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18GB ARCHIVE 2 EXCLUSIVE LIBRARY NEW PACKS Issue 373

Making the future since 1992

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MODWAVE Korg’s wavetable monster reviewed!

Editor-In-Chief Si Truss, simon.truss@futurenet.com Reviews Editor/Online Content Manager Simon Arblaster, simon.arblaster@futurenet.com Managing Editor Kate Puttick, kate.puttick@futurenet.com Art Editor Phil Cheesbrough, philip.cheesbrough@futurenet.com BIG THANKS TO… Rob Redman, Danny Turner, Tim Cant, James Russell, Bruce Aisher, Roy Spencer, Oli Bell, Adam Lee, Olly Curtis, Robbie Stamp, Jon Musgrave ADVERTISING For Ad enquiries please contact: Kyle Phillips, kyle.phillips@futurenet.com MARKETING Direct Marketing Executive: Will Hardy PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION Production Controller: Fran Twentyman Production Manager: Mark Constance Printed in the UK by: William Gibbons & Sons Ltd on behalf of Future Distributed in the UK by: Marketforce (UK), 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HU Tel: +44 (0) 203 787 9001 CIRCULATION Head of Newstrade:Tim Mathers SUBSCRIPTIONS Order line and enquiries: +44 (0)330 333 1113 Online enquiries:www.magazinesdirect.com Email: help@magazinesdirect.com INTERNATIONAL LICENSING AND SYNDICATION Future Music is available for licensing and syndication. Contact the Licensing team.

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FM | WELCOME

Digital love

It’s interesting how trends work in electronic music. I remember almost exactly 10 years ago, getting my hands on a Korg Monotribe for the first time, and the excitement that came with having a genuine analogue instrument priced at a mass market level. Obviously in the years that followed, affordable analogue blew up – if you want VCOs on a budget there are countless directions you could go.

Now here we are in 2021, and the synths that are exciting us most (on the whole) are those that break away from the analogue orthodoxy and embrace the power of DSP. Casein-point, this issue’s cover star and lead review – Korg’s Modwave – which joins the excellent Wavestate and Opsix amongst our list of must-try digital synths.

That’s how these things go, I guess. I’ll see you in a few years for the analogue revival.

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

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FM | CONTENTS

38

Mano Le Tough The Irish producer-DJ tells us how he IN THE STUDIO WITH…

dug into his garage band roots for his latest album for Pampa Records

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This Issue | Contents

ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS

20

Classic album Holy Ghost!

66 REVIEWED

Korg Modwave

Another cult classic revisited for this wavetable synth

64

Retrospective Dancehall

REVIEWS 66 Korg Modwave

70 Bitwig Studio 4 74 M-Audio Oxygen 49 MkV 76 Roundup: Exciter plugins 78 Arturia FX Collection 2 80 Modular: Wavefonix R2R DAC and 8 Step Sequencer 82 Lewitt LCT 140 Air 84 Audient iD4 Mk2 86 Testbench: FabFilter Timeless 3 88 Tracktion F.’em!

90 Antelope Audio Zen GO

78

Review Arturia FX Collection 2

INTERVIEWS

38 MANO LE TOUGH 58 JAPANESE BREAKFAST

18 TALKING SHOP SCALPING 46 THE TRACK RHODE & BROWN

52

Producer’s Guide to…

Guitar Rig Pro 6

58

82

FEATURES

SOCIAL

Interview Japanese Breakfast 12 Filter: The latest news

20 Classic Album: Holy Ghost!, Holy Ghost!

24 Get a print or digital subscription to Future Music

26 Album reviews

64 Retrospective: Dancehall

Review Lewitt LCT 140 Air Find us online at futuremusic.co.uk Watch our videos youtube.com/ futuremusicmagazine Follow us on Twitter @futuremusicmag Join us on Facebook facebook.com/ futuremusicmagazine 7

FM | ON FILESILO 46 THE TRACK

Rhode & Brown – Wave 200 INCLUDES VIDEO

The Munich duo took a trip back to Italo disco days for this track – and brought us along for the ride

ACCESSING YOUR BONUS DIGITAL CONTENT

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

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This Issue | Contents

IN THE ARCHIVE – UPDATED!

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

AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.1

HOUSE & TECHNO

> ’90s Ambient (562 samples) > Ambient Dawn (490 samples)

> Chicago House (537 samples) > House & Techno Stabs (213 samples) > Jacking House (518 samples) > Warehouse Techno (575 samples)

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

ATMOSPHERES & BACKGROUNDS > Atmospheric Beds (369 samples) > Noise, Crackle & Hiss (512 samples) > Sounds of the City (371 samples)

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

CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.2 > Analogue Poly Chord Hits (342 samples) > Classic Synths: ’80s, ’90s, ’00s (678 samples) > Hardware Arps (511 samples)

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

TRANCE & RAVE > Classic Breakbeats (371 samples) > Rave Synths (524 samples) > Trance Tools (537 samples)

THE LATEST BATCH AMBIENCE EXTRAS

> Ambient Orchestral (246 samples) > Ambient Piano (469 samples) > Sound From The Ether (492 samples)

CREATIVE DRUMS

BASS BUNDLE

> Cyborg Beats (514 samples) > Lo-Fi Sampling (555 samples) > Obscure Drum Machines (517 samples) > Overloaded Beats (889 samples)

> Amped-Up Bass (234 samples) > Sub-Frequency Grooves (256 samples)

ESSENTIAL DRUMS > 808 and 909 (39 samples) > Ultimate Cymbals (503 samples) > Ultimate Kick Bundle (505 samples) > Ultimate Snares & Claps (676 samples) > Vintage Drum Machine Hits (548 samples)

FX & TRANSITIONS PT.1 > Filter Fun (496 samples) > Gates ‘N’ Sidechains (287 samples) > Total Transitions (260 samples)

FX & TRANSITIONS PT.2 > Destroyed synths (519 samples) > Sci-Fi FX (501 samples)

FOUND FAVOURITES > Mechanical Sounds (390 samples) > Out There FX (500 samples) > Studio Noise (234 samples) > The Edge Of Noise (512 samples) > The Sound Of Water (375 samples)

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

MORE BEATS > ‘80s Pop Drums (197 samples) > Dub Percussion 2 (537 samples) > Jazz Drums (499 samples) > Total Snares (501 samples)

HIP-HOP, FUNK & SOUL

SYNTHS & MORE

> Cosmic Soul (386 samples) > Funk Keys (279 samples) > Hip-Hop Drum Machines (387 samples) > Minimal Hip-Hop (540 samples)

> Chord Stabs (136 samples) > Clone Wars (523 samples) > Percussive Leads (289 samples) > VHS Synths (207 samples)

TECHNIQUE & FEATURES

28 The ultimate guide to digital synthesis INCLUDES AUDIO

Don’t know your frequency modulation from your elbow? Look no further…

EXCLUSIVE SAMPLE PACKS

’80s Synths – Pt 2 CYCLICK SAMPLES PRESENT…

Our jaunt through the history of synthesis continues with this fresh pack of retro pads, arps and leads.

Digital Nature GROOVE CRIMINALS PRESENT…

We blur the boundaries between artifice and reality with a pack of synthesised natural tones, digitised field recordings and more.

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Contents | This Issue

BONUS SAMPLES DOWNLOAD THEM NOW FROM FILESILO.CO.UK/FUTUREMUSIC 01 02 03

04

05 06

loopmasters.com 01 Loopmasters LCY Presents Bionic Autonomy 02 Thick Sounds Hybrid Liquid Drum & Bass 03 Loopmasters Michael Jablonski Experimental Techno Experience 04 Apollo Sound Latino Future Pop & Reggaetron 05 Vocal Roads Rudeboy’s Clubhouse Vocals and Beats 06 Abstract Sounds Vocal Shape 07 Frontline Producer Slo Funk n Soul 08 Loopmasters Rodriguez Jr. Presents Polychromic House

07 08

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FM | FILTER Erica Synths and Sonic Potions have cooked up the LXR-02 Digital drum synth combines subtractive and FM sounds, plus a host of sequencing tricks

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The Future Of Music | Filter

S

onic Potions and Erica Synths are set to release the LXR-02 drum machine, a complex standalone drum synth with a powerful integrated sequencer, which is an evolution of the former company’s original LXR. There are six digital drum voices.

Three are multi-purpose, and there’s

also a dedicated subtractive clap/ snare voice, an FM percussion voice, and a hi-hat voice. Each can be shaped using modulatable parameters for the oscillator, amp envelope, frequency modulation, transient generator, filter and variable waveform assignable LFO. This gives you plenty of scope to design your rhythmic sounds, but the

beating heart of the LXR-02 is the sequencer. This offers seven tracks (one for each voice, and an additional one to control the open hi-hat of the sixth voice), each of which can have up to 64 steps. You can automate two parameter changes for each of these steps, and the sequences for all seven tracks can be saved as a pattern. Up to 64 patterns can be saved as a song, and you can have 64 songs in a project.

It also has a performance mode that lets you mute tracks and create manual rolls at the touch of a button. There’s sample rate reduction, too, and you can morph between active and target presets.

Connectivity includes four 1/4-inch outputs, a headphone output, MIDI I/O, USB and analogue clock I/O. The LXR-02 is selling for €490/$599, and is currently available for pre-order.

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Filter | The Future Of Music

Enter the Abyss with Tracktion’s colourful new ‘visual’ synth

>

There’s always been a strong relationship between sound and colour – music is often described as dark or bright, for example – and now Tracktion Software are offering a very literal exploration of this in the form of the Abyss synth plugin.

Offering a workflow that “focuses on the ‘art’ rather than ‘numbers’,” this gives you many of the features you’d associate with standard synths – a filter, envelopes, LFOs and effects, for example – but enables you to build patches using more than 2000 ‘sound colours’.

Sounds are created by placing your chosen tints or shades on a central tone gradient, and you get an “arbitrary modulation” system with 13 sources and 23 destinations. More than 130 presets are included, and the UI is easily scalable and responsive. With its strong emphasis on the visual, Abyss promises to make it easy for you to create evolving, nuanced textures, which can really come alive whenever you hook up an MPEcompatible controller.

Available for PC and Mac in VST/AU formats, Abyss has a regular price of $129, but it’s currently available for $77.40.

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Steinberg’s SpectraLayers 8 audio editor promises ‘AI processing with a human touch’

>

Steinberg have taken the wraps off version 8 of SpectraLayers, the company’s deep audio editing software.

With its visual interface, SpectraLayers is designed to let you ‘see inside’ your sounds and carry out a variety of music production, post-production, sound design and audio restoration tasks.

Version 8 introduces a secondgeneration AI processing engine that enables the implementation of new processes and improvements to existing ones.

There’s AI-powered Reverb Reduction, too, which attenuates and reduces room resonances. Other new features include EQ and Ambience Match. EQ Match lets you make a selection on the spectral graph and apply the EQ profile across several layers, while Ambience Match lets you specify room tone or background textures on the spectrograph and apply the profile elsewhere.

Elsewhere, you can now select harmonics automatically based on a single frequency, there’s a Voice Denoiser that can clean up everything from spoken word recordings to sung vocals, and you now have interchannel copy/paste functionality.

There’s enhanced ARA 2 integration, too, so you can run multiple independent SpectraLayers projects within your compatible DAW (Cubase or Nuendo, for example).

SpectraLayers 8 is available in two versions: Pro (€299) and Elements (€80). PC/Mac.

The Future Of Music | Filter

Pro Tools now has M1 Mac support, and lets you create bigger projects than ever

>

Avid have released Pro Tools 2021.6, a summer update for the DAW that brings the Hybrid Engine to HDX systems, adds support for M1 Macs and offers more I/O, tracks and voices. The Hybrid Engine was launched alongside the Pro Tools |

Carbon audio interface, and has now been brought to Pro Tools HDX systems. It’s designed to let you switch between native and DSP processing on a track-by-track basis, giving you a best-of-both worlds approach and the ability to run bigger sessions more smoothly.

In fact, Pro Tools | Ultimate now supports 2,048 voices and audio tracks at all sample rates, from 128 to 28kHz. That’s five times more than the previous version.

What’s more, the maximum number of I/O channels has been doubled from 32 to 64.

The standard Pro Tools, meanwhile, now supports a maximum of 256 mono or stereo audio tracks.

The update also means that you can now run Pro Tools | First, Pro Tools, Pro Tools | Ultimate and Pro Tools | Carbon systems on M1 Macs – which is another boost for Apple’s silicon processors.

Other enhancements include the option to customise the dark and classic UI themes, QuickTime and file support improvements, and automatic delay compensation when sidechaining tracks. Pro Tools 2021.6 is available to all users with an active subscription plan.

Revelator io24: a USB interface for live streaming, podcasting and recording

>

It’s a sign of the times that PreSonus has now seen fit to create a USB-C audio interface designed not only for recording, but also live streaming and podcasting.

The Revelator io24 offers two XMAX-L mic preamps, along with instrument and line inputs, but that’s not really the story here.

The feature that will appeal to live streamers and podcasters is the loopback one – two dedicated stereo loopback channels let you mix the audio from two different applications in with both of the io24’s input channels, ready for streaming and/or recording simultaneously.

You’ve also got built-in DSP – there are

dedicated presets for guitar and voice, along with effects that enable you to emulate the likes of a concert hall, AM radio, or even a Venusian armada. What’s more, the io24 can be used standalone – you can just plug in an SD recorder or DSLR and get busy with it anywhere you like, without a computer.

The io24 has built-in input and output monitoring, and the mixer also enables you to create a zero-latency monitor mix.

There are iOS, Android and Windows apps for adding touchscreen control, and the Studio One Artist DAW is included. The Revelator io24 is available now priced at $199/£175/€199.

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Filter | The Future Of Music

KV331 Audio bring full fat SynthMaster 2, one of the best VST plugin synths, to the iPad Having previously brought

>

Traktor Pro 3.5: new integration for your DJing needs

>

It’s update time for Native Instruments’ Traktor Pro, with version 3.5 integrating Beatport and Beatsource LINK into the venerable DJ software and adding support for Pioneer DJ’s CDJ-3000s.

Users can now explore the complete Beatport and Beatsource catalogues and find their favourite artists, labels or curated playlists.

Search results can be sorted by release date or genre, and you can play back full-length streams from either catalogue.

You can add cue points, loops or comments to any track, and apply all Traktor FX to them. Currently-playing tracks are cached – a nice safety net if you’re working with an unstable internet connection – and subscribers to the LINK Pro and Pro+ plans will soon be able to access an Offline Locker of up to 100 tracks.

Elsewhere, owners of Pioneer DJ’s CDJ-3000s will be pleased to learn that Traktor is now compatible with said controller. All of your Traktor Pro tracks will be accessible from the hardware via the CDJ’s browsing features, and most of the software’s features can be controlled, too.

In addition, Traktor’s waveforms can be viewed on the CDJ-3000’s display, cover artwork can be viewed on the central jog display, and there are dedicated display buttons that link to the Key Shift features in Traktor, making harmonic mixing more intuitive.

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their SynthMaster One and SynthMaster Player plugins to iOS, KV331 Audio have now ported the full-on SynthMaster 2, the developer’s flagship instrument, to the iPad. Widely acclaimed as one of the best VST plugin synths you can buy, this iOS version is the first to be developed using KV331’s new cross-platform UI framework, and runs both standalone and as AUv3 plugin.

As in the desktop version, the oscillators can operate in four modes: Basic, Additive, Wavetable and Vector. There are also modulators, which can be added to other oscillators or modulate other oscillators’ or modulators’ phases.

Other features include wave file import, filters, a comprehensive modulation section, an arp/sequencer and effects. There are more than 1000 presets, and we’re told that smart browsing features should make it easy to find the sound you’re looking for.

KV331 say they haven’t compromised on the feature set with this iOS version, so we’re hopeful it will perform just as well as its desktop counterpart.

Available now from the Apple App Store for the introductory price of $15, rising to $25 at the start of September.

Get creative with | Ableton Live

Generate new musical ideas in Ableton Live

PROBLEM: Creating new ideas for chords and melodies can be challenging. How do I find new ideas when I’m stuck for inspiration?

S

ometimes we sit down to make music and ideas immediately start flowing. Other times... nothing. Inspiration can be fickle, especially when it comes to creating new chords and melodies. How can we use Ableton Live 11 to help us come up with new ideas?

One way is to use the new Note Chance feature to generate ideas based on a set of input notes and rhythms.

We’ll use Live 11’s new Scale feature to create a Clip that’s in a chosen key, then fill that Clip with a random selection of notes. Then, by setting the Note Chance of all

01

Create a clip and set up your scale

the notes to a low value, we’ll cause only a small set of notes to play on each loop. We can then record the output of those notes as new patterns and ideas.

In the example we’ll keep things simple, with notes triggering on every bar, but be sure to experiment with different rhythms and pitches. The key to this technique is using Note Chance to only trigger a random selection of notes on each loop.

Remember, like all generative techniques, this won’t instantly produce chart-topping results, but should give you some ideas to kickstart your creative process.

First, create a new blank Clip and choose which Scale you’d like to use on the left hand side of the Clip View. Click the ‘Fold To Scale’ button to only show notes from the chosen scale within the MIDI Editor.

03

WANT TO KNOW MORE? Tom Glendinning has worked as a session musician, sound engineer, sound designer, music producer, composer, and VJ. As an Ableton certified trainer he helps musicians to be more creative with Ableton Live. More at elphnt.io/fm

Set all Note Chance to 25% – 50% Select all the notes in the Clip and open the Probability Editor. Set the Note Chance of every note between about 25% and 50%.

Now, when you play the Clip, a random selection of notes will play on each loop.

Experiment with amounts of Note Chance.

04

Record the output to a new MIDI Track

02

The final step is to record the output. Create a new MIDI Track and set the MIDI From to the Track that contains the generative Clip. Simply record a Clip on this new MIDI Track to capture the output. You’ll end up with a range of ideas to choose from.

Fill in random notes from the chosen scale Next create a note that fills the entire bar,

then copy this note to other random pitches within the scale, so you have a range of random notes within your chosen key. Things tend to sound best if you leave some gaps between the notes.

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Talking Shop | Scalping ASMHydrasynth and a Behringer MonoPoly. We wanted to have a whole new world of digital and analogue to explore and get fully lost in for this next chunk of writing.

Loving the X-MOD on the MonoPoly and the interface on the Hydrasynth is like nothing I’ve ever used before, the controls are laid out so uniquely.

“The latest plugin we bought is Michael Bauer Motion which is a circular auto panner, great for making sounds swim around your head.”

B

“We’d love a Waterphone… they create these horrible but beautiful screeches” Scalping|

ristol’s Scalping sit at the exciting cross section between rock, electronic music and avant-garde art.

Combining distorted guitars, mangled synths and driving beats, the band have caught the attention of UK tastemakers with their raw sound and engaging A/V live shows. We caught up with them to talk studios and the creative process behind Flood, their recent EP for Houndstooth.

“We have a few bits of hardware that we use a lot; a couple of synths (Roland SH-01a, Behringer TD-3), Octatrack and a load of guitar pedals.

The Line6 M9 ends up getting a lot of use just because it’s so simple and so immediate, we’ll often just send some samples through that and jam with it until we’ve got a hook. Other than that it’s all very plugin heavy; a fun Max MSP euclidean sequencer and Devil-Loc get a lot of action.”

When did you start making music?

What DAW do you use?

“Three of us have known each other since secondary school where we were in different rock/punk bands that would play together locally, ripping off various combinations of Deftones, Foals,And So I Watch You From Afar and Metz. We bonded over an obsession with guitar pedals and making weird noises. Pedals were definitely our first bits of proper ‘gear’, that’s how we got into any kind of production or sound design stuff and they’re still a big part of our setup.”

Tell us about your studio/set-up

“We were lucky enough to get our own studio space in Bristol last summer which was such a blessing when everywhere else was closed.

We’ve basically locked ourselves away in there working on music since we got the keys and it’s been incredible.

18

“We write, produce and record in Ableton Live as we’ve found it the best

tool for being able to cross over the worlds of live instrumentation with electronic and programmed elements.

“Once we’ve got a finished track we move over to Pro Tools for mixdown, to separate this stage of the process and commit to stems.”

What one piece of gear in your studio could you not do without, and why?

“Boring answer is a laptop. Other than that, the Roland SH101a has been integral for us.”

What was your last purchase?

“We’ve just picked up an

What dream bit of gear would you love?

“We’d love a Waterphone – an instrument used for horror movie soundtracks, it’s made of a shallow resonating bowl with thin metal rods of different lengths sticking up all around the rim, when you strike or bow the rods they resonate and create these horrible but beautiful screeches.

“For now we’ve had to make do with smacking the skip outside our studio for similar sounds.”

When approaching a new track or project, where do you start?

“One technique that’s been quite fruitful is setting up a chain of pedals with no real thought of what it’s going to sound like, then sending something through it (synth, samples, microphone, mixer etc) and just recording a 30-40 minute jam.”

What are you currently working on?

“The combination of getting a studio space and having no distractions (pub or touring) has meant we’ve been writing more than ever. We’re also working on a project re-imagining our new EP Flood that we’re very excited about.”

TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS…

“…and record everything. Often the first time you do something or the first idea you have is the best. That could be the first idea you come up with for a riff, the first take you do, the first time you use a new synth. For that reason we always record everything, you never know what you’ll end up capturing. We’ll often use stems from demos in final tracks just because we already got what we needed the first time round and there’s no reason to go back and try and copy or recreate what you’ve already done. We also find it much more fun working like this, you can be more carefree and just enjoy making noise, worry about the details later.”

Distortion after reverbor compression “I once heard someone describe this as the sound of

cramming a cathedral into a shoebox and while I’m not too sure how that works it does kind of make sense. Essentially

use a reverb so add some space and scale to a sound and then absolutely smash it with a distortion or compressor and it really brings up the tail.

