transparent gain control, hard limiting options and transformer stage, it’s a great tool for submixes and master mixes. Much like the original hardware, the plugin runs in both stereo and dual mono modes. However, the plugin adds a choice of either stepped or continuous controls, providing great precision from the outset. If you know the original, you’ll see that the layout has been swapped around a bit. Software extras include M/S processing, fully lexible attack times (5ms to 75ms), more ratio options and a mix blend. Click on the VU meters and you’ll ind a real-time gain reduction graph. Further software enhancements are available on the foldaway Processor Advanced Controls panel at the bottom. Here you’ll ind our favourite enhancement, the 3-band sidechain EQ for both internal and external sidechain sources. But there’s also adjustable lookahead (0 to 5ms) and an Input Drive, which inluences the diode-bridge emulation, adding subtle, primarily third harmonic, distortions. EQ Sitral-295 takes inspiration from a more obscure processor. The original is a 1970s transistor-based EQ from Siemens, and has a very sweet sound. The EQ has a bell-shaped mid band (300Hz to 8kHz), high and low shelves and high and low-pass ilters. Once again, stepped or continuous controls can be selected, as can M/S operation. The shelving bands have three frequency settings each, and we particularly like the 30kHz option on the high shelf for adding silky smooth air. Enhancements include optional Auto Gain, which compensates for the applied
The inapp tutorials provide multistep walkthroughs for a quick grounding in each plugin’s features
Value Meal
With so many plugins available, it’s becoming harder and harder for developers to diferentiate their designs. Nevertheless, with FX Collection 2, Arturia are doing their very best to persuade you. First up, by opting for the FX Collection 2, you are saving considerably on the individual plugin pricing (€99 each). So assuming you pay the full and quite hefty €399 price tag, it works out at around €18 per plugin, which is very reasonable. Next up, and this is a big one for us, added extras. Arturia’s plugins combine authentic hardware emulation with plenty of extra features. gain, and our favourite, Range, which is a depth setting for the overall EQ curve. You also have a handy foldaway signal Visualizer with before and after (input and output) curves and a character setting for the overall processing, which applies a slightly more saturated lavour. EQ Sitral-295 is a gentle shaping tool rather than surgical one. We found it did this task excellently on pretty much everything we tried it on. Overall we love the new plugins contained in Arturia’s FX Collection 2. And yes, combined with the other established processors, excellent sonics and software enhancements, you have a highly desirable package of efects you’ll deinitely want to use. Top marks. Web arturia.com
Whether that’s the modulation matrix in the M12 ilter, the Time Warp feature in the FET-76 compressor or the Range control on the Sitral295 EQ, to name just three examples, there’s always something useful or creative that lifts the plugin. Finally, inapp tutorials. All FX Collection 2 plugins include a foldout side panel that handles quick tour and tutorial duties. These have multipage walkthroughs, highlighting relevant sections as they go. So if you’ve not used the plugin before, you can be fully briefed in ive minutes, and no need to head to the manual.
Alternatively
Slate Digital All Access Pass $14.99 per month For subscription fans, Slate’s massive ofering includes their own Analog plugins alongside designs from Overloud and Kilohearts FabFilter Mixing Bundle £499 If analogue hardware emulation isn’t important to you, this 7-plugin bundle is a great choice
Verdict
For Awesome new Bus Force efect Two great classic hardware emulations Highly engaging visual interfaces with handy in app tutorials Very authentic sonics Extensive software enhancements Exclusive upgrade and crossgrade ofers for registered Arturia owners Against The overall bundle price may deter some FX Collection 2 bundles together some great existing plugins and adds some new ones, delivering a creative and sonically inspiring efects toolbox All plugins include excellent software enhancements
10/10 October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 69
> reviews / orchestral tools tom holkenborg’s percussion
TUNING/BPM Displays sample’s tuning and project tempo
SINE VIEW SELECTOR Select more advanced SINE views, such as Performance and Mixer
SEVEN DRUM LIBRARIES Choose between the seven different drum choices
ARTICULATION LIST Shows all currently loaded instruments and articulations
DRUM SAMPLES Select your drum samples, organised by size and tuning MIC POSITIONS Switch the mic position to either front or back
CPU USAGE Displays current disk usage by the library
ARTICULATION OPTIONS Edit Round Robin, Legato and Dynamics options KEYBOARD MAPPING Displays the key range of the currently selected sample
MASTER VOLUME Controls master volume of currently selected sample
Orchestral Tools
GENERAL ARTICULATION CONTROL SETTINGS Easy access to activate Legato, MIDI CC and Sustain Pedal
Tom Holkenborg’s Percussion €299
Hot on the heels of a salvo of stunning soundtracks, the master of highintensity scoring opens up more ingredients of his sonic arsenal “I’m [always] thinking about how to get the most out of one instrument, rather than switching between multiple things for diferent purposes,” Tom Holkenborg explained to us when we chatted with him fresh from completing his own personal ‘Mount Everest’ with that behemoth score for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Though Tom was keeping his cards close to his chest with regards to what was around the corner, this emphasis on wringing the best out of each instrument is underlined more than ever on the second instalment of his sample library series – and folks, it’s the big one. Though Tom’s irst release covered a stupendous array of brass sounds, Holkenborg is really renowned for the thunderous might of his percussion (think of his modern classic soundtracks for ilms like Mad Max: Fury Road and Deadpool – they’re all about that signature impact). That’s what this second collaboration with Orchestral Tools aims to provide. Rather 70 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
than just present an approximation, Tom himself has personally performed, recorded, organised and mixed the samples contained within, which are arranged across seven libraries, in a range of sizes and tunings – and with a startlingly original and engaging approach to performance.
Tom tom Before we dive in, it’s worth pointing out the
adjustment to the range’s titling, with Tom Holkenborg now deining himself by his actual name and not his former moniker. This is an intentional step to move away from the electronic/DJ-orientation that the XL-brand was associated with, and underlines his status in the multi-faceted soundtracking universe. You’ll notice that the previously released Brass package has had an update, too. Like that package, Tom Holkenborg’s Percussion installs via Orchestral Tool’s simpleto-navigate SINE player, and is neatly arranged
into drum-model speciic folders. One of SINE’s major attributes is its ability to zip up considerably-sized samples like this into much more palatable download sizes, in this case, just 5GB, meaning our download time for the entire package was just under seven minutes. You can also download per folder, or per sample. The seven main folders span Bass Drums, Surdos, Tupans, Concert Toms, Taye Toms, Marching Band Drums and ‘Custom’ Drums, all of which have been inely sculpted by Holkenborg to be release-ready. What’s really exciting about this pack is the way that Holkenborg has meticulously captured the dynamic range of each drum – massively expanding the playability of each drum sound. With 100 dynamic layers per instrument, each drum is pleasingly playable across your MIDI or pad controller (or even electric drum-kit, if you so prefer). During our tests with a 61-key keyboard controller, it was refreshing how our
orchestral tools tom holkenborg’s percussion / reviews <
“Tom himself has personally performed, recorded, organised and mixed the samples within this library” creative approach to these drum sounds is immediately lifted from the simple impacttriggering of other libraries. With a range of sizes and tunings adjustable to taste, each one has a uniquely mapped playing range, which increases in intensity as you ascend the notes. Coming at drum sounds like this not only emphasises their centrality to Holkenborg’s compositional ethos, but makes for a unique and utterly fresh way into building up some thunderous, dynamically thrilling arrangements. It also makes latter-stage MIDI editing a much more straightforward process.
