FREE CM PLUCK PLUGIN + ULTIMATE BREAKS SAMPLES BACK TO LIVE August 2021 / CM297 BUILD YOUR OWN PLUGINS TOP ADVICE TO TAKE YOUR SOUND TO STAGE The easy guide to creating your own unique instruments and FX ULTIMATE FREE SAMPLES BREAKS The only breakbeat and vinyl grooves collection you need 2 NEW PACKS OVER 2500 3 CLASSIC PACKS INCREDIBLE SAMPLES LORAINE JAMES RURAL TAPES INTERVIEWS welcome / computer music < DOWNLOAD HOW TO USE Whenever you see this icon, you can grab the files on your PC or Mac by going to filesilo.co.uk/computermusic. DOWNLOAD Tutorials eaturing this icon make use o our own Plugins – find out all about them at filesilo.co.uk. This icon means there are extra files to help you ollow a tutorial eature: project files, audio examples, etc. TUTORIAL FILES There’s extra video content wherever you see this icon. computermusic.co.uk WWW computermusic@futurenet.com facebook.com/computer.music.mag twitter.com/computermusicuk youtube.com/computermusicmag instagram.com/computermusicmag Subscribe to Computer Music! See p66 Where to get PRINT in stores and online magazinesdirect.com ZINIO for PC, Mac, Android, iPad & more zinio.com iOS APP STORE GOOGLE PLAY for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch for Android & Chrome for PC/Mac computermusic.co.uk/cmdigital play.google.com See page 83 to find out how to download this issue’s exclusive content welcome In the DIY spirit of our cover feature this month, I’m not going to bother writing an intro for the issue, but let you construct your own ‘Welcome’* out of the following phrases. The best wins a magazine editor job. Good luck! <And some DAWs get upgraded on p6> <Annoyingly, my favourite plugins wouldn’t run after the OS upgrade> <It really was nothing like the sound of a real analogue synth> <And it’s another incredibly packed issue!> <You’ll never guess what happened to me/my dog/car/ computer this month…> <And their brand new, cutting-edge feature is… comping!> <Hello everyone and welcome to another amazing Computer Music!> <I remember the days of tape splicing and hiss – good times!> <Probably best to build your own plugins, really – and we’ve got just the feature…> <I made the greatest speech ever, and then someone said ‘you’re on mute’> <Don’t forget to subscribe! - see p66> <”XXX” – insert company name here – has decided to go to a subscription model for their software> <Enjoy the issue!> <There’s a new VA softsynth inbound> <Time to get out on stage, and get ready to rock… Someone press ‘Play’ will you?> <Well, I say he was happy about it, but it was a ferret, after all> <I loaded it up and suddenly I was in the 80s> <I’ve got more plugins than you. My music, you ask? It’s on the way…> “Make your own Welcome this month!” * And maybe we could do this with the entire magazine next issue? Andy Jones Editor andy.jones@futurenet.com contents ISSUE 297 AUGUST 2021 Cover feature 60 /experts 62 60 HEARTBREAK CHORDS Dave Clews starts crying… 62 SYNTH MASTERCLASS Formant iltering and Zebra DIY SPECIAL! MAKE YOUR OWN PLUGINS The complete DIY guide – starts p16 18 NI REAKTOR How to go DIY with a plugin-creation classic 28 CYCLING ’74 MAX 4 LIVE Get pedalling with your plugins… 38 MELDA MSOUNDFACTORY The new kid on the DIY plugin block / Back 2 Live Play music now! How to take your music out on the road 46 GET AN AUDIENCE How to get a live following – and keep it – with our detailed look at taking your music out live 54 GET THE GEAR Our rundown of live essentials from the best microphones to lighting and the best DAWs to take on stage… all under the live spotlight 46 4 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 64 PRODUCTION How to create the ultimate FX riser, the easy way 64 15 Questions 44 LORAINE JAMES Creating the ‘album of the year’ with freeware and a 50-quid keyboard 94 RURAL TAPES Ex members of R.E.M. converge on Norway without a computer in site! Reviews 70 TONE2 WARLOCK 728 ORCHESTRAL TOOLS TALLINN 748 AUDIOMODERN OPACITY II 768 UVI 8-BIT 788 THE 6 BEST MULTI FX 808 JMG SOUND ORBITRON 818 TOONTRACK EXPANSION PACKS 94 Essentials 6 NEWS 664 SUBSCRIBE 97 BACK ISSUES 98 NEXT MONTH 81 downloads / contents < downloads Get this month’s content from ilesilo.co.uk – see p83 free plugin MELDA CM PLUCK How to get our irst DIY plugin (and a stack of other Melda goodies while you’re at it!) See p84 Instructionsat File Silo (p83) 84 GROOVY BREAKS 88 free samples BREAKS: NEW AND CLASSIC A breakbeat special as we present two new packs and three classics On the DVD or download from File Silo (seep83) free videos DIY & MASTERCLASSES 92 See how to make your own plugins and watch our expert guides in action Download via File Silo (see p83) DOWNLOAD An all-new PDF detailing our complete Plugin Suite of instruments and efects Download from File Silo (seep83) plugin suite THE CM PLUGIN SUITE August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 5 > news DAW updates a plenty… Bitwig the 4th, Reason’s dozen and 11’s all round everywhere else It’s going to be busy over the next few months in the DAW calendar. We’ve got major releases from Bitwig and Reason to check out, but don’t expect the big releases to end there. First up, Reason Studios Reason 12 has just been announced, although it won’t be released properly until September. That said, subscribers of the new(ish) Reason+ will get the new features and extras as they become available, although no release dates have been conirmed as of yet. New additions include high deinition for all of Reason’s devices meaning that, according to the RS blog, “all your favourite devices will feel like you’re seeing them for the irst time. You can zoom Reason to it your setup, and all third party Rack Extensions will be hi-res ready on day one.” Which is good news on the looks, but the sounds are also seeing additions. There’s a brand new sampler that “goes way beyond what’s available in Reason today”, enabling super quick sound editing and performance. Arguably even bigger news is that Combinator is getting a worklow refresh to make it even simpler to create your own custom device groups. We’re big fans of Combinator but would agree it’s looking dated, so this is great news. There are also other worklow tweaks in the main browser, not to mention a whole Reason’s new sampler will be more direct and easy, but not look as simple as this (we hope) graphic bunch of new Sound Packs on the way. Reason is currently £399 or £199 for the yearly Reason+ sub. It’s Bitwig next who are taking Studio to version 4 with some nice additions including comping for audio clips in the Clip Launcher and Arranger, plus a new set of Operators for changing the chance values of notes or audio events. There are four modes here, including Chance and Occurrence, which can be used individually or together. There’s Native Apple Silicon support on the Mac. And with Live 11, that’s two big 2021 DAW updates with comping, like it’s a completely new idea in music recording. Cynical? Us? Bitwig Studio 4 is out “end of Q2/early Q3”. And here’s some comping in Bitwig 4 These two releases follow big recent updates for other DAWs including that Live 11 one, Tracktion (both Waveform 11 and Waveform Free) and, of course, Pro Tools (which is always being updated). And there will doubtless be more added the minute we submit this story. Of course we’ll have reviews of most, if not all of these in the next few issues of Computer Music. reasonstudios.com, bitwig.com Tron and non Tron too IK Multimedia have released SampleTron 2 which gives you the classic sound of the Mellotron… and because it’s IK, a lot more. It contains “an extensive collection of new, original samples of vintage Mellotron and Chamberlin machines” and uses IK’s extensive processing to apply the same vibe to many non-Tron sounds too. ikmultimedia.com 6 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 news < App watch We report on the latest devs in phone and tablet music making. Easy! Arturia: 22 effects you’ll actually use? We do like a good bundle here and Arturia certainly like making them. And in FX Collection 2, their biggest audio efects bundle, they are actually bundling bundles! It contains all 15 efects rom the original FX Collection, plus the three Modulation FXs, the Chorus JUN-6 and three brand new Bus FXs. That’s a total o 22 efects in what is (almost) rivalling their V Collection in terms o power (OK maybe not). FX Collection 2 is available now although the price was TBA at the time o writing. arturia.com Ins & outs APPLE’S AUDIO BOOST Apple have added more reasons to consider switching to their Music streaming service; not only does it now ofer lossless audio across the catalogue, but there’s also Spatial Audio, which adds support for Dolby Atmos. Both new features are included in the standard price. NOTLIVESTREAM The Glastonbury Festival’s Live At Worthy Farm livestream sounded and looked great, but the fact that so many ticket holders were unable to access it overshadowed all of that. A real shame as there was no traditional mud and rain to blame for the tech failure this time… LET’S HAVE A LOOKC In exciting dongle news – yes, really – there’s now a USB-C iLok, so if you need to use one for software license management and have one of the newer MacBooks, it’ll slot in without requiring an adapter. The downside is that you’ll have to pay $60 to ‘upgrade’. NONE MORE DIME Daft Punk’s One More Time was a massive hit, and features a brass sample from Eddie Johns’ More Spell On You. Incredibly, it’s been conirmed that Johns – who has been homeless – has never had any of the Punk’s royalties. Let’s hope this wrong is soon righted. COME TOGETHER AT ABBEY As part of their 90th birthday celebrations, Abbey Road Studios are opening their famous doors this summer and allowing members of the public to take a tour. You can visit the main recording rooms and check out iconic gear – providing you pay them £100, that is. THE JOSHUA THREE The delayed Euro 2020 tournament will be in full swing now, and you may have heard its oicial song. We Are The People is the work of Bono, The Edge and Martin Garrix, a collab that after the year we’ve had, no one really needed. Easy iOS DJ-ing? Don’t tell the crowd at your next house party, but creating a seamless DJset might just havegot even easier thanks to Algoriddim’supdate to djay on iOS. It features a rewritten Automix AI with improved transitions, so you can set up a playlist of songs, step away from the decks and let the software do the heavy mix lifting. Diicult, cross-genre mixes are said to be supported, as are tempo jumps. Youcan also utilise Algoriddim’s Neural Mix technology, which breaks tracks down into their component parts. djay Pro AI is a free download, while the optional Pro subscription – for all content and features – is $7 a month or $50 a year. algoriddim.com Easy chords? Even the greatest musicians can struggle to come up with good chord progressions. They need Audiomodern’s Chordjam! A “realtime compositional assistant”, this is designed to generate chord progressions based on user-conigured settings, such as the scale and rhythm. You can also play with the chord voicings and explore randomisation options, and there are plenty of presets to get you started. Chordjam runs on iPad (and as a desktop plugin) and is currently $8/£8. audiomodern.com Easy Polyrythms? Cem Olcay’s Euclid Goes to Partyis an iOS bassline synth that stands out byfeaturing a 32-step Euclidean sequencer. This makes it easy for you to create polyrhythmic grooves and variations on the ly. The mono PWM oscillator has an adjustable LFO that modulates the pulse width, and there’s also a low-pass ilter. It runs standalone and as an AUv3 plugin and costs $5/£5. keybudapp.com August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 7 > news Get with the programmers A musician, producer, engineer, collector and sound designer or SounDevice Digital. And, no, not that one… How did you get into music software? BC “I’ve been a musician since age five and in the recording business or 20+ years. I even have a couple o Czech Grammies and a Mercury Prize as an artist/singer/producer. I was always a technical person and went rom collecting gear to designing sotware efects.” How did you become successful? BC “Are we successul? Well, unity is power. We had a long term relationship with Vojtech Meluzin (o Melda), Jason (JMG Sound) and FireSonic. We all had ideas, but starting a SounDevice Digital company or one plugin is too difficult so we thought it’d be best to create UnitedPlugins to deal with things the developers don’t want to do (marketing, accounting, distribution etc.) so we can ocus on designing as many musical plugins as possible.” What makes your software stand out? BC “I’m active in my own studio, so I’m always trying to design something I’d love to use and that would save me time in the recording process. I own a kind o dream studio, as I’m a bit obsessed and collect legendary gear, so I have an original Fairchild, Neves, original Redd 47 preamp, and o course microphones like the U47, C12, M49 and many more. I know how things sound and how the plugin should sound. I use these legends every day, so I’m not just a programmer, who’s just seen these things in a museum.” What are your three most important plugins? BC “Verbum is a kind o new reverb with modelling o chaotic behaviour o reflections, and I modelled the 12-bit ADDA o an EMT 251. I can proudly say that IMHO it is the most hardwarish sounding reverb on the market. Front DAW is a simulation o three desks with our Variable Analog Random Modelling. VARM is technology based on chaotic behaviour and randomness in the analogue world, so each plugin instance acts slightly diferently. VARM models randomness o the subtle diferences o the values o the electrical parts like in real electrical units and console channels. Voxessor is a very smart plugin which has Intelligent Matching. Engage the Learn button (to analyse your voice) or a ew seconds and it will detect the speaker’s voice character. The Match unction will then EQ it to sound as close to the ideal voice as possible.” What would you like to see developed in terms of plugins? BC “I’d love to see automatic real-time metronome cleaning rom a signal. I oten record acoustic guitar and very oten, even with the tightest headphones, click bleeds to the mic. It’s a lot o work to clean it ater.” What software development advice do you have? BC “Simple things work best. People don’t need 1000 knobs and 1000 possibilities. They just want a thing that does the right thing.” What have you guys got planned for the future? MK “For SounDevice Digital, we are creating another vintage-analogue (ish) project to create legendary sounds, but using it in a way that was not possible beore. I can’t tell you the name yet. As or UnitedPlugins, a great guitar plugin by Muramasa will be out soon.” boriscarlof.com Boris Carloff “People just want a plugin that does the right thing” 8 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 years back Our monthly shake-o-thehead at our younger selves’ news choices… “Who needs a real singer these days?” was our question in August 2011 (CM167) as we pondered the concept o the ‘virtual vocalist’. 