“Coming from the background of playing guitar and building pedalboards, you come across hundreds of articles and videos from guys playing the same blues riff a thousand times telling you to put distortion before reverb, so it’s quite liberating working with plugins where there’s a much greater ‘anything goes’ attitude.”

Use your phone “People don’t make the most of how powerful and handy

their phone is. We use them for field recordings, free tacky music making apps and, our favourite, skipping through random YouTube videos; car crashes, fights, arguing, birds... whatever, jam with the pedals as you go, cut out the good bits and you’ve got your own samples!”

Holy Ghost!

Holy Ghost!

DFA, 2011

“W

recnepS yoR yb sdroW

e really didn’t know what the fuck we were doing,” blurts Alex Frankel, one half of Brooklyn synth pop duo, Holy Ghost! Nicholas Millhiser, roundly agrees: “We were both making it up as we went along!”

Debut album time for this pair meant learning on the job, and enlisting the help of anyone sucked into their orbit. And that started with DFA co-founder, James Murphy.

As session players for his and Tim Goldsworthy’s label, they had his ear, and played him a demo of a track they’d been tinkering with. That was Hold On. Liking what he heard, he sat in to mix the record, and give it the extra boost it needed.

The track blew up. And DJ tours, remixes, and EPs followed.

But, for their LP, they needed more bodies in the room.

20

Producer Juan MacLean swapped skillsets, as dearly departed drum god, Jerry Fuchs, thumped tubs. Other vital players included mix engineer, Eric Broucek. And, more than most, album co-producer Chris Zane, who added much meat to the bones of any new demos the band cooked up at home, and on the road.

“We had a lot of help,” says Millhiser. “Way more so than anything else that came after. James and Tim were monumentally instrumental and influential from afar – their general production ethos was the blueprint for this record.

“But, Chris Zane, whose approach could not have been more different from James’ and Tim’s, was instrumental in helping us finish, and really encouraged us to get out of our own heads and just make stuff.”

That “stuff’ would be 10 tracks of hip-hop influenced sampling, club-banging and DJ-ready dance and electro and power pop synth, loose in form, and less linear than anything they’d attempted in bands before.

Frankel wrote lyrics, taking a little swagger from Talking Heads and Stevie Nicks, and worked keys. As Millhiser took on the bulk of the guitars, basses, ‘programmy’ synth stuff and engineering.

“We were so green,” he says. “But, it really felt like we were learning something new every day.”

FYF rof segamI ytteG/eldniW ekiM ©

FM | CLASSIC ALBUM

segamI ytteG/miK boR ©

Classic Album | Filter

Track by track with Alex Frankel and Nicholas Millhiser Do It, Again

Alex Frankel: “I started to make this one at my house. It all started after a trip to the A1 record store – I had been digging around for hours and found a song with an intro in that excited me, so went home and that inspired a groove.

“Then, after listening to the DFA group, Still Going, who had this song with an arpeggiated piano in, I hooked up my Prophet-5. Then the vocal was like my Talking Heads impression – just matter of fact and cool. I played it for Nick and we both loved it.

“We ended up re-recording the drums with the late great Jerry Fuchs at Gigantic Studios. I remember, we couldn’t figure the chorus out. So, Nick sampled my vocals and put them through an [E-mu] Emulator.

“Nick also says that a combination of the Roland Paraphonic synth and a customdesigned ‘Sound Strobe’ can be heard on the chord progression in this track.”

Wait & See

Nicholas Millhiser: “This started off with me trying to make something out of an iPhone recording that [album co-producer] Chris Zane had made of Jerry just messing around in the studio. I chopped it all up quite a bit and then supplemented the kick with an LM1, but the drums on that song are basically just an early iPhone recording.

“Now that I think about it most of the live drums on that record are Neve recordings. Totally not by design, as neither of us has ever been particularly partial to Neve stuff, but every studio we were doing drums in just happened to have lots of Neve stuff.

“Zane with the 1091s.

Metrosonic had a 5315 console, and Flymax in Woodstock, where we did Static on the Wire, had a bunch of 1073s, if I recall. But Wait & See is

No new Holy Ghost! material to talk of.

Although Nicholas Millhiser recently produced and mixed much of a forthcoming Nation of Language LP, and their last two singles, and is currently working with Juan Maclean on a “new age” record. He has no plans, of yet, to go it alone.

Alex Frankel, however, recently dropped his first solo single on Ed Banger called, Still Got It. The comes digitally or on a rather fancy yellow 12”, and features two remixes

by Breakbot.

just audio exported from an iPhone movie. So, high brow versus low brow would definitely be a sonic theme of the record.”

Hold My Breath

NM: “This one was started very quickly with our friend, Wolfram, and was written around his song, Hall of Shame. The basic meat of the song came together in a single drunken night with the three of us at my house, but Alex and I always felt like we never got it quite right, and returned to it many times – both with Chris Zane, [mixer] Eric Broucek, and on our own, all without luck.

“Then, the day before Eric was scheduled to re-mix it with Alex’s new vocals, I borrowed a TR909, re-did all of the drums, re-tracked the main guitar melody, added a Moog/ Realistic MG1 and an Omnichord, and wrote the bridge section.

“I think the only things that we kept from the original production were the white noise hi-hats, the Juno-106 bass and the

Nicholas Millhiser: “A lot came together at the last minute. When I look back at unable-to-let-go-micro-managing, I find that the stuff we obsess over really doesn’t matter. It sort of disappears, and sometimes you even forget what it was you were worried about.

“But, going back and listening to the record we nearly released, we were 100% right. All the last minute tweaks really made a huge difference. Alex re-did 80% of the vocals, and they are light years better. And the mixes feel more defined and more fun.” handclaps. The song, as it existed one day before Eric mixed it, can be heard on Wolfram’s LP.

Say My Name

AF: “This was one of the first ones we finished after Hold On. At the time we were in the mindset of DJing, and making things theoretically playable on a dance floor, you know? Even though we knew there were too many vocals and stuff. That’s why it’s that length, and has those kinds of pianos and chords.

“I remember writing it on the piano, and coming up with the big changes on the chorus. It went through a bunch of versions, too.

“It’s Nick playing the drums. And we recorded that at a studio with [DFA label co-founder] Tim Goldsworthy. He was actually going to produce that record.

“Basically, when we signed to DFA, part of the deal was that Goldsworthy was going to produce. I think we did two days with him, and then he didn’t show up to the studio

again. So, that was that [laughs], but hey, in those two days we got those Say My Name drums.”

Jam For Jerry

AF: “Speaking of drums – this was a tribute to Jerry Fuchs. It was just hard to get the tone of that sentiment right. We wanted to put something down about what had happened, but not be a sad song. Yeah, more of a celebration. It remains one of my favourite songs off the album, and always my favourite song to play live.

“Production-wise there was always a disagreement between me and Nick. He didn’t want any changes, and just wanted it to stay on one note, basically. I wanted lots of movement in it.

“Me, him and Chris Zane were in the studio and we’re like, ‘Let’s just take a vote.’ Nick lost that one. Then I went home and wrote some uplifting lyrics.”

NM: “Jerry Fuchs was probably the real secret weapon of the record. He played a really nice 1965 Slingerland 21

Filter | Classic Album drum kit on Do It Again, Slow Motion and Jam For Jerry, which was recorded by Chris Zane. He was the best drummer, ever.”

Hold On

AF: “This was very much started by Nick. He took a break, and then we had the Paraphonic doing the melody, [hums it] and then a Realistic Moog bass from Radio Shack, doing whatever that is.

“It was mainly melody, drums, and bass. And James [Murphy, DFA label co-founder] made Hold On his ringtone for a year and a half! He kept saying, ‘You gotta finish it!’

“That was like 2005. And it was just sat around. And we always thought, ‘OK. How do we finish it?’

And, ‘How do I sing on it?’ Once we figured out how to sing on it, that came together.

“The most interesting thing about this one would be the chorus. It now falls ‘on the one’. But, in the demo version, it fell on the two. James moved it. He was like, ‘What the fuck are you guys doing? You know how wrong that is? It should be straight!’

So, that was that…”

It’s Not Over

AF: “I remember writing the vocals. I think I was doing my best Stevie Nicks impression. It was cool, but I

didn’t really love it until Nick put the intro through a [Korg] MS-20. Then it had that filter opening up at the top, and the harmonic guitar parts.

“Then it all really came together at Gigantic Studios, with Chris Zane.

That one was not like a home recording. Far more like something that we did all together.”

NM: “Chris really was instrumental in helping us finish. An amazing producer and engineer, he was capable of being both a heavy hand and strong guiding force behind songs like Its Not Over and Jam For Jerry. And could also just get out of the way and cheerlead for things like Do It Again and Say My Name, which were already pretty full formed, but just needed us kicked out of the drivers’ seat to cross the finish line.”

Slow Motion

AF: “I’d got a sample, and made a beat out of it. I forget the name of it… I basically have a horrible habit of doing that. Sometimes I’ll take an entire song, or edit a song, and basically make a complete beat out of it, and then sing over it, which gets me into a lot of trouble. That was one of those, right there.

“I didn’t even add music to it. I just wrote the whole song over this beat, and then I played it for Nick, who’s like, ‘This is dope. But this is

In the studio with Nicholas Millhiser

“Early on we used an MPC for drums. A Prophet-5 was used throughout the single I Know, I Hear. A Yamaha CS60 for bass and big swells in Do It Again. The most used synth was the Roland Paraphonic 505 – which was often used with a custom Gavilan Rayna Russom-designed ‘Sound Strobe’.

But, the Juno 106 was used quite a lot, as was my Synthesizers.com modular synth.

“All of the vocals, except Say My Name, were recorded on a Neumann TLM193, which was Alex’s main vocal microphone, and our main snare drum mic, throughout.

“Everything done at home was recorded with a Universal Audio 610 preamp and DBX160s. 162s and 165s were used very heavily – vocals and drums mainly, but also guitars and keys and as parallel compression on the whole mix.

“Chris Zane, who produced much of the record with us, had a crazy rack of old Neves – 1091s, I think? All the markings were in Afrikaans. Those were used a lot at his studio, Gigantic, which would include all of Jerry Fuchs drumming.”

22

not our song’. So, that one almost didn’t make it.

“We basically painstakingly replayed it. Including, and figuring out, these string parts, and stuff like that. We did that at Gigantic. It was basically a replay of the music, or an interpolation, and then new vocals.”

Static On The Wire

AF: “Right after Hold On came out we told DFA that we didn’t really have any instruments or a studio. So, they gave us a few thousand bucks, and told us to take some demos to work in a studio with Juan MacLean and Eric Broucek.

“The idea was we’d be working on Juan’s record, which me and Nick played and wrote a lot on, and would switch and get Juan, and he would be our engineer and help us out. So, you know, DFA was killing two birds with one stone. This track came out of that.

“I played the clav on this, and then the vocals came together very easily. I remember those chords, and figuring out that there’s a disco chord in there. I love this song. The drums are Nick and super compressed, and I love the way it all sounds.”

Some Children

AF: “This features [Steely Dan’s soulful vocal legend] Michael McDonald. We got his email through a friend, and sent him the track when we were DJing in Mexico. Two hours later he wrote back saying he’d sing on it, asking what we wanted.

“I had to send a quick guide recording. But, the only way I could hit his high notes was to do this impression of him. Nick was like, ‘Do not fucking send that! He’ll think we’re insulting him.’ I did.

“Luckily Michael got it and killed it. We could not believe the quality of the vocals that we got back from him.

We only used a fraction what he sent – maybe two or three harmonies. I’m sure I have the whole stack on a hard drive, somewhere.

“He was very cool. And working with him did make my mother very proud.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

For the latest pics of the boys’ latest jams, head to: instagram. com/holyghostnyc

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Wolfram Wolfram

Dope album of deep house and disco excursions from the Austrian DJ and producer, featuring writing credits from Holy Ghost! boys. Worth it for the OG version of Hold My Breath, alone.

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Hold My Breath’, ‘Out Of Control’, ‘Untitled’|

The Juan MacLean The Future Will Come

2009 electro stormer featuring a rotating cast of DFA allstars chipping in. Nick and Alex’s funky fingerprints are all over it.

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘The Simple Life’, ‘Tonight’, ‘Happy House’

Michael McDonald Sweet Freedom

Timeless Best Of album from the highvoiced crooner. Alex Frankel’s mum deffo has a copy.

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Sweet Freedom’, ‘I Keep Forgettin’’, ‘I Can Let Go Now’

Alex Frankel Still Got It

The latest (aptly named) 12” offering from Frankel – his first solo joint, and on Ed Banger to boot.

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Still Got It (Original)’, ‘Still Got It (Breakbot “La Fiesta” Remix)’, ‘Still Got It (Choices Remix)’

Holy Ghost!

Work

Synth-pop-disco-dance banger from 2019. When the boys knock heads, wonderful music always comes pouring out.

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: ‘Epton On Broadway (Part I)’, ‘Nicky Buckingham’, ‘Escape From Los Angeles’

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D.K. Eighteen Movements Abstrakce Records

V

alencia-based experimental label Abstrakce has been building a reputation for the finest leftfield and avantgarde music since its 2015 formation. Once again dangerously on-point, the imprint releases a magnificent collection of live recordings from Parisian producer and performer, Dang-Khoa Chau, aka D.K. The recordings, captured at various live shows between 2017 and 2019, take us on a meditative journey through ambient soundscapes that sound at once unfamiliar, yet warm and inviting. Jangling melodies, tribal rhythms, unusual woodwinds, beautiful gongs and warm melodies transport you to highly spiritual locations across the globe in a wave of transcendental, naturally flowing music that feels rich in mysticism and spirituality. The record feels exotic and sultry throughout, with tribal rhythms penetrating field recordings of jungles and nature.

The hypnotic nature of the entire record casts a spell over you, 26

pulling you deeper and deeper into its rich and immersive soundscapes. Expansive textures of stretched-out pads and warm synth excursions unfurl below as indigenous sounds, strange animal calls, flowing water and tangled web of intricate rhythms grow up through the forest floor and create the perfect resting place for you to take this all in and let it wash over you. Each of the six beautifully constructed tracks feels remote and isolated, like somewhere totally unexplored that explodes the senses when stumbled upon. D.K.’s most ambitious and most fully realised music to date, Eighteen Movements is a masterclass in expansive and meditative ambience and experimentalism. Tom Jones ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Clarity, Echo Chamber, Awakening

9/10

HTNOM EHT FO MUBLA

FM | ALBUM REVIEWS

Albums | Reviews DEDNEMMOCER

Oliver Patrice Weder The Pool Project SA Recordings

Almost two years after his wonderful debut album, Swiss pianist and composer Oliver Patrice Weder returns with his second album.

The Pool Project was recorded in a pool house surrounded by an evergreen oak tree forest just outside of Madrid as Weder cared for his young daughter and welcomed a new son into his life during lockdown. The result is a record that feels personal, organic and contented. Delicate

piano keys waft elegantly in the air as light woodwinds stretch out below and fuzzy, muted textures curdle around the outside.

Subtle electronic manipulations add further depth as Weder’s contemplative and meditative compositions touch on elements of jazz, ambient, modern and minimalism.

Understated, breathy vocals add a dreamy, ethereal feel that drifts in and out throughout

the album. Rich in beauty and emotion, The Pool Project captures a calm and peaceful state of mind of one of the finest modern composers around. Even before the first track ends, you feel like you are in the pool house with him and you do not want to return to the outside world. Tom Jones ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Rainbow Fish, Peter, Distant Island

8/10

Bendik Giske Cracks

Smalltown Supersound

The mesmerising second album from Norwegian saxophonist, composer, experimentalist and artist, Bendik Giske.

His distinctive, hypnotic saxophone style that brims with physicality is once again at the heart of this record. Linking minimalist, electronic, classical and experimental styles together in a hazy, spaced-out and heady concoction, Cracks takes us on a dizzying,

tripped-out journey through the subconscious. Fuzzy electronics, stretchedout pads and delicate synths drift in the background as Giske’s circular breathing takes the saxophone into spellbinding, clubby territories. Intricate and subtle rhythms weave their way into the mix at times, as reverb and echoes rebound off mesmerising sax, creating a sense of being lost in a dense labyrinth of

subterranean tunnels and unexplored paths.

Rich in emotion and atmosphere, the record moves through tension, isolation, and intimacy with ease. Cracks is as indefinable as its creator. An artist in the true sense, Giske pushes boundaries as he reshapes the performance limits of his saxophone.

Tom Jones ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Flutter, Cruising, Cracks

8/10

Llyr Biome Mesh

T

he brilliantly high concept debut album from Berlin-based producer, Gareth Williams’ Llyr project. Described as an artist who makes music and sonic ecosystems, Llyr’s debut is an exploration of natural beauty and human interference.

Constructed using a vast collection of field recordings that the producer made across the rainforests of Borneo, the record comes in two parts. The first part represents untouched nature and is made entirely from Llyr’s rainforest recordings, which are painstakingly formed without the use of drum machines, samples or synths. Bird call, monkey sounds, frogs singing, water dripping, gentle breezes and peacefully shuffling branches are at the centre of textural, ambient compositions that feel meditative and contented. The second part, exploring the impact humans have on nature, introduces synthetic elements and production techniques to the natural sounds, building a more chaotic, intense and unpredictable soundscape. Rhythms break up the natural order, synths over-power the natural surroundings and a sense of threat ensues. Biome forces us to reflect on and consider our own impact on the planet. But not just an important conversation on environmental conservationism, Biome has also charted an engaging and forward-thinking sense of musicality and pleasure. Tom Jones

ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Refuge Of Majesty, Chorus Of The Insects, Encroachment

9/10

27

Feature | The ultimate guide to digital synthesis

The ultimate guide to digital synthesis

From wavetable to FM, additive to granular; digital synth engines are having a resurgence in both hardware and plugin form. But how do all these complex-sounding setups work, and when should you reach for each variety? This issue, let’s explore all that digital synths have to offer...

Like all of history’s great rivalries, the long-fought battle between analogue and AUDIO ON digital ebbs and flows.

FILESILO Early digital synths were seen as convenient, affordable and more powerful than analogue rivals, but their ubiquity and supposed ‘cold’ sound drove many musicians back into the warm embrace of old-fashioned circuitry.

Following the affordable analogue boom of the 2010s, recent years have seen a resurgence of digital synths once again, with the likes of Korg, Modal, Waldorf and Arturia releasing sure-fire future classics that are proudly digital-by-design.

What do we mean when we say ‘digital synthesiser’? On the whole, most modern synths include at least some elements of digital technology and, obviously, the plugin market is digital from top to bottom. What we’re talking about here, however, are instruments that use synthesis 28

techniques that can only exist in the digital realm. A plugin emulation of a Minimoog such as Arturia’s Mini V, say, is technically a digital instrument, but as its approach to synthesis is based on replicating the workflow of a subtractive synthesiser built around analogue circuitry, we’d call it a virtual analogue instrument.

What we’re focussing on this issue are instrument types such as FM, additive and wavetable synths – methods of creating sound that for reasons such as stability, complexity or memory, couldn’t feasibly be replicated by a fully analogue instrument. While there are plenty of analogue purists out there who will tell you that all digital synths are just poor approximations of their analogue counterparts, in reality – as we’ll see – nothing could be further from the truth. From the glitchy samplemangling of granular synthesis to the complex timbres of FM, there are plenty of reasons to embrace the power of DSP-driven synthesis.

ESSENTIAL ADDITIVE SYNTHS Unlike FM or wavetable synthesis, additive synths haven’t yet had much of a resurgence in the hardware realm (although we think it’s about time Kawai’s ’80s classics got a revival). There are plenty of great additive plugins out-there though.

In terms of dedicated additive instruments, Native Instruments’ Razor – designed by Berlin producer Errorsmith – is a longtime favourite. Arturia’s Pigments has recently gained a powerful additive engine for version 3 too. What’s more, lots of common software synths have easily-overlooked additive capabilities. Logic’s Alchemy, Ableton Operator and Xfer Serum all have additive engines onboard, so you may well have an additive synthesiser in your arsenal without even realising it!

The ultimate guide to digital synthesis | Feature

What is additive synthesis?

>

Unlike subtractive synthesis – ie, that found on most analogue synths, where you start with a harmonically rich waveform and remove frequencies using filters – additive synthesis builds from the ground up.

It uses Fast Fourier Transform theory, which says that any audio signal, no matter how complex, can break down to a series of sine waves; you can recreate any waveform with the right combo of sine ‘building blocks’. Pile up sine waves (ie, harmonics) at related harmonic integers at different amplitudes, and you get familiar waveforms.

For example, start with a simple 100Hz sine as the fundamental frequency, then stack up more sine

waves at odd-integer harmonic intervals from the fundamental (ie, one at 300Hz, another at 500Hz) to create a basic square wave. Take that same initial 100Hz sine and add sines at odd- and even-integer multiples of the fundamental (200Hz, 300Hz, 500Hz, etc) and you’ve created a sawtooth wave.

This process of adding together so-called ‘partials’ to create more complex waveforms is the basis of additive synthesis. Things get more

timbrally interesting once you mix in additional sine waves at inharmonic intervals from the fundamental, modulate the amplitudes of these harmonics over time, alter the phase of individual sines in relation to each other, and mix in noise for more bite.

Sounds technical, but it’s essentially the same concept at work in many classic organs, where pipes or drawbars stack simple sounds, altering the instrument’s timbre.