Boom raider It’s clear from the outset that Holkenborg has
been critically involved with the making of this library, and the recording quality is sublime. A key point here is that these drum sounds are instantly recognisable as Tom’s, which may put of those looking to carve their own compositional identity. But, even for those wary of big-name association, the drums on ofer all have distinct qualities that can serve as the foundation for something entirely original. The Bass Drums are efective underpinnners, and experimenting with these quickly reveals the beneit of the numerous dynamic layers. The Surdos are a Holkenborg staple, and provide a lot of that clattering, pulse-quickening drama – pretty much any arrangement you care to make with these have a trailer-ready tone. The Tupans resonate with long, tantalising tails, while the Concert Toms have been captured with a more distant, airy space – pre-sculpted for you to start building up some kinetic, pulse-pounding rhythms. The Taye Toms have a bit more lavoursome subtlety, yet still have a cinematic stamp. Surprisingly enough, some of the pack’s very best sounds can be found within its Marching Band Drum library. Though Holkenborg has admitted that the drums recorded here were among the cheapest he could ind on Amazon, his approach to recording these sounds has an
The drum samples are simply organised in a range of sizes and tunings
Tom has been relying on the drums found within this package as his personal library for years
One I made earlier
Holkenborg is renowned for his ‘fullcontact’ credo – taking complete hands-on oversight of everything he records, and this trait is exempliied by Tom Holkenborg’s Percussion’s often quirky, experimental choices – such as the decision to record a cheap set of Marching Band drums. The ierce individuality of Tom’s attitude to musicmaking is also fairly apparent by the mixing choices that he has opted for, with the default recordings showcasing massive amounts of natural reverb, up-front, direct quality that somehow takes them full-circle from cheap-sounding to in-yourface, attention-grabbers. Their no-frills simplicity works supremely well when building up rhythmic soundscapes. The Custom Drums consist of a series of random drums that Holkenborg has had for years, including a Birch kit and – most notably – ‘Quad’, which is, in essence, four diferent kits set up across four corners of the studio. It’s just utterly immense.
Make your own future The appeal of Tom Holkenborg’s Percussion will
of course depend on your own relationship with the man himself. If you’re a fan, and intend to follow a similar creative path, this is not just a superb toolkit, but ofers a fascinating insight into Holkenborg’s ‘full-contact’ approach to drum presentation. If you’re not that enthralled with his level of cinematic intensity, and crave something a bit more ambient, then this won’t be for you. During our tests, we sufered from some occasional mild lag when performing multiple samples at the same time. While it’s not a major issue, it’s worth making sure your CPU is up to the task before taking the plunge with the full version. Those caveats aside, we have no qualms about recommending Tom Holkenborg’s Percussion. It’s a monumental library, sporting peerlessly recorded drum samples lovingly curated by one of the world’s most in-demand composers. Web orchestraltools.com
with often near-endless room-tails that boost their dramatic impact. It’s more understandable when you realise that this library is, essentially, the very same home-made package that Holkenborg has used himself, for nearly eight years. “I started developing this library as early as 2013, when I started sampling my own drums,” Tom told us. “I should say I had a very insane drum collection. I started sampling my own drums and had a diferent approach to what a drum library should be.”
Alternatively
Heavyocity Damage 2 $299/£210 The follow-up to Heavyocity’s brutal big-screen drum-builder allows for vast amounts of personalisation Spitfire Audio Hans Zimmer Percussion 250 » 9/10 » $399/£349 A similarly personalised array of ready-made, big-screen booms, thuds and rhythms
Verdict
For Superb library of ready-to-go cinematic drums, hand-crafted by Holkenborg himself 100 dynamic layers and tailored keymapping for a fun, expressive approach Simple to use UI within Orchestral Tools’ SINE infrastructure Against If you’re not a Tom fan, look elsewhere CPU-taxing with larger arrangements This library presents an innovative way to approach playing and performing those cinematic rhythms
8/10 October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 71
> reviews / xils-lab kaox
XILS-lab
KaoX €179
FM synthesis is associated with certain typical sounds, but maybe this new synth can expand that palette. Will you order some Kaox? KaoX (VST, AU, AAX) is a hybrid synth that’s based on Yamaha’s rare early 80s FM synth, the GS1. Very few GS1s were made, and most lacked the external programmer so were pretty limited from an editing perspective. KaoX takes this 8-operator FM concept, makes it easy to edit and then beefs it up with two analogue oscillators, two chaotic oscillators, two analogue ilters, two LFOs, two chaotic modulators, two envelopes, two output VCAs with individual output panning, four efects, arpeggiator and step sequencer. Phew! Signiicantly, it then duplicates the whole thing into a dual layer (Lower and Upper) architecture. Powerful stuf. KaoX’s default state is a simple view, inspired by the wooden design of the GS1. Here you can set overall performance aspects such as Tune, Glide and Pitchbend and activate the four efects (Chorus, Delay, Phaser and Reverb). You can also choose single or dual layer playback and load one of the more than 500 presets. For in-depth editing, you open the large parameter panel at the top, and you can edit layers individually or together (Gang). This is arranged in a clear, modular fashion albeit with a standard signal low, and active modules are illuminated, which is handy. Some modules such as ilters and oscillators include on/of switching and this can help save CPU. The layout is centred around the ive oscillators and noise generator and their connection to the two global VCAs and
Total Chaos
KaoX includes chaotic oscillators and modulators but what does this mean in practice? The chaotic oscillators are designed to mimic real life behaviours and there are three algorithms - 2M, Chaos and Subh. 2M produces a voice-like sound, Chaos is a type of noise generator and Subh a chaotic subharmonic. Each has a Tune option, a Parameter setting that modiies the underlying algorithm, and Keep Pitch, which preserves the pitch when you adjust 72 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
two global Filters. Some key parameters are instantly available on the modules themselves and clicking on a module provides a detailed view in the left panel. A further foldaway panel to the right provides context-speciic help. From a user standpoint this isn’t quite as immediate as it could be, but there are no further hidden panels which is a good thing. Either way, KaoX clearly has a lot of parameters to it in. This makes for a large plugin window and although adjustable, we found the most compact window size pretty iddly.
Big sounds As mentioned, KaoX includes both chaotic
oscillators (see below) and analogue oscillators and, for the latter, the Wave knob selects the shape, moving from triangle to saw, then square to pulse. These oscillators considerably expand the sound palette. However, KaoX’s FM synthesis is the star here. Centred around the FM Algorithm matrix, the eight operators are arranged in two banks of four. The matrix provides cross modulation between operators and also modulation of operators by the analogue and chaos oscillators. In addition to individual operator pitch you also have individual control over onward levels to the VCAs and analogue ilters. There are a handful of FM operator presets and sonically KaoX’s FM engine can deliver typical FM sounds that are
the Parameter setting. The oscillators provide instant oddness and we particularly like the rich, eerie sound of 2M. For chaotic modulation, ire up the two ChaoX LFOs. There’s a choice from four quite individual repetitive cycles, represented on an XY display. Oscillator behaviour is inessed using the smoothing (Glide) and randomness (Amount) sliders. Each oscillator can modulate up to four target parameters, or be used as a source in the Modulation panel.