10 years on and we’re still not hearing chart hits being sung by robots – unless you count identikit boyband members – though there are a air ew who rely heavily on Auto-Tune... Our Producer Masterclass eatured Toddla T – technically, he should be called Teenager T by now, shouldn’t he? – and “Dada Life’s Sausage Fattener plugin is still sizzling away 10 years on” we asked when DAWs would ofer proper support or multitouch displays. There have been some advancements in that area, but we’re still pretty happy with our keyboard and mouse rigs, thank you. In the news, Steve Jobs announced the iCloud – we recall that, at the time, there was a big drive going on to explain what ‘cloud computing’ actually was – and we witnessed the launch o Dada Lie’s Sausage Fattener plugin, which is still sizzling away, ten years on. Speaking o simple plugins, there was outrage in the letters pages as readers claimed that Waves’ new OneKnob processors were dumbing-down music production. In the era o AI, though, perhaps the no-knob efect isn’t too ar away... > news Ochestral Tools Tom Holkenborg Percussion Orchestral Tools Tom Holkenborg Percussion is the latest fruit of a team-up that previously brought us the remarkable Junkie XL Brass. We speak with Tom Holkenborg about what we can expect from this innovative new library 12 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Thunderous, pounding percussion has been a hallmark of Tom Holkenborg’s soundtracks for decades. Little surprise then, that following the successful meeting of minds that brought us Junkie XL Brass, Tom’s next signature project with Orchestral Tools foregrounds this love of all things hittable. Not only does Tom Holkenborg Percussion allow access and insight into Tom’s percussive approach, but tantalisingly contains all of the drum sounds that Tom himself sampled for his own personal use when making such monolithic scores as Mad Max: Fury Road. We gave Tom a call to ind out more about this awesomesounding suite. Hi Tom, so can you give us an overview of Tom Holkenborg Percussion, how did the idea for this originate? TH “Well I actually started developing this library as early as 2013, when I started sampling my own drums. I should say that I had a very insane drum collection. When I started sampling my own drums I pursued a diferent approach than what typical drum libraries ofer. I knew that there were better ways to assemble news < “When I started sampling my own drums I pursued a diferent approach than what typical drum libraries had to ofer” something that worked for me, in contrast to what was currently available on the drum library market. So I already had a massive library by 2015, which I was continually expanding upon.” So you ofered up this sel-curated library to Orchestral Tools? TH “Well, Orchestral Tools and I began developing the JXL Brass Library, which we designed in a very similar way. We just felt that we could do better. When making that we cut no corners and invested time in mixing and thinking about how the user plays with these sounds. That paid of. JXL Brass is an absolutely incredible sounding library. I was super happy with it. So the next question was ‘what’s next?’ And I said, ‘well, maybe my drum library?’ We set to work with the same approach, with the aim of reining it, thinking about it deeply and Behind the scenes o OT’s Junkie XL Brass making sure everything was as well-recorded as possible. I’m very excited about it. I think this will be welcomed by big programmers. It sounds absolutely fantastic.” What are some o your avourite sounds on there? TH “In terms of favourites, well the Surdos (Brazilian drums) have a superb low end, while the Tupans sound so big and round and woody. Everything was recorded with up to ten diferent microphones. A lot of it was closemicrophoned but we also really wanted to capture the sound that the Warner Brothers’ Eastwood Scoring Stage (where the pack was recorded) has. We used room mics and surround mics for this. We even brought in a Marching Drum kit that was used by high schools and that sort of thing in America. There are Concert Toms and Ordinary Drum Kits. I really don’t know which is my favourite sound, they’re all awesome.” What’s interesting about this is that the keyboard mapping or the velocity layers get louder as you ascend up the notes o the keyboard, can you explain how that works? TH “When you work in velocity layers, you can only select ive layers at the most, but technically there are countless subtly diferent layers – however many the real instrument has. Obviously, when you have ive dynamic layers you can go for a few Round Robins, let’s say seven Round Robins would be a lot in a percussion library, so that’s essentially 35 cymbals to mix with one snare drum. The fact that here, all of those layers are mapped out on the keyboard, means every ascending hit is a tiny bit louder than the one before. It took me some practice to play like that because it’s not easy. After getting used to it, and building test instruments, it absolutely works and ofers much wider scope.” What would you say are some o the benefits o this approach? TH “If you want to program something loud, you program it, you spend a few minutes on it. You can transpose all the notes up and down in velocity. You can go to Fortissimo to Forte, to Mezzoforte to basically where it becomes so quiet that you can barely hear them anymore. It’s a wonderful way of programming incredibly natural rhythms.” “The V Drummers in the world are going to be so happy with this. Instead of having just a few velocity layers to deal with, they’ll have the whole dynamic range in front of them. It’s a more fun way of playing, believe me. The odds that you’ll play with a V Drum at exact velocity 81 four times a row is 0, because it will be 78, 81, 84. Nobody plays that precisely, but with this your velocity can be set. There’s so much more to this collection, it sounds incredible and I can’t wait for people to start using it.” Orchestral Tools Tom Holkenborg Percussion is out now August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 13 > cover feature / build your own plugins 16 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 build your own plugins / cover feature < BUILD YOUR OWN PLUGINS Creating your own instruments and efects is surely the best way to get a completely custom sound. In this eature we detail three o the best ways to build DIY synths and efects Back in the olden days, many people would fiddle around with the innards o their studio kit to change how it operated and sounded. Things aren’t quite so simple in today’s digital studio. The complexity and exacting nature o digital audio hardware does not lend itsel to a bit o casual circuitbending, and the source program code that underlies commercial audio sotware is locked down tighter than a hipster’s jeans. One solution or those wishing to tinker in the digital audio world is to take a computer science degree, and then use that knowledge to start developing their own processors and instruments. This is an extraordinarily longwinded way o getting into a bit o DIY plugin making, though, so thankully there are other options – at least three as it goes – that require a lot less mucking about! At the simplest end of the spectrum are “plugin chainers” such as Blue Cat’s PatchWork. In essence, a chainer is a plugin that hosts other plugins, thereby allowing you to create your own custom chains of processors and instruments. But chainers are a limited solution, incapable of detailed patching and modiication, and restricted to the plugins you have available in the irst place. They can also be iddly due to the need to conigure each plugin’s parameters individually. The best known code-free tool for creating your own processors and instruments is Native Instruments Reaktor. Having been around in one form or other for nearly 25 years, Reaktor is a mature and stable platform, with extensive capabilities and a large community of creators. The program’s graphical building tools are certainly more intuitive than writing lines of code, but it still helps to use the logical thinking of a programmer if you plan to delve into its deepest depths. Next up there is a tool that sits somewhere between the purely graphical and the purely code-based: Max by Cycling ’74. This staggeringly capable system is not designed speciically for audio work, but its ability to integrate with Ableton Live has made it an important studio tool. Finally we take a look at Melda’s MSoundFactory, the latest plugin creation platform and the one behind your free plugin in this issue! Creating your own efects and instruments opens up a whole new universe of possibilities for producers and creators, and with tools like Reaktor, MSoundFactory and Max we’ll show you that it needn’t even be that diicult… August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 17 > cover feature / build your own plugins REAKTOR Reaktor is a visual programming environment dedicated to creating audio processors, tools and instruments. It can run standalone or as a plugin, with practically no functional diferences between the two modes. Many of Native Instruments’ synths, efects and sound expansions are built on Reaktor technology, and there’s also a free Reaktor Player that allows you to build modular synths using Reaktor Blocks, and to load synths and efects created by NI and their development partners. Levels To explain Core Cells we need irst to talk about Reaktor’s three editing levels: Blocks, Primary and Core. Blocks are fully self-contained Instruments that conform to NI’s Reaktor Blocks standard. That standard ensures easy intercompatibility with all other Blocks, and this allows you to quickly assemble any combination and signal low that you like, much like working with a hardware modular system. Reaktor’s Primary level contains all of the essential modules and tools you need to create practically any efect, processor or synth. Some Primary modules perform very basic tasks, such Wrappers as applying mathematical operations to Ensembles are the top level entity in Reaktor. incoming values; others, such as oscillators, are They are the outer wrapper for all of the more complex in their makeup and function. diferent modules and connections that Primary also includes a built-in library of precomprise an efect or instrument, and an instance of Reaktor can host only one ensemble deined Macros, most of which include GUI at a time. There are a number of other wrapper elements and so provide another quick way to assemble efects and synths. modules available too, the most important Core is where you get down to the nitty-gritty being Instruments, Macros and Core Cells. Instruments are very similar to Ensembles in of things. Core modules can only be created that they create their own GUI panel, and deine inside of a Core Cell and allow a deeper level of control over proceedings, and complex DSP visual settings that afect any modules they contain (note that the word “Instrument” is used routines to be created. After a Core Cell has been edited, Reaktor compiles the structure into as in “tool” or “device”, and doesn’t imply eicient-to-run machine code. While Core Instrument modules are intended only for editing looks similar to Primary editing, and building synths). Macros are essentially just a Core contains many useful modules and its own container for other modules, and display any visual elements they contain within their parent library of pre-built Macros, it is in fact much more akin to writing program code due to the Instrument or Ensemble’s panel. PLAYER AND RECORDER Play audio files into your Ensemble, and/or record the sounds it is creating, using the handy Player and Recorder feature 18 