Kawai’s K5 is an additve classic from the early days of digital synthesis

WHEN TO USE IT…

The USP of additive synthesis is that it can do a whole variety of things, but it specialises in dissonant drones, bell sounds and airy pads

If your synth has a partials editor, start by experimenting with how different arrangements sound. Randomly scattered ‘spikes’ of partials will create dissonant chime sounds. Creating ‘waves’ of partials that rise and fall across the spectrum will generate formant or vocal-like sounds. Try modulating the amplitude (level) of partials as a method for creating interesting pads.

Some synths, such as Arturia Pigments or NI’s Razor, simplify the additive creation process with tools that can arrange and modulate the distribution of partials without the need to edit everything from scratch yourself. Let’s see this in action…

>

Arturia Pigments 3’s new Harmonic engine has a user-friendly take on additive synthesis, with tools to automate distribution of partials so users needn’t draw them in by hand. This starts by dictating how many partials a sound will have, variable from 1 to 512.

>

Ratio adjusts the pitch relationship between each partial, which has a significant effect on the tonality of the sound. Parity, meanwhile, adjusts the balance of odd and even harmonics, altering the character of the waveform that’s created.

>

Pigments’ Imaging section is particularly interesting. This lets users control the spread of partials across the stereo field.

Users can split odd and even harmonics left and right (split mode), spread out clusters of partials (periodic mode) or randomise distribution.

29

Feature | The ultimate guide to digital synthesis

What is FM synthesis?

>

Frequency modulation synthesis is notoriously complicated, and for those more used to working with analoguestyle subtractive instruments, it’s easy to be put off by jargon such as ‘operators’, ‘algorithms’, ‘carriers’ and ‘modulators’. When you break the concept down to its fundamentals, however, it’s not actually as impenetrable as you may think.

The basic principles behind FM are actually common in the analogue realm. Essentially, FM involves taking a simple waveshape – typically a sine wave – and altering its timbre by modulating it. If you’ve ever used an LFO to create vibrato by applying it to an oscillator’s pitch, then you’ve encountered a basic

form of FM. The difference is that FM synths use audio-rate oscillators as opposed to the lower frequencies of an LFO. This audio-rate modulation is fairly common in the analogue realm too; synths like Arturia’s MiniBrutes, Moog DFAM or the IK UNO Synth Pro all let users create a simple form of FM by using one analogue oscillator to modulate the pitch of another.

So if FM is common to analogue synths in one form or another, why do we associate FM synthesis with digital instruments? Well, instruments that we’d typically call true ‘FM synths’ take this concept and run with it, using more complex routings as well as dedicated envelopes in order to finely adjust the relationship between each oscillator. Because of the precise,

stable tuning and complex processes required to make this work, it’s usually only possible with DSPpowered instruments.

Let’s tackle some of that jargon.

‘Operators’ are essentially FM-speak for oscillators. In classic FM synths, these are usually sine waves, and the key difference between FM operators and analogue-style oscillators is that each operator has its own amp envelope, meaning it can be individually shaped before being routed to an output or to modulate another operator.

Operators divide into categories of ‘carriers’ and ‘modulators’.

Carriers are operators routed to an output, meaning they’re heard in the finished sound, modulators are routed to modulate the pitch of a carrier, so we only hear the effect of their modulation, not an output from the modulator itself. The arrangement of these operators is controlled by something known as an ‘algorithm’, which is essentially a map indicating which operators are assigned as carriers or modulators and where each is routed.

The other key difference between operators and their analogue counterparts is that their tuning is usually labelled as a ratio. These are harmonic ratios – ie, multiplying the

incoming pitch by a certain number.

Tuning an FM operator to ‘2:1’ equates to ‘2x’ the pitch, meaning it’ll be an octave above an operator tuned to ‘1’. An operator tuned to 3:1 will be pitched an octave and a fifth above the original note; 4:1 gives you two octaves, and 5:1 gives you two octaves and a third.

These ratios, combined with the individual envelopes, are key to FM sound design. Modulate a carrier tuned to 1:1 by a modulator with a higher ratio and hear it add high frequency harmonic content. Use the modulator’s envelope to introduce a slow fading attack or short decay, to hear how this creates changes to the sound over time.

WHEN TO USE IT…

FM synthesis is often associated with metallic or ‘glassy’ sounds: eerie pads, bells and mallets. It’s great for bass too – the stability and wide-tuning range of FM synths mean they can create seriously powerful low end. It’s an underrated tool for percussion too though. The fact that each operator has its own envelope gives lots of control over the attack and decay elements of percussive sounds, which can be great for creating kicks, hats or metallic perc tones.

THREE GREAT FM SYNTHS

Once seen as a relic of ’80s synth design, FM is back in fashion for both hardware and software

This setup we’ve described above is essentially that of Yamaha’s DX7 – probably the best known FM synth of all time, and the one that brought the concept to mass market attention.

Its 6-operator, 32 algorithm design is essentially the blueprint used as the core of most FM synths today. Modern hardware and software often builds on these ideas though. Common enhancements include the ability to add more operators, change the operator waveshape or

Elektron Digitone

While its FM engine has only four operators, Digitone is fully multi-timbral, so can create four distinct FM voices at once. It’s paired with a creative step sequencer, which is great for inspiring patterns and lines. We particularly like Digitone for FM drum programming.

30

even – as in the case of things like Korg Opsix or Kilohearts Phase Plant – use alternative forms of modulation synthesis such as ring mod, phase distortion or wavefolding.

The DX7 was notoriously difficult to program too. Thankfully, the new wave of FM synths that have emerged in recent years are far more user-friendly, allowing musicians to get hands-on for live tweaking and performance.

Tracktion F.’em!

For a long time Native Instruments’ FM8 (and before that FM7) was the king of virtual FM synths. Tracktion’s recent release looks set to take that crown though, with a complex but well-organised FM engine combined with virtual analogue and sampled elements.

Korg Opsix

Opsix is easily the most intuitive hardware FM synth we’ve tried. Its sliders make blending and editing operators remarkably tactile. It goes beyond the classic DX7 format though with multiple modulation modes, such as ring mod, filter mod and wavefolding.

The ultimate guide to digital synthesis | Feature

The basics of FM Let’s run through the basic

elements of FM sound generation. We’ll use Tracktion’s dedicated FM plugin F.’em! But these principles are shared by any FM synth, including free DX7 emulation Dexed

01 >

FM synth oscs are called ‘operators’: a simple sound generator with tuning controls and amp envelope.

Operators can be carriers, routed to the output, or modulators, routed to modulate a carrier, so we hear its effect on the carrier, not the operator itself. Operators can also be routed to the output and a carrier at once.

02 >

Routing of operators is handled either by an ‘algorithm’ – a preset selection of routing configurations – or a matrix, which let users assign routings freely. Try a single carrier and modulator, then add more. Even if an algorithm uses all of a synth’s operators, you can turn off or reduce the level of those you don’t require.

03 >

Operator pitch is a ratio. Above 1.00 multiplies the root pitch (for a higher pitch), and below 1.00 divides the pitch (for a lower note). Set your carrier to 1.00 and try modulating it with higher/lower pitched operators to hear the effect. Operators have a fine/freq tuning parameter, letting you adjust tuning by Hz and deviate from neat multiples of the base pitch, for detune effects.

04 >

Adjusting the amp envelope of a modulator lets us create changes to a sound over time. Try modulating your carrier with an operator with a high ratio (maybe 6:00), and set the modulator’s envelope to have an immediate attack and short decay. The result adds a percussive ‘attack’ element to the main sound.

05

To take things further, try using another operator to modulate an existing modulator.

This can add further harmonic complexity and change the relationship between operators over time. FM synths allow feedback too – this lets an operator modulate itself. In practice this has the effect of turning a simple sine into a saw wave.

POWER TIP

It can be tempting to try and use all your operators in any patch, but it’s often unnecessary. Many modern FM synths let you use complex waveforms for operators as well as simple sines. In this case, you may only need subtle modulation to create something interesting.

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Feature | The ultimate guide to digital synthesis

What is granular synthesis?

>

Like wavetable synthesis, granular has samples at its heart. Granular synthesis is, broadly, the opposite of wavetable synthesis though – where a wavetable synth builds on the capabilities of a sampler by stacking multiple waveforms and morphing between them, granular synthesis breaks a sample into pieces, creating additional scope from a sampled sound by dividing it, not multiplying.

It uses the same principle used to power the timestretching capabilities found in most DAWs by looping miniscule elements of an audio file, known as grains, allowing each to be sustained without altering the pitch.

What granular and wavetable synthesis have in common though is

that both come to life with a little modulation and variation. In the case of granular synthesis, this usually involves modulating the position, length or pitch of grains to add variety to a patch. The results created will, naturally, depend on the source material used, but with a sample with plenty of timbral variety, the results can be ethereal or glitchy. One common technique is to play back multiple grains of a source sample at once, creating a ‘grain cloud’ effect,

so called because of the ‘fluffy’, ambient tones that can be achieved.

Randomisation is a common tool found in granular synths. Whereas wavetable synths tend to work best with smooth modulation that ‘morphs’ the sound from one table to another, granular synths can create earcatching effects using both subtle and overt randomisation. This can be a great way to create sounds that change in an unpredictable and unusual manner.

GREAT GRANULAR SYNTHS

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Granular synthesis has found particular popularity with modular users, likely due to its usefulness for resampling existing sounds, plus how well it works with modulation sources and randomisation. Mutable Instruments’ Beads – a successor to their popular Clouds module – is one of the best granular Eurorack devices. Make Noise Morphagene and Qu-Bit Nebulae are excellent too though.

Logic Pro’s Alchemy (originally launched by Camel Audio) can do granular, additive and more

WHEN TO USE IT…

Granular synthesis is one of the most overtly digital approaches out there.

In that sense, it excels at the creation of complex, otherworldly sounds that are a world away from the fuzzy warmth of analogue As a sample-focussed approach, granular synthesis is heavily influenced by the source sound used. Most dedicated granular synths will come stocked with an appropriate library of source sounds, but we’d highly recommend exploring your own collection. Vocal samples are a staple source for granular experimentation. Try loading up an acapella (or short recording of your own voice) and experiment with creating droning, choir-like pads. Alternatively, as is a common approach in the modular realm, try using a granular tool to resample and deconstruct another instrument, such as a classic analogue synth or even a drum machine.

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Position A granular synth’s ‘position’ parameter

dictates where, in the sample, the looped grain is taken from. Sweeping or modulating this adds variety to a sound.

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>

SizeAdjusting the size of a granular loop is

another way to create ear-catching, glitchy effects. Decreasing the length can create sounds that ‘ramp’ up as they become harsher and more atonal.

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Density A density control defines how many grains

will be played back at once. Increasing this can create ambient ‘grain cloud’ effects.

Many synths offer options to spread these out across the stereo field.

On the plugin front, granular capabilities can be found in a host of popular plugins. Logic users can make use of the DAW’s stock synth Alchemy, while Live Suite owners can use the Max-powered Granulator II, and Reason users get the excellent Grain device. Arturia Pigments and Kilohearts Phase Plant both pack granular capabilities. For a dedicated instrument, meanwhile, check out Audio Damage’s Quanta.

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Feature | The ultimate guide to digital synthesis

What is wavetable synthesis?

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Wavetable synthesis is nothing new; it first appeared in the hardware realm in the early ’80s with the launch of Wolfgang Palm’s PPG Wave, later followed by a string of influential hardware synths created by PPG successors Waldorf. It has really come to the fore in the 21st century though, becoming almost the de facto synthesis method for modern plugins.

Native Instruments’ 2007 Massive is the synth responsible for the modern wavetable boom. Its powerful, versatile sound and copious modulation options defined the growling, frequency-filling sound of modern DnB and American EDM. Its popularity has inspired no shortage of evolutions, the most notable being Xfer Records’ Serum, but wavetable

oscillators are also a key part of Arturia Pigments, Kilohearts Phase Plant, Bitwig’s Polymer, Ableton Wavetable and KV331 SynthMaster, to name a few. In hardware we have ASM’s fantastic Hydrasynth, Modal’s Argon8 and Waldorf’s Quantum.

Wavetable synths are essentially a form of sample-based synthesis, using a recorded sound as the primary source for each oscillator.

What makes wavetables different from a straightforward sampler is the ability to morph or evolve that sampled sound. This is possible because wavetables aren’t just a single static sample, but actually a stack of individual waveforms called ‘subtables’ or, more commonly, ‘frames’. Wavetables can contain up to 256 of these frames, and a wavetable synth will always offer

some method for the user to move through these, often in the form of LFO or envelope modulation or a manual ‘morph’ control.

Without movement or modulation, a wavetable synth is effectively no different than a sample-based synth that reads a single cycle waveform.

However, the stacked frames of a wavetable allow it to transform from one wave shape to another as you play. In analogue terms, that could mean having an osc that morphs from a saw wave at one end of a wavetable to a square at the other. In creative terms it lets users incorporate textural elements such as rain or static noise, or capture the inconsistencies that come from an acoustic instrument.

The key differences between wavetable synths lies in the methods used to play back and modulate the

wavetables themselves. Massive successor, Massive X, for example, features ten different playback modes that each read, filter and modulate the wavetable differently.

Beyond the oscillators, wavetable synths tend to adhere to classic subtractive synth structure, using filters, an envelope-controlled amp and onboard effects. Due to the emphasis on movement though, wavetable synths tend to come with extra modulation options, certainly including LFOs and envelopes, often joined by more complex sequencers and modulation generators.

WHEN TO USE IT…

Wavetable engine popularity in the plugin realm is due to their versatility.

As with a sampler, you can effectively make a wavetable osc sound however you want. Unlike standard samplers though, wavetables can sound more natural or varied as you’re not simply playing the same recorded sound each time you trigger a note.

They’re great for pads and atmospheric patches, adding interest to longer, droning sounds. Wavetables are great for impersonating vintage synths and acoustic instruments too; they can replicate the natural variety inherent in both analogue oscillators and real instruments.

THREE GREAT WAVETABLE SYNTHS

Wavetable synths are now everywhere, in hardware and plugin form For much of the past two decades, the wavetable synth sphere has been dominated by two all-conquering plugins – first Native Instruments Massive, then Xfer Records Serum. Both are a little past their prime now. Massive has been superseded by a follow up, Massive X, while countless imitators and rivals have built on the ideas popularised in Serum in recent years, often offering a more modern look and workflow to boot.

ASM Hydrasynth

There are many great hardware wavetable synths hitting the market, but Hydrasynth is one of the most interesting. Rather than giving preset wavetables, it allows the creation of custom morphing tables selected from a list of 200+ single cycle waves: very fun to use.

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There’s still something to be said for these modern classics though. While the interfaces look a little dated, both Massive and Serum are still more than capable of creating a huge range of cutting edge sounds. Serum in particular still boasts a number of features that have added to its longevity, primarily its flexibility when it comes to uploading and editing your own wavetable sources (users can even upload .png image files).

NI Massive X

Massive X remains somewhat divisive among fans of the original, but its multitude of unique playback modes and semi-modular routing push wavetable synthesis forward in new ways. Undeniably characterful, even if that does mean it lacks the intuitiveness of the original.

Korg Modwave

The latest Korg digital synth revival hits our test bench on p86. Its wavetable oscs have 30+ modifiers, 13 types of morphing process, plus the ability to blend between two independent wavetables. Among the most comprehensive hardware wavetable power around.

The ultimate guide to digital synthesis | Feature

Modulating wavetables Morphing and modulating

wavetable oscillators is key to adding movement and variety to sounds. Let’s see how a few different synths approach this…

01 >

Ableton Wavetable is a fairly straightforward example. It has both LFOs and ADSR envelopes, either of which can be routed to wavetable position in the mod matrix.

Here the envelopes can function in looped mode though, allowing them to act like custom LFOs.

02 >

04 >

Korg Modwave is interesting as it lets users blend two wavetables – rather than simply crossfading, this actually combines characteristics of the two tables resulting in new waveforms in between. Its modifiers also let users do things like isolate just the odd or even harmonics of a wavetable, or apply vintage filters.

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Native Instruments’ Massive X is one of the most complex wavetable synths out there. It has ten modes which each ‘read’ the wavetable oscillators differently.

Formant capture, for example, mimics the qualities of a human voice, while Art mode uses hard-sync to replicate the sound of a resonant filter.

Xfer Serum’s breakpoint LFOs are based on the LFOTool volume-shaping effect. Select a traditional LFO shape from the presets, or add/remove breakpoints and bend the curves to dial in complex modulation shapes.

03 >

U-He Hive 2 is a particularly user-friendly wavetable synth. Its automated modes will scan through or loop frames without the need for modulation routings. It boasts a unique ‘2D’ mode too though, which arranges frames in an X/Y configuration and scans through in two directions at once.

POWER TIP

Many wavetable synths have some form of ‘smooth’ parameter, adjusting how abruptly the oscillator moves between frames. Smoother transitions sound more natural and realistic, but abrupt, stepped changes can create cool glitchy effects.

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Feature | The ultimate guide to digital synthesis

The hybrid approach Although, in this feature, we’ve been discussing different synthesis types as distinct from one another, in reality it’s rare to find a digital synth in 2021 that doesn’t blend multiple approaches to some extent. In the plugin sphere, modern ‘power synths’ tend to offer a variety of engine types as standard. Look at Arturia Pigments, Kilohearts Phase Plant, Apple Alchemy, UVI Falcon or Spectrasonics Omnisphere, to name but a few; all are capable of using at least two or three of the different techniques highlighted in this feature, and allow users to combine and blend approaches for even more sonic variety. In hardware too, even instruments that focus primarily on one type of synthesis, such as the Digitone, Opsix or Wavestate, all incorporate elements of virtual analogue design that deviate from first-generation digital synths. Increasingly common too are instruments that blend authentic analogue with digital sound generation, like Korg’s Minilogue XD, Novation’s Peak/Summit or UDO’s excellent Super 6.

SAMPLE SYNTHESIS

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While wavetable and granular synthesis present a more creative take on sample-based synthesis, straightforward sampling remains a powerful tool for sound creation. In both hardware and software, there are countless instruments that make good use of sample engines, from Sequential’s Prophet X to Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere. Sampling, in a synth context, needn’t be a case of simply

playing back a static recorded oscillator. By looping, stretching and modulating a source sample it’s possible to generate all sorts of tones. Many ‘power synths’ make use of extensive multisample libraries too, where variations of a sound are used for different notes, velocity levels or in a ‘round robin’ arrangement to add inherent variety and make the sampled instrument sound more authentic.

VECTOR SYNTHESIS

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Another synthesis type synonymous with Korg’s Wavestation (and Wavestate), although Vector synthesis was first created by Sequential Circuits for the Prophet VS. The concept is fairly simple – four sounds can be assigned to the opposing points of an X/Y axis, and users crossfade between these by selecting any position on the ‘vector plane’ between them. Typically, this is 36

done by using a hardware joystick, but in many cases LFOs or envelopes can also be used. How each of the four sounds themselves is created differs per instrument – the Prophet VS used four wavetable sources, Yamaha’s SY synths offered a choice of sample and FM sounds, while the Wavestation (and Wavestate) allow full wave sequences to be assigned to each point.

WAVE SEQUENCING

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Wave Sequencing is a type of sound generation that first appeared in Korg’s ’90s classic Wavestation, and was recently revived as Wave Sequencing 2.0 for last year’s Wavestate. It’s broadly similar to wavetable synthesis, making use of multiple samples to create an evolving sound.

However, where wavetable synths stack frames and modulate the transition between them, here

sampled waves are placed into a sequence, each with its own pitch and duration settings. These waves could have entirely disparate timbral qualities – a piano sequenced with a synth tone and percussion hit, for example. The Wavestate takes this concept further, with individual sequencer lanes for samples and playback parameters, which allows for the creation of complex polyrhythmic movement.

PHASE DISTORTION

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Phase Distortion was developed by Casio in the 1980s as a rival approach to Yamaha’s FM synthesis. It works by rapidly altering the phase of an oscillator – ie the position within the wave cycle. Put in ridiculously overly simplified terms, it’s a little like cutting and pasting elements of a simple waveform in order to shape a more complex one.

Creating a new version by

compressing or stretching elements of that existing waveform. Casio’s much loved CZ synths also added in a hard sync effect that allowed the oscillators to emulate the squelch of a resonant filter. Phase distortion ultimately lost the popularity war to FM, but you can still find CZ-inspired plugins such as VirtualCZ, Arturia CZ V or KiloHearts Phase Plant.

In The Studio With | Mano Le Tough

Mano Le Tough For his third Mano Le Tough album, Niall Mannion revisited his band-playing days, recording live instruments at his home studio.

Danny Turner found out more

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A

Mano Le Tough | In The Studio With

s Mano Le Tough, Irish-born Niall Mannion garnered immediate critical acclaim for his debut album Changing Days (2013) – a melodic, genre-hopping blend of modern disco and atmospheric house. Following his second album, Trails, and almost a decade living in Berlin, the guarded yet increasingly sought-after producer/DJ upped sticks to seek solace in the serene, rolling hills of Meilen near Zurich.

Stuck at home over the past 14 months and looking for creative impetus, Mannion returned to his formative years spent playing in post-punk/indie bands. Picking up his instruments once more, his third Mano Le Tough album, At The Moment, is a melancholy yet cautiously optimistic collection of expressive vocal pop, containing slithers of the dance culture he’d been forced to abandon.

When did you move to Zurich and is that a good base for an electronic musician?

“I moved here around five years ago after living in Berlin for eight years before that, so it was a bit of a change. Obviously Zurich isn’t the electronic music mecca that Berlin is, but that suited me at the time.

If you travel a lot there’s few better places to travel from, and up until Covid times I was travelling every weekend.”

It sounds like you took the opportunity to make this album while the pandemic was raging. Has the time spent recording at home been useful from that perspective at least?