bright, punchy or bell-like. But it also produces amazingly rich sounds you wouldn’t necessarily associate with FM synthesis. What’s more, with swift access to cross modulation and easy tailoring via the main VCAs and analogue ilters, sound editing is quick and fun. Nevertheless, this power and complexity requires plenty of CPU. So, when you increase the number of voices per layer (up to 16), ire up the unison, select both layers and start playing chords, things can get a bit sticky. Overall, this is our only big gripe, and we applaud KaoX’s bold ambitious design. Web xils-lab.com
Alternatively
Native Instruments FM8 109 » 9/10 » £129 Native’s powerful design is the industry standard FM synth U-he Bazille 212 » 10/10 » €129 Phase distortion, FM and fractal resonance are featured in this lexible modular instrument
Verdict
For Hybrid sound generation 8-operator FM synthesis Easy to use FM modulation matrix Excellent rich sounds Against CPU hungry Large plugin window works best on higher resolution screens KaoX produces some wonderfully rich sounds, ofering an intriguing hybrid take on FM synthesis
8/10
toontrack cinematic pads ez keys expansion pack / reviews <
Toontrack
Cinematic Pads - EZ Keys Expansion pack £129 With sound design running through its core, Toontrack’s latest visit to the flicks brings complex pads to a DAW near you! In the Toontrack eco-sphere, they pretty much have you covered for the majority of your commercial music requirements. With the impressive roster of EZDrummer, EZ Bass and EZKeys, the ease with which you can assemble impressive track elements, with equally impressive speed, is genius personiied. However, Toontrack have recently been furnishing their EZ Packs with imaginative elements of sound design.
The silver Screen The EZKeys suite started life as an accessible
way to get great pianistic sounds into your song, (especially helpful to non-keyboardists) and the lineup has been increasing steadily since. The opening salvo of pan-swept goodness immediately inspires conidence, thanks to the glittering array of sampled content, from analogue and modular synths, through to bowed guitars and a Bösendorfer grand piano. This is the brainchild of Mattias Eklundh, co-founder of Toontrack and head of sound design. The imaginative use of sampled elements ilters down into an easy-to-use construct: on the one hand, you can take advantage of the onboard MIDI elements, which will make easy (EZ!) work of chord progressions, if your pianistic tendencies are limited. But on the other hand, it’s a pad-like-powerhouse of content, which is ready to go.
EZ Playability
What sets Toontrack products apart from some other products which ofer similar useful constructs, is the quality of their sound. The MIDI element of all of the Toontrack lineup is exemplary, easy to use and very efective. As a keys player, you may not require this element, but don’t disregard Toontrack on this basis, as you’ll be missing out on some fantastic sounds. The fact that they also categorise their products means that once you are in the Toontrack zone,
The elements are arranged into six menus, labelled for descriptive guidance, with categories including Atmospheric, Bells, and Saturated. You can guess the sort of patch you’ll ind in each arena, and as is always the case with Toontrack, the GUI is intuitive and pleasing to look at. With more than 70 patches which are mix-ready, the collection sounds beautifully crafted, creating inspiration from the moment you play a chord. By the nature of the cinematic pad-shaped beast, many of these patches take a moment to get going, often with swathes of movement across the stereo ield.
Attack of the edits! One of the shortcomings of a product such as
this is the lack of what one might call advanced control. There is capacity to save user presets, but with much of the content prescribed already, you are left with only basic access to control. It is possible to reduce the attack and release times of the presets, but in some cases, reducing the attack envelope phase does not result in the immediate volume shape that you might require. Clearly, some instances have slow attack elements built in, but then again, that’s what you want for most cinematic pads. There is also ilter control, in both low-pass and hi-pass formats. Both cases appear to exhibit a slight degree of resonance application, which sounds lovely, but is again prescribed,
adding new sounds and expansions is easy and comparatively cheap. In some cases, an absolute bargain for what you get. Apart from all shapes and sizes of acoustic and electric piano, the Hybrid Harp library is another case in point. Brimming with originality and uniqueness, these sounds will set you apart from others that rely and exist with onboard sounds from DAWs, making Toontrack very worth exploring. Your music will thank you!
with no ability to alter. It’s also interesting to note that the low-pass cutof operates as a mirror image, counterintuitive to what you might use elsewhere. I could use a little more control for editing, but the overall sound quality and content is undeniably good. In fact, it sounds utterly amazing! This is an expansion pack, so newcomers need to purchase the host EZKeys package as an accompaniment, which is also ofered as a package deal! Web timespace.com/www.toontrack.com Info £129/€155 including EZKeys package or £47/€60 for expansion pack only
Alternatively
Spitfire Audio - Cinematic Pads £29 Modestly priced pads pack created through the processing of symphonic orchestral recordings Sonic Couture - Geosonics 196 » 9/10 » £139 Some utterly beguiling textures created from pure noise
Verdict
For Beautiful collection of pad sounds Categories for easy auditioning Extensive MIDI/note builder for nonkeyboard players Useful shaping control for tone/volume Against Not great tonal control Requires host EZKeys package Another classy Toontrack product, distilling the concept o the cinematic pad into a ormat that’s useul or all
9/10 October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 73
> reviews / audio imperia solo
Audio Imperia Solo $299
With many orchestral libraries ofering music en masse, Audio Imperia distill things to a singularity, going or virtuoso with Solo The roster of Audio Imperia sample libraries has been slowly swelling, with an impressive library of cinematic and orchestral sounds which have rightly garnered both user and critical acclaim. While many users demand big, brash sounds sets, there is equal demand for individual instrument samples, which can explore the more subtle end of the spectrum, and that’s where Solo has plenty to ofer.
instruments, which also includes cor anglais. As a useful addition, two soprano vocal samples embrace both operatic tendencies and a purer soprano timbre, which is described as Angelic.
Audio Imperia have an unbelievably strong reputation for sound design, always including such elements among their acoustic libraries. With the inclusion of 13 acoustically derived pad textures, Solo does not disappoint. If you need impressive pads, completely production ready, Molto espressivo All of the samples are equipped with a plentiful these are amazing, and a very welcome addition helping of articulation variation, which are open to this very classy compendium. to multisample format or individual patch formation. The individual patches are useful if Solo encore! you are struggling with RAM allocation. The Going solo If you bundle the comprehensive efects section, overarching sense is how expressive these Solo embraces the familiar form of a Kontakt with Audio Imperia’s usual impressive level of samples are. Each note attack is followed by a sample control, you have a highly competitive instrument, adopting the preferred NI library delayed vibrato, which leaves you smiling at the pack. Solo is packed full of expressive realism, status, making light work of both installation level of musicality oozing from each note. and usability. It immediately appears in the with some very tempting oddities. Thanks to some clever programming, subtle library browser, while also being open to use within the free Kontakt player plugin. Solo also control relating to re-bowing or re-tonguing may Web audioimperia.com conforms to Audio Imperia’s beautiful, clean GUI be activated through velocity control, or via construct, which ofers some appealing layers. MIDI CC. Due to its expressive nature, the library does lend itself to sweeping melodic gestures, at Firstly, each instrument is equipped with a Alternatively least in its legato form. It is very impressive, but Classic and a Modern mix. The Classic mix is Cinematic Studio Series relatively lat and sounds acoustically authentic, with plenty of shorter and more punctuating Solo Strings samples for more agitated playing moments. whereas the Modern mix is sharp, bright and $299.00 The library ofers plenty of highlights, with production ready. These form part of the Basic Limited to a string quartet but it’s the melancholy oboe and cor anglais proving to setup, where it’s also possible to see-saw an impressive package be highly efective and evocative. The Angelic between a close and far microphone mix. However, for those wishing for greater control, a soprano patch is also particularly cinematic, UVI IRCAM Solo Instruments 2 ofering Oohs and Aahs. Particular mention has quick click on the Advanced tab reveals a full €299.00 to be made of the legato patching, which is ive microphone placements, which may be A library of solo acoustic incredibly realistic. When you get great samples blended to suit. instruments that ofers a truly The choice of instruments is relatively wide, like this, you just want to play them, and that’s unique palette certainly the case for the next element which including violin, viola and cello, trumpet and could be regarded as the joker in the Solo pack. horn, and a full set of the four main woodwind
Verdict
Advanced options While Solo performs beautifully right out of the virtual box, the level of control available is something of an industry-leading concept. While the usual control elements, such as timbral and expressive dynamics are immediate, there’s also control of velocity curve and legato smoothing, allowing you to tweak settings to your playing style. Even more importantly, the sample start pot immediately gets around the issue which is common with orchestral libraries, of 74 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
inconsistent latency with the articulation of every note. This subtle but useful control literally saves hours of programming time while trying to program samples to sit correctly in the timing pocket. It’s a unique selling point across all Audio Imperia libraries which is praised by many users, as an enormous aid to worklow. Whatever your preference for Basic or Advanced mode, there’s an immediacy which is a huge boon for all users, while the realism is sublime.