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Connections In order to make Reaktor’s modules do anything useful they need to be connected together in some way, which is why almost every module has at least one terminal on it. Terminals on the left of a module are inputs, while those on the right of a module are outputs. Connecting the modules is simply a case of dragging between inputs and outputs to create signal paths. At the Blocks and Primary levels, connector terminals can operate in one of two modes, audio or event, the latter being conceptually similar to control signals such as MIDI or CV/ Gate. This means the event terminals run at a lower data rate than do audio terminals, and so the two can generally not be interconnected without using a converter module in-between (there are some exceptions to this, but using them can weigh heavily on CPU usage). The Core level includes a bunch of other connection types, some of which we’ll introduce you to in the Building Efects With Reaktor tutorial. The “Building In Primary” manual shows how to make a simple synth using the included library of pre-deined Macros. It’s a big help, but the library Macros don’t show how to structure such modules, nor deine panel control elements like knobs. Let’s build one using only the more primitive Primary modules… PRESETS An Ensemble can store snapshots of its current configuration, and store these as recallable presets, also be viewable in the sidebar PANEL This area shows the currently loaded Ensemble’s GUI. Instruments create panels within the Ensemble’s panel, while Macros create areas within their parent’s panel SIDEBAR Reaktor’s Sidebar has various modes; here it is showing the Browser mode. It can also be hidden entirely when not needed NAVIGATION Ensembles generally consist of modules contained within modules contained within modules! This bar helps you to navigate that nested structure concepts it uses. We’ll try Core for the second tutorial, but don’t worry – we’ll be gentle! PROPERTIES MANAGER This panel is where you define the details of your modules. It can be undocked from the Sidebar when Reaktor is running standalone EDIT AREA This area is shown when Reaktor is in Edit Mode, and is where you add and interconnect the Ensemble’s modules build your own plugins / cover feature < > Step by step 1.YourfirstReaktorsynth 1 4 7 Fire up Reaktor in standalone mode, create a new Ensemble, and adjust the split-screen layout to taste. We don’t need the Ensemble’s default In Port modules, so delete these. Undocking the Properties Manager can be useful whilst building in Reaktor, allowing you to keep the parameters you’re working on close to hand – you can do this from the program’s View menu. Our Macro needs to receive the pitch and gate events from the Ensemble, so it needs In Port modules. Right-click and select Built-In Modules > Terminal > In Port, then name the new port as “P” (ie pitch). Repeat this process in order to create an In Port module labelled “A” (ie amplitude), and a main Out Port for the oscillator’s audio. Reopen SimpleMultiOsc, create a Pulse and Sawtooth osc, and wire the Macro’s In Ports to them. Create a Switch module, name it Waveform, and set its Min Num of Ports to 3. Double-click terminals to rename them Tri, Pulse and Saw. Connect the Osc Outputs to corresponding Switch Inputs. Connect the Switch’s Output to the Macro’s Out Port. 2 5 8 Click an empty area of the editor and hit [Enter] or [Return] to open the Searchbox. Type “MIDI” then in the results list locate and click on Note Pitch MIDI In. Repeat to add a Gate MIDI In. Take a moment to hold the mouse pointer over the new ports and their terminals to read the popup hint text. Add a Triangle Oscillator to the structure. Connect your In and Out ports to the matching terminals on the oscillator module. Double-click an empty area of the editor to back-out of the Macro and return to the Ensemble, then connect the Note Pitch and Gate ports to SimpleMultiOsc’s “P” and “A” ports (respectively), and its outputs to the Ensemble’s Out Ports. Hold your mouse over the Pulse oscillator’s W terminal and read the popup hint text, noting the value range it suggests. Create a Knob module, name it “Width” and enter the suggested values as the Knob’s Max and Min values. Set the Knob’s Default to 0 and Step Size to 0.01, then connect it to the Pulse oscillator’s W terminal. 3 6 9 Let’s create a multi-mode oscillator for our synth. It makes sense to pack this into a Macro so that it’s self-contained. Right-click in the editor and select New Macro from the popup menu. Double click the new Macro’s name ield and change it to “impleMultiOsc. Double-click the SimpleMultiOsc Macro to view its internal structure, which is empty. Play your oscillator, noticing that it’s monophonic. Click an empty area so that the Ensemble’s properties are shown in the Property Manager, and increase the Voices value to 8. The oscillator is now polyphonic, but the Ensemble’s main Out Ports are always monophonic. Fix this by inserting a pair of Audio Voice Combiners prior to the Out Ports (see Top Tip). Hold your mouse over the Pulse oscillator’s W terminal and read the popup hint text, noting the value range it suggests. Create a Knob module, name it “Width” and enter the suggested values as the Knob’s Max and Min values. Set the Knob’s Default to 0 and Step Size to 0.01, then connect it to the Pulse oscillator’s W terminal. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 19 > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 1.YourfirstReaktorsynth (continued) 10 Notice that the maximum value of PitchEnv’s output depends on the value arriving at its G terminal. We’ll use the Macro’s A In Port to drive PitchEnv’s G input, but A is afected by playing velocity, and so the amount of pitch shift provided by the envelope will also be velocityafected. So we need G to be either 0 or 1. 11 A Compare module will do this for us – create one with the Searchbox. Connect the A In Port to the Compare’s upper Input, and a Constant module with value 0 to the lower Input. Now, when A is greater than 0, the Compare’s upper Output will have a value of 1, otherwise it will be 0. Connect this upper Output to PitchEnv’s G Input. 12 Read the hint text for the envelope’s other Input terminals and create suitably-conigured Knob modules for each. Layout the knobs in the GUI panel. PitchEnv’s Output is an audio signal, but we will be using it to manipulate event signals, so create an A to E (ie Audio to Event) module and connect it to the envelope’s Output. POWER TIP >Polyphony Reaktor polyphony can be a bit confusing at irst. Ensembles and Instruments have a voice count, whilst modules can either be monophonic, indicated by a single crotchet symbol in their bottomright corner, or polyphonic, indicated by a stacked pair of crotchets. Polyphonic signals cannot be connected directly to monophonic modules, so we patch in Audio Voice Combiner modules to collapse multi-voice polyphonic signals into single-voice monophonic ones when needed. 15 The release phase is being lost because the oscillators are stopping as soon as the note is released. We can ix this by preventing A In Port values of 0 from being passed to the oscillators – this is a job for a Core Cell! Right-click in an empty area and select New Core Cell from the popup. Name the Core Cell “GateCntrl”. 20 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 13 16 Create a new Knob and call it “EnvAmt”. The Knob’s Max value should be the maximum amount of pitch shift that you want the envelope to be able to apply, in semitones; the Min should be negative the same value. We’ve gone for two octaves, so have set Max at 24, Min at -24, and default at 0. Double-click GateCntrl to enter it, and notice the slightly diferent appearance – the columns to the left and right are where you create In and Out ports (respectively), whilst the central area is where you add Core modules and macros. Create an In and Out port, name both “A”, and ensure their Signal Mode property is set to Event. 14 17 Create a Multiply module and connect the A to E module and EnvAmt Knob to its inputs. This will scale EnvAmt’s value by PitchEnv’s value. Disconnect the P In Port from the oscillators, and then connect it to a new Add module. Connect the Multiply’s Output to the Add’s other input. Wire the Add’s output to the oscillators’ P Input terminals. Add a Compare (Flow) module. This compares two incoming values based on the module’s “Criterion” property, and outputs a value of True or False from the module’s BoolCtl (Boolean control) port, represented by a green arrow. Set Criterion to >, connect the A In port to Compare’s upper Input, and connect a Constant of value 0 to the lower Input. > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 1.YourfirstReaktorsynth (continued) 18 21 24 Create a Router (Flow) module. This will send the incoming signal to its top Output if its BoolCtl receives a True value, otherwise it will route the input to the lower Output. Connect the Cell’s In port to Router’s lower Input, and Compare’s BoolCtl Output to Router’s BoolCtl Input. Create a Merge (Flow) module and connect’s Router’s upper Output to its upper Input. If you were to play the synth now the notes would carry on forever, so we need an amp envelope. Select and copy PitchEnv, all of its Knobs, the Compare module and its constant. Return to the Ensemble, create a new Macro named AmpEnv, open the Macro and then paste the structure. Create and connect a “G” In Port and audio Out Port. Add a Multi 2-Pole Filter to the Macro and connect the Macro’s In Port to the Filter’s In terminal. Create a Knob for driving the ilter’s P input, using a Min value of 16 and a Max of 140. Also create a Knob for driving the Res input, using the settings suggested in the port’s Hint text. 22 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 19 22 25 We need to store incoming “A” values that are greater than 0 to use them when the note is released. Create a Write (Memory) module and connect Router’s upper Output to its upper Input. Create a Read (Memory) module and connect its lower OBC (Object Bus Connection) Input to Write’s OBC Output. This OBC connection ensures both modules access the same memory address. Back in the Ensemble, combine the SimpleMultiOsc Output with AmpEnv’s Output using a Multiply module, and feed the output of the Multiply to the Audio Voice Combiners. Play your synth and notice that envelope release stages are working, but that this synth needs a ilter. Create a new Macro and name it “MultiModeFilter”, and place it near SimpleMultiOsc in the structure. The Filter module outputs High Pass, Band Pass and Low Pass iltered signals from a single module, so we need to control which is active. Create a Switch module, give it three input ports and name the ports “HP”, “BP” and “LP”. Connect the Filter’s outputs to the Switch, and the Switch’s Output to the Macro’s Out Port. 20 23 26 Read will send the stored value when a signal arrives at its upper Input, so connect this to Router’s lower Output – this means when A equals 0, Read will send its stored value. Connect Read’s Output to Merge’s lower Input, then connect Merge’s Output to the Cell’s Out port. Return to SimpleMultiOsc and insert GateCntrl between the A In Port and the oscillator’s A inputs. Delete the connection between SimpleMultiOsc and the Multiply module. Hold down [Cmd] (Mac) or [Cntrl] (Windows), then drag from SimpleMultiOsc’s output to the left edge of MultiModeFilter – this is an easy way to create new ports in Macros. Repeat to link the Macro to the Multiply module’s Input. Open MultiModeFilter and move the auto generated ports into convenient positions. Drop back to the Ensemble and save your synth. Have a play of your synth to see what sorts of sounds you can coax from it, and think about what more you could add. A ilter envelope is deinitely needed, and you should explore adding some LFO too. If you’ve been paying attention then you know what to do! > cover feature / build your own plugins KnowyourFX Building synths in Reaktor is quite an accessible process, because even if you only know a little bit about synthesis you’re likely to understand the concepts involved – oscillators, envelopes, and all the rest. And if you understand these concepts, you’ll understand most of Reaktor’s synthesisbased modules too. The same cannot be said for efects because we tend to see them as magical black boxes, rather than a collection of interconnected modules. So you may know what a particular efect does to a sound, but do you know what components and processes are actually used? Delay is a very simple efect, and so building a delay processor will allow us to focus on inding out more about Reaktor itself, in particular its Core level and how to customise panel graphics, rather than the deeper details of how diferent efects are created. 5 Connect the Time Knob to CntrlToMS. The problem now is that Time’s readout won’t tell us what we need. Select the Knob, open View from the Properties Manager, and deselect Show Value. Create a new Numeric Readout, deselect its Show Label property, and put it under Time in the GUI panel. Connect CntrlToMS to the Numeric Readout. 