“Yes it has been because I’d wanted to make a new album but that process was getting interrupted every year by being on the road too much. This time, although it was extremely difficult for many reasons, being at home gave me the chance to work properly on the record and finish it. I’d been gathering material for quite a while. A couple of tracks survived from those original demos, but most were made starting February and March 2020.”

Would it be fair to say that working from home while raising a young family presented some ‘logistical’ challenges?

“Kind of – I do get interrupted quite a lot. I’ll be recording vocals and all of a sudden a child comes crashing in so it’s a little bit difficult to get the takes right [laughs]. If my wife’s out with the kids I can concentrate, otherwise I work when they go to bed.

My eldest is four and my youngest is a year and a half, so for them it’s completely normal to have a studio full of gear to bash away on, but only time will tell if they have an interest in all that stuff.”

The dance music references seem a little lighter on At The Moment. Is this the pop

album you’ve always wanted to write?

“I just felt a lot freer in terms of not thinking in a club context when it came to arrangements and BPM ranges. In the past, my records have always had one foot in the dance world while also trying to express myself. This time, I didn’t want to put myself under any constraints.”

It’s upbeat, but quite melancholy. Does that reflect the mood of the times?

“There are some tracks that directly reference what’s been going on in terms of the whole pandemic situation. It’s the first existential crisis that I’ve experienced where most of the things I took for granted were completely turned upside down. That’s reflected in a few of the tracks but I wouldn’t say the album is overtly melancholic; there are still some hopeful bits. Everything I write is about something I’ve experienced, but the creative element of making music is definitely about creating a space where I can escape from whatever’s going on.”

What was your experience writing more pop-oriented songs and how has everything that’s been happening fed your temperament?

“I need to be stimulated to have something to write about, so I find that when things aren’t going great or there’s a problem I’m forced to create more. If everything’s going well, I’ll still go into the studio but definitely won’t feel the need to write as much and I think that’s quite common for most musicians. In terms of the songs being more pop-oriented, the tracks may have a pop structure but a lot of the sound is dependent on where I’m coming from artistically these days. With commercial pop music there are 20 songwriters working on a project and it’s done in a very clinical way, but that’s very different when it’s coming from one voice.”

Did you find lots of past influences seeping into the music this time?

“I felt that I was going full circle back to the music I grew up with, but filtering it through the lens of my electronic music or DJ career. A lot of it’s got that post-punk/indie vibe going on using dance music sounds, but the idea wasn’t to overtly reference anything and I probably don’t even recognise when I’m doing that. I wouldn’t say it’s a change in direction, just the logical next step. For me, all the music I make inhibits the same world. I suppose there’s been a bit of a creative rebirth – I’ve felt much more inspired over the past two years in terms of how I think about music.”

The most notable change is that the album’s a lot more acoustic-driven…

“I played quite a lot guitar and bass on the record before mixing in the more synthetic elements.

Before I was making electronic music I started off by playing instruments in bands, so I went back to that.

I’m a much better guitar player than I am a keyboard player and found that I can express myself better playing guitar than keyboards so I thought it would be a good idea to use that technique a bit more. I played quite a lot of classical guitar, just to 39

In The Studio With | Mano Le Tough get different timbres into the sound. I’ve got a Hanika and a couple of electric guitars, including a Fender Telecaster and a jazz bass, so they’re all over the record. I also have a violin, which belonged to my wife from when she was a child. I managed to generate a few sounds out of that because she’s not a great violin player, unfortunately.”

the computer and programming drums, so I didn’t really change that or write as a singer/songwriter would by using chords or taking a verse, chorus, verse, chorus approach. I’d make loops,start layering the guitars and synths and develop the tunes from there. There are still beats on pretty much all of the tracks, though they’re not always prominent.”

pretty good recording playing acoustic instruments at home. I’ll typically record the guitars through a small Fender Super Champ and have that running through a channel on my Studer 963 mixing console and into my soundcard. I also used the Roland RE-201 Space Echo a lot when recording guitar because that sounds pretty decent.”

Have you found that your songwriting style has changed to complement the tools that you’re now using?

“The process tended to change on every track, but I guess the process was still similar to how I made dance records. Typically, I’ll start by making loops in

How have you found recording live instruments in a home environment?

“The room’s quite insulated from the outside. There are a lot of windows, but I don’t get a huge amount of background noise and the room’s semi-treated so it’s not completely dead. These days you can get a

What’s your vocal setup?

“For most of the vocals I used a Neumann U67 and had that running into the Studer. I’ve got a UAD LA2A clone and a Warm Audio WA73 preamp, which is a clone of the classic Neve 1073, so I’d often run the Neumann through those and go straight into the soundcard.”

“If I can get one or two good tracks out of each synth then they pay for themselves”

Was it a challenge mixing the acoustic and electronic elements, especially as the tracks often interchange between the two?

“The mixing process was more of a challenge than the recording because a lot of the tunes were different sound-wise, but somehow it all glued together. I pretty much mix as I go, which I think is a common way to work now that we have everything at our fingertips. I might tune stuff or do a bit more EQ and compression while I’m mixing, but I’d definitely be doing a lot of that while I was recording the tunes too. Mastering was done by Hans-Philipp Graf at Deinklang who does all of the Pampa and DJ Koze records. Thankfully, my masters were pretty good so I didn’t have any big issues with that.”

You seem to favour a circular gear setup – surrounding yourself with instruments that are all in easy reach.

“It’s as ergonomic as possible. I’m not megaorganised but I do need to feel connected to my gear, so I like to have all of it around me purely to enable my creativity and not have to think about what I’m using so that I don’t have to mess around when I want to record. I also prefer playing stuff because that’s the way I tend to write music. I have a piano in the kitchen and very often I’ll have a play on that to start off some song ideas before playing them on the synths in the studio.”

At first we thought you had the Yamaha CS-80, but it’s actually the CS-60?

“The CS-60 didn’t feature that much on this record because it’s a pretty recent acquisition, but I’ve been keeping my eye out for years for either a CS-60 or a CS-80 because I love all the old polysynths. The Yamaha synths were top of my list and I found a CS-60 in Switzerland that had been in some guy’s attic for 25 years. It’s in pretty much pristine condition and it’s an amazingly expressive instrument. Like the CS-80, it’s really well laid-out and got the ribbon controller and a ring modulator.

Although the aftertouch is monophonic rather than polyphonic, it’s still an awesome synth.”

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Is the CS-60 responsible for that lovely, evocative keyboard sound on Fado Fado?

“No, that’s the Korg Trident MkII, which is another classic polysynth from around 1982. I got it in

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Mano Le Tough | In The Studio With

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In The Studio With | Mano Le Tough

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Mano Le Tough | In The Studio With NIALL’S ESSENTIAL GEAR

Yamaha CS-60

“My favourite new synth. It’s 44 years old and spent most of its life in a Swiss attic, but it’s an incredibly expressive instrument and hard to get a bad sound out of.”

Studer 963 Mixing Console Korg Trident MkII

“I use this mostly for strings and it has a built-in flanger and vibrato that make it really unique. I made the lead sound from Pompeii on the new album with it.”

Roland RE-201 Space Echo Moog Voyager XL

“My go-to mono synth that’s been on almost all of my records. Has that classic Moog sound but with some more modern capabilities.”

Yamaha Reface CS Roland Jupiter-8

“Classic poly beast from the ‘80s. A really versatile instrument and great for sequenced bass lines, pads and leads etc.”

Make Noise Shared System

“It’s such an innovative and perplexing instrument, but it’s really great for making weird noises!”

Neumann U67 Nord Drum Vermona DRM1 MKIII

Zurich from a second hand website. In some ways it’s a bit limited compared to the CS-60, but it has loads of vibrato, chorus effects and synth, brass and string sections that can be blended together or separated out across three channels on a desk. The delay, vibrato and flanger give it a really different character to all my other synths and it’s especially good for organ sounds. There’s a track on the album called Pompei where I used the Trident for the warbling lead sound.”

You also have the Roland Jupiter-8 polysynth?

“The Jupiter-8’s incredible. I bought that years ago when I was in Berlin and use it quite a lot for chords, but one of the first synths I bought was the Moog Voyager XL and I still use that for all the basslines and sequences, so it’s probably the synth that I know the best out of all of them.”

You’re a bit of a polysynth hobbyist…

“It’s definitely an expensive hobby but if I can get one or two good tracks out of each synth then they kind of pay for themselves. They go up in value too, so you don’t feel you’re just throwing your money away. But I’m trying to take a break from buying gear at the moment because I’ve bought quite a lot over the last couple of years and I think it’s best to just learn them a bit better. At least that’s what I usually say and then I ended up buying the CS-60.”

How does the Deckard’s Dream 8-Voice analogue synth – itself an emulation of the CS-80 – compare to the CS-60?

“The Deckard’s Dream is great, but the CS-60 is from a different era. Athough they sound similar, the CS-60 is a different beast. It was built in 1977 so it’s absolutely gigantic and weighs around 120kg, which means it’s not the most convenient instrument but there’s been no expense spared. The Deckard’s Dream is an amazing module but you can hold it in one hand, which makes more sense for how people work nowadays. I’ll usually just program a MIDI sequence and run it through the Deckard’s Dream, so I don’t really use it so much for playing, but it sounds really good and it’s one of my favourites.”

You seem to like putting your synths though various pedals?

“You can put a delay on any instrument and I find they’re especially good for synth bass and lead lines.

I usually interchange between using the Strymon Big Sky and the TimeLine because a bit of delay just brings the sound to life a little bit more, then I’ll run them through the Studer console. I actually wanted to buy one of the smaller Studers like the 962, which is a more portable version, but the 963 console is really common in radio stations. It’s got an unbelievably high fidelity, which makes everything sound very clean and I found this one for a really low price in Switzerland even though it takes up half the room.”

Is it easy to source gear in Switzerland?

“There are a few second-hand websites and I’m always keeping an eye out for certain synths. I 43

In The Studio With | Mano Le Tough bought the Trident off a guy who had a huge collection of polysynths from the ’80s – basically all of them [laughs]. It had definitely been in a smoker’s studio though – it’s the smokiest synth I’ve ever bought. It’s got cigarette burns and smelt a bit when I got it, but I’ve got used to that now.”

Some producers are afraid to chuck out gear, are you one of those?

“There’s certain gear that I know really well and always rely on for certain sounds, but sometimes you’ll get inspiration from a device that’s been sitting in a corner for six months, so every time I think I should get rid of gear I usually remind myself that just by changing stuff around I’ll find new inspiration. Recently, I’ve given away gear or let my friends have some for a while because there’s definitely a danger of having too much stuff that ends up just sitting there.”

You have plenty of great analogue synths but seem reticent to use modular to build sounds from the ground up?

“I do have one module – the Make Noise Shared System, but the Make Noise stuff’s very complicated and not very intuitive. I’ve been mostly using it for sound effects and weird stuff, routing sounds through the Erbe-Verb and the delay. I haven’t delved too deeply into modular gear as the way I make music the song always comes first and with modular the system guides you more than you’re guiding it, so it’s just a different way of working.”

What can you tell us about the Yamaha reface CS Synthesiser, which is a revival of the Yamaha Control Synthesiser series?

“I learned about the instrument from Floating Points after I saw an interview he did where he said he was using it in his live sets. It’s a very simple polysynth that’s super-easy to use and convenient, and because it’s small it can just sit on my desk next to my track pad and keyboard. You can plug in a USB stick, programme stuff really easily and it sounds really good. I use it a lot for writing ideas and it’s definitely a device people should consider if they want to get some bang for their buck.”

What are you using for beat creation?

“I have the Nord Drum 2 and play that alongside the Nord Pad, which gives you six different sounds on the pads and you can play them with sticks. I used them a lot on this record for percussion and the Nord Drum is really good because you can programme your own stuff and it sounds very unusual compared to most drum machines, especially its bell tones and tuned percussion sounds. I record all the hi-hats and snares acoustically, but I also have Superior Drummer 3, which is a sample-based drum library. Up to then, I found that I’d never really used drum samples before, but it has some amazing sounds in it. I also have a Vermona DRM1 MKIII analogue module, which I use a lot for creating some of the weirder and more synthetic drum sounds.”

Are you generally using an auxiliary bus for your drum compression?

“I use the Stam Audio SA4000 MK2 as my bus compressor for drums. It’s a lovely bus compressor but I also like to use plugins and compare them, and if you compare it to the UAD SSL bus compressor it’s very difficult to tell them apart. The Stam has a

transformer button you can press, which makes it sound a bit more like an API and gives it a slightly different kind of flavour, but the difference is pretty much indistinguishable. UAD have really nailed it. I have three of their soundcards linked together and they’re pretty much the bedrock of my I/O system.”

What path have you taken when it comes to software sequencing?

“I used Fruity Loops for a while and messed around with Cubase, but the first time I got Ableton Live was a mind blowing experience because I found it so intuitive and could make tracks from start to finish.

That hasn’t always been the case with Ableton because people have definitely had issues with it in the past, but sound-wise it’s improved a lot over the last few years. The latest version sounds just as good as Logic or any other DAW.” In the absence of DJing, have you decided whether you’ve missed it or did you view it more as a necessary evil?

“Although I’m predominantly a music producer, I really love DJing and it’s definitely something I’m passionate about. There’s just something about the visceral, immediate feedback that you get when you’re DJing that I really miss because it’s a real-life experience. Being in the studio and working on music is great and you get to express yourself, but there’s something about being around other people that makes a massive difference. To be honest, last year I tried not to think about DJing too much because I didn’t want to get into a mind-set of missing it too much, but now I’m really looking forward to getting back to it.”

Have you been keeping your hand in and practising on your home setup?

“Having worked on the record for months I’ve been practising more with my DJ setup recently. The first time I started playing again I felt like I’d maybe forgotten how to do it for the first 20 minutes, but it all came back pretty fast. I’m playing in the Netherlands next week and then I go to the US later in July and have more bookings for the next few months. Whether they all happen remains to be seen, but it seems like it’s slowly starting up again.”

Do you have any intention of performing At The Moment in a live band environment?

“I have one live show booked for next year, which will be my live show debut, but it’s still in development. As mentioned, I came from playing in live bands growing up and loved the experience of interacting with other musicians, so there’s a good chance the shows will be like that.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Mano Le Tough’s forthcoming album At The Moment is released 20 August on Pampa Records. For more information, visit manoletough.com 44

FM | THE TRACK

Rhode & Brown Wave 200

Permanent Vacation, 2021

The Munich-based, synth-loving duo of Friedrich Trede and Stephan Braun, AKA Rhode & Brown, have recently released their first album Everything in Motion, a genre-hopping affair that touches on VIDEO ON everything from old-school electro and synth pop to FILESILO breakbeat trance and ambience. We asked how they made the ’80s-inspired Wave 200…

tehcreH nimajneB ©

It seems like you guys are very strongly influenced by the 1980s?

FT: “Yeah, a lot of stuff we have in our vinyl collections at home is from the ’70s onwards, I’d say. But yes, on the album there were a lot of influences from the ’80s, probably more than before.”

It seems as if electro and Italo disco were two particularly important influences.

46

FT: “Yes, especially the Italo vibes are clearly there, definitely. But it’s not just classic Italo stuff, also there are synth pop influence and some more ravey stuff that inspired us on some tracks.”

In the video you use an Akai MPC to kick off the track by triggering one-shot drum machine samples. Is that how you’ll generally use it in your productions?

FT: “When we first bought it, we used it more for ‘classic’ sampling, with more musical samples. The earlier stuff we did, with more samples in it, came from the MPC. But in the last two years we used it more as a drum machine, and also as a sequencer, which we never did before. We use it to jam around and sequence our synths, which is pretty fun. It’s not really like we do a complete track inside of it, but it’s a great starting point.”

Where do your drum samples come from?

FT: “We have a massive folder of all kinds of samples that we gathered over the last 10 years, and at some point we put parts of them on the MPC. Now they’re on there we have no idea where they came from! But also it’s great, because every time we turn on the MPC, we’re surprised by what’s on there. Like, “where did we get that from?” On the computer you can see the sample source folder or the name of it, but the MPC1000 has this super small

tehcreH nimajneB ©

Rhode & Brown | The Track

“To be honest, we are super shy with how we test tracks out, we don’t play our own stuff that much. I don’t know why, maybe it changes after the lockdown, because we have done so much new stuff for the album and we could never play it to a crowd.”

screen and you can’t really tell where the sample is from. So, you use samples without thinking too much where they came from. But yeah, it’s a big mixture of a lot of sources I’d say.”

SB: “There’s one sample pack we can recommend a lot, Samples From Mars.”

FT: “Oh yeah. That’s for sure. Like lately we use a lot of the Samples From Mars stuff because for the classic drum machines, they did a good job of recording them properly. Of course, there are tons of 808, 909 samples around the web, but I think these ones are the best we ever used. Also they produced these racks that you can use, with all the parameters already set to release, decay and all that stuff. They sampled them through a SP-1200, I guess, so some of them are super raw, but they sound great.”

You guys DJ, but created that album during lockdown. Was it difficult not being able to test tracks out on the dancefloor?

FT: “To be honest, we are super shy with how we test tracks out, we don’t play our own stuff that much. I don’t know why, maybe it changes after the lockdown, because we have done so much new stuff for the album and we could never play it to a crowd.”

You mention you tend to get your tracks mixed down by engineers, how come you prefer that to mixing them yourselves?

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The Track | Rhode & Brown

THE GEAR Hardware:

> Apple MacBook Pro > RME Fireface UFX > Genelec 8050B x2 > Akai MPC1000 > Roland Juno-106

Software:

> Ableton Live > Wavesfactory Trackspacer > FabFilter, Korg and Soundtoys plugins

FT: “For the first years we thought we had to do everything on our own, but at some point, I think it was the Wave 100 EP that we put out on our own label, we had this one track where we couldn’t get the mixdown to the point where we were happy with it.

“It was the first time we tried using someone who has fresh ears and a more professional background only in mixing. That was the turning point where we said, ‘there’s the creative part of producing the music, and then there’s this whole next level of the mixdown, which doesn’t particularly have anything to do with our creative process.’ It was this ‘aha’ moment for us, that it’s OK to give it to someone else who has a day job only doing that, so we can focus on the creative process. Then you can be sure that the finished product sounds good on every sound system. That’s worth a lot.

“That was also sometimes a reason why maybe we didn’t play a track in the club, as we thought perhaps it doesn’t sound so good in comparison to the track before. It’s like a new freedom, because now we can focus on just the production and the creativity.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Everything in Motion is out now on Permanent Vacation 48

Rhode & Brown | The Track

Creating Wave 200’s ’80s hardware bounce Friedrich and Stephan use the

Juno-106 alongside contemporary software effects

03 >

“Then we band-passed it with EQ Eight, we just cut out some of the low end, because it was heavy in the lows, and some of the highs that we didn’t need,” Friedrich continues.

“We also automated the Auto Filter in low-pass mode, just to fade it out before the break,” adds Stephan.

01 >

Originally the bassline for Wave 200 was created in software. “I made the bassline in lockdown with a Roland Juno-60 emulation, TAL Software U-No-LX, as I didn’t have synths at home,” explains Stephan. “After the lockdown, we went back to the studio and we decided to rebuild the bassline with a real Juno.”

04

“We have this neat little tool, Wavesfactory Trackspacer, which we used like a side-chain compressor, except it only ducks certain frequencies,” reveals Friedrich. “So in this case we only wanted to side-chain the low frequencies of the bass, up to around 100Hz, and the rest stays as it is.”

02 >

“When we replaced the bassline with one from our Roland Juno-106, we really felt it took it to the next level, especially because of the really nice Juno chorus, which sounds pretty dope!” says Friedrich. “One thing we did was use the Utility to put the frequencies up to 120Hz in mono, as the chorus spreads the sound in the stereo field.”

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

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

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

Joal, Eighty Four The hardware-loving producer recreates his typical workflow

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

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FM | PRODUCER’S GUIDE

NI Guitar Rig Pro 6

Discover the new gear and sonic possibilities in Native Instruments’ one-stop shop for amp and pedal simulation With the history of amplifiers spanning nearly 100 years, nowadays there are AUDIO ON more ways to send an FILESILO electrical signal from a guitar pickup rattling through a loudspeaker than you can shake a six-stringed stick at. Tube, solid state, modeling, hybrid; heads, cabinets, parallel or series – it’s enough to make your head melt.

For the average home producer, trying out every possible model and mode of amplification would be enough to make your wallet melt 52

too, added to the cost of finding the right mic, preamp and room acoustics to record your sound faithfully. For these reasons and more, amp simulation has become a hugely popular part of production.

An amp simulator is a plugin that mimics the sound of a real-life hardware amplifier. With only a laptop, audio interface and amp simulator software, you can put anything with an output jack through its paces, whether you’re looking for smooth tube overdrive or a sparkly, clean, solid-state amp feel. As you can imagine, any piece of software

that manages to do this successfully could potentially save consumers a great deal of money and floor space, so it’s no surprise that audio tech companies have been trying to mine the idea for a number of years now.

Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig was first introduced for both Mac and Windows in 2004 as a hardware and software hybrid. The program was simple, featuring only three tube amp emulations, but in the iterations since, the software has been refined to a huge extent. Guitar Rig 5, released in 2011, quickly became a market leader in the

amp-modeling game, and a go-to when it came to software-based multi-effects processing.

Sure, the user interface was a little clunky, but at the time of its release there was noone better at doing what it did, and it took a while for competitors to catch up. Catch up they did, however, and in the nine years since Guitar Rig 5 was released, it slowly became less relevant to guitarists and producers.

In 2021 though, Guitar Rig 6 is a slick, multi-faceted amp and effects modeling software package that brings NIs’ amp simulation

NI Guitar Rig Pro | Producer’s Guide To software back to centre stage, and puts a whole host of creative possibilities at your fingertips. A plugin (also available as a standalone application) with this kind of multi-effects processing ability is far more than just the preserve of bedroom guitar players noodling into audio interfaces.