For Extensive collection of versatile solo instruments Incredibly expressive Number of articulation options The interface is incredibly intuitive The sound design elements are amazing Against No control of vibrato available Solo is a highly usable suite o solo instruments and vocal samples that sounds incredibly classy in all settings
10/10
> reviews / mini reviews
Soundware round-up EST Studios
Fourward Drum & Bass £29.95 Time to put your best foot Fourward, as we join the celebrated Austrian producers for a savage session of DnB pressure. The weighty 1.28GB of tearing samples clocks in between 86 and 175bpm, and has been forensically designed with one purpose – to blow cobwebs out your ears, and holes in your speakers. Bitch-slap drums, demented bass, head-for-thehills percussion, and synths so clean you can see your own stupid face in ’em. We’ll take it, please and thank you. Perfect for your next neuro, or halftime, roller.
loopmasters.com n8/10n
Sample Diggers
Diggers Vol3: Sugar Breaks £14.95
Singomakers
Back To The Funk £29.95
The Singomakers crew fire up the DeLorean and head back in time to the 70s, to bring you 1.21 gigawatts o unkin’ power or this super groovy throwback pack. The slick disco rifs, slapping basslines, classy keys, and ballin’ geetars would make Doc and Marty proud, as they pack enough punch to bring any ading track back to lie. The quality comes rom the fine gear and customised kit – vintage strats, tube amps, Rickenbacker basses, and iconic Korg synths all get a look in, amongst the 340+ loops in this collection. It makes or a great creative well to draw rom. And even i you’re not ready or it, your kids are gonna love it. loopmasters.com n
8/100
76 / COMPUTER MUSIC October 2021
The drummer gives some back! As veteran stickman, Mark Fletcher, delivers another masterclass in timeless tub-thumping. He’s got the funk and hip-hop grooves covered in this 254MB set. As the 200+ recordings (all of the inest kit, recorded on the slickest chain) run the full circle of 76137bpm. From loose ride workouts to puddle splashing hat sessions, steady block party jams and jazzed out meters – he’s got you. Another classic pack you’ll be hitting up time and again for your drum loop needs.
loopmasters.com n8/10n
Zenhiser Spiral $60
The white-coated sound scientists at the Zenhiser labs have inally buckled, bowing to pressure from their loyal legion of customers, and turned out a Psytrance pack. It was worth the letter-writing campaigns, as their customary high-end standards and practices suit this crisp and clean genre down to the ground. Inspired by elite imprints like HOMmega Recs and the Dutch label, Iboga, they use this 2.4GB collection to serve up a swirling mass of sensational samples, ticking of every vital element these notoriously meticulous producers need.
zenhiser.com n8/10n
Undrgrnd Sounds
Lillie McCloud: Deep House Vocals £24.95
Join American dance and R&B singer, Lillie McCloud, as she showcases the pipes that have graced legendary house music tracks and X Factor stages. The 200+ iles ofer a treasure trove of classy vocals, each one happy to sit at the front your tracks, or hang back for some serious breakdown vibes. With four construction song kits, and folders of one-shots and phrases, you’ll ind more than enough strutting soul singing to make or break your next track.
undrgrndsounds.com n8/10n
mini reviews / reviews <
W. A. Production
Mode Audio
Step right up! We have a downright delightful blend of deep and tropical dance samples, designed to move butts and bring all you party people together. And criss-crossing these bouncy beats and basses are plucky leadlines and saucy synth symphonies, ripe for the plundering. Add to that ive expertly crafted and inspired fullsong construction kits, FL Studio templates, MIDI loops and Serum presets, and you have a gang of gigabytes to paw through, as you hunt out ammo for your next danceloor weapon. One at a time, please…
Modernist composers like John Cage stufed bits of rubber in the strings of their piano, muling and warping the notes. Here, the Mode Audio pianists follow suit, coaxing all manner of oddball sounds from their instruments, as they cram nuts, bolts, and erasers inside, and merrily bash away. You get hundreds of samples, rich in of-key harmony, detuned and muted note clusters, and bonkers little plucked sounds. Plus, channel strip settings, MIDI, and some drum kit sampler patches.
Deep House Journey $19.90
waproduction.com n8/10n
Alteration: Prepared Piano Samples £16
modeaudio.com n8/10n
Zero-G
Bingoshakerz
This title originally dropped in 1991 – the same time Pro Tools launched – and is one of the world’s irst sample libraries. A lot’s changed since then, but the demand for funky loops never goes out of fashion. That 30-year-old set is included here, along with follow-up, Mo’ Funky Elements. All pulled from the dusty Akai CDROMs they were crammed on, back-inthe-day. It all makes the 1,900+ samples a real onestop shop for big beats and killer loops, for those that missed it the irst time.
The theme of this latest construction kit library (in WAV, Live and Reason ReFill formats) seems to be a slightly vague combination of acoustic/electric instrumentation and analogue synths, with the emphasis placed on the former. We have ten wellproduced loop-based ‘songs’ that media producers will ind incredibly useful but musicians won’t get as much mileage out of, as all the parts (MIDI and audio) are designed to work together. That’s not to say that there aren’t ad hoc treasures to be plundered, particularly among the percussion loops and hits.
Funky Elements £21.98
timespace.com n8/10n
Retrotronica V.2 $19.95
bingoshakerz.com n8/10n
Sample Market
Audiotent
The LA-based techno don kicks his kit-packed studio doors open, shining a light on some seriously full-on, and fully loaded loops. The synth and bass section (his trademark territory) is thankfully covered extensively, with a host of growling and pulsing pieces to play with. While the spooky and kooky sci-i space textured pads, and banging digital drum hits are of on a little world of their own. It’s acidy, minimal, and guaranteed to give any needy beats you might have a right old kick up the chuf. Love it.