24 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 > Step by step 2.Creatingadelayeffect 1 3 6 Launch Reaktor in standalone mode, create a new Ensemble and give it a name (like “CM Delay”). Set up a sound source with which to audition your delay processor. This could be a live input or an audio ile loaded into Reaktor’s Player. To load a ile, open the sidebar’s Browser and drag a ile from it to the Player. Another common practice is to retain a Knob’s default value range of 0 to 1, and then scale this value if necessary. This is the ideal range for our Wet/Dry and Feedback Knobs, but Time needs to be scaled to integer (ie whole number) milliseconds of up to our maximum delay time of 2000ms. Create a Core Cell and name it “CntrlToMS”. The Bypass Switch needs to send a value of 1 to indicate an enabled state, and 0 to indicate a bypassed state. Create Constant modules with these values and connect them to the Switch. The Switch needs to just be an on/of indicator, so open the Switch’s View, disable Show Label and Button - Show Entries and enable Button - 1 Toggle. 2 4 7 It’s common to group the controls for a device into a dedicated Macro, which helps with keeping your structures neater and easier to manage. Create a Macro, name it “CPanel”, and navigate into it. Create three Knob modules and name them “Time”, “Feedback” and “Wet/Dry”. Create a Switch module, name it “Bypass”, and give it two ports called “Enabled” and “Bypassed”. Open CntrlToMS and create In and an Out event ports. Create a Multiply module, right-click its lower input terminal and select Connect to New QuickConst. Set the QuickConst’s value to 2000, then connect the In port to Multiply’s upper input. Create a Round module and connect it between Multiply and the Out port. Return to CPanel when done. Create Out Ports for each of your controls, naming each to indicate the control it is connected to; for the Time value, you should be sure to connect to CntrolToMS rather than directly to the Time Knob. Use the Properties Manager to enter info describing each port and the value range that it outputs. When done, return to the Ensemble. > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 2.Creatingadelayeffect(continued) 8 11 14 A Distributor/Panner module will allow us to switch the signal between bypassed and processed pathways. Create one now, set its Curve Type property to None, and Min Num of Ports to 2. Connect its In terminal to one of the Ensemble’s In Ports (we’ll ignore the other for now), and its Pos terminal to CPanel’s Bypass Output. Create a Reception (Scoped Bus) module, name it “Out” and connect to the Cell’s audio Out port. The Reception module is the lip-side of the Distribution one, getting signals from deeper in the structure. Make a new Macro named “2sDelay”. Create a Delay (Audio) module, and note the OBC Array connector… Delay needs a seconds value at its T input. Create a Divide module, click its upper input and select Pickup Distribution Bus. A small type-in ield appears, next to the terminal. Type “Tms” into the ield, the name of the Distribution module sending 1TapDelay’s Tms input value. Red means you typed wrong. 26 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 9 12 15 The bypassed and processed pathways will have to rejoin before the Ensemble’s Out Ports. There are a few ways we could do this, but an Add module allows the processed signal to peter-out naturally when the processor is bypassed. Create the necessary module, connect its input to Distributor’s 0 output, and its output to both Ensemble Out Ports. A delay processor must store the incoming signal in memory; its multiple samples can’t be stored in a single location. An Array, however, represents a series of memory locations, so is the memory storage we need. Create an Array (Memory) module and connect it to the Delay module’s OBC Array terminal. Click Divide’s lower Input, Connect to New QuickConst: enter “1000” in the ield that appears. We regularly need constants in Core, and QuickConsts are good for creating them. Connect Divide’s output to Delay’s T input. The audio Input needs to mix with the feedback signal. Create an Add module to do this. 10 13 16 Create a new Core Cell, name it 1TapDelay and navigate into it. Create audio In and Out ports, and two event In ports named “Tms” and “FB”. Connect each In port to new Distribution (Scoped Bus) modules, each named like the connected In port. These Distribution modules pass signals deeper into the structure minus wire clutter. Reaktor needs to know how many values we intend to store in an Array. For a delay processor, that number depends on the sample rate, so for two seconds of storage at 192kHz you’d need an Array with a size of 384,002 (the extra 2 is to do with sample interpolation). Set the Array’s Size property to this number. Link Add’s upper Input to the In Distribution Bus, and output to Delay’s top connector. The feedback signal is Delay’s Output multiplied by the Feedback control’s value, found via the FB Dist Bus. Make a Multiply module, connect Delay’s Out to an In and FB bus to the other. Link Multiply’s Out to Add’s lower Input. build your own plugins / cover feature < 17 Right-click on Delay’s Output, select Connect to Reception Bus, and type “Out” in the field that appears. This sends Delay’s Output back to the Reception module in 1TapDelay, which is in turn connected to 1TapDelay’s Out port. Navigate back to the top o the Ensemble and connect Distributor’s lower Output to 1TapDelay’s Input. Also connect up the CPanel Output. 20 Open CPanel. Rename the Time knob to “Time1” and its Out Port to “TimeMS1”, then duplicate the whole Time Knob to Output structure. Rename the duplicated Knob to “Time2” and duplicated Out Port to “TimeMS2”. Repeat the process to duplicate and rename the Feedback Knob/Out Port – then rearrange the controls in the GUI panel too. 18 21 Create a Core Cell, name it “WetDryMixer”, and navigate into it. Create audio In ports named “Dry” and “Wet”, an audio Out port named “Out”, and an event In port named “WDBal”. Create an XFade (Lin) (Audio) module. Connect the Dry input to XFade’s 0 input, Wet to its 1 Input, and WDBal to its X Input. Connect XFade’s Output to the Cell’s Out port. In Ensemble, duplicate the Distributor, 1TapDelay, WetDryMixer and Add modules. Connect the Ensemble’s unused In Port to the duplicated Distributor, and the new CPanel control outs to the duplicated 1TapDelay and WetDryMixer. In Ensemble’s View properties, change the Panel and Indicator colours, selecting their entry in the Color Scheme list. 19 22 Return to the Ensemble. Connect Distributor’s 1 Output to WetDryMix’s Dry Input, and the output rom 1TapDelay to its Wet Input. Connect CPanel’s WDBal Output to WetDryMixer, and WetDryMixer’s Output to the Add module that comes just beore the Ensemble’s Out Ports. Your processor should now be working. It’s somewhat plain, though, so let’s make it a bit more interesting. Select CPanel and, in its View properties, change Frame to None then adjust the Borders properties to taste. Go to bit.ly/knobgraphics and download a nice knob graphic. Back in Reaktor, select the Time1 Knob in the GUI panel (being sure the panel is unlocked), click the Image drop-down in the View properties, and select Open From File. POWER TIP >KnobMan 23 Browse to your downloaded graphic and select it to load – the Image Properties panel will open. Knob graphics contain multiple versions o an image, one or each position o the knob, laid out horizontally or vertically like a film strip. Enter the number o rames in the graphic (typically 100 or 128) and click OK – the Custom knob should now be visible. 24 Select the next Knob in the GUI and open View properties’ Image dropdown again – this time you can just re-select the previously used graphic. Once done customising your panel, have a think about other improvements you could make – try adding filters and/or overdrive to the delay eedback loops… you know what to do. The #1 tool or creating knob and other controller graphics or use in audio plugins is KnobMan by g200kg (g200kg.com). The website is a bit patchy, but don’t be put of – KnobMan is a great tool. There are both installable and web versions available, as well as hundreds o downloadable examples o other people’s knobs… stop sniggering at the back o the class there! August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 27 > cover feature / build your own plugins MAX FOR LIVE Like Reaktor, Max by Cycling ’74 is a visual programming tool but, unlike Reaktor, it is not in-and-of-itself dedicated to creating audio processors, and has capabilities that extend into many diferent ields: image and video processing, hardware control, and more. So, in reality, Max is more like a combination of an IDE (Interactive Development Environment – a software suite that assists with code development) and a runtime environment in which programs created with Max – referred to as “patchers” – can run. This allows Max to be exceptionally openended, because new packages of functionality, known in the coding world as “libraries”, can be created by anybody who feels so inclined. And because Max objects can be coded in a number of languages, including the widely used JavaScript, you don’t need to deal with iddly compiled languages like C and C# in order to start coding your own Max objects. (The word “object” is used in programming to refer to a “thing” within a program – a value, a controller, an oscillator… whatever!) “Max feels a lot closer to writing code than Reaktor does” MSP and M4L One of the most important Max libraries for audio processing is MSP. This integrates closely with Max and provides more than 200 objects dedicated to processing and working with audio signals in one way or another. These can be recognised by the tilde (“~”) suix given to all MSP object names – when you see that tilde you know that the object is intended for handling audio signals. With Max and MSP you can create all sorts of diferent synths and efects, but integrating your creations into your music production worklow isn’t so easy because there is no plugin version of Max. Rather, you can either use Max standalone, link Max with your DAW via ReWire, or you can use Ableton Live. Max For Live (M4L) is a version of Max that integrates tightly with Ableton Live. You can add instruments, audio processors and MIDI processors created with Max directly to a track’s device chain, as well as add empty prototype devices that act as starting points for your own M4L-based devices. The integration includes a library of visual controls – dials, buttons, etc. – that are styled to match Live’s standard look, and access to internal details about Live and its currently loaded set. M4L is a standard part of Live Suite, or can be purchased as an add-on for 28 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 OBJECT SHORTCUTS Commonly used objects can be created from these shortcuts – the one that looks like a dial contains Max For Live objects WIRES Objects are interconnected using virtual wires. Plain, thin wires carry normal events and values, while striped wires carry audio signals PATCHER LOCK Lock your patcher in patching or presentation mode to interact with controls to test and audition your growing creation PATCHING/PRESENTATION MODE SWITCH Switch between Patching mode, where all objects are visible, and Presentation mode, where you create your Patcher’s user interface Live Standard and Live Intro. Ableton also distribute a number of M4L devices, both free and premium. distinction between audio and event connections; and both come packed with premade building blocks from which you can create your own synths and audio processors. In practice, however, Max feels a lot closer to Geek chic Conceptually, Max and Reaktor have an awful lot writing code than Reaktor does: object names in common: both of them work by using virtual are often multi-part afairs separated by dots, for patch wires in order to link together objects that example “live.dial” or “jit.bufer”; object names perform some function or other; both create a can be quite obscure, for example “phasor~” for build your own plugins / cover feature < PATCHER Everything you build in Max is built within a Patcher. Here you create and connect the objects your project requires OBJECTS Many objects are shown as just a name and arguments. Inlets are positioned on the top of objects, and outlets on the bottom SHOW INSPECTOR All of the parameters and settings of the currently selected object are accessed via the Inspector – this button opens and closes it a sawtooth oscillator; and there’s no avoiding programming concepts such as integers, floats, lists, and more. I you already know a bit about coding then Max’s code-y-ness shouldn’t trouble you, but i coding isn’t your thing then you may have to work a bit harder at first to understand how to do things with Max. It is worth the efort, though, and you’re helped along the way by Max’s excellent integrated help and reerence system. And o course there’s the tutorials we have created or you here! Our ocus in the tutorials will be that o learning to work with and program in M4L, and so the devices we’ll create are intended to demonstrate how to work with M4L, and to help introduce you to some o the most important objects and techniques. To this end we’re going to make an analogue-style drum synth, and then we’ll create a pattern sequencer MIDI Efect or triggering the synth. I you don’t have Live then adapting the projects or Max MSP is possible, largely by replacing Live.* controllers with Max’s built-in equivalents; that being said, you may find it slightly easier just to install the Live Suite demo and enjoy its ull Max integration. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 29 > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 1. Making a Max For Live synth 1 4 7 The drum synth we’re about to create will have multiple voices, with each voice being an instance of the same mini synth. Create a new Live set and drag a new Max Instrument to a MIDI track. Locate the new device in the track’s device list then click on its Edit button to open the device for editing in Max. The “.” we’re adding to the numbers tells Max to handle them as loats (ie decimals) rather than integers (ie whole numbers). The range we’ve entered is in Hz, so change Unit Style to “Hz”. Frequency doubles per octave, making lower frequencies hard to dial-in. Setting the dial’s Exponent property to “2” will ix this without impacting the overall value range too much. Reopen the device in Max and switch back to Patching mode. Double-click to create a new object and type “cycle~” followed by [space] – a pop list of arguments appears. These are essentially default values that we can set now and override later. Type “440.” following the space and hit enter – we now have a sine wave oscillator running at 440Hz. 30 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 2 5 8 Max has created a default MIDI input, “midiin”, and a default audio output, “plugout~”. The tilde “~” indicates this is a MSP object, and designed to handle audio signals rather than events or messages. Delete the comment objects that are labelling things and drag plugout~ down to the bottom of the screen. Click the “i” button to open the Inspector sidebar. Max’s Presentation Mode allows us to lay out the Live device control panel, and hide things we don’t want to see in that panel. Click the “P” symbol at the top of the Inspector to view the patcher’s parameters, scroll to the View group and tick Open in Presentation. This tells Live to always display the patcher in Presentation mode. Create three more oscillator objects, “tri~”, “rect~” and “saw~”, all with the same “440.” frequency argument. Add a second argument to rect~ with a value of 0.5 – this sets the pulse width. Connect the leftmost output of the Pitch dial to the leftmost input of each oscillator. Create a “selector~” object with an argument of 4, thereby specifying its number of inlets. 3 6 9 Double-click an empty area of the patcher, type “live.dial” in the ield that appears, and hit Enter. In the Inspector’s All tab, enter “Oscillator Pitch” for the Long Name (visible when selecting controllers in Live), and “Pitch” for the short name (shown above the dial). In the Range/ Enum ield enter “40. 10000.”, tick Initial Enable and enter an initial value of “440.”. Right-click the Pitch dial and select Add to Presentation. Enable Presentation Mode from Max’s bottom border, then position the dial above the horizontal divider (this shows where the bottom of the device panel will be in Live). Save the patcher (we’ve called ours “CM Drum Synth”) and close it. Notice that your dial is visible in Live, but midiin is not. The selector~ will let us choose which oscillator we hear. Its leftmost input receives an integer that indicates which of the four signal inputs should be passed to the output. We can drive this input with a “live.tab” object, so create one, name it “Osc Waveform”, then right-click on it and select “Prototype -> Waveforms” – this creates handy waveform buttons. build your own plugins / cover feature < 10 There are more waveform buttons than needed. With the selector~ selected, go to the Inspector and click the Range/Enum ield’s Edit button. Modify the list so it only includes the waveforms we’re using. Modify the list of ilenames in the Image Files ield as well, removing unused waveforms and reordering to match the entries in Range/Enum. 11 The selector~ will block all signals if it receives “0” at its irst input, but our live.tab is going to output “0” to represent its irst choice, so we need to add “1” to this output. Create a “+” object with an argument of “1”, connect live.tab’s irst output to its input, and its irst output to the irst input of our selector~. 12 Connect the oscillators to the remaining inlets on the selector~. Add a new live.dial, name it “Osc Level”, and conigure it to output loats in the range of “0.” to “1.”. Create a signal multiplier, “*~” (notice the tilde), connect the selector~ output to multiplier’s irst input, and the dial’s left output to multiplier’s right input. We can now control the oscillator level. POWER TIP > Bang on One of the most important concepts in Max is the “bang”. Bangs are a special type of message that tells a receiving object to do whatever it is it’s meant to do. For example a live. button object sends a bang when it is clicked; if the live.button’s bang output is connected to a dialogue object, a dialogue window will open when it receives the bang message. 15 Create a “selector~” and “live.tab” for controlling which ilter output we hear. The live.tab has a prototype for ilter shapes, so apply and adapt this just as you did for waveforms. Our iltered signal now needs to go through an amp envelope, so create an “adsr~” object and a set of four “live.dial” objects conigured to control it. 13 16 Now we’ll create a noise generator to mix with the pitched oscillator. Create a “noise~” object and a “pink~” object, a “selector~” and “live.tab” to switch between them, and a level dial and signal multiplier to control the noise signal’s volume. Wire them all up, then create a signal add object, “+~”, and use it to combine the oscillator signal and the noise signal. Create a “*~” signal multiplier object and use it to combine the ilter selector~ object’s output with the envelope’s output. We still need a way to trigger the envelope – create two “live. button” objects named “Std Trig” and “Acc Trig”, and two “live.dial” objects named “Std Vel” and “Acc Vel”. The dials need to output loats in the range “0.” to “127.”. 14 17 Our combined signal needs to be iltered. Create a “svf~” object (ie State Variable Filter). Hold your mouse over each inlet to understand what signals or values they expect, then create “live.dial” objects to control the ilter’s frequency and resonance. The maximum frequency value should be “11000.”, and the dial’s Exponent value should be “2.”. Wire everything up appropriately. Create an “f” object, which will output its stored value in response to a bang message. Connect Std Trig’s irst output to f’s irst input, and Std Vel’s irst output to f’s second input. Repeat the process to add an “f” object for Acc Trig. Connect both f objects to a “/ 127”, scaling the value to a 0-1 range. Connect the divide’s output to the envelope’s irst input. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 31 > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 1. Making a Max for Live synth (continued) 18 21 24 We also need a way to send note-of messages to the envelope. Create a live.dial, name it “Gate”, configure it to output float values in the range 10 to 1000, and to display its value as milliseconds. Create a “delay” object, connect the dial’s first output to delay’s second input, and connect the outputs o both buttons to delay’s first input. Reopen your synth in Max once more. Our creation so ar is just one voice o our drum synth, so we’ll wrap it up into a subpatch. Select and cut everything rom your patcher other than the midiin and plugout~ objects. Create a new patcher and paste everything into it. Save the new patcher as “CM_DrumVoice.maxpat”. Connect routepass’ let output to a new “bangbang” object – this will generate bang messages when it receives an input rom routepass. Connect bangbang’s right output to the right input o a new “gswitch2” object – this will let us route the bang message. Create a “>” compare object with an argument o 100 and connect it between stripnote’s right output and gswitch2’s let input. 32 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 19 22 25 Create another “” object, with an argument value o “0.”. Connect delay’s output to this ’s first input, and connect its output to the envelope’s first input. A note-of message will now be sent to the envelope ater the gate time has elapsed. Create an “omx.comp~” object, to prevent big peaks, and connect the envcontrolled signal to both o its inputs. Click the “P” icon at the top o the Inspector and enable Open in Presentation. Create two “inlet” objects to receive MIDI note and velocity data, and connect these to the inputs o a new “stripnote” object, which removes note-of messages. Create a pair o “outlet” objects and wire the omx.comp~ object’s first two outputs to these new outlet ports. Connect gswitch2’s let output to the Std Trig button’s input, and the right output to Acc Trig’s input. Save and close the subpatcher and return to the main patcher. Replace the “midiin” object with a “notein”. Create a “bpatcher” object and, in the inspector, click the Patcher File parameter’s Choose button. Browse to your subpatcher file and select it. 20 23 26 Connect the comp object’s first two outputs to the plugout~ object’s two inputs – this sends the patcher’s sound back out to Live. Add all o the on-screen controls (ie dials, tabs and buttons) to the presentation, switch to presentation mode, and create a layout. Save and close your patcher, then test your synth in Live. Make a “live.numbox” object, name it “Trigger Note”, and configure it to output an integer in the range 0127 and display its values as MIDI notes. Link the numbox to the rightmost input o a new “routepass” object, and link stripnote’s let output to routepass’ let input. Now, routepass will only allow messages past i they match Trigger Note’s value. Your subpatcher is now showing in the bpatcher object. Duplicate it three times and wire it in to the notein object’s outputs and the plugout~ object’s inlets. Add all bpatchers to the presentation, and position them. Save and close the patcher. Your drum synth should now be working in Live! To improve it, try adding envelope control to the pitch and filter. > cover feature / build your own plugins MIDI sequencer One great feature of Live is its extensive range of MIDI efects, and M4L enhances this by allowing us to build our own MIDI efects and processors. What we’re going to do next, then, is build a MIDI step sequencer to complement the drum voice synthesiser we’ve just built. To do this we need to create various elements: a timing clock, a display and programming grid, and a method for converting those sequences into a stream of MIDI messages. We’ll be using a few new objects and techniques here, so be sure to make full use of Max’s builtin documentation if you need to better understand any of the objects we use: just rightclick on an object to access help and reference information, or simply select an option and click the Reference button to view an object’s details in the sidebar. 5 Patcher objects are used to create a subpatcher that doesn’t create a visual output. Create one now with the argument “StepCounter” (this is just a name). A new patcher window will open. Create three “inlet” objects. In the Inspector, set the first inlet’s Comment to “Ticks”, the second’s to “Num Steps” and the third to “Step Size”. 34 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 > Step by step 2. Creating a Max MIDI sequencer 1 3 6 In Live, drag the Max MIDI Efect device onto a MIDI track. Also add the drum synth you made in the last tutorial, and set it up with some sounds. Open the MIDI efect in Max, and in the Inspector enable the project’s Open in Presentation option. Get rid o the deault comment objects, and save your patcher as CM_StepSequencer. We need to repeatedly tell the transport to update itsel. Create a new object and type “metro 64n @active 1 @autostart 1”. The “64n” is a timing value expressed as a sequencer-style note length, ie 1/64th note – be aware we can also add suffixes “nd” or dotted note lengths, and “nt” or triplets. Connect metro to transport’s let input. To calculate the current step position compare the sequence’s total length with the current play position. Create a “translate” object with arguments “notevalues” and “ticks”, and connect the Step Size inlet to it. Connect translate’s output to the letmost input o a new “*” multiplier object, with the Num Steps inlet connected to multiplier’s other input. 2 4 7 To keep our step sequencer in sync with Live, the first thing we need to know is Live’s current playback point. Press [N] (a shortcut or creating new objects) and type “transport @ clocksource live”. The “@clocksource live” is an attribute name and value pair – a named argument – that tells the transport object to lock to Live’s transport. We need to know the step sequencer’s number o steps and step length. Create a “live.numbox”, name it “Num Steps” and give it an integer value range o 1 to 16. Also create a “live.menu” and name it “Step Size”. In the Inspector, click the Value/Enum field’s “edit” button and enter lengths o 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32, with suffixes “nd”, “n” and “nt”. Create a “bangbang” object, connect the Num Steps inlet to its input, and its rightmost output to the letmost input o the multiplier. This means the multiplication is recalculated when the Num Steps value changes. Feed the multiplier’s output to the right input o a new “%” (modulo) object, which divides then outputs the remainder. Connect the Ticks inlet to modulo’s let input. build your own plugins / cover feature < > Step by step 2. Creating a Max MIDI sequencer (continued) 8 11 14 Create a new “/“ division object, connect modulo’s output to its left input, and translate’s output to its right input. The output of the division will be the current step number, but counting from 0; we want to count from 1, so create a new “+ 1” object and feed it from the division object’s output. Connect the addition’s output to a new “change” object. Although matrixctrl can represent multiple states, its default graphics can’t, so we need to create a custom graphic. Use an image editor to create a new image 72x24 pixels in size. Create three circles or squares of approximately 18 pixels in diameter/width, in three diferent colours, and distribute them evenly across the image. Save as a PNG ile with transparent background. Create another Message object, set its text to “getcolumn $1”, and connect its output to matrixctrl’s input. Both column and row numbers in matrixctrl will be starting from 0, so, before sending in the value from our StepCounter we will need to subtract 1 from it. Create a “-“ object with an argument of “1”, and connect it between StepCounter and the getcolumn message. 