Guitar Rig 6 is a complete audio processing workstation, and it can function as a shop floor for all your audio tinkering, even if turning dry, DI guitar signals into stadium-ready amp tones is still its sweet spot.

With a redesigned user interface, new amps, new effects, and new machine learning technology to model state-of-the-art hardware makes Native Instruments first major update to the software since 2011 an intriguing proposition.

New additions to Guitar Rig 6 include amps, emulations of classic hardware compressors and reverbs, and a raft of creative effects plugins

Getting started with Guitar Rig Pro 6

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Load Guitar Rig 6 onto an audio track in your DAW. At the top, choose either left, right or stereo as your input, and check your gain. There’s a Gate that can eliminate any noise below a threshold you set. The output level is shown to the right, alongside a Limiter.

4

Next, we can build an effects chain on our preset. Selecting any of the effects types displays a list of choices below. We’ll add Twin Delay and RC 48 Reverb. You may recognise the ‘48 from another NI plugin.

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Select an input source in the menu on the left of the display – we’re using a guitar – and browse through the Curated presets to hear a selection of sounds. Presets can be filtered by genre, character, effect type and more.

Let’s build our own virtual rig. Switch to the Components menu and click Amplifiers. We’ll build a basic amp/cab setup using Chicago, a mid-’50s combo amp, new in v6. The amp is automatically matched with a cab, but can be changed.

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The position of the components in the rack can be moved to change your signal flow (top to bottom). The order of the effects makes a big impact on the sound, and effects like delay and reverb are typically added after the amp in simulated rigs.

In the toolbar you find rack tools, including macro controls. Macros provide global instructions that can be assigned to any parameter in the rack by dragging. This lets you automate multiple things at once, using a single knob.

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Producer’s Guide To | NI Guitar Rig Pro

Using Guitar Rig’s modifiers and tools

1

Guitar Rig’s modifiers give you extra sound design control. The modulation sources include an Envelope, an LFO and sequencers. You may know these from a synth, but we’ll show how to map them onto your rack to create interesting sounds.

3

Add another LFO module to the rack. Set the rate to 8.06Hz on the main panel and switch it to a Square wave. Assign this LFO to two sliders on the Filterbank. Now we have two LFOs modulating multiple frequency parameters.

2

Start with a Firebreather amp, an LFO and Filterbank. Assign the LFO to the Stretch knob on the Filterbank. Adjust the range to +0.500 in the Expert tab. Then, assign the LFO onto any slider on the Filterbank. Set the range to -1.000.

4

Add an Analog Sequencer. Choose the Min. to Max. preset and set tempo to 1/4. Turn Slide down to 10ms. Add Pitch Pedal and assign the sequencer to the Pitch knob. Set the Mix to 100%. In Expert, change the range to +1.000.

Changing the strength of an effect based on input level For rip-roaring solos that Clapton himself would be proud of, it can be helpful to know when to step on the gas and when to back off. A technique you can employ in Guitar Rig 6 to help add expression at the right time is syncing an effect to your guitar volume using the Input Level modifier. The Input Level modifier uses the input level to generate a control signal that can modulate any parameter in your rack. You could drag the Input Level modifier onto a Cry Wah effect to create an auto-wah, or onto a Fuzz effect to add bite when you’re really digging into notes in a wailing solo.

You can fiddle with the Attack and Decay knobs on the Input Level modifier to adjust how quickly the modulation hits and comes back, or use the Offset control to set whether it starts in the low or high register.

Recreating Clapton’s Layla guitar tone

1

Add a Tweedman amp to the rack and set it to the Full Lead preset. Turn the Presence to 5. Change the matched cabinet to Control Room Pro and select 4x10 Tweed, DYN 57 Mic and Cap Edge.

Bring the Room up to 25%.

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2

Add Psyche Delay after the cab. Set the Time to 220ms and dial the Mix back to 25%. Next, put Spring Reverb below. No need to change anything here.

3

Finally, click into the Distortion section in Components and add Dirt before the amp. Set it to the Delta Blues preset.

NI Guitar Rig Pro | Producer’s Guide To

Guitar Rig’s new effects rundown As mentioned, Guitar Rig 6 is a multieffects processor. Along with traditional guitar-focused components there are a wealth of studio effects to shape and characterise your sound. The 54 original effects from Guitar Rig 5 have all remained, including Tape Echo, Spring Reverb and PsycheDelay, plus classic stompboxes, filters and a host of intriguing new effects.

Some new effects are technically only new to Guitar Rig, and you may recognise them from elsewhere in Native Instruments’ armoury. A set

of compressors from the Komplete package has been added, the VC 160, VC 2A and VC 76, which are based on classic hardware models.

There’s further vintage hardware emulation with the RC 24 and RC 48 reverbs. Raum, NI’s high fidelity

utility reverb plugin is also present.

Other effects that are new to Guitar Rig 6 include the Crush Pack (Bit Crusher, Frequency Shifter and Distortion), and Mod Pack (Chorus, Phaser and Flanger).

We also get the Solid Mix Series

including a 6-band EQ, a stereo compressor with a gate/expander module, and a transparent, versatile glue compressor.

Transient shaping can be carried out with Transient Master, and there’s Driver, a distortion and filtering effect from the creators of Effects are overhauled in Guitar Rig 6, with reinforcements provided from the NI armory: distortion, Massive. Rounding off the saturation, compression, modulation, reverb and more new effects are Replika Shimmer (pitch-shifted reverb) and Replika GR (a delay effect with Tape Echo, Analog, Vintage Digital, Diffusion and modern modes) plus 12 DJ-inspired effects converted from Traktor.

Creating a phasey, modulating effects rack

1

Driver is a filter unit, and we’re going to use it to create a slow sweeping effect similar to a phaser.

There’s a preset that does this already, so set it to Slow Sweep. Bring down the Output Level to around +1.0 if your signal is a bit hot.

4

Next, put Raum on the rack. Use the Freeze button to loop a sound for an ambient drone effect, which can be controlled with track automation in your DAW. Turn the Size to 100% and the Decay to 6.1s. Set the Low Cut filter to -12dB.

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Add the VC 76 compressor. Set the Attack to 3.5 and the Release to 7.0. Keep the ratio at 4:1. Your input gain should be around 25 and your output 18. You can always roll up the Dry knob if the compressor is doing too much!

Add Replika GR for short tape echo. Choose Wide delay and 1/32 in Straight time. Set Feedback to 30%. Pick Tape Echo and switch on the Noise. Turn Wow & Flutter to 85% and Tape Age to 50%. Saturation to 25% and Mix to 30%.

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6

Drop a Bite distortion before the amp. We’re using a preset, Outside Club, to give the sound a muffled low end and buzz. We’ll turn down the Mix to 50% though, and put the Post Filter at 15.3kHz.

We’ll need another reverb to give our tone space when the Freeze function of the Raum is enabled, so drop an RC 24 onto the rig. We’ll use the Room setting to keep the guitar tone up in front of the Raum drone.

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Producer’s Guide To | NI Guitar Rig Pro

Creating a split processing patch

Using the Crossover tool we can split our audio signal and route different effects to either lower or higher frequencies. This can be handy for keeping parts of the mix clear, or dialling in a layered tone, among many other things.

Let’s look at how Crossover works. Add it to the rack and you’ll see it has split the signal into Low and High channels, which we can treat independently. You could add different amps to each channel, or just use it for effects components.

2

Take the high frequencies first. Add Phaser 9 to the High channel and turn the Colour up to 8.

We’re also going to add a fast delay too, so throw in a Delay Man component underneath the phaser and set the Time to 80ms. Set it to Vibrato instead of Chorus.

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4

We can carve out an individual space for both channels using reverbs. Put Iceverb onto the High channel and set Size to 0.70. Bring the Color down to 0.40. We want our Low channel separate, so put Octaverb on the low frequencies and set it to the Small Room preset.

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Now for the low frequencies of our audio signal.

Let’s add a bit of distortion to the low end in order to set it apart. Put Fuzz onto the Low channel and turn it down to zero, we don’t want it overpowering the sound.

3

We want the sound to favour the Low channel, so move the X-Fade in the Crossover tool to the left, until it’s at 80% : 20%. This feature allows you to emphasise either the Low or the High channel, and is a great way of blending your sounds.

POWER TIP

7

Let’s set the high frequencies slightly to one side, and keep the low frequencies dead centre.

Move the Pan knob right to 20%. There’s an Invert button that flips the effect backwards, and a Frequency knob to shape the combined sound, but we leave them untouched.

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8

Separate the two channels even further by EQing each. Add a Shelving Equalizer to the Low channel and set it to the Highs Out preset.

Do the same with the High channel, but set it to Lows Out. Now it sounds like we have two guitars!

These sort of split patches are easy to make using Guitar Rig’s tools, but you can also put these formulations together in your DAW. By splitting your signal however you choose and then loading up two instances of the Guitar Rig plugin, you can try splitting whole patches and use two different interfaces to do so.

THREE GREAT NEW FX

1

Freak

Frequency shifting, ring modulation and radio modulation techniques all in one. Three distinct effect modes – Radio, Oscillator and Sidechain – allow you to completely transform your sound.

Emulate the noisy tones of AM radios, get classic modulation sounds using an internal sine oscillator or use a sidechain input signal in order to create inharmonic ring modulation.

2

Replika Shimmer

This sparkling, pitchshifting reverb is an amalgamation of Native Instruments’ other Replika delay models. Layer an ethereal reverb tail on top of your dry signal by adding Shimmer to your sound at pitch intervals from -12 to +12 semitones, and exercise tight control over Time and Feedback. Classic reverb controls such as Diffusion and Size are also included.

3

Flair

For vintage-style or futuristic flanging.

Flair’s Voices mode uses multiple delay lines to create harmonically tuned flanging layers. Thru Zero mode duplicates voices at their respective pitch, and Scan mode plays them one after another (instead of stacked into chords), with the order set by a chosen waveform. There’s also the option of classic analogue and pedal flanging effects.

NI Guitar Rig Pro | Producer’s Guide To

Preset reset Even if you’re a staunch original, using presets can be a good way of looking at rack configurations you might not have considered. A lot of the presets in Guitar Rig 6 are cleverly put together, making use of LFOs, step sequencers, split signal chains and more. Taking a look under the hood of a preset can show you how the professionals put their sounds together, and inspire you creatively to build your own chains using similar techniques.

In the browser, selecting the Input Source type shows presets that work with your instrument.

Guitar Rig presets work best on guitars, so, as you’d expect, the range of options greatly

drops with other input sources.

There are 611 curated presets available for guitar, 96 for bass, 72 for drums, 63 for vocals, 50 for keys and so on. There are also Mixbus You can browse presets by Input Source, FX presets to Type, Character, Amplifier, Genre and more boost your mixes. Some, like Bus Warmer and Mix Energizer, are subtle; others, like Crush My Mix, are quite intense.

Running other instruments through Guitar Rig

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4

You can use Guitar Rig to beef up a softsynth sound. Try placing a Dirt distortion on the rig with the Drive knobs cranked but the Mix down low.

Then widen it out with a Choral and add a Large Hall RC 24 reverb on top.

Guitar Rig has plenty of options for bass guitar, especially as a tone shaper. Put a Pro Filter with a HiCut preset selected, a Solid EQ on Rock Bass setting and a VC 160 compressor with a Bass preset on. Use the Gate to cut noisy inputs.

There’s only one curated preset suggested with piano as the input source: Suitcase Piano, a cheap-sounding lo-fi effect. Use Guitar Rig’s reverbs to change the room setting of your piano and add choruses and Ensemble to easily turn electric.

Setting up Guitar Rig on an auxiliary bus lets you parallel process a vocal track. This is useful for EQing or compressing, or blending onboard effects into your dry signal. Distortion, Pitch and Modulation components can create modern hooks.

57

Interview | Japanese Breakfast

Japanese Breakfast

Moving beyond the grief-stricken narrative woven into Michelle Zauner’s past Japanese Breakfast records, new album Jubilee strikes a more celebratory tone. Danny Turner speaks to Zauner about her artistic growth

eeL hsA reteP ©

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J

Japanese Breakfast | Interview

apanese Breakfast singer/ songwriter Michelle Zauner has much to celebrate. Recently topping the New York Times Best Seller list with her memoir Crying in H Mart, completing her third Japanese Breakfast album, Jubilee, and the soundtrack to the open world exploration video game, Sable, all three projects showcase her rapidly ascending talent.

While Zauner’s lyrical observations defined the pain and suffering of losing her mother to cancer in 2014, her reputation for writing devastatingly catchy songs blotted with thorny narratives has grown from album to album. With Zauner focused on stretching her songwriting capabilities to the max, Jubilee details her fight for contentment and continued studio evolution.

Why did the word Jubilee come to mind as a title for the album?

“For a long time I’ve wanted to move away from themes of grief and loss. I felt that Psychopomp was my grief album but I didn’t think that I was ready to move on with Soft Sounds from Another Planet and had to write an entire book about that experience in order to really feel like I’d closed the chapter. With Jubilee I had a natural interest to write about something on the opposite end of human experience – a real celebration of release and joy, which is in some ways an unexpected theme for the indie rock genre in general.”

Would you say that, lyrically, you’re projecting more on this record?

“My records in general are more of a mixed bag than people allow them to be. On Soft Sounds there’s a song called Machinist that’s about falling in love with a robot – that’s pretty fictional, and there’s a song on Psychopomp called Triple 7 that’s about slot machines and sex workers. One thing that I really love about making records is that you can flow through fiction and non-fiction but, ultimately, everything’s a commentary on real life in some way.

Even a song about falling in love with a robot is really about the different ways that people connect to one another.”

While the subject matter of your songs often necessitates a sombre tone, the music is typically the complete opposite…

“That’s definitely become a Japanese Breakfast calling card. If you need to have some lightness to balance how heavy the lyrical themes can be, then both are more impactful when they’re unexpectedly working towards each other. It’s a great trick to entice someone with the music and knock them on the ass with the lyrics.”

Can you listen to your own music as other people would or is that not possible being so close to the production?

“I feel the same about most art, that it’s not 59

Interview | Japanese Breakfast different starting points. With Slide Tackle I built the beat and started with the bass, which is something I don’t do often but in that case felt I was able to create a different type of song. Paprika started on the piano – actually I was just drawing MIDI chords and arranging them in Ableton and turning all of those into analogue instruments. Tactics was written on piano too.”

Although Craig Hendrix came into the process a little further down the road this time, how does he help you realise your ideas?

“He was still incredibly instrumental to this record.

I’m not as creative a player because Craig’s a better musician than me, so sometimes I’ll lean on him to play a part instead of pushing myself to learn it.

With Jubilee, I just wanted to make sure I had time to express all the ideas that I had and bring them into the studio once I’d exhausted them.”

interesting to me if it’s not useful [laughs]. But I love listening to my own songs and I know they’re working well if I’m not thinking too much about them technically. There are some things on Jubilee where I do think the guitar is too loud or I wish we’d EQed something differently, but for the most part I just want to feel a rush of emotion and try to experience it the way that I hope everyone else is.”

You’ve probably forgotten but in 2018 you mentioned your third album would be influenced by Nine Inch Nails. You obviously had a change of heart?

“I definitely didn’t forget that. I wanted to make an album that sounded like Nine Inch Nails meets Björk’s Homogenic but every time I come up with an idea like that I quickly feel very claustrophobic.

You’d have to be a pretty advanced musician to come up with that record and I don’t really make that type of music even though I want to.

Ultimately, I just have to make the type of music that comes naturally to me.”

They say that, for third albums, artists feel compelled to shake things up. How did you approach Jubilee from that perspective?

“I definitely thought about that a lot in terms of my discography and how the records sit next to one another. Soft Sounds was really hard for me. I was petrified of the ‘sophomore slump’ so I created an environment to best combat that self-doubt and 60

feelings that my first album was a real fluke. The third album was slightly easier because I had this confidence that it wasn’t a fluke and that I should know what I’m doing and flex every muscle, but there were certain things that I did do to kind of disrupt my writing patterns.”

What tactics did you employ?

“Initially, I pushed myself away from my coproducer Craig Hendrix because I needed to go out and explore working with other people. I worked on production with Jack Tatum from Wild Nothing and Ryan Galloway from Crying, demoed out a lot more stuff and started arranging before I even went into the studio with Craig. For the first time I took some guitar lessons and started writing string and horn arrangements so I could push things forward and experiment with a bigger sonic palette.”

You also learned music theory and piano. From that, did you immediately notice a change in your songwriting technique?

“I’ve been wilfully ignorant of music theory for a long time and still don’t know much about it, but learning that definitely expanded my ability to incorporate more interesting chord changes like minor fourth chords. When you’re used to writing on guitar all the time, you lean heavily on specific chord shapes, so disrupting that was interesting to me. I started playing piano when I was five but never really enjoyed it; I’m just trying to write songs from

Did you mix the album with Craig?

“Jorge Elbrecht mixed Jubilee and there are certain liberties that he now feels more comfortable taking.

For example, on Slide Tackle he added a percussive element that made the song a lot better, which is not something a mix engineer usually does. When it comes to mixing I find it’s really helpful to use someone that doesn’t know what went into the recording process to come in with a fresh perspective and take things to a new height. It’s basically like having an editor. When you write a book the editor has no idea how long a certain sentence took, but if it’s not working, it’s not working and needs to come out. Perspective is the greatest tool in any art-making, so bringing people in with a fresh perspective is crucial.”

Are you working from your own home studio?

“I kind of do, but my studio’s not really outfitted with a lot of preamp studio gear. I have a Yamaha DX-7, Roland Juno-106, a Korg Minilogue, Yamaha piano and a Rhodes, so it’s mostly just keyboards and some guitar stuff. A lot of what I do at home is mostly MIDI and then I bring it in and we make it analogue. For Paprika I used lots of plugins for writing the synth parts, horn and string arrangements and brought them into the studio to work on with Craig. I also used plugins for the marching band snare, but then we had to record eight toms, bass drums and cymbals to make it sound real and not be cheating [laughs]. Craig has a warehouse studio called The Well that we recorded Soft Sounds and Jubilee in and I went to a place called Spice House Sound in Philadelphia to record the strings.”

Did you find that recording live instruments in a more professional studio environment made a big difference?

“After doing a couple of tracks at Spice House Sound for the Sable soundtrack that’s coming out in September I realised that I never want to do this DIY shit again because I feel like I’ve hit the ceiling with that. For instance, I comped a vocal take for a song called Better the Mask on the Sable soundtrack and

Japanese Breakfast | Interview

“I was petrified of the ‘sophomore slump’ so I made an environment to best combat that” 61

Interview | Japanese Breakfast

“Some of my favourite artists don’t necessarily use really expensive gear” 62

Japanese Breakfast | Interview did eight to ten vocal takes on my Shure SM7 and Apollo Twin because I thought it was great that I didn’t have to pay a studio to get all these different performances and that the performance is ultimately the most important thing. So I comped the track and went to Spice House Sound to record piano, strings and do a scratch vocal on their vintage Neumann mic using all their fancy preamps and that take was so much better than the comped version. Now I realise the value of using a more expensive studio because a certain space and environment does make a big sonic difference.”

Do you need to know what a song’s about before you start writing it?

“Typically I’ll have a line in a notebook that’s pretty evocative and then I’ll come up with a chord progression that evokes that feeling. The combination of those things leads me to find out what the song’s about and then they just kind of borrow from each other. With Paprika, the arrangement really lent itself to the song, which was kind of a new experience for me, so I don’t think I need to know what a song is about before writing it.”

Paprika is certainly a career highlight, although we understand you fought not to have it chosen as a single?

“It’s a great song but I loved the idea of it being a surprise opener. I don’t think people like it when the first two songs on a record are singles and we already knew Be Sweet was going to be one. Paprika sets a tone and for people entering the album not knowing it exists is hopefully exciting for them.”

You switched from FL Studio to Ableton Live and have more synths in your home setup, but how are you finding the balance between using software and hardware these days?

“There is a really lazy part of me that prefers working in the box. It’s so interesting to find a chord, drag it around and make things up – it actually opens me up creatively so I feel more comfortable being an in-the-box producer. It’s just really expensive to record out of the box and in-the-box is so versatile and the plugins sound so good and are getting so powerful. After writing the Sable soundtrack I’d rather just go to a studio and work with an engineer who has loads of outboard gear so I don’t feel I need to learn about that stuff as much. It’s comforting to know that some of my favourite artists like The Spirit of the Beehive and Alex G don’t necessarily use really expensive gear; they’re just innovators who are able to make something sound great out of a Crate amp.”

You mentioned using lots of strings, horns and brass on Jubilee. What soft synths did you initially use for the demos?

“When I was working on the Sable project I got an Albion Spitfire library that sounded so great. Just having access to that sonic palette enabled me to hear what it would be like to throw a string quartet on there, and once you’ve written the part it’s easy enough to get it performed by a real quartet. What I

didn’t realise is that when you use MIDI and plugin libraries everything sounds so full because they’re samples of a full orchestra recorded in the perfect room with the perfect mics and preamps, but when you have three string players in a room you suddenly realise that you have to layer it eight times to get that same density, which is nerve-wracking because it doesn’t sound as full as when you played it on a MIDI keyboard. It was an even harder adjustment getting used to how thin the real horns sounded after getting accustomed to how they sounded on the demo. Ultimately, it’s much better to have real players, but the majority of people probably wouldn’t even know.”

Are you still using Native Instruments’ Maschine to help with your beat-making?