Super-sweet set of modular percussion loops and hits, wrung expertly out of a monster wall of Eurorack bits and bobs. Each tasty groove and noise is presented in a library of super diggable sounds. All the right knobs and dials have been tweaked and the resulting iltered and oscillating analogue sequences sing and ring, drenched in a thick gloop of creative juices (eww!). The patch work is next-level, obvs, and the dynamic and three-dimensional sound design will make you want to up your game with the rest of your track elements.
Originals: Truncate £30
samplemarket.co.uk n8/10n
Perception £17
audiotent.com n8/10n
Sound Ghost
Mode Audio
Super nice set of live and acoustic drum samples, ired of vintage 60s kits, and caught perfectly with a variety of iconic mics. All in that dusty hip-hop-ready style, and begging to be dropped into your sampler. The 135 loops hold jazzy and skippy time, come raw, and run from 7095bpm. And the customised kits feature both muted and more open tuning, serving up a variety of tones for you to choose from. Perfect beats, then, for lo-i producers and boombap rapheads of all sizes.
Woozy lo-i hip-hop grooves for days in this blissed out collection of beats and low-slung musical moves. Perfect for producers with thoughts of underground LA club life in their rear-view mirror, and a lean to their swagger. The 459MB of content in this library is smooth as an apple and twice as fresh. The drums thump, but don’t ight the dreamy chords and of-kilter melodies, with each group inding a space to get along. The FX hold down the fort, too, adding a gritty and glossy dust to sprinkle over this magical mix.
Vintage Hip Hop Drums £20
soundghost.net n8/10n
Dream Days £18
modeaudio.com n8/10n
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 77
>
the 6 best
the 6 best …
Guitar products
Want to bring a realistic guitar sound to your productions? Look no further than these recently reviewed axemeisters Fuse Audio Labs Virtual Pedal Board Bundle £17 10/10 cm288
IK Multimedia AmpliTube 5 €100 9/10 cm293
It was one of the irst amp sims ever developed and is now even spawning its own signature models – see opposite – but AmpliTube’s latest incarnation is better than ever. We concluded: “AmpliTube 5 expands further on the suite’s lexibility and realism. Hugely accurate amp tones abound.”
ikmultimedia.com
78 / COMPUTER MUSIC October 2021
A four-strong bundle of classic guitar stompboxes, with each plugin mimicking a real-world pedal with added parameters. “At this price we’d recommend VPBBundle to electronic producers too – it’s just the thing for colourful roughening, toughening and widening of synth leads, basses and drums.” useaudiolabs.de
Audified ToneSpot Electric Pro $99 9/10 cm278
A channel strip plugin designed to polish and transform electric guitar recordings in any genre with EQ, saturation, compression and four other efects. “It is a joy to use and sounds fantastic!” audified.com
the 6 best <
IK Multimedia AmpliTube Brian May €120 9/10 cm276
Mercuriall Euphoria
$99.99 8/10 cm283
This is another emulation of a full rig, including pedals, amp, cabinet and post-cabinet efects. The amp in question is a boutique (aka very expensive) Bogner Ecstasy 101B capable of a huge range of tones, but you also get around ten modules in total, including four pedals. “The new interface looks great and we like the loating pedal scheme,” we said before concluding, “Euphoria sounds awesome and the amp emulation is one of the most lexible we’ve tried.”
If ever you’ve felt the urge to sound like the most famous astrophysicist and guitarist out there, then look no further – this emulates May’s entire rig for many of his famous tones. “It really hits the mark, providing all the tools you need to achieve May’s classic signature sound.” ikmultimedia.com
mercuriall.com
Audiomodern Opacity II £189 9/10 cm297
Opacity II is aimed at those after a more cinematic guitar sound and comes with a highly editable guitar sample player, loaded up with some exquisitely wellrecorded guitar sounds. “It provides a way to re-think your typical approach to writing for the instrument, while making us wish we could wrench the same emotion from our axes.” audiomodern.com
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 79
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Love this magazine? You’ll love musicradar.com Thousands of gear reviews and killer video demos
Tips and techniques to help you create your own sound
downloads
Get this month’s content from filesilo.co.uk
free plugin MINIMAL AUDIO RIFT
82 free samples 88 free videos 93 FILTER LITE CM
How to install and get the most out of this fantastic ilter efect
FUNK ‘N’ DISCO SPECIAL – 2 NEW PACKS AND 4 CLASSICS Time to dust down your clubbing threads
OUR EXPERT GUIDES ON FILM + RIFT
Watch our masterclasses on ilm plus a demo of Rift Filter Lite CM
plugin suite THE CM PLUGIN SUITE
DL
An in-depth guide to all of the plugins in our mighty collection can be found as a PDF at ilesilo.co.uk
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02
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> free software / minimal audio rift ilter lite cm
DOWNLOAD
> Free software
Get this great plugin for your PC/Mac at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic
RIFT FILTER LITE CM Minimal Audio are brand new developers of both plugins and
sound packs, and we have both to give you, for free this issue! Minimal Audio are new US-based sotware developers who have already released some great looking and sounding plugins like Rit, which they describe as ‘a new type o distortion’. Rit Filter Lite CM is a version o their $49 next generation morphing filter which we have or ree this issue. Minimal also make sound packs and we’re delighted to be able to ofer all readers five o these as well. Full instructions to get the packs and the plugin are opposite, plus a run-through o the eatures in Rit Filter Lite CM.
Rift Filter Lite CM might look pretty basic but it’s actually a very powerful and dramatic ilter plugin. It has no less than 24 types of ilter in four categories (Basic, Morph, Peaking and Harmonic) with a Morph control that allows you to gradually (or quickly) move between ilter shapes, with a screen showing the ilter types move as you dial in the action. You get everything from fairly standard low and hi-pass ilters to more complex shapes. Highlights include some great vowel-like ilters that allow you to create speech-like ‘wow’
FILTERTYPES Select between four main filter types, each with six presets
efects which are especially creative when combined with a bit of DAW automation. Over the next few pages we’ll give you full instructions on how to download Rift Filter Lite CM for free and the Minimal Audio sound packs. We’ll then run through some of the main features of the plugin, including its rather great Pitch Snap feature, where the cutof frequency of the ilter can be snapped to MIDI. Check out Minimal Audio’s website (minimal. audio) for more info on their other plugins and our interview with them on p8.
FILTER STEPPING Step-through filters with the dropdown menu or click left and right
MAIN DISPLAY Gives an indication of filter type and what the Morphing dial is doing to your filter type. Also especially useful with the Spread control MORPH DIAL Morph between filter types for great real-time effects; very good when used with vowel filters FILTER MIX This simply controls the mix between the signal entering and the wet filtered mix 82 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
CUTOFF MAPPING Your main cutoff frequency can be mapped to MIDI or note values, or shown in standard Hz CUTOFF And of course the main cutoff frequency can be controlled here
SPREAD Adjust the cutoff of left and right channels for wide stereo effects. Positive make the right filter higher; negative, the left
RESONANCE CONTROL Your other main dial to set the amount of filter resonance is here
minimal audio rift ilter lite cm / free software < > Step by step 1. Getting started with Rift Filter Lite CM
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To get your own copy o Rit Filter Lite CM and the sample packs worth $50, you need to register an account or log in at www.filesilo.co.uk/computermusic. I you don’t already have an account, hit the Register button.
Now simply hit the ‘Unlock Content’ icon to download the instructions. It shouldn’t take long as it is a simple text file. Open it! Follow the first link to the Minimal Audio website.