9 12 15 The change object only outputs an incoming value if it is diferent to the previous incoming value. Connect change’s output to a new “outlet” object then close the subpatcher. Back in the main patcher window, connect transport’s Raw Ticks output (second from right) to StepCounter’s irst input, Num Steps to its second input, and Step Size’s middle output to its third input. Back in Max’s Inspector, click the Cell Image File Choose button, then browse to and select your PNG image ile. Uncheck the Has Clicked Image and Has Inactive Image options. Lock your patcher using the Padlock button at the bottom right of Max’s window and test your matrixctrl – each click in a cell should step through the three cells of the image. Connect the getcolumn message’s output to matrixctrl’s input – this will make matrixctrl send from its right output a list containing each column cell’s value. We’ll use this list to assemble MIDI messages, but we also need to know what note each row uses. Create four “live. numbox” objects conigured to show MIDI notes. Name these “Trig Note 1” to “Trig Note 4”. 10 13 16 We’re going to use Max’s trusty matrixctrl object as our sequencer grid because it allows each cell to have more than just on or of states (our cells need to show of, on and accented states). Create a “matrixctrl”, check “Autosize to Rows and Columns”, set it to have 16 columns and 4 rows, and set the Cell Range to “3”. Unlock the patcher. Create a new Message object. Once created, double-click it and type in “columns $1”. When the message receives something at its irst input, it will replace “$1” with the received value and then send out the message. Connect the Num Steps menu’s output to message’s left input, and message’s output to matrixctrl’s input. Create an “unpack” object, give it four arguments of “0”, and connect its input to matrixctrl’s right output. Unpack breaks a list into its individual elements, and outputs each element from a dedicated output; the arguments tell it how many items to expect in the list. Create a new “patcher” with the argument “createMIDI” (remember, this argument is just a label). August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 35 > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 2. Creating a Max MIDI sequencer (continued) 17 In the subpatcher, create two “inlet” objects, with their Comment parameters set to “Cell Val” and “Trig Note”, respectively. Create a “select” object with arguments of “1” and “2”. This will send a bang from one of its outputs, depending on the input value. We’ll use these bangs to create the velocity value for the output MIDI message. 20 Create a “pack” object with two “0” arguments. This is the opposite of the unpack object that we used earlier, ie it creates a list. Connect the left and right outputs of buddy to the left and right inputs of pack (respectively). Create a “midiformat” object with an argument of “1” and connect pack’s output to its leftmost input. 18 21 Recall that our synth responds to two velocity levels – less than 100 for standard hits, above 100 for accented hits – so we’ll output velocities of 50 and 127. Create two “int” objects, the irst with an argument of “50” and the second with an argument of “127”. Connect select’s irst output to the irst int, and its second to the second int. Create an “outlet” object, connect its input to midiformat’s left output, then close the subpatcher. In the main patcher, connect unpack’s leftmost output to createMIDI’s left input, and Trig Note 1’s output to createMIDI’s right input. Repeat for each of unpack’s outputs, connecting each to the appropriate Trig Note numbox. For tidiness, you can resize the unpack object, as in our image. 19 22 Create a “buddy” object with two arguments of “0”. This remembers incoming values until both inputs have received a value, whereupon it outputs the values simultaneously from their own ports – this helps to synchronise events, something that can become tricky with Max. Connect the Trig Note inlet to buddy’s left input, and the outputs of both int objects to buddy’s right input. We need to bang the Trig Note live. numbox objects so they send their values into the createMIDI subpatchers at the same time as the unpack object sends its messages. Create a bangbang object for each Trig Note numbox, connecting each bangbang’s input to one of unpack’s outputs, and the bangbang right outputs to the corresponding Trig Note live. POWER TIP > Bugging out 23 Find the patcher’s default midiout object and connect the output from each createMIDI subpatcher to the midiout’s inlet. Select all of the interactive control elements (matrixctrl, live.menu and live.numboxes), add them to the presentation, then switch to Presentation mode and create a layout. Add “comment” objects to act as labels if desired. Save when ready and close your patcher. 36 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 24 Have a play. There are a lot of improvements that could be made: a song position marker would be handy, as would a background graphic that shows where the beats lie, and the ability to store and recall sequences is notable by its absence. However, you should now feel conident enough with M4L to tackle these jobs yourself… happy developing! Things don’t always work as you intended them to – or at all – when you’re building your own plugins. When this happens you have to track down and understand the bug. An easy way to do this in Max is to connect number or number~ objects at various points in a patcher, and use them to study the values that are being passed around in order to better understand the bug. > cover feature / build your own plugins MELDA MSOUNDFACTORY Melda’s MSoundFactory is the latest plugin-creation platform and is also behind your free plugin in this issue. Here’s how to get up and running with this ‘one plugin to rule them all’ and also some more detail on how the free plugin was created… 38 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 build your own plugins / cover feature < Fun factory and where our plugin creation tutorial is ocussed. It is accessed with the Edit tab next to the Random option. Within this area you get three main tabs: Globals, Generator and FX. Globals has, as you might expect it to, several main parameters or overall envelope, volume, pan, polyphony and so on. The latter two Generator and FX tabs are or how the actual sound is made up and contain grids o cells within which are Module options. There are many diferent Generator Module options to be had including Synthesis (rom components like Filter and Oscillator to types like Additive, Wavetable and FM), MDrummer instruments, Building Blocks (Envelope, Mixer, LFO and loads more) and Per-voice FX (Delay, Reverb, Chorus etc). You can start by loading diferent basic instruments in the Generator tab like a String sound and then add your own efects rom the FX tab. Or go in at a component level and load in an oscillator in the Generator area. Play a note and you will hear a single oscillator play; play five and five will automatically load and play. You get six Generator outputs and these then go into the FX section. In this way, instruments can be created in a component way with efects, or with bigger pre-made modules, all o which ship with MSoundFactory. You can see, then, that this is the real heart and power o MSoundFactory, where instruments can start to come together or be quickly added to and made your own. In our main tutorial we show you how plugin Instrument or creator? MSF has two modes when it opens: Instrument creation works on a deeper level in MSoundFactory, but do remember that you can (Device) mode which is initially empty but contains any device, either complete or under use this plugin on any level: player to sound construction, and also contains a main browser design tool. For more inormation on MSF there are many more in-depth tutorials on the Melda or selecting instruments by tag or organising your own. In this mode you are essentially using Production website. To find out how to install and use the DIY the plugin to play existing sounds and instruments. Edit Mode is the second main area, plugin see p84. MSoundFactory is the new kid on the plugin creation block, although it’s been around for a couple of years now. The easiest way to describe it is with the cover-all title of ‘modular instrument’ which features everything from sampling to synthesis, and that ofers everything from individual building blocks right up to complete plugins. The thinking behind MSF, Melda say, is that this will be the company’s last plugin because literally everything they develop now, will come from it. You will, they say, need just one plugin to rule them all, and this is it. “A single instrument that does it all,” they say, in a slightly Tolkien-esque way. Melda are also hoping more third-party companies will join the MSoundFactory party, and the plugin currently comes in three flavours: MSoundFactoryLE (£84) provides all the MSoundFactory sounds, but it doesn’t let you access the edit screen; MSoundFactory (ull, £265, although £170 as we write this) gives you all the edit acilities you need to make your own sounds and plugins; and finally MSoundFactoryPlayer, which is ree (and which MSoundFactory deaults to ater the 15-day trial period), which ofers limited instruments (including MonasteryGrand) and sounds rom third-party plugins. We’re ocussing on the ull version here which you can download and use by ollowing the mini tutorial below. Will your plugin attempt be great or a bit of an 808-state? The power’s in your hands Sell your own plugins? (And make some cash?) So what happens if you create an amazing plugin in MSoundFactory? Can you make some cash from it? Melda gave us the following details: “Instruments can be sold and distributed without any fees or royalties for both the third-party seller and the end-user. Instrument creators can generate an installer that will install all the necessary content for the user. The instrument can contain samples that will be encoded in Melda format to keep them protected. The installer can install multiple instruments at once and each instrument can have its own presets. The creator gets access to a serial number generator that can be used to allow the customers to unlock their purchase. If the creator wishes to keep the inner workings of the instrument a secret, they can lock the edit screen, in which case the user will have access only to the instrument GUI. The creators can make custom graphics for their instruments using Melda’s easy-to-use GUI designer. This is a great opportunity for sound designers to create their very own instrument plugins, share them with the world and make money doing what they love!” Bottom line to answer our initial questions: yes, you can! (But also bear in the mind that whoever you sell them to will need to run them in the Player version.) August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 39 > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 1. Installation process 1 3 5 Go to the MeldaProduction website (meldaproduction.com) and hit the Downloads Tab. If you haven’t got it already, you’ll need to download Audio Plugins. 2 This is the Melda Universal Installer that makes downloading and paying for their vast range of plugins a breeze. And it is a vast range, as we shall see… Next you get to choose MSoundFactory and we’d also suggest downloading the excellent MFree FX bundle. Melda do a subscription of €49 a month for the lot – fair given the number. 4 Now open up MSoundFactory in your DAW as you would any other plugin. Before you get up and running you’ll need to install some factory content. (Note the red tab, top right ‘install Factory data’.) Click that red tab and you will open MDownloader, which lets you quickly access and install the content you need. There are several free options including MonasteryGrand plus two essential downloads that you must click to get the most out of MSF: MSFEssentials and MDrummerEssentials. 