“I was introduced to Maschine through an interview I did with my friend Lorely Rodriguez of Empress Of. I thought if I got this I’d be able to write beats like Lorely and then I found out that Lena Raine, who wrote the Celeste soundtrack, uses the Massive library so I started using that a lot more for the Sable soundtrack and those plugins then started trickling their way into Jubilee. I mostly used Maschine for a song called Essentially a couple of years ago but because it comes with a library and Kontakt I prefer to use the plugins now rather than the hardware.”

Tell us about the Sable soundtrack “It’s an open world exploration game, similar to

Breath of the Wild or Journey. You play as a young girl called Sable who explores this desert planet – there’s no combat. I’ve been working on it for the last three of four years with a team called Shedworks. The developers are based in London and have an architecture background, so a lot of the architectures in the game are really beautiful.”

Writing for that was presumably a very different experience to making a traditional album…?

“I was really nervous about it as it was the first large project that I was the sole producer/composer/ arranger for, but I was really inspired by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Async, Cornelius, Joe Hisaishi and even Alan Menken who does a lot of Disney soundtracks.

It was fun to write all these long ambient tracks for different areas of the game with different themes for different characters. There are three tracks with vocals and lyrics and the other 30 are ambient. It was a way to challenge myself and I’ve learned so much about production from that experience. It’s all my own work too, so I’m really proud of it.”

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee is out now via Dead Oceans. For more information, visit michellezauner.bandcamp. com/album/jubilee 63

FM | RETROSPECTIVE

Dancehall S

We investigate how Jamaica’s dancehall became an important part of modern pop and hip-hop

otohP kcotS ymalA / mekaW wehttaM ©

ince the 1960s, Jamaican music has consistently punched above its weight on a global scale. From ska to reggae, dub and beyond, the Caribbean island nation with a population of less than three million people has influenced the world.

Much like the evolution of dub from reggae, dancehall began as an offshoot of the dominant roots reggae sound of the late 1960s and early ’70s. As the name suggests, its origins lay firmly in the dance halls of Jamaica, where reggae evolved into a more party-focussed style that emphasised upbeat musical backings for ‘deejays’ (vocalists) to perform over. On the Jamaican musical spectrum, you could say that dancehall sits somewhere between the traditional roots reggae of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and the dub of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Augustus Pablo. Since dancehall is unabashedly party music, it evolved into its own distinct genre.

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Despite sounding very different, there are numerous similarities between dancehall and the more downtempo, almost trippy sound of dub, not least in terms of the reliance on ‘riddims’, popular instrumental backings which are reused by numerous artists to create different songs based on similar or even identical instrumentals.

The dance element of dancehall shouldn’t be overlooked, with dance crazes playing just as important a role as the riddims themselves (and often being directly linked to each other).

Cited by Beenie Man as the greatest dancer of all time, Gerald ‘Bogle’ Levy was possibly the most influential character in the development of dancehall’s dance trends, responsible for his signature bogle dance among many others.

Dancehall isn’t particularly loyal to any specific tech or instrumentation, making it a notably diverse genre in terms of sound. There are riddims which stick closely to the organic

instrumentation of roots reggae and others which are more influenced by other genres, such as R&B (Miss Independent riddim, inspired by the Ne-Yo hit of the same name) and pop (Faith riddim, inspired by George Michael). From the mid 1980s onward, the digital dancehall revolution marked a shift in style to synths, drum machines and other ‘digital’ instrumentation.

Vocally, dancehall is equally diverse, with an emphasis on ‘toasting’ – the uniquely Jamaican rap-like vocal style also frequently heard in dub – but also singing and more US-influenced rapping styles.

Lyrically, dancehall has rarely been without its controversies, having been accused at various times of glamourising violence and gang culture, promoting misogyny and even of fostering homophobia. All of these criticisms are undoubtedly true to some extent, but a broader view of dancehall might argue that such negativity is thankfully a very small

aspect of the genre rather than a defining feature. It’s also well worth noting that dancehall has fostered careers of female artists from Sister Nancy to Lady Saw and Spice, each representing female empowerment in their own personal way.

As with so many of the genres we’ve explored – and much like other Jamaican styles including ska and dub – dancehall has been hugely influential on a global scale. Aside from obvious commercial success for Jamaican artists like Vybz Kartel, Popcaan and Alkaline, you can see the influence on Diplo’s EDM crossover project Major Lazer, or UK rapper Stefflon Don. Beyond the direct spread of dancehall sounds, you can hear numerous instances of pop artists adopting dancehall sounds, from Drake’s Beenie Man-sampling Controlla to Rihanna’s huge 2016 hit Work. As with so many other Jamaican styles since the mid 20th century, dancehall’s global impact is gigantic.

Dancehall | Retrospective

Three classic Diwali dancehall riddims 2

Characterised by its distinctive syncopated clapping pattern, the Diwali riddim was one of the most recognisable sounds of pop music in 2002, spawning hits including Sean Paul’s Get Busy, Wayne Wonder’s No Letting Go, Rihanna’s Pon De Replay and Lumidee’s Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh). Originally produced by Steven ‘Lenky’ Marsden, some of the most famous tracks performed over the riddim were compiled on Greensleeves Rhythm Album #27, part of the London-based label’s long-running series which released 90 riddim-focussed albums between 2000 and 2010.

Real Rock Arguably the first reggae riddim to

1

cross over into early dancehall, Real Rock was a 1967 instrumental by Sound Dimension whose simple Hammond organ melody and loping groove were adapted by hundreds of other artists, from Augustus Pablo to The Clash to Bounty Killer.

Sleng Teng Produced by King Jammy and Wayne Smith and popularised by the

3

latter’s iconic track Under Mi Sleng Teng, the Sleng Teng riddim was largely responsible for kicking off the digital dancehall craze in the 1980s. Sleng Teng is notably based around a rockabilly-influenced preset pattern found on the humble Casio MT-40 keyboard, widely believed to be influenced by Eddie Cochran’s 1959 song Somethin’ Else. Casio’s Hiroko Okuda denies that link, suggesting that the distinctive riff may have been inspired by David Bowie’s Hang On to Yourself.

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FM | REVIEWS

£699 Korg Modwave Korg’s latest digital revival is a wavetable synth loosely inspired by the DW-8000. Si Truss rides the wave CONTACT

KEY FEATURES

WHO: Korg WEB: korg.com Dual-layer, 32-voice digital wavetable/sample synth. Feature 3-octave keyboard, Kaoss Physics modulator, Motion Sequencing 2.0 sequencer, arpeggiator and digital effects

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Korg Modwave | Reviews THE PROS & CONS

+

Deep sound engine with copious options for manipulating and morphing wavetables Filters and effects sound great Plenty of sample content and excellent presets

-

Kaoss Physics is fun, but gimmicky Not quite as unique as the Wavestate or Opsix

M

odwave is the third of Korg’s recent line of digital synths, kicked off in early 2020 with Wavestate and expanded a few months later by Opsix. The Modwave follows a similar blueprint to those two; again, an all-digital instrument that wears its DSP-power on its sleeve.

All three synths present a modernised take on some of the synthesis concepts pioneered in the

’80s and ’90s. With the Wavestate, that involved updating the wave sequencing synthesis of Korg’s own Wavestation, while Opsix expanded on the FM format popularised by Yamaha’s DX series. For Modwave the focus is on wavetable synthesis.

The design is, at least according to Korg, loosely based on the company’s cult classic DW-8000, although aside from the broad concept and some DW waveforms there’s not that much to link the two.

It’s to Modwave’s credit that it offers so many updates to the format that it

feels no more like a clone of the DW-8000 than it does any other wavetable synth.

The hardware itself is similar to its siblings. As with those, Modwave is remarkably light for its size. Despite this, though – and the abundance of plastic in the build – it’s sturdy and neither looks nor feels cheap.

There’s a full-sized three-octave keyboard which feels decent but, as with Wavestate and Opsix, lacks aftertouch, despite the fact the synth can respond to poly aftertouch from an external controller. I/O is standard:

a stereo pair of jacks for the main output, plus rear-panel headphone port. A damper input allows for pedal control, while MIDI in/out and USB round out the connectivity.

The sound engine here is dual-layered and 32-voice polyphonic.

Layers A and B can each contain a full sound, including effects and an arpeggiator, and can be blended or assigned velocity or keyboard zones.

Each layer can also be configured to respond to a separate MIDI channel.

Programs within each layer use two wavetable oscillators, each of 67

Reviews | Korg Modwave THE ALTERNATIVES

Modal Argon8 £450

Modal’s compact wavetable synth is a little less powerful, but also cheaper.

The two cover similar bases though. modalelectronics.com

Waldorf Iridium £1900

A lot more expensive, and considerably more powerful in several ways, but Iridium and Modwave often have a similar sound set.

which can make use of more than two hundred stock wavetables. There are, in fact, three different modes for each oscillator – a single wavetable mode, an A/B mode, where oscillators can blend between two wavetables, and a sample mode, making use of straightforward multisamples. There are numerous ways in which users can manipulate each wavetable, including a position setting, for scanning through frames, along with Modifier and Morph tools.

Modifiers offer ways to alter wavetables as they’re loaded into an oscillator. There are more than 25 modes here, ranging from options that remove harmonics – such as cutting all odd or even harmonics, or skipping every third harmonic – to modes that apply fades to each wave, reverse wavetable position, apply clipping, or cut/boost the volume of either specific harmonics or the wavetable as a whole. There are vintage modes too, which reduce the bit rate and add aliasing to ape the quality of classic wavetable synths.

On top of these static alterations, the Morph function provides a

number of ways to fluidly reshape the oscillator waveforms in real time.

Options here include sync – using an additional ‘phantom’ oscillator – stretch, mirror, flip and narrow. These let users draw out or compress the waveform, with results often akin to classic hard sync or pulse width modulation effects. Osc 2 includes additional Morph modes, which add FM, AM and ring mod into the mix.

All of this is on top of the fact that, as mentioned, each oscillator can load two separate wavetables and blend between them. Note that this process isn’t simply crossfading, but will combine the characteristics of waveforms A and B. This blend is applied on top of any Modifier, meaning you can blend between

modified and unmodified versions of a sound, then further reshape a sound by morphing that blended combo.

You could overlook the oscillator’s sample mode as a poor relation of the wavetable capabilities, but it’s actually a nice inclusion that adds a new dimension. Pairing a modulated wavetable sound with a sampled one is a nice way to flesh out body.

An additional noise/sub oscillator rounds out the sound generation tools. This can add either a square or triangle wave or one of five types of noise, including exceptionally gritty Speckled and Saturated noise types.

Arguably it’s a shame having to choose between a sub oscillator and noise, but I didn’t really find this a problem in practice. It all adds up to

Another top quality addition to Korg’s growing digital synth line

waldorfmusic.com

Native Instruments Massive X $199

In the plugin realm, NI’s follow-up to the influential Massive offers a similar amount of flexibility when it comes to reading and manipulating wavetables. native-instruments.com

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WORLD IN MOTION Modwave is equipped with a 64-step sequencer labelled ‘Motion Sequencing 2.0’. In a nutshell, this provides individual sequencing lanes for pitch, timing and recorded movements of up to four parameters. As a result, it can be used either like a simple step sequence – by recording patterns live or inputting them offline – or as a more complex polyrhythmic generator, where parameters and timings change independently of sequenced notes. You can set loops and repeats for each lane too, and apply probabilities. There’s a further ‘shape’ lane to the sequencer too, which can sequence envelope-like contours for each step, to then be applied to other sequencer lanes. Like much of Modwave’s design, it has a lot of potential to explore, but can be used more instantaneously too.

Korg Modwave | Reviews some very creative sound generation tools, allowing the user to conjure all sorts of timbres and harmonics, even before filters or effects.

On that front, Modwave features the same digital filter found on Wavestate and Opsix. This offers emulations of the circuits found on the MS-20 and Polysix, plus an assortment of generic 2- and 4-pole designs and a customisable multifilter. As before, they sound great and provide plenty of flexibility.

The digital effects are similar to those on Modwave’s siblings too, with three effect slots per layer – for Pre FX, Mod FX and Delay – plus a global Reverb/EQ slot. The excellent randomiser tool makes a return here too, letting users auto-generate with whole or partial patches.

Movement is at the heart of Modwave’s character, and it’s fittingly well-stocked with modulation tools.

There are four ADSR envelopes, for the filter, amp and one for each oscillator, matched by five multimode LFOs for the filter, amp, pitch and oscillators 1 and 2. For hands-on control, the synth’s front panel features a mod wheel and four freely-assignable Mod Knobs, which can act as macros for making big sound adjustments on the fly.

The Modwave’s headline modulation tool, however, is its Kaoss Physics generator. It’s like Korg’s classic Kaoss Pad, but it’s more than a simple X/Y pad controller. While you can assign different parameters to the X and Y axis, modulation makes use of a virtual ‘ball’ which users can launch with a swipe of a finger, causing it to bounce around the modulation vector. There’s plenty of control over the responsiveness of these virtual physics, like the ability to control the level of friction, set what happens when the ball connects with a wall, and add a virtual ‘hill’ or ‘dip’ to repel or attract the ball.

It’s masses of fun to play with, if perhaps a little gimmicky. It’s the sort of feature I wonder if I’d end up using in the long run, although with careful setup it might become a fun performance tool. You could also use the pad as a more straightforward X/Y controller, which is far less sexy, but maybe more useful in the long run.

Modulation is controlled by the same matrix system found on Wavestate and Opsix. There’s a smart touch-to-assign function that makes it easy to set up routings on the go.

KAOSS PHYSICS: This ‘bouncing ball’ generator can be a little gimmicky, but there are plenty of ways it could be set up as a useful performance tool

KEYBED: As with the Wavestate and MOD KNOBS: These customisable Opsix, the keys here are full-sized but, controls can be used as performance alas, once again there’s no aftertouch macros for hands-on manipulation of various patch parameters

Going deeper in the modulation menu, you can apply additional modulation sources to each routing, and add modulation processors that can apply rules to switch between two modulation sources. It’s all very powerful, though keeping track of everything using the small screen and multi-page menu can get confusing.

The software editor/librarian could come in handy on this front. That desktop application also lets users upload their own wavetable and sample content, so has the potential to expand Modwave significantly.

As with Wavestate or Opsix, it all combines into a very powerful instrument with a remarkable depth

for the price. There’s enough potential that you could happily ignore half the features and still find copious depths of sound design inspiration.

Another top quality entry to Korg’s growing digital synth line then, although probably my least favourite so far. There’s nothing wrong here, but compared to its counterparts, which are both very distinctive, there’s more competition in the wavetable sphere. Modal’s Argon8, for example, is a comparatively-priced take on similar ideas.

That said, this is certainly the most versatile of the three, able to do convincing analogue impressions alongside oddball digital textures and

FILTER: The multiple filter emulations found on Opsix and Wavestate return here, and, as before, they’re flexible and sound bang-on-the-money

nice percussive sounds. Another powerful, impressive instrument.

9.0

FM VERDICT Modwave is far from the only wavetable game in town, but it sets itself apart with unique tools and a few added gimmicks 69

Reviews | Bitwig Studio 4

€399 Bitwig Studio 4 The modular-inspired DAW hits version 4, but is it still at the cutting-edge of music software? Si Truss finds out CONTACT

KEY FEATURES

WHO: Bitwig WEB: bitwigstudio.com Adds Audio Comping, Event Operators, Expression Spread, M1 Mac support and Chinese, Japanese and German localisations. Price includes 12-month update plan. Update is free to users with an active plan.

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Bitwig Studio 4 | Reviews THE PROS & CONS

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Operators and Expression Spread make creating variety and complexity easy Audio comping is well implemented Probably the best M1 Mac support of any DAW, right now

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COMPS, NO COMPROMISES While audio comping is nothing new, it’s nicely implemented with a few unique touches that suit Bitwig’s workflow. Comping lives within each clip, meaning it works the same in clip launcher and timeline views, and comped edits can be dragged between the two. The tools and workflow are neatly designed – each audio take is colour coded, and various shortcuts make it easy to select, adjust and move audio events. One nice touch is the Fold To Takes function, an easy way to slice a longer take into equally-sized takes for editing. For editing long hardware jams, this is very handy.

There’s nothing here as essential as v3’s The Grid or v2’s Modulation System

A

rriving seven years ago, Bitwig Studio was initially burdened with its reputation as ‘alt-Ableton Live’.

The two brands are both Berlin-based, share several original developers and, with its Clip Launcher and Live-like devices, version 1 was obviously influenced by Ableton’s DAW. Four versions later, that comparison is less apt; while similarities remain, Bitwig has

developed its own identity, with a workflow that’s arguably deeper, making use of a hugely flexible modulation system, fully-modular synth and effect devices, and numerous other tools that are influenced as much by the Eurorack realm as any rival DAW. Bitwig Studio has embraced flexibility too, in its ability to run on Linux as well as PC and Mac, use of touchscreens and open MIDI controller system.

Despite these differences, the update to version 4 once again invites fresh Ableton comparisons. The main

factor this time is that, as with Live 11, one of the headline additions for Bitwig Studio 4 is the arrival of audio comping. As with Live, you could argue that this is slightly underwhelming as major feature updates go; comping has, after all, been present in numerous DAWs for years now, and while it’s well implemented here [see boxout], it’s still hardly ground-breaking.

Particularly compared to that aforementioned modulation system (launched with Bitwig 2) or the modular Grid devices (Bitwig 3) it feels more like a catch-up feature rather than something radically new.

In Bitwig’s defence, the DAW now operates on an ‘update plan’ model that puts less emphasis on headline-grabbing new versions.

Rather than buying each new iteration outright, users now buy into 12 months of updates, meaning that any major or minor updates are included in an active plan no matter what numbered iteration the user originally paid for. In practice, this has meant that Bitwig tend to roll out major new devices as ‘point’ releases between full versions. Since we reviewed Bitwig 3, for example, the DAW has been bolstered by the arrival of a new customisable wavetable synth plugin, Polymer, revamped EQ and saturation

effects, and a raft of new pitch tools.

As a result, even a straight update from the Bitwig Studio 3 of 2019 to Bitwig Studio 3 as of early 2021 would feel like a significant upgrade.

Comping isn’t the full story here.

More fitting to Bitwig’s general MO are the new Operators – a quartet of tools designed to speed up the process of adding variety to MIDI or audio events. The Operators live in the Inspector Panel to the left of the interface, and can be applied to any individual note event. The four Operators are labelled Chance, Repeats, Occurrence and Recurrence.

Chance is fairly self explanatory; it allows users to apply a percentage value to a note dictating the likelihood of it sounding each time the sequence cycles. Repeats is essentially a beat repeat tool, which can apply retriggers spaced at different note divisions across the duration of an event. What’s neat here is the control you get over timings and – for MIDI notes – velocity of repeats, making it simple to create ramps or slightly off-grid rolls.

The Occurrence and Recurrence tools will feel familiar to anyone who has used the conditional triggers included on Elektron gear. These make it possible to set rules dictating when an individual event will sound, 71

Reviews | Bitwig Studio 4 THE ALTERNATIVES

Ableton Live 11 Suite £539

Bitwig’s foundations are built, to an extent, on Live’s ideas, and Suite’s inclusion of Max4Live rivals some of Bitwig’s modular tools. ableton.com

VCV Rack Free

This open source application brings a full modular system to your desktop, expandable by both free and paid modules, many taking their cues from real-world Eurorack modules. vcvrack.com

and on which cycles of a loop it will repeat. Occurrence includes options to trigger an event only on the first loop, or depending on whether a previous trigger has sounded, or whether the new ‘Fill’ mode is engaged – a handy tool for live performers. Recurrence is actually considerably more flexible than Elektron’s take on these ideas; here you get a mini step-sequencer that lets the user set an amount of loop cycles and then dictate precisely which of these a given event will trigger on.

In a similar realm to these Operators is the Expression Spread function. This lets users define a range for event parameters, such as velocity, pan position, pitch, or the assignable pressure or timbre settings. Each time a loop cycles, Bitwig will select a random value within this range, allowing for plenty of variation within a pattern.

There are nice touches that help you monitor and control this randomisation too. Each time a new loop starts, Bitwig will present a visual representation of all randomised spread parameters, so it’s possible to see how events are going to fall before time. There’s a Seed function too, which is essentially an offline randomisation that will lock the resulting values into the clip. You can Expand clips too, which will sequence out any Occurrence/ Recurrence values into an expanded version of the current loop.

OPERATORS: These inspectorbased tools allow users to add probability and variety to note events

EXPRESSION SPREAD: Set a range for your note parameters, then watch as Bitwig generate new values for each cycle

These features aside, Bitwig 4’s other big update is native compatibility with Apple’s new M1 silicon chips. This means that owners of a new generation Mac Mini or MacBook Pro can take full advantage of the machine’s processing power without needing to run the DAW via Rosetta. What’s best here is that

POLYMER Bitwig’s latest synth isn’t new, arriving midway through v3’s life cycle, but it’s worth mentioning. It’s effectively a simplified version of the DAW’s open-ended Poly Grid modular environment, a simple subtractive synth, with a switchable osc that can offer wavetables, phase distortion, FM or virtual analogue. It’s flexible and highly usable, even alone. You can convert Polymer to a full Poly Grid device, for full access to its signal flow.

COMPING: Audio comping lives in Bitwig’s clips, so loops can easily be dragged between the launcher and the timeline

Bitwig’s system of partitioning plugins away from the DAW itself – designed to limit crashes – means users can run Bitwig in A1 mode while still using Intel-based plugins via Rosetta.

This is great, and results in noticeably improved performance.

Unlike the modulation system or Grid, there’s little here that I would say should make anyone who doesn’t have an active plan already desperately rush to upgrade (aside from silicon Mac users, for whom it’s definitely worth it). That being said, what features are included here all hit their mark. Given prior form too, you can probably expect some nice new tools to drop via point updates in the coming months.