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Head to this issue (299) and click on it. You will get a question related to the issue (it will be easy and not the one above!). Simply enter your answer, making sure you put the correct casing on the letters in the reply.
You’ll need to create an account with Minimal Audio simply by entering your email address. You’ll also have a password auto generated (or choose your own). It’s not essential, but make a note o this password.
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You should have now unlocked the content or this issue (299). Scroll down to the sotware section o the content, download and open the older, ‘FREE PLUGIN! Your Minimal Audio Rit Filter Lite and sample pack Instructions’. You will see the screen above.
Now go to the second link in that text file you downloaded in step 3. I you are still logged in (likely) you will then be asked to enter a special Redeem Serial Code, also ound in that text file. (I you have logged out or any reason, enter your email and password here too.)
POWER TIP
> Piracy!
As always with our plugins we are now putting them on FileSilo as it afords us more security so only readers can enjoy the ree plugin. Please do not share the details with non readers. Rit Filter Lite CM and the sound packs are ree to all readers but not to be redistributed or sold separately.
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You’ll be taken to a page with the plugin installers and five sound packs. Download the installers (Mac or PC plus the manual while you’re at it). Install Rit Filter Lite CM as you would any other plugin. (We’ll cover the sound packs on page 87.)
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Rit Filter Lite CM should now be picked up when your DAW loads. Head to the plugins older and it will appear in the Minimal Audio older (as shown with Logic above).
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 83
> free software / minimal audio rift ilter lite cm > Step by step 2. A tour around Rift Filter Lite CM
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Load Rift Filter Lite CM into your DAW and then simply drag it onto a track and run some audio through it. Using a looped piece of music is best here so you have audio constantly running through the plugin as you experiment with it.
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The irst is the Basic folder with standard ilter types including High Pass (shown), Low Pass, Peak, Notch and Dual Notch.
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Now to the Peaking folder and here we get ‘ilters that use peaks and notches to create formant and phaser-like efects’. Again there are six ilters to choose from.
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Now open it up as you would a standard plugin. You may need to login with your Minimal Audio account details so enter your email and password at this stage.
In the Morph folder you get ilters that smoothly morph between diferent ilter types which creates diferent efects depending on which ilter is selected.
Here the Morph dial is still active and used to create diferent shapes, but with the Mid Vowel and Low Vowel ilters especially, gives you some great vocal sounding efects.
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Rift Filter Lite comes with 24 ilter types. Click on the top left banner and a drop-down menu appears with four ilter types – Basic, Morph, Peaking and Harmonic – each one with a sub folder of six ilters.
When you select one of these Morph ilters, the Morph dial becomes active and, depending on the presets selected, will morph into diferent shapes when you crank it up. Here we have the Shifty Filter and the Morph dial at 77%.
These efects are especially cool when used with your DAW’s automation as you can record the movement dial to almost creates some vocal sounds on your track. Here we’ve recorded the Morph dial movement in Logic.
minimal audio rift ilter lite cm / free software <
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The last main filter section is called Harmonic, containing another six filter types which Minimal Audio describe as being ‘based on harmonic structures and mathematical series’.
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With the Spread dial turned right (with a positive value) the right filter is higher. Here we’ve pushed it to a maximum 100%.
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Now go back to the Basics older and load in the Low Pass filter as we’re going to explore the final two dramatic controls: Cutof and Resonance.
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These ofer quite dramatic filter types which again work very well with the Morph control. Here we’ve cranked it up with the LP Scan filter or some dual peak filtering action.
Conversely with the Spread dial turned let, the value goes negative and the let filter is higher. Think o it like a pan control with extras!
Cutof merely moves the low pass requency efect let or right on the requency spectrum so here we’ve reduced it to 300Hz, and like a standard filter, this means that only requencies below 300Hz will pass through.
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Now let’s look at the other main controls. Spread is interesting in that it allows you to split your filtered sound into let and right channels.
The Filter Mix slider is efectively a let/right dry/wet control. Set it to maximum like we have or maximum filter drama with the ull efect mixed with the input signal.
With a notch filter – this one rom the Peaking older – the Cutof dial moves the notch up and down (right and let dial) the requency spectrum.
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 85
> free software / minimal audio rift ilter lite cm > Step by step 2. A tour around Rift Filter Lite CM (continued)
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With more complex filters, like Howl rom the Harmonic older, Cutof reverts to moving the impact o the filter let and right; so in this case it moves it like a low-pass filter, albeit one with extra complex peaks.
You’ll notice that as soon as you Select MIDI (or indeed Tune) the previously greyed out purple keyboard icon now lights up. Press it and a mini keyboard appears with 12 pitch buttons.
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Where the Cutof control removes requencies rom the incoming signal, above the requency (low pass) or below it (high pass), the Resonance dial enhances the requencies around the cutof or a ringing-like or squealing efect.
This eature is called Pitch Snap and is used to quantise the cutof requency to either notes or scales. Minimal say, “when combined with modulating Cutof, you can create melodies with RIFT Filter Lite!”. Now make sure you have the Low Pass filter selected so you can easily see the efect.
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You’ll notice one final drop-down menu above the Cutof, which allows you to show it in standard Hz, MIDI or Tune. This is one last Rit eature to explore. Select MIDI (like we haven’t!).
The cutof requency snaps to whatever notes you have highlighted. You can see it shit up and down as you press and release each pitch note.
POWER TIP
> Automation
As we demonstrated in step 9, you can automate any o the parameters on Rit Filter Lite; indeed this is one o the best ways to get really creative with the filter. It demands you play with it in real time but make sure you record everything you do to capture the best moments in automation lanes so you can play them back any time.
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Note that this only works in MIDI or Tune mode and with all the notes of, it will not afect the cutof.
86 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
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Finally, you can transpose the selected notes up or down while maintaining their relative positions which is used to transpose the selected notes to the correct key or chord. Now simply sit back and enjoy some great efects!
minimal audio rift ilter lite cm / free software < > Step by step 3. Just want the free sound packs? Here’s what you need to do
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Already got the free version of Rift Filter Lite? Well, the good news is that the $50 value we’re giving away is by way of the ive free sound packs that Minimal Audio have generously given to every reader. If you are starting from scratch, irst unlock issue 299 on FileSilo by following steps 1 and 2 on p83. (If you have an account with MA go to Step 4 below.)
Go to the second link in the text ile from issue 299 and enter the Redeem Serial Code supplied with it. You will now be taken to a page with ive free sound packs to download! We’ll now detail each one of them…
Microtech is all about Minimal Glitch Drums. “Create high-tech beats, and add digital detail to your productions with this futuristic drum library. It blends abstract synthesis with hard-hitting drum design. Drop these loops and one-shots into your project for immediate inspiration to create futuristic, glitchy beats.”
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You’re after a Redeem Serial Code to get the sample packs for free. This is in a text ile under issue 299 called ‘FREE PLUGIN! Your Minimal Audio Rift Filter Lite and sample pack Instructions’. Download it, open the text ile.
Convolve is over 500MB of Lush Hybrid Atmospheres. “Convolve fuses elements from the natural world with harmonic layers from modular synthesisers and acoustic instruments. Experience 60 rich, atmospheric soundscapes that add otherworldly depth to your projects.”
Oxide is 350+MB of Stylized Metal SFX. “Texturise your sound with a professional metal sound efects library containing 60+ beautifully designed impacts, rhythmic loops, atmospheres, and one-shots. Easily build tension that is perfect for cinematic music and trailers.”
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Create an account at Minimal Audio or if you have an account already, simply head to Step 4!
Nearly 100MB of Overdriven Analog Drums that “showcases the noises and imperfections of analogue hardware pushed to the extreme. 100+ drum loops, one-shots, and textures ideal for analogue-inspired electronic music, hiphop, or stylised lo-i beats. If you are looking for drums with attitude, this is the perfect it.”
Finally Transmute is 165MB of Sci-Fi Mechanical SFX. “High-tech, futuristic, this ofers 60 advanced sound efects for epic sci-i projects. Design your own world with space-age impacts, lyby swells, userinterface sounds, and mechanical movements.” Enjoy these free packs and thanks, of course, to Minimal Audio!
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 87
> your free samples / all-new samples
New funk samples!
We set our sampling gurus a funk task this issue and they have two all-new packs for your funktastic delight on the DVD or download at filesilo.co.uk
SmorgasFunk!
We’ve gone ‘total funk’ this issue, with two new sample packs and no fewer than four packs from the vault. First up, Robbie from Cyclick explains how he assembled his banquet… “There is so much ‘funk’ that it was hard to choose a lavour to favour for this collection. I started by picking up the sticks, setting a click and pressing record on a drum kit setup that was already sat in the live room at Sandpit Studio. “The drums difer across the three tempos with either a change in dampening or tuning, and the snare was switched from a Ludwig to a Tama for the 105bpm beats. Each tempo features SELECTED GEAR USED three mixes, produced simultaneously Drums: Beverley Blue Badge by blending diferent mics into separate 60s/70s drumkit efects chains. Mics: Teleunken AR-51, STC “Then it was time to record bass, 4038 (Coles), Royer R-121, RCA guitar and keyboard parts, which were MI-6204-B, Sennheiser done in that order. These were recorded MD421-II and MD441, AKG through a chain of the pedals. The bass D112, Beyerdynamic M201, Joe Meek JM47 used UAD Ampeg bass-amp plugins and Amplitube 5. The guitar and keys (Arturia Guitar/bass: Fender Stratocaster (’72 hardtail), Clavinet, Wurlitzer electric piano and B3 Squier Telecaster Standard, organ) were amped with Amplitube, only Epiphone Ripper bass with a healthy dose of UAD plugs after Sotware: Arturia V Collection, the amp.” Steinberg Nuendo, UAD, There’s more information on the PDF Soundtoys, Eventide, Ozone 8 supplied in the Samples folder on the plugins, Kush Clariphonic DSP DVD or at ilesilo.co.uk. mkii EQ, IK Amplitube 5 Max 88 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
Funk Grooves
Oli Bell from Groove Criminals details how he put together a funk platter that matters… “On the synth side we rinsed both the Moog Grandmother and Mother 32 for those classic synth bass tones. The clavinet and organs were taken from a mixture of softsynths and our old, trusty E-mu Classic Keys. These were then run through the hardware wahs and vintage Dynacord for some rotary speaker lavour with the added bonus of its slightly crunchy preamp circuit. We sped up and slowed the rotor efect manually on the ly for some extra character. “Bass and drums were all sampled from our stockpile of authentic multi samples and past sessions, then processed through secret sauce efects chains. The beats come from a large bank of MIDI iles we have collated, played by a drummer on an electronic kit from which we saved the performance as MIDI data. Most of the percussive elements were played live or sampled, then programmed.” SELECTED GEAR USED Moog Grandmother Moog Mother 32 Emu Classic Keys Dynacord CLS 222 Snarling Dogs Wonder Wah Danelectro DanO-Wah Great British spring reverb Fender Fat Telecaster Various percussion, sotsynths and efects
from the
vault / your free samples <
4 funk ‘n’ disco packs! FROM THE
VAULT
We’ve gone deep into the mighty Vault this month to grab three classic funk packs and one disco one to maintain the happy dance summer vibes… It’s a total funk sample issue – with a sprinkle of disco glitter (and why not!) as we deliver not one but four classic sample packs for your cool compositional pleasure. First up, we go back to July 2017 for Sampled Funk & Soul, of which we had the following to say: “Want the authentic sound of sampled 70s vinyl without the copyright hassles? Then it’s time to roll up your sleeves and start diggin’ through this month’s royalty-free samples! In this 500-strong pack, you get crusty breakbeats, sexy bass rifs, funky guitar licks, ‘sampled’ cuts, S900style drum hits and more – all expertly designed to exude the authenticity and weight of classic funk and soul records.” A mere eight issues later, we were dusting down our dancing gladrags again for another 500+
shimmies across a collection called Disco Fever: “As the genre that spawned dance music as we know it, disco’s inluence is as relevant as ever. Whether you’re seeking retro vibes or modern interpretations, this issue’s exclusive sample pack gives you all the disco one-shots and loops you need to get that authentic groove and soul in your DAW. “It’s time to don your lares, pull on those platform shoes and get making music with our soundware giveaway!” Our third classic pack returns to ‘the funk’ with a touch of dust to make, yes, Dusty Funk. Of this one we said : “It’s time to get down with this issue’s exclusive sample pack! Created by our in-house funk purveyors, Cyclick and Groove Criminals, these toe-tappin’ loops, licks, hooks, drum beats and oneshot samples are primed and ready
to supply your productions with a much-needed dose of funk, soul and groove!” For our inal vintage funk collection, we have Funk Fills which should be the glue you need among all the other funk here to make some damn ine grooves: “This 500-strong pack of samples will provide the funky exclamation marks to your tracks that they were crying out for. You may know the concept of ills from drumming, where you underscore the end of a phrase before moving to another line... but it’s not just for drummers! Here you’ll ind synths, guitars, keys and FX too, all built to punctuate melodic, instrumental or rhythmic lines, whenever you need to move the groove along.” You can ind all these samples in the Free Samples folder on the DVD or at ilesilo.co.uk under issue 299.