8.5

FM VERDICT Bitwig Studio remains one of our favourite pieces of music software, but this is its least essential update so far

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Reviews | M-Audio Oxygen Mk V 49

M-Audio Oxygen £135 Mk V 49 With many of v5’s new features coming

via its ‘Pro’ sibling, Jono Buchanan thought it time to do a quick spec-check CONTACT WHO: M-Audio WEB: m-audio.com KEY FEATURES 49 full-size, velocity-sensitive

keys, Preset and DAW buttons for auto-mapped DAW controls & plug-in parameters Smart Chord mode, Smart Scale mode, Arpeggiator with Type, Octave, Gate and Swing controls, 2 banks of 8 velocity-sensitive trigger pads with Note Repeat, 8 assignable knobs, 9 assignable faders

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M-Audio Oxygen Mk V 49 | Reviews

E

arlier this year, I had the opportunity to assess M-Audio’s Oxygen Pro 49, the latest revision to the ‘top end’ of its highly popular range of controller keyboards. Having modified the flagship model, thoughts clearly turned to the more affordable Oxygen range and, accordingly, here is the fifth gen of the four-octave Oxygen 49.

Style-wise, the Oxygen 49’s corners are rounder, the OLED display of the Pro is replaced by a 3-segment LED display, whilst the 16 multi-coloured pads are stripped back to eight back-lit red ones. This affords more space to the Oxygen 49’s front panel, though I must say that I prefer the ‘busier’ design of the flagship. Perhaps the biggest compromise is only having half of the assignable pads of its big sibling, though do note that the pads here are split into two banks of eight, so you do still have access to 16 sound sources from the front panel when programming beats, just not all 16 simultaneously.

Also absent is the dedicated MIDI Out port on the rear panel; MIDI connectivity and bus power are offered via USB, but if you were hoping to trigger MIDI hardware directly from the Oxygen 49, consider yourself warned. Perhaps the other biggest difference is that the Oxygen 49’s functions are mostly

Oxygen Pro 49’s new sibling is also feature-packed and creative triggered via soft keys and via ‘secondary modes’ from the keybed itself. This is true to some extent on the Pro model too, though the buttons beneath the sliders are labelled there, providing immediate visual feedback and facilitating workflow more directly.

Much of the new tech introduced with the Pro is adopted here too. So you’ll also find you have access to the Pro’s Smart Chord and Smart Scale modes which aid songwriting and composition by, in the case of Chord Mode, triggering whole chords (major and minor, depending on the key of your track), from a single key.

In Scale Mode, you’ll find it impossible to trigger notes ‘outside’ of the key of your track, as keyboard playback adapts to reflect your chosen harmonic foundation.

Also present are the Pro’s excellent Arpeggiator and Beat Repeat, so that stutters and repeats can be triggered from the pads. One slight gripe here; where the Note Repeat button is next to the pads on the Pro, its position just below the LED display here feels less intuitive.

I was extremely positive about the Oxygen Pro 49 and its new sibling is also feature-packed and creative. Much of the tech central to the ethos of the rebadged Oxygen range is present here too, with excellent DAW integration, an all-singing Arpeggiator, Chord and Scale Modes and more.

As there isn’t a big price difference between this and the Pro, your decision will be how much cash to splash. Either way, you’ll get an impressive keyboard controller.

8.6

FM VERDICT Look carefully at the ergonomics of the two keyboards and the extended feature set before deciding which is right for you

THE PROS & CONS

+

Chord and Scale modes help facilitate composition and production Fully-featured arp Deep DAW integration Software suite is generous – plus educational tools

-

8 pads rather than the 16 of the Pro model More functions are assigned to ‘soft keys’ A couple of layout choices feel less ergonomic than on the Pro

75

FM | ROUNDUP

EXCITERS

Thril yourself silly with these toasty signal warmers – but which is the most exciting?

Waves Vitamin $249

FM | MUST HAVE!

waves.com

audiothing.net

AudioThing Type A $71

Easily the most flexible and configurable exciter on this list, Vitamin is a workhorse plugin that can perform precise enhancements. There are five distinct bands that can be manually divided across the spectrum using the crossover controls. Each has an independent gain control (0 to +48) and a stereo width control (0x to 2x) which works well for widening or narrowing sounds. The overall balance between clean and enhanced signals can be changed via the Direct and Enhancement Master settings, while an additional punch control seems to exaggerate the enhancement effect with compression.

Vitamin’s ability to manipulate harmonics across the spectrum and stereo field make it a go-to for full range, exciting and polished-sounding mixes. It’s expensive, but the comprehensive level of controls and solid sound quality mean it’s excellent for warming up any signal.

Pitched as a recreation of the classic Dolby Noise Reduction Unit – a “misused” piece of hardware that was exploited as an enhancer – Type A is a faithful emulation of an obscure piece of history and produces a unique sound. Type A packs four bands of independent excitement, each with its own Level control and Mute.

The built-in compressor with variable Attack and Release, paired with the added background Noise circuit, can help create that nostalgic “dodgy” ’80s/’90s VHS tape sound. The Input and Output levels, along with the Mix control, allow the precise dialling in of sounds from subtle to extreme. Additional controls help with monitoring and calibrating the VU meter. The factory presets are well designed with a good variety of effects possible. A great tool for exaggerated lo-fi tones and retro excitement on drums, bass and vocals.

VERDICT 8.0

VERDICT 8.1

76

Exciters | Roundup

FM | STUDIO ESSENTIAL!

Wavesfactory Spectre £89

Voxengo CRTIV Shumovik $49

$20

voxengo.com

klevgrand.se

Spectre is set out like an EQ, with three bands and two shelves that can be boosted (not cut) to apply its effect across the frequency range, making it a ‘multiband harmonic enhancer’, however much like an EQ it looks.

Like an EQ, each band can have its frequency and Q adjusted to refine the effect’s tone. There are a selection of Color options to apply to the band processing, plus an overall setting of Subtle, Medium or Aggressive to give a new edge. In use, Spectre is particularly intuitive, thanks to that EQ interface. You can access a range of distortion, saturation and excitation styles including Tape, Tube, Solid (state), Bitcrushing and Rectification modes, and applying each per band (FabFilter Saturnstyle) is a beautiful experience. Great for anything from focused saturation of certain frequencies to allencompassing signal warming.

A niche but useful plugin that adds shaped noise to audio signals. This might seem a strange tool at first, but Shumovik is an aggressive type of exciter that uses white noise and filtering to boost particular frequency bands. An envelope system shapes the attack and release of the added noise from long to short, while a Dynamics control works like a gate threshold, setting the level the signal has to reach before triggering the added noise. There are two EQ controls, for setting relative High/Low frequency gains. A Band setting from 10-64 determines how many noise bands are added, roughly corresponding to the balance of smoothness-crunchiness. The level section has independent Wet/Dry gain levels and metering. Useful for adding a characterful vibe to dull stuff.

VERDICT 8.8

VERDICT 7.2

wavesfactory.com

Klevgrand Luxe

With its more abstract and simplistic interface design, Luxe is a saturation and enhancement plugin boasting a smooth, rich character which effortlessly spices up sounds. Centred around one main control dubbed “Lyx”, which functions as an enhancement amount from 0 to 100, Luxe provides a fair range of sounds. You get two enhancement modes: “Luxe” and “Finesse”. Luxe has a narrow, smoother tone, like clean, modern hardware – almost Neve-like. The Finesse mode is dirtier and works great on low frequencies. At higher levels it also compresses the sound, though there are no controls for timing this process. Luxe is topped off with an output level control for gain staging. This is a no-frills plugin that doesn’t overcomplicate the enhancement process.

VERDICT 7.0 77

Reviews | Arturia FX Collection 2

Arturia FX Collection 2 €399 The second iteration of Arturia’s effects package adds modulation and bus processors. Si Truss discovers what’s special about these FX

CONTACT WHO: Arturia WEB: arturia.com KEY FEATURES 22 effects plugins including filters, preamps, delays, reverbs, compressors, modulation and bus effect

78

Arturia FX Collection 2 | Reviews

O

ver the past few years Arturia have been trickling out virtual effects under the umbrella of their ‘Effects You’ll Actually Use’ series – a clunky moniker but, I’ll begrudgingly admit, a factual one. By combining, for the most part, quality analogue emulations with well-considered modern features, Arturia have hit on a winning formula. Their delays and filters, in particular, have become go-to plugins as a quick and inspiring source of creative processing.

The company’s FX Collection bundles all of these effects into one place, a total of 22 plugins for this second iteration. The collection can, mostly, be broken down into groups of three by category – three filters, three delays, three reverbs, three compressors, three preamps. New for version two are a trio of bus processors and, breaking from tradition, four modulation effects.

Three of these modulation effects were released as their own bundle last year. They are emulations of Roland’s Dimension D chorus, the BF-20 flanger and a stompbox-inspired phaser (here named Dimension D, BL-20 and Bi-Tron respectively). All three hit the mark and their usefulness is expanded considerably

by Arturia’s Advanced View extras and in-plugin tutorials. The Dimension D, like its inspiration, is fantastic for adding instant width, but the Bi-Tron phaser is my personal favourite, being a fantastic tool for warping synth leads and basses. The final modulation effect is a clone of the lauded dual-mode Juno chorus. It’s hardly a rarity in the emulation sphere, and Arturia’s take is fairly straightforward, but it sounds on-the-money and is a nice addition to the overall package.

The bus effects are some of the most interesting Arturia has produced. The trio here includes the Neve-inspired Comp DIODE-609 and an emulation of Siemens Sitral EQs, named EQ SITRAL-295. The FX Collection has generally lent more towards creative tools than mixing effects, so these are really nice additions that round out the package well. While both capture the vibe of their hardware inspirations, they’re enhanced with tools such as mid-side processing and more precise control over EQ frequencies.

The final bus processor, Bus Force, is an original, combining a variety of effects in a semi-modular container app. These effects mix modern and retro inspirations – there’s an Oberheim-style filter, a Pulteq EQ, and saturation and a punchy VCA compressor both inspired

by Overstayer hardware. As a combined package, it’s fantastic. This is no master bus processor though; I’m sure you could use it for some final subtle tweaks, but it’s by far at its best used on individual sounds or drum groups, as a tool to smash, distort or add punch.

Misgivings about the naming convention aside, I’m a very big fan of Arturia’s effects range and this latest package is all-round impressive. For the price point, it covers a lot of bases and there are no real duds among the 22 inclusions.

It’s perhaps not quite the only effects bundle you’ll ever need – creativity and character is still served better than precise mixing tools – but it can handle a very good chunk of your music making duties.

9.4

FM VERDICT

THE PROS & CONS

+

Bus Force is a highlight – great for adding punch and gritty distortion New emulations are each impressive and nicely varied Advanced tools and in-plugin tutorials add a lot

-

Does creative duties and characterful effects better than precise mixing

Arturia’s effects range keeps getting better, and Bus Force is a new highlight.

A great value, impressively consistent collection 79

Reviews | Wavefonix R2R DAC and 8-Step Sequencer

80

Reviews | Lewitt LCT 140 Air

Lewitt LCT 140 Air £259 stereo pair Want to mic things in stereo? Jon Musgrave sees if this new pencil mic bundle is what you need

CONTACT WHO: Lewitt Audio WEB: lewitt-audio.com KEY FEATURES CAPSULE: 17mm

diaphragm SENSITIVITY: 14.6mV/Pa EQUIVALENT NOISE: 20dB-A MAX SPL FOR 0.5% THD: 135dB SPL DYNAMIC RANGE: 115dB-A PHANTOM PWR: 48V +/- 4V ATTENUATION PAD: -12dB LOW CUT FILTER: 80Hz (12dB/octave) DIMENSIONS: 140 x 24mm, 66g PRICE: Single: £135, Stereo pair: £259

82

Lewitt LCT 140 Air | Reviews

L

ewitt LCT 140 Air is a new pencil-style cardioid condenser mic available as either individual or matched stereo pairs and it’s the latter I have for review. The stereo bundle includes the two mics, a pair of bespoke clips and two small foam windshields.

There’s also a nicely conceived double compartment-lined carry case that’s big enough to incorporate the mics with clips attached. Ideally a matched pair should help deliver reliable stereo recordings, so to create closely matched pairs, Lewitt uses full frequency analysis.

Assuming you have a couple of identical mic preamps, you should be good to go.

On the side of the mic are three switches. Two of these are pretty standard fare, and you get a -12dB level pad and an 80Hz low cut filter.

The third option is responsible for the AIR aspect of the mic name and engages a bell-shaped high frequency boost. This is an interesting addition and though it’s not the first time I’ve encountered a mic with some form of modifiable curve, I’m not sure I’ve seen it on a small capsule condenser before.

Still, I’m all for getting things correct ‘at source’ and there may well be situations where this could come in handy. The mic finish is great and the black colour scheme coupled with Lewitt’s green and white labelling matches other mics in their range. At 66g each, the mics are

The natural sound works well for all manner of acoustic instruments pretty light and even when you factor in the mic clips, they won’t tax your mic stand. The included foam windshields are pretty skinny, which doesn’t impede crossed configurations. That said, they don’t cope very well with extremely windy atmospheric conditions.

LCT 140 AIR has good sensitivity (14.6 mV/Pa) and although the self noise of 20dB-A isn’t class-leading, it’s not atypical for a small capsule design. The cardioid pattern is also pretty standard and the shift from on to off-axis is reasonably smooth with decent rear rejection. Get in close and there’s an obvious proximity, although this can be reduced a bit with the low-cut filter. For close speech or vocals you’ll definitely want a decent pop shield.

In its ‘flat’ setting the mic sounds pretty natural and a quick look at the frequency plot reveals just a slight lift in the upper mids. This works very well for all manner of acoustic instruments. Switching in the AIR boost adds a really pleasant lift, and although I would typically consider ‘air’ to be primarily higher frequencies, it’s clear this is adding a presence lift from the high mids

upwards. Either way, it’s smooth and it doesn’t sound artificial and as I said, if it’s needed and you’re able to make that judgement then why not add this at source.

So, any gripes? It would have been great if they’d included a stereo bar, as for me this is a vital tool for a number of common stereo configurations. What’s more, stereo configurations are somewhat limited by the cardioid-only pickup pattern.

Nevertheless, overall the LCT 140 AIR is a solid performer and the stereo bundle both well conceived and executed.

THE PROS & CONS

+

Handy on-body filter and pad options Optional high frequency EQ boost Very light Bundle includes windshields, clips and dual mic pouch

-

Cardioid only No stereo mounting bar included

9.2

FM VERDICT Want an affordable cardioidonly stereo pair? This is a great choice, and the on-body features make it a flexible one as well 83

Reviews | Audient iD4 MkII

Audient iD4 Audio Interface £138 Audiophile design on a budget is a tricky

goal. Jon Musgrave sizes up this popular and newly updated interface CONTACT WHO: Audient WEB: audient.com KEY FEATURES I/O: Class A mic preamp

1 JFET instrument input INSTRUMENT INPUT GAIN RANGE: 40dB MIC PREAMP GAIN: 58dB MAIN OUTPUT DYNAMIC RANGE: 125.5dB-A HEADPHONE OUTPUT DYNAMIC RANGE: 125.5dB-A POWER: Min 0.9mA @ 5V (USB 3.0) DIMENSIONS: 133 x 120 x 60 mm WEIGHT: 0.62kg

84

F

or truly compact audio interfacing on the move, Audient’s recent EVO series has much to offer and I was really impressed by the slickness of the design. However, if you’re after a more audiophile experience their iD desktop range has always been a good bet. Up for review I have the new iD4, which, alongside its sibling iD14, has been given a mk2 upgrade, and now features better dynamic range, improved signal to noise ratio and a beefed up headphone output.

The iD4 is a 2-in 2-out 24-bit / 96kHz compact desktop design with one rear-mounted mic/line input and one front-mounted instrument input.

The mic pre is Audient’s long established 8024 Class A circuit and the instrument input is a JFET design. On the back is the 48V phantom switch alongside a pair of ¼” balanced monitor outputs. On the front edge is the instrument input and both ¼” and ⅛” headphone outputs.

Both headphone sockets receive the same signal and can be used simultaneously, which is very handy.

On the top panel, in addition to two preamp gain controls, you get hardware monitoring via a simple balance control (Input/DAW) and output level is set via the large push button volume encoder. The push action dims both headphones and main outputs and you can also mute just the speaker outputs using the speaker button. Meanwhile using the speaker button and iD button together allows you to adjust the left/right balance of the zero latency monitoring. Alone, said iD button activates the encoder mode so you can use the main knob to adjust DAW plugin parameters. Finally, the top panel includes a five-step output meter that temporarily doubles as a level indicator when you adjust one of the controls.

The iD4 mk2 is exclusively USB bus powered, however unlike for its predecessor, connectivity is now via the latest USB-C style port. The iD4 also takes advantage of the higher power supplied via the USB 3.0 protocol to deliver an improved headphone output and provide true 48V phantom power to the mic pre.

To that end, a USB 3.0 connection is required, and although I did get the unit to function on a USB 2.0 connection, this is not supported and

Audient iD4 MkII | Reviews THE PROS & CONS

+

Good amount of clean gain from tried and tested Audient preamp Tasty JFET instrument input Robust stylish construction Simple hardware monitoring with panning option Useful additional encoder features

-

Requires USB 3.0 connection for correct operation

For me it’s the instrument input that’s the star would likely be unreliable. Connection to iOS devices is also possible, though unless you’re using a new USB-C equipped iPad Pro you’ll need the Camera Connection Kit and a PSU. The iD4 is solidly made with all-metal casework, and with chunky controls and decent connectors, it definitely has a quality feel.

How does it sound? Well we already know the mic pre is very transparent and you’ve got 58dB of clean quiet gain. But for me it’s the instrument input that’s the star. The JFET design is quiet and punchy with plenty of headroom and if you do happen to clip the input, the distortion is natural and pleasing.

This mk2 release builds on the iD4’s audiophile credentials whilst

keeping things simple and compact.

Yes, you’ll need a USB 3.0 connection to power it, but this is still a very solid upgrade.

9.0

FM VERDICT The iD4 provides a solid uplift on its predecessor and although the feature set is pretty basic, there’s quality where it counts 85

FM | TESTBENCH

FabFilter Timeless 3 > The innovating Dutch plugin developers are back with another upgrade to one of their range, and this time it’s the out-of-favour Timeless delay that gets to go up a version number.

Version 2 of Timeless was something of a hit back at the time of its first release, but, alas, its knob-heavy interface has been starting to make it look and feel a little bit dated as the years have gone on.

Timeless 3 completely re-imagines the concept, putting the easy Delay (time) control front and centre, with its outer ring determining the delay time difference between the left and right channels, should you want it to.

Delay controls >

The usual delay controls are easy to make sense of. Delay and Feedback control your delay’s timing and the amount it repeats in the same way as ever. Your delay ‘taps’ are represented very nicely in the graph display in the top left. Changing the feedback makes subsequent taps closer to the level of the original spike (and you can even apply Feedback levels above 100%). Meanwhile, to show how the graph represents left and right channels, tweak the Delay Time Pan control (the ring around the Delay knob) to watch the channels’ tap spikes separate in time.

Dynamics >

Dynamics lets you either compress or gate the delayed signal, depending on which way you turn it. The difference is easier to hear with Diffuse turned up: the gating and expansion side act to bring back the original timing of the signal, while compression turns it more into a smeared wall of sound.

The Pitch control shifts the delayed signal higher or lower up to 12 semitones, and has two more options: to place it inside or outside the feedback path; and to pitchshift the opposite direction in the two channels.

86

< Feedback

With decent feedback and the Wet Mix turned right up, it’s time to check out the Feedback effects. These are processes you can apply to the wet (delayed) signal while keeping your dry signal unprocessed. Drive applies a nice analogue-style distortion to the delayed signal; Lo-Fi, meanwhile, applies bitcrushing with a combo of both sample rate and bit depth tailor made for you. The Diffuse parameter is something approaching reverb, smearing the delay’s wet signal into an epic, cavernous sound.

Testbench | Reviews Meanwhile, a nearby Cross slider determines the extent to which each channel should feed back into itself or the other.

There’s a lot more to it too, of course. With feedback path effects, easy visualisation of delay timing, mid/side stereo mode, and some out-of-this-world modulation options, Timeless 3 goes further than most delay plugins while still remaining accessible to casual users.

Let’s take a closer look…

INFINITE MODULATION

Timeless 3’s modulation section uses the same upgraded mod interface (and visualisation style) as the recently upgraded Saturn 2 plugin, which in turn keeps things pretty similar in spirit to FabFilter’s original ideas.

The modulation section can be hidden completely, but when activated offers a choice of LFOs, envelope generators and followers,

MIDI sources, XY controllers, and the lovely new Slider widget which basically acts as a macro control with a scalar value. All can be renamed, which makes them pretty helpful when looking to control complex patches from the presets. Further delightful features include LFOs that turn into full sequencers (with pitch snapping available), presets on the envelopes, and MIDI functions including Mod Wheel, Aftertouch, Velocity and CC.

EQ >

Let’s look at the EQ, a very recognisable part of the plugin to anyone who already uses any FabFilter plugins. You can call up a band by clicking on the display, and select its type from the usual suspects: bells, low- and high-passes, shelves and a notch. EQ bands can be applied in serial or parallel configuration (which may help with modulation setups, as we’ll see soon), or in Per Channel to service either left and right sides separately, or alternatively, mid and sides channels separately. < Modulation

The filters are so visible that we can grasp the modulation controls easily. On the lower interface, we instantiate an XLFO, and send its signal to two places: a notch on the right channel and a bell boost on the left. As per a longstanding FabFilter staple, we can change the frequency and ‘Glide’ (ie waveshape) of the LFO here, and assign more destinations through drag ’n’ drop. Clicking the XLFO’s source node opens a display to set depths and polarity for each routing.

< Taps

Back to the delay graph, we can select the Taps view to add extra delay stages into our setup (by default it’s just an input and a signal tap). You can double-click to add new taps between 0 and 100% of the selected delay time, and change levels and timing of any tap (you can have up to 16 taps here).

What’s more, you can right-click to set the taps in predefined shapes such as ramped and randomised, and you can modulate any tap’s level, frequency or panning with any of your modulators.

< Further features

The best of the rest include the Cross control, which has the different channel feed back into each other, and the Ping Pong control, which lets you feed the channels into each other alternately, and disables crossfeed. There’s Stereo Width for the delayed signal; tape-style or samplerstyle handling when you change the delay time, and delay buffer freezing onboard too.

The design of the delay plugin is truly the last word in its category… at least for now.

87

Reviews | Tracktion F.’em!

Tracktion F.’em! $180 Could this confrontationally-named plugin be the most powerful FM synth ever?

Si Truss finds out…

CONTACT WHO: Tracktion WEB: tracktion.com KEY FEATURES Four-layer FM synthesiser. 11 OPERATOR ENGINE: 8 digital synthesis operators, 2 multi-sample operators, noise operator, 2 multimode filters with drive. Four effect slots per-layer. Arpeggiator per-layer. Multiple modulation tools and matrix with modifiers

88

Tracktion F.’em! | Reviews THE PROS & CONS

+

Hugely wellequipped synthesis/ sample engine Routing matrix is a neat and powerful system Masses of powerful modulation tools

-

F

or a long time, when it came to FM synth plugins, Native Instruments’ FM8 ruled supreme. With the playfully confrontational F.’em!, Tracktion are set on changing that.

This new powersynth is easily the most serious FM synth plugin we’ve seen in recent times, and could quite convincingly stake a claim to being the most powerful FM synth ever.

The overall design here has four layers, each containing an 11-operator FM engine. The most noticable element of F.’em!’s design is its central matrix. This customisable grid takes the role usually employed by algorithms in a traditional FM synth, for dictating the assignment and routing of each operator, whether that involves being routed to an output, to modulate another operator or both. It’s a neat, pleasantly user-friendly system, that essentially comes down to clickingand-dragging the point between any two operators to apply routing. While, with the potential to employ 11 operators, it can get complex quickly, the nice use of colour in the interface helps keep track of what’s going on.

Likely too complex for casual users Can be demanding of the CPU

Dig into the operators themselves and there’s plenty of flexibility on offer. The FM operators incorporate elements of virtual analogue in with traditional FM design, offering a choice of waveforms, along with amp and pitch envelopes, plus level and pitch LFOs for each operator. Along with these eight synthesis operators, F.’em! features two multi-sample operators, which can be loaded with sounds from the plugin’s factory library or your own collection. These operators are similarly equipped to the synth operators, both in that they feature the same pitch and amp modulation tools, but also in the routing capabilities; both sample sources can modulate, or be modulated by, any other operator.

The final operator is a noise source, another nice virtual analogue touch, joined by a pair of analoguestyle multi-mode filters. The two filters each come equipped with their own LFOs and envelopes, plus a drive effect, and can be routed in series or parallel using the central matrix.

Even on top of all these individual envelopes and LFOs, there’s a wealth of additional modulation sources, including customisable Flow LFOs, macro controls and a powerful

modifier matrix. Each layer is rounded out by an EQ section, a four-slot effects processor and individual arp.

In short, F.’em! is very powerful.

It’s hard to think of a better equipped FM synth. This comes at a price however; despite a well laid-out UI and quality presets, this remains a fairly advanced instrument. It can tax the CPU heavily too, particularly when making use of its full features. Not that this is a huge issue – you can create immensely rich, complex sounds without even scratching the surface. This is a big, powerful soft synth and a deep, inviting well of sound design possibilities!

9.3

FM VERDICT A hugely powerful digital synth – likely too powerful for some. But for those who brave its depth there’s a mass of potential here 89

Reviews | Antelope Audio Zen Go

Antelope Zen Go €416 Synergy Core Jon Musgrave checks out this new affordable USB powered and DSP equipped audio interface

CONTACT WHO: Antelope Audio WEB: antelopeaudio.com KEY FEATURES I/O: 2 x mic/line/

instrument, ¼” TRS and RCA mirrored, 2 x ¼” jacks, 1 x S/PDIF Mic preamp max gain: 65dB A/D Converter Dynamic Range: 120dB D/A Converter Dynamic Range: 127dB (A-weighted) DIMENSIONS: 198 x 117 x 57.5mm WEIGHT: 0.7kg

90

Z

en Go is the latest, most affordable interface from Antelope’s Synergy Core range and again includes internal DSP to power their minimal latency onboard processing and support mic modelling for their Verge and Edge modelling mics. The 4-in, 8-out USB-powered design has great specs including discrete mic preamps with up to 65dB gain, high quality 64-bit AFC clocking, 24-bit operation at up to 192kHz, two separate headphone outputs, mirrored main outputs on both TRS and RCA connectors, and minimum latency monitoring via the Control Panel app.

The stylish compact desktop design has a robust metal case and the top panel includes a large rotary encoder and three buttons (Gain, HP/ MON, Antelope) alongside an eye-catching multipart display for monitoring input and output levels, sample rate and clock source. On the back you’ll find two XLR/TRS combo inputs for mic/line/instrument connection, the monitor outputs and S/PDIF in/out. On the front edge are the two headphone outs.

USB connectivity is via type C connector and though I powered it from both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 connections, USB 2.0 doesn’t really provide enough power. However, there’s also a second type-C connector so you can power Zen Go from a hub or charger, widening your hardware options to include iPads and iPhones. Although at the moment there’s no iOS control app for Zen Go. Zen Go, like other Zen devices, is a tech-driven interface and the streamlined top panel controls can access multiple functions including input gain, 48V phantom, output level, headphone levels and output muting. Though not as immediate as dedicated controls, this worked well.

Still, for more extensive controls you’ll need the Control Panel app. This includes mixer panels for setting up not only headphone cues but also general routing including internal loopback. It’s also where you can add Synergy Core processing via the Synergy Core FX Rack (AFX) available on the first four faders either as four mono or two linked stereo streams with up to eight inserts on each.

Of course, this is one of the Zen Go’s USPs and it ships with 37

Antelope Audio Zen Go | Reviews

Audiophile front end and impressive onboard processing effects, including mic preamps, EQs, compressors, guitar amps and cabinets, and their Auraverb reverb.

You can also purchase further Synergy Core effects as required, tantalisingly listed in the plugin list. Among the included 37 are plenty of analogue emulations based on trusty favourites such as FET-A76 (Urei) and VEQ-1A (Pultec) and some more esoteric examples such as BA-31 preamp (RCA). There are also some rather good guitar amp and cabinet effects.

Unlike Antelope’s Thunderbolt interfaces, Zen Go can’t use their AFXDAW plugin, which lets you access Synergy Core plugins from your DAW. However, if your DAW supports hardware inserts you can actually use the flexible routing in the Control Panel mixer to route signals via the plugins.

Overall Zen Go Synergy Core is a fantastic portable interface that provides not only an audiophile front end but also impressive onboard processing – and all at a very competitive price.

8.5

FM VERDICT Zen Go brings Antelope’s impressive Synergy Core system to a much wider audience in a more affordable and impressively

THE PROS & CONS

+

Compact slick desktop design Well conceived monitoring and routing app Bundled Synergy Core effects

-

The Control Panel app is required to access many of the features

91

FM | SOUNDS & SAMPLES

UVI – Quadra €149

>

Most FM reviews for UVI soundware focus on their ever-expanding range of instruments aimed at capturing rare or classic hardware.

However, UVI cover a lot of ground - the latest of their products that defies categorisation is Quadra, or ’Quadra – Muted and Harmonics’ to give its full title. As always this

Soundiron – UFO Tone $29

>

This Kontakt-based instrument library is based around a sampled hand drum captured in the vibrant acoustics of St Paul’s

Church in San Francisco. It is well-recorded and extremely playable, but the real fun for me is in what Soundiron do at the layering and processing stage within Kontakt. The Custom FX Presets section takes the content and turns it into something far less predictable – from odd pulsing patterns to evolving pads, and with decent scope for tweaking and further sound design. Bruce Aisher soundiron.com

VERDICT 8.0

92

comes as an instrument library in their free UVI Workstation software (in standalone and plugin versions) or as an expansion to the Falcon 2 hybrid synth.

Quadra, as the name suggests, is based around a 4-part sound engine, and UVI’s description of it as a ‘multi-instrument and sequence designer’ neatly sums up its focus. Each layer is assigned a sound from a comprehensive list of acoustic, electric and synthetic sources – these are based around nicelycaptured multi-samples, and explains the hefty 6GB (compressed) install size. Even before any further treatment, there is some excellent content here.

However, once each of the four parts is layered, sequenced and processed by the internal effects, the results take on a whole new character. The sequencing of each layer is independent and while described as an arpeggiator it includes chord detection and scale quantising alongside some sophisticated tools, such as the so-called Euclidean Emphasis section (for adding octave, velocity and volume side-chain accents) and MIDI Effect (which is for generating additional sequenced harmonic lines).

The interface is up to the usual high standards of UVI’s previous instruments, and there are many excellent presets to get you started. Quadra is fun and inspirational to play, and would find plenty of use across the full spectrum of styles. Bruce Aisher uvi.net

VERDICT 9.0

Spitfire Audio – Hainbach – Landfill Totems £29

>

As you’d expect from Hainbach, this is no ordinary sound library, and neither are the tools which created it. As the name suggests, the startpoint here was a bunch of boxes destined for the scrapheap (originally part of a performance installation). This collection uses a

dedicated plugin, and there are 40 presets here, covering tonal, atonal and percussion sounds.

However, the boundaries between them, and the uses to which they might be put, are blurred, and all the better for it. Great use is made of the modwheel to morph between textures, and underlying it all is an alluring lo-fi sound that can go from quaint and simple to menacingly complex in an instant.

Bruce Aisher spitfireaudio.com

VERDICT 8.9

Sounds & Samples | Reviews

Singomakers – Back To The Funk £29.95

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Great Scott! A Back To The Future-riffing sample pack of dope funk beats and grooves? Your kids will love it. And you can see why – the 1.7GB (not GW, sadly) of loops and one-shots will enchant any dance.

The slap bass stuff is to die for, and the percussion on-point. Plus, the other vintage and custom instruments they pull sounds from are top notch, too – 74’ Fender Strats and Rickenbacker basses sound superb, whatever the decade, and everything is captured with a high-end recording chain for maximum quality. The man behind the pack is EDM and hip-hop guitarist/producer, Moscow Alien, and his axe-work is some of the best in the biz.

Roy Spencer loopmasters.com

VERDICT 8.0

Sample Diggers – Vol. 3: Splice Originals – Fire Sugar Breaks £14.95 and Ice From $7.99/mth

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Audiotent – Perception £17

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VERDICT 8.0

VERDICT 8.0

VERDICT 8.0

VERDICT 8.0

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Drums, please! Sample pack veteran, Mark Fletcher, steps up once more to deliver another expert session. His super live and loose style is perfect for dropping in your soul and funk productions, as is, or chopping or beefing with extra hits of your own.

Nothing is pushed to the maximum, with Wav files having lots of headroom, so there’s plenty of raw material to play with.

And the 76-137bpm loops come in a wide variety of moods, with lots of tone and energy to get inspired by. From springy snares and splashy hats, to crisp toms and thumping kicks, everything radiates from the finest kit, captured with the pro’s choice of mics and outboard gear. Quality tub-thumps, throughout. Roy Spencer loopmasters.com

The Splice crew fire up their in-house synth, Astra, and coax some cold ass sounds for all you bleepy bloopy beatmakers. The virtual instrument’s unique bank of tones and drones have been tweaked, offering up everything from simple passages, all the way up to complex brainmelting oscillations. It’s a pack of two halves, or temperatures. To start, they channel the spirits of old-timers Vangelis, Wendy Carlos, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop posse, before racing forwards, through decades of pioneering electronica, to stop in on the arpeggiated rhythms of future synth lords like patch artists Lichens, and Ninja Tune’s own modular monsieur, Chrome Sparks. Roy Spencer splice.com

Got a wall of Eurorack synth modules? Those that immediately answered with a smug “Yes!” may now go off and lose an hour or three working sweet bleeps out of them.

For the rest of you this pack of patches, hits, and grooves will make you feel like you’re amongst that spawny few.

The Audiotent team treat their own wall of prized kit with respect, and know just what spots to tickle. Deep and meaningful oscillations abound, culminating in a cool and crazy useable collection of super experimental and magical modulations.

From steady metronomic pulses, to loose and lairy loops, you’ll find an energy and mood to suit every section of your tracks.

Roy Spencer audiotent.com

Sample Magic – Piano House From $7.99/mth

Hundreds of tinkled ivory loops, ready and willing to turn your half-realised house beats into hands-in-the-air club anthems.

From stabs and chords, to riffs and melodies, each sample has been inspired by years of dance music history. And the nostalgic playing style, especially when let loose on the richly recorded grand piano, instantly fills the room with a joyous noise.

You also get five great presets, and other track-starting elements to fill out your productions. Case in point – the jackin’ drum loops, stacked with percussion or stripped back to kicks. And the excellent bank of vocal hooks, which come pre-chopped. Great fun, all round.

Roy Spencer splice.com

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FM | GEAR GUIDE AFFORDABLE SYNTHS Novation Circuit Tracks £360

IK UNO Synth Pro from £399

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

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

Full Review: FM369

Full Review: FM371

Korg Wavestate £699

Arturia MicroFreak £279

Erica Bassline DB-01 €460

Arturia MiniBrute 2S £575

Korg Minilogue XD £565

Modal Cobalt 8 £579

Korg Nu:Tekt NTS-1 £99

Korg Volca FM £129

Review: FM353 The price is pushing what we’d usually call ‘affordable’ but with 64 stereo voices and a multi-timbral sound engine you get a lot for your money here. And it sounds great too!

Review: FM341 The four biggest Prologue features (Multi-Engine, user oscillator/effect import, filter-drive and stereo-effects) in an affordable form. Instabuy!

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Review: FM345 If you’re looking to go beyond regular analogue synths and expand your sonic palette with an affordable creative tool, MicroFreak should be top of your ‘must try’ list.

Review: FM368 Another brilliantly unique-sounding Modal machine! Very flexible for its price and a powerful editor plus MPE give it futuristic appeal.

Review: FM359 A powerful sequencer and plenty of unique features make this much more than just another Bassline-clone.

Review: FM351 Easy to build and fun to program, the NTS-1’s flexibility and expandability make it a mini synth to be reckoned with.

Review: FM328 The second coming of ’Brute sees it take on an expanded synth engine and semi-modular architecture. The sequencerfocused 2S is our favourite.

Review: FM305 A great-sounding box of classic FM sounds. It might lack the polyphony of the DX7 but, apart from that, the sound is bang on.

Its motion sequencing is seriously powerful too.

Essential Tools For Music Making | Gear Guide

DAWS Bitwig Studio 4 $399 Full Review: FM373

Ableton Live 11 Suite £539 Full Review: FM368

On the whole this is the least essential update of Not an essential upgrade for everyone, but new Bitwig Studio so far, but the DAW remains one of additions, including comping, MPE and linked our favourite pieces of music making software. tracks, have been smartly done. Live retains its place at the cutting edge.

Steinberg Cubase Pro 11 £499

Review: FM366 The latest annual update to Steinberg’s much-loved DAW improves sampling, refines a number of Pro features and adds a selection of fun creative tools.

Universal Audio LUNA free

UA might not want to call LUNA a DAW, but let’s be honest... Even in its version one form, this is a slick and stylish recording environment and a great freebie for Apollo users.

Tracktion Waveform Pro from $119

Apple Logic Pro X 10.5 $199

PreSonus Studio One 5 Pro £345

Image-Line FL Studio 20 ¤89

Review: FM345 Waveform is now friendlier, contains more creative tools and brings workflow ideas you’ll have missed from other DAWs.

Studio One has built up quite the cult following over its decade of existance, and with good reason – this is a powerful, modern DAW.

Review: FM361 Although many of Logic 10.5’s new tools are familiar from other DAWs, this generous free update rounds out a feature set that is now arguably unrivalled.

Review: FM334 Released to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Image-Line’s FL Studio 20 is a powerful and inspirational application – and it’s a welcome addition to the Mac realm too!

Reason Studios Reason 11 from $69

Review: FM350 Having the ability to use Reason’s Rack tools as a plugin is something of a revelation, and the new effects are great.

Avid Pro Tools from £25 p/m

Pro Tools has now caught up with other DAWs, bringing in a fast workflow to match its power.

It still only runs AAX plugins, and there are alternative subscription payment models.

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Gear Guide | Essential Tools For Music Making

DIGITAL POLYSYNTHS Y R TNE W EN ASM Hydrasynth £1,299

Korg Wavestate £699

Waldorf Quantum £3,500

Korg Opsix £699

Review FM360 An impressive first release from a new brand. Hydrasynth looks and sounds great, invites exploration, is built to last and is hugely expressive. What’s not to like?

Korg Modwave £699

Full Review: FM373 | Modwave is far from the only wavetable game in town, but it sets itself apart with unique tools and a few added gimmicks.

Review: FM336 A stunning piece of hybrid synth design – setting a new benchmark for features, interface and sonics. It’s expensive, but a synth that you’ll find inspiring for many years.

Review FM353 Wavestate walks the line perfectly between paying tribute to a ’90s classic and offering cutting-edge tools. A fantastic update to a much-loved synth line.

Review: FM365 Opsix is packed with unique character, and – rarely for an FM instrument – it’s fun and accessible. Another top-class digital synth from Korg.

HARDWARE SEQUENCERS Arturia KeyStep Pro £319

Novation SL MkIII from £540

Pioneer DJ Toraiz Squid £467

Arturia BeatStep Pro £196

Full Review: FM359 For melodic sequencing duties and flexible hardware control, this is one of the best keyboard devices around.

Korg SQ-64 £269

Full Review: FM367 | An intuitive, nostalgic and very musical bit of gear and one that should stand the test of time. Now, where did we park the Trans-Am? 96

Review: FM351 Pioneer DJ’s Squid opens the door to a world of bespoke sequencing, with features like Groove Bend and speed modulation putting a new spin on your sequencing moves.

Full Review: FM338 Well-designed and versatile.

For those who work with both hardware and software, this may be the best studio centrepiece on the market.

Review: FM296 The BeatStep Pro is a modern classic, offering a great range of connectivity, sequencing and controller capabilities, all without breaking the bank.

Essential Tools For Music Making | Gear Guide

AFFORDABLE MONITORS M-Audio BX3 & BX4 from £85

Adam Audio T5V £133

KRK Rokit G4 from £133

Yamaha HS5 £155

Full Review: FM369 Compact and convenient, M-Audio’s new BX monitors expand the appeal of the range and do so at an incredible price.

Kali Audio LP-6 £147

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

Full Review: FM348 With punchy delivery and an abundance of EQ options, these are the best Rokits yet, offering power at an accessible price.

Full Review: FM335 The T5V delivers plenty of clarity, decent imaging and volume from a pretty compact footprint. A tidy package, all at a good price point.

High-quality, accurate studio monitors offering solid power, imaging and detail at a very reasonable price.

STANDALONE MUSIC MAKERS Polyend Tracker £449

Akai MPC Live II £1,040

Roland MC-707 $999

NI Maschine+ £1,099

Full Review: FM357 Less esoteric than it first appears, this is a well-designed sampler that’s both fun and inspiring. Worth a look whether you’re experienced with trackers or not.

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

Review: FM349 It lags behind some rivals on the sampling front, but on the whole the 707 is a powerful and well-designed groovebox. A welcome return for the company’s MC line.

Full Review: FM358 A truly go-anywhere production experience – and now better equipped than ever. The Live II remains the high point of the current MPC range.

Review: FM363 There are some limitations, but Maschine+ delivers the core Maschine workflow in standalone form: inspiring, creative and fun in the process.

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Gear Guide | Essential Tools For Music Making

SEMI-MODULAR SYNTHS

Full Review: FM355

Moog $699 Subharmonicon Full Review: FM359

Korg Volca Modular £190

Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900 $629

Moog DFAM £549

Arturia MiniBrute 2S £575

Review: FM341 Wears its influences on its sleeve, but still has its own unique style.

Review: FM333 A unique percussion synth, and the perfect partner to the Mother-32. The lack of MIDI is quite disappointing though.

Dreadbox NYX 2 €539

Behringer Neutron £549

Analogue Solutions Impulse Command £1,020

Moog Matriarch £1,979

The Matriarch is very inspiring. It’s well built, has Mixes familiar Moog sounds with experimental the classic Moog Modular sound and is complex sequencing and rhythms. An inspiring, well-built yet intuitive. A future classic! and well thought-out synth.

Review: FM342 A West Coast synth in a compact package. It may be fiddly, but give in to its experimental ethos and it’s endless fun.

Dreadbox Erebus 3 €499

Review: FM355 The Erebus V3 is a powerful, well-specified and flexible synth, capable of both conventional and more experimental tones.

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Review: FM352 Dual filters and some great routing, modulation and patching possibilities make this more than just another semi-modular.

The reverb is great for drones and FX too.

Review: FM334 Despite a couple of design issues, the Neutron is a fun, useful and immensely flexible synth. At the suggested price, it’s fantastic value for money.

Review: FM328 Takes on an expanded synth engine and semi-modular architecture. The sequencer-focused 2S is our favourite.

Review: FM346 Likely an acquired taste, with its unpredictable sequencers and filters, but if you embrace the chaos this is truly inspirational.