INCLUDES… 2,000+ 100s 100 500
Funk/disco samples Loops (various) Drum hits Fills
We demanded our samplists dressed in their best disco slacks when producing these samples. They refused
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 89
> your free samples / loopmasters
Loopmasters 01 02 03 04
LMLCY-BionicAutonomyIDM Organic LoopsBhangraPercussion LoopmastersEclecticPop LoopmastersTotalBlackout
90 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
05 06 07 08
299 samples
LM MichalJablonski-Exp.Techno Loopmasters FutureSoul&Chill RV ResonantTechno LoopmastersSoulSqueezeVol1
PRODUCER’S GUIDE TO ELECTRONIC MUSIC THE HISTORY, GEAR, PIONEERS AND TECHNIQUES ON SALE
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SYNTH MASTERCLASS
experts / Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist fields every month COMPOSING
VOICE LEADING
Read the full article on p42
PERKY SYNTH SOUNDS
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VOCALS EQ PRODUCTION
Read the full article on p46 October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 93
> 15 questions with / bomba estereo
BOMBA ESTÉREO As one of the biggest bands in South America, Bomba
Estéreo have notched up more views on YouTube than most bands can dream of and have built up a huge audience with ive acclaimed album releases and half a dozen Grammy nominations. The band’s founder Simon Mejía shares his refreshing production ethos: “Don’t let your brain lead you…”
Bomba Estéreo are described as “a Colombian electro-folkloric dance band”; such is their varied, often eclectic and massively popular music. We mention that because they might well be the biggest band you haven’t heard of, with millions of followers and record sales, and hundreds of millions of YouTube views. The band started some 20 years ago, with founding member Simon Mejía releasing the irst album Vol. 1, 94 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
almost as a solo efort. Recruiting band members over further releases, Bomba Estéreo started making huge waves, voted MTV’s Best New Band in the World, and notching up plays on ilm (Limitless and TV series Dexter) and in video games including Fifa and Just Dance. They have also enjoyed major success in the US, with headline festival appearances and major brand ad soundtracks. So maybe Mejía’s particular
production philosophy – where he doesn’t chase down the next big plugin and prefers to be led more by yoga rather than the brain – is something we should all aspire to. And having a studio up a mountain… us how you got into music 1 Tell Simon Mejía: “When I was a kid I was curious about what my parents were hearing and their record collection. It consisted of Fania,
aevoG esoJ airaM :otohP
15 questions with…
bomba estereo / 15 questions with < rock and Motown music, mainly. Salsa music always intrigued me. That power and that sense of Latin. You cannot hear salsa without wanting to dance or move your body in some way. It was the door for me, as a kid, to the world of Latin music, which was the style I was going to explore through my life.” did you get successful? 2 When SM: “I think success in music does not have anything to do with fame. Fame is one thing, and has to do only with marketing, economy and likes on social media. I’m not interested in that. For me, success in art or music happens just when you do it and enjoy doing it. When you sit in your studio or with your guitar, or whatever means to express yourself, and just connect with that low of energy. And then also if you take the risk to devote your life to that low of energy without the fear of being famous or not.” is your overall philosophy? 3 What SM: “Be true to yourself, honest to what you want to express and share with other people, and avoid making artistic concessions. When economics stands in the way of art it basically loses the reason it was meant to be.” us about your ‘computer music’ 4 Tell production history? SM: “In the 90s I had rock bands here in Bogotá. We are always a little late in technological terms here in Colombia, so it was quite diicult to record and make albums. Studios were quite limited and expensive to access. So when computers arrived with software to do that at home, everything changed and so did the approach for making music. We discovered we could make it with other tools diferent to traditional instruments; just programming. It was a very rich and creative decade. I came from playing instruments and I kept playing and combining that with sampling and programming. It’s the way I work and approach electronic music today.”
“It’s the best way to share experiences, not with screens” us about the rest of your studio 5 Tell SM: “I have a computer, soundcard and monitors. There’s a Neve vocal preamp, also synths like a Moog Sub Phatty and Little Phatty, and a Korg Minilogue. I have some guitar pedals which I put synths, electric guitar and bass guitar through, plus a lot of folk percussion instruments from Latin America.” are your favourite plugins? 6 What SM: “I don’t like to overuse plugins, so I’m not always looking for what’s new out there. It’s kind of overwhelming. For me it’s only necessary to have an EQ, compressor, delay and reverb. Besides those I don’t explore too much. I think you have to rely on the music and on simplicity. I use the Ableton native plugins and the Soundtoys bundle, which I ind really fun to play with.” do you tend to start a track? 7 How SM: “In my case I always start rhythmically, from the beats, and then start building up from that. The beat always keeps everything in motion and I like that. Sometimes I’ve done that and then simply removed the beat and you then go to some interesting places.” do you know when a track’s done? 8 How SM: “It’s the most diicult thing to know when you’re working on a track. It can be endless actually, and then you release the record and are still always changing things about it in your mind. So, in my case it happens just when you have to deliver [the song] and there’s no more time for changes!”
you have any production tricks? 9 Do SM: “For me the best electronic music sounds less digital and machine-like. So my research is around how to make machines and computers sound organic. Basically the trick is how you use acoustic instruments and not staying too attached to the grid.” would you like to see developed in 10 What terms of studio technology? SM: “No cables at all. They annoy me – always making the place a mess!” on your gear wish list? 11 What’s SM: “More than having gear in the studio, I wish I could have a studio in an amazing outdoor location. Like in front of a huge lake, the ocean, or on top of a mountain. A place where just going out gives you lots of inspiration.” advice for playing live? 12 Any SM: “Just that it is the best way to share energy between human beings in real time, not with screens. Hope it comes back.” about studio advice? 13 What SM: “It’s an amazing and intimate experience, especially when you do it alone, producing your own music. It’s a way of travelling through time without moving.” other more general advice? 14 Any SM: “Use the yoga philosophy: try not to lead your life and art based on what the brain tells you. In music it works amazingly. Also deal with [the industry and scene], low with it, but don’t let it be the director of your music.” have you got planned? 15 What SM: “With my band Bomba Estéreo, we’re releasing new music now. If you’re into alternative Latin music, it’s all available on social media and digital platforms. Same with my personal project called Monte – a bit more experimental and downtempo, but also based around folk music from Latin America and nature sounds in electronics.” The new Bomba Estéreo album Deja is out in September 2021
HEAR MORE
Agua bit.ly/CM_Bomba To My Love (Tainy Remix) bit.ly/CM_BombaTo WWW
Simon is not one of these plugin-ixated sorts but he does dabble in the Soundtoys bundle
bombaestereo.com twitter.com/bombaestereo facebook.com/BombaEstereo
October 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 95
BACK ISSUES Catch up on what you’ve missed – all of these issues include FileSilo downloads! ISSUE 298
ISSUE 297
ISSUE 296
• Plugin synth vs classic synth. Can software beat vintage hardware? • FREE Flux Mini CM filter modulation plugin • Vintage sample DVD – 7 free packs!
• Build Your Own Plugins • FREE CM Pluck Plugin + Ultimate Breaks DVD • Interviews with Loraine James and Rural Tapes • Back To Live guide to getting back on stage
• Hardware DAWs: the end • Modular Synthesis For of software? The Computer Musician • FREE Tone2 Filterbank 3 • FREE Kilohearts Carve worth $79 and Ultimate EQ worth €79 Twisted Bass samples • Junkie XL Justice • Interviews with Lau.ra, League (Snyder Morcheeba and more Cut) interview
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• Essential Recording Masterclassfor guitar, bass and drums • FREE Simple Concept synth rom Krotos, worth $24 • Krust interview
• Fix Your Mix – pro studio • Ableton Live11 and results using the Cubase 11 – an in-depth Plugin Suite preview of what’snew • FREE! IK Syntronik OXA • FREE! Noizz sub worth €59.99 • Roisin Murphy and • Philth, Claude VonStroke Orchestral Manoeuvres and Kelly Lee Owens in the Dark
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• The 40 Greatest Synth Sounds of All Time • FREE 8GB synths sample collection plus bonus Pro Pack worth $19 • Mogwai, BlayVision and Roosevelt interviews
• Your Free Virtual Studio – a guide to using your FREE Bitwig Studio 8-Track • Fourward Masterclass • Uéle Lamore interview • Recording Masterclass
May 2021
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• The 100 Greatest Apps for Music Making. DAWS, synths, drums and more! • FREE! KiloheartsSlice EQ worth $79 • 3000 free samples • Solardo Masterclass
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• Synth Special – make great synth tunes and even better sounds! • SynthMaster Player ofer worth $29 • $19 Pro Sample Pack • Holly Herndon interview
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ISSUE 299 OCTOBER 2021
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98 / COMPUTER MUSIC / October 2021
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The best things of the last 300 issues (and the worst!)
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