40 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 6 You are now ready to use MSoundFactory in one of its guises as a huge plugin factory and preset browser, which you can easily do by stepping through instruments and sounds (in the area to the bottom left). However, now we’re going deeper into plugin creation with our main tutorial. See opposite for more. build your own plugins / cover feature < > Step by step 2. Getting started 1 4 7 MSoundFactory comes with many instruments, but to build our own, we must first navigate to the Edit screen by clicking the Edit button in the toolbar. We do not need some o the controls or this instrument. Open the Multiparameter Manager by right-clicking on any MP and selecting Manager. Reset MPs 3355 and 245250. Currently, Wavetable is the only module that is routed through the FX as lanes 2 and 3 are routed directly to the output. To fix this, we will use a Mixer. Insert it below the wavetable and rightclick it. 2 5 8 This screen comprises o three tabs; Globals, Generator and FX. The Globals section contains options or general settings, FX is or building efect chains that take input rom the Generator. Everything inside the Generator modular is per-voice and this is where we will start to build our instrument. In order to make some sound we must insert a Sound Generator. Click on an empty box in the Generator Modular and choose WaveTable8, then enable the unison panel. Enable the checkboxes or inputs 1, 2 and 3, and also steal those inputs. In the mixer, reduce inputs 2 and 3 to -12dB. 3 6 9 We can load a template, which gives us a good starting point with many FX and parameters already set up. Open the Global presets browser rom the toolbar and under Sound design templates load Main template. Insert a String module in the lane next to the Wavetable, then select +1 octave in the pitch panel and change the low-pass to 2,000Hz. Then insert an Oscillator in the third lane and set it to -1 octave. Next, we will add in a filter. Click on one o the empty boxes under the mixer and select Filter rom the menu. Reduce the Resonance down to 30% and add 25% Saturation. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 41 > cover feature / build your own plugins > Step by step 2. Getting started (continued) 10 13 16 By default, the ilter’s frequency follows the pitch of each voice, therefore the frequency is measured in octaves rather than Hz. We will leave it pitch-tracked, but you can disable this using the Pitch mode. Click on the Mod control for the ilter’s frequency to open the Mod Editor window. Click the irst slot of row A to open a list of possible modulation sources, then choose “Attack 1”. Click on MP5 to open it, and you’ll see that it has been connected to the ilter frequency and it now controls it. 42 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 11 Let’s take a look at the modulation system. There are mod controls located to the left of most parameters in the modules, indicating they can be modulated on a per-voice basis. 12 14 To set modulation amount, use the Depth parameter located at the top of the Mod Editor window. Set this to 50%. 15 17 We need to limit the range to something more usable, so set the Value to -4oct and the Max to +4oct. 18 If a parameter does not have this, you can still use a global modulator, however, it will be monophonic. Per-voice modulators are located at the bottom of the generator and global modulators in the utilities panel. Time to set up the controls for this instrument, that will appear on the easy screen. Right-click on Multiparameter 5 and choose Clear. Move the Frequency parameter in the ilter, then click MP5 again to stop it from learning. Next in the process, name the MP as Frequency and write the group as Generator#Filter. Text before the hashtag deines the tab and text after the hashtag deines the panel. Take a look on the easy screen (click edit) to see how the control looks and behaves. build your own plugins / cover feature < 19 Next learn the unison Detune and Voices parameters (from the Wavetable module) to MP1. Set detune range from 0% to 100% and voices range from 1 to 7. 22 25 If you wish to keep the inner workings of your device secret, you can deny access to the edit screen using the Editable lag, but beware not to lock yourself out, keep a preset to be safe. Continue to add controls in this way until you’re happy with your GUI. Load the CM pluck GUI project and look at all the elements to see how they are set up. 20 Name it Unison and set the group to Generator#OSC. It will appear in the Generator tab like the other control but a diferent panel. We have continued this for a few more MPs. Load the Settings 10 and check each MP to learn how they are set. 23 26 We can make custom graphics for our instrument. Click Menu and choose Custom GUI designer to open the editor. Choose from pre-made controls or import your own. Start by loading a background image ‘CM pluck background’. To export our GUI we must specify which instrument we’re attaching it to and which tab it should be displayed on (using the settings panel). Click Export. 21 24 27 Once we are happy with our instrument and it’s been fully tested, it’s time to export it. To do this, click Menu (on the edit screen) and choose Export Device, name and save it somewhere. Next, we’ll add our irst control: choose +Knob from the Items panel to the left. Click Target and select our irst MP Generator#OSC – Unison. MSF is fully MPE compatible and you can ind per-voice modulation sources for timbre and pressure. Your new instrument can have its own presets: simply save/name them using the preset browser at the top of your instrument. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 43 > 15 questions with / loraine james LORAINE JAMES Electronic producer Loraine James had just produced what many critics cited as the ‘album of the year’ when a certain pandemic hit… and all with a 50-quid keyboard and freeware. What to do? Produce your way out of a pandemic with another album of the year, that’s what… Four years ago Loraine James released her debut album , Detail, to widespread critical acclaim, but it was her next album on Hyperdub, For You And I, that earned the London-based producer even more praise, including ‘album of the year’ in both DJ Mag and Quietus. Live gigs followed including headline shows and support slots for Telefon TelAviv, Jessy Lanza and Holly Herndon. Such is life, though, and just as you’re breaking through, a certain pandemic comes along and puts a halt to proceedings. But no matter. James has used the enforced lockdown to produce her inest album yet. Reflection is just that, a personal and honest journey produced “in a world that suddenly stopped 44 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 moving”. It veers from an intriguing “BeachBoys-in-space weightlessness” to tracks with just about any label you care to try and stick on them (trap? grime, electro, jazz? – “I don’t know”, she laughs) with many produced with various guest artists including Xzavier Stone and regular collaborator Le3 bLACK. Perhaps it’s the perfect way to get through enforced solitude: produce, produce, produce. And the best part of all? Reflection was done on a laptop with a whole bunch of free plugins… us how you got into music 1 Tell production in the irst place? Loraine James: “I’m a producer from London, and have been making electronic music since I was 16, when I left secondary school and enrolled on a production course at college. I’ve been around music since I was young; my mum plays the steel pan and I started learning to play the keyboard at the age of 6.” did you start to feel you were 2 When getting somewhere”? LJ: “I started making a living from music in the summer of 2020. I’d been saving money from my previous job and was lucky to be busy with music last year.” is your overall music and 3 What production philosophy? LJ: “To try and not overthink things and not to rellüM akieluS :otohP 15 questions with… loraine james / 15 questions with < have too much of an expectation as well. Both can just end up with you making things very linear for yourself, and also if you expect something and it doesn’t turn out how you want, it can sometimes be annoying!” us about your ‘computer music’ 4 Tell production history? LJ: “When I was 16 I started producing with a computer. Before that I was just making stuf on a little keyboard with 300 presets and writing very bad lyrics in a notebook, all from when I was about 12.” us about the rest of the gear in your 5 Tell recording studio LJ: “When making music, I pretty much just use solely the MacBook keys or a MIDI keyboard. When playing live, I’ve always used a MIDI keyboard, Akai APC40 MK2, and a Novation Launchpad/control.” are your favourite plugins? 6 What LJ: “I use mainly free plugins so: Polyverse Music Wider – It’s self explanatory – it just makes the sound wider; I use it really for making kicks wider and vocals mainly. “Eventide Quadravox – I love layering vocals. This plugin makes it sound really nice and natural compared to some of the other plugins that I’ve tried. “Output Portal – a very easy-to-use efects VST where the efects can focus on diferent sections like drums, vocals or smearing sounds all over the place. “Surge – is a free synth VST – you can do a lot with it and it has great presets.” “Valhalla Supermassive – all of Valhalla’s plugins are great. This plugin is free, and is one of the best reverbs out there.” do you tend to start a track? 7 How LJ: “Sometimes it starts with me just improvising on Ableton with a sound I do or don’t like. Then I’ll sample it, like I did on the song Let’s Go. It changes – sometimes it’ll be with percussion part of it – but I do love playing the results on the keyboard.” “A lot of gigs, I’ve regretted not being ‘in the moment’” usually work like that so it was no diferent for me in a pandemic!” on your gear shopping list? 11 What’s LJ: “I have been thinking about getting some hardware lately, but really I’m scared to in case I spend loads on it and just never use it and it just collects dust.” do you know when a track’s done? 12 What advice have you got for playing 8 How LJ: “In the past year I’ve deinitely begun out live (now that we can!)? editing myself, which I hadn’t done before; just LJ: “Be in the moment. A lot of gigs I’ve thinking: ‘is this part really necessary?’ or ‘does regretted not being ‘in the moment’ and treating the song need to be that long?’ and so on. it more like, ‘ah I can’t mess up’. Just enjoy it and Sometimes I can be done with a song in 30 believe that no one cares or can tell that you’ve minutes, other times I need to give it a while and messed up.” think ‘ah no; actually this section of it just does not work’. I don’t really have any advice, but I What have you picked up from being in think it’s just more a thing that you know when 13 the industry that you can pass on? something is done or that you’re happy with.” LJ: “Collaborate. And just going to gigs and meeting like-minded people is fun. I wish I’d done that more before the pandemic.” you have any production tricks? 9 Do LJ: “A lot of the time, Simpler on Ableton is my go-to plugin. I love splicing things up and time! Give us a gratuitous plug for 14 Plug just inding random bits of goodness in there, whatever you like! and you can change the sensitivity so the LJ: “The new album Reflection is out now, and length of the section you’re working on there’s a headline London show in October. If increases or decreases.” you like what you hear, then you should buy it… if you want. Or see me live and decide!” How did you manage the various 10 collaborations during lockdown? inally, what else have you got 15 And LJ: “All of them were done online through coming up? sending stuf back and forth on WeTransfer. I LJ: “Just more music stuf!” Loraine James’s latest album Reflection, is out now on Hyperdub. HEAR MORE Simple Stuf bit.ly/lrnjms_smpl Silver (t.Le3 bLACK & Sadie Sinner) bit.ly/lrnjms_slvr WWW Surge: a great VST synth and again – don’t tell our advertisers we told you, mind – completely free hyperdub.net twitter.com/LoJamMusic facebook.com/lorainejamesmusic August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 45 > play music now / back to live The end of Covid restrictions (whenever that is for you) means more than giving your inest out-of-the-house trousers an ’ airing. Yes, it s time to get gig-ready… 46 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 back to live / play music now < As we near the end of a calamitous period of recent history, it’s certain that, for many millions of people, experiencing live music again will be among the most jubilant moments of post-lockdown life. Though throngs of gig-goers are readying themselves to once again get sweaty, get inspired and feel the connectivepower of music, we also anticipate that for many artists, a little reassuring guidance is needed to help get them back on their feet. Or, if you’re one of the thousands of computer musicians who have been tempering a hunger to inally get out there for the irst time, then this feature is here to steer you in the right direction. Across the next few pages, we’ll detail the technical and performing factors you need to consider, as well as the equally important wider issues of audience management and harnessing social media for intelligent gig targeting. Finally, we’ll also ponder what paths developing technologies may open up for tomorrow’s live performer. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 47 > play music now / back to live Gear and performance Playing live requires a considerable amount of courage, thoughtful preparation, and of course, some investment in the right (reliable) tech. Let’s explore the technical setup considerations, and other factors, that could transform your gig into a showstopper… We’ve lost count of the number of artists who cite the live experience as the highlight of their careers. Though the music-making process is profoundly rewarding, its magic pales when pitted against the euphoric highs of playing your tracks to a mass of enthusiastic and appreciative spectators. However, with the last year-anda-bit spent mainly locked behind closed doors, and venues heartbreakingly closing around the world, the magic of the gig-sphere has been tantalisingly out of reach. As we see restrictions lift, it’s understandable that many artists are itching to get back out there, and even more budding performers are gearing up for their irst ever shows. The pandemic aside, making the leap from bedroom producer to attention-seizing live performer has long been a daunting venture. But it needn’t be. In this feature we’ll guide you through the major considerations you need to make, without overly prescribing ‘what’ to do. Our aim is to help you to make the right calls and avoid any potential mishaps, feel conident and get the best from live life. Live and let live OK, so let’s start by boiling things down to four 48 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 fundamental factors. We can broadly sort our live concerns under the following overall quarters – the gear, the performance, the gigs and the audience. Let’s begin with the irst. For the lion’s share of modern electronic musicians, live performance will orbit a central computer, typically running a live-tailored DAW such as Ableton Live, FL Studio or Studio One, though compact synth and sequencer setups are also fairly common. If you’re making your irst foray into the live world (or returning to it Ableton Live’s Session View is renowned as the gold standard of live performance DAWs, with good reason after a considerable absence), it’s best to not over-complicate your rig initially, and prioritise comfort with how everything works, where your shortcuts are, and make sure you’re very familiar with the ebb and low of your set. For many, having the convenience of a timeline-type digital environment keeps things logically ordered, so you’re never caught with your proverbial trousers down. Ableton Live is the grandaddy of performance workstations, its hugely intuitive Session View allows you to break down your dense arrangements into single trigger-able elements (or even banks of tracks) which can be activated at will. It also sports slick performance-enhancing effect-automation and crowd-pleasing transition effects. It’s an electronic music mainstay, designed to not just serve as a lexible DAW for musiccreation behind closed doors, but the all-in-one hub of all your live sets. With Live you’re able to keep everything tempo-aligned, perform to a backing track or incorporate as much improvisation and musical performance as you wish. Live is popular, but it’s certainly not the only option, with the aforementioned FL Studio, Studio One, Reason and even GarageBand now being similarly optimised for the live domain. Relying on a computer in a live environment can be off-putting to some, and so a decent MIDI controller is paramount for both the triggering, and performing of your tracks. MIDI controllers come in many lavours, though the most common for Live setups are usually gridbased surfaces, best illustrated by Novation’s Launchpad, replete with big, colourful pads with which to zone into your clip triggering in a more expressive way, while also sporting parameter-scaling control knobs to modify factors like volume or modulation. Ableton’s bespoke Push control surface is similarly pad-based, and is speciically aligned to control its sister software. Keyboard-based back to live / play music now < controllers, like the ones used in a home studio context, can also be put to use on stage. The show must go on So having a fluid home or your set-elements, and a MIDI controller to navigate it is (generally speaking) the simple oundation. However, spontaneity and sonic flair are essential to an exciting live perormance. Aside rom the mountains o sotware effects, synths and instruments operable within your DAW itsel, bolstering your rig with additional items can also help. Hardware synths, effects units (eg physical effects units, such as pedals) or live instruments (such as a guitar) can add more character, and create more engaging perormance moments. It’s entirely down to personal choice – and practicality. Many will choose to align any external instruments to the BPM o your track, though i you’re intending on using a larger assortment o gear, it’s advisable that– down the line – you plump or an external time-setting device, such as the ERM Multiclock, which will solve many timing-related headaches. Hear me now Beyond your music-making kit itsel, it’s also vital to consider the impact o the all-important gear that channels and amplifies your sound to the audience’s ears. Firstly you’ll o course need an audio interace – and we’re not necessarily talking about the same one you use in your home studio. You’ll need one that is the lowest latency possible and is able to accommodate your central computer, as well as any additional instruments. I you plan to bring out a larger rig, a bigger live mixer may be required, though the venue will likely handle that in house. “One piece of advice for newcomers is to build up your tech repertoire slowly. Less can be more, especially when there is room for error. As you gain the conidence with your tools you can start to bring them out more and more. So I suggest starting with something simple, like a piece of hardware – a synthesiser or perhaps a vocal effects unit. Then adding some MIDI controllers with Ableton Live and perhaps some elements from your backing tracks. Then progressing to looping and live arranging and then controlling visuals and then everyone’s minds!” Laura Escudé Low latency interfaces SSL, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 can help stop the dreaded lag when you need it least MIDI control surfaces are vital for bringing your electronic music out of the screen and into the performance-sphere Many swear by the ERM Multiclock, as it can smooth lags and synchronise any external gear to a ixed BPM August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 49 > play music now / back to live Visual appeal Many artists o a certain stature have accompanying visuals or their perormance, while VJs such as the peerless DJ Yoda, merge perectly synced video ootage with their tracks or mesmerising multi-sensory experiences. Though adding video might cause additional headaches, it can be an easy-ish route to elevate your set rom person-in-room-playing-music to an unorgettable night. Beyond just flatly displaying a video, sotware such as Resolume and VDMX provide a simple, tactile way to trigger video that interacts with your set rhythmically and intelligently, and allow you to manually perorm the visuals as part o your show. Beyond the area o video, a more regularly overlooked aspect o a live show is the lighting. Venues will usually be equipped with their own stage lighting; largely this will consist o a ront wash o lights poised on the perormer(s). Backlighting can work in tandem with this to create more distinct stage eels or different songs, while controllable effect lighting such as strobes, blinders and haze can accentuate the energy o your tracks. O course you’ll need to speak to the venue in advance i you want to incorporate your own lighting, and you may need another person to control it. But it’s certainly worth considering. DJ Yoda performs on stage during the irst live music event at Banksy’s Dismaland, Tropicana in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset Microphones are, quite naturally, vital for vocals, but they tend to be less important to electronic musicians than they are for live rock/jazz bands (who may require multiple amp and kit mics). For your main microphone, you’re going to want to prioritise durability and ideally a lat response, so any software vocal treatment you may wish to apply isn’t already pre-coloured. You’ll also ideally want to shop for a dynamic mic over a cardioid, which will better weather the variations in vocal intensity thrown its way. All ears Typically, most venues will have a room-fitted PA system in place, with your audio inputs being blasted out o the numerous speakers around the venue. Your audio is typically routed through and mixed on a mixing console by an in-house sound engineer. More established artists bring in their own Front o House engineers, who know their artist’s sounds intimately, and Eyes front how best to adjust or a venue’s acoustics. So for computer musicians, your live tech bedrock should be: a performance-tailored DAW, The most immediate concern is ensuring you’re monitoring your sound accurately a MIDI controller keyboard/launchpad, a low onstage. In-ear monitors are useul, routing latency audio interface and durable dynamic microphone. This is the typical setup that’s recommended as a comfortable hub, though, of course, we heartily encourage you to expand your rig with stereo efects, additional synths and more as you grow in live conidence. Being happy with both your gear setup and the sound of your set beforehand is pivotal to putting on a good show. You’ll be less paranoid of pitfalls, and able to focus irmly on audience satisfaction. You want to feel stable enough that, during your shows, you can connect with the vibe of the room – making mental notes on which tracks your audience respond well to, and what elements of your set elicit the most positivity. Not to mention, enjoying the experience yourself. the same audio eed that you’re sending out rom your mixer to your ears so you can clearly hear your sonics, as opposed to oten overly loud on-stage monitors. The only downside is that you’ll miss out on crowd reaction noise, so it’s sometimes better to pop one out when less detailed listening is needed. The benefits o inear monitoring are myriad – there’s greater accuracy that can enable quicker live decision making, they diminish the potentially harmul volume levels o a live show and, with wireless systems, let you move around the stage unettered by wires. “Always show up for your audience regardless of size. Playing to a room with more people on stage than in the crowd can be humiliating. But you’ve still gotta give the same energy to that performance as you would if there were 50,000 people there. Be evangelical, no one is going to be more hyped about your project than you are and that kind of enthusiasm and joy is infectious” Josh Boardman, Battle Tapes 50 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 back to live / play music now < Growing your audience You may be putting on some exhilarating live shows, but if you’re not effectively nurturing and analysing your new fans, you may as well stay in your studio. If audience management on top of everything else feels too much, here are some hints As the live music industry prepares for – or at least we all sincerely hope – a period of rejuvenation, it’s important to remember that even despite the host of modern challenges new performers face in the wake of Covid, managing and developing your career as a gigging musician has always been a demanding prospect for those who’d rather remain in the comfort of their home studio. Right now, of course, the problems facing not just artists, but everyone involved in the industry, are immense. The live music industry sustains tens of thousands of people around the world, from sound engineers, promoters, festival staf and more. With festivals losing over 90% of revenues in 2020 and grassroots music venues struggling to maintain their all-important weekly lifeblood after all shows and tours were cancelled, it’s going to be a tougher landscape than ever to navigate efectively, as venues and live artists get back on the horse. Blossoms’ pilot concert in Liverpool back in May ushered in the re-birth of the gig experience But, conversely, with the restrictions soon to be lifted, the appetite for live music is going to be absolutely massive. Your lockdown tracks might just be the soundtrack to a new renaissance of live shows. So, let’s explore how you can make those freshly enthused gig-goers into dedicated fans. Back to life It’s an old story for many, spending endless months on the local live circuit, playing the same venues, to the same faces repeatedly, with a feeling of not really getting anywhere. To avoid inding yourself in this stagnant situation it’s important to not simply view your audience as a featureless mass of judgemental eyes. Each person at any of your shows is a potential new fan – and a future investor in your music. The most straightforward ways to cultivate that transformation during, or after, the gig is by keeping yourself personable and accessible to Hey scenesters While it can be easy to get wrapped up in your own complicated world of fan management, tour-planning and rehearsing, often the very best way to build some attention is to show it to others; get yourself down to your local venues, support new artists, talk to them after gigs and buy their music. You’ll be surprised by how many other musicians will feel the reciprocal compulsion to attend your shows too. Build these inter-band/artist relationships, and you may be able to set up joint strategies to help the both of you. There’s a careful balance here, you don’t want to appear too keen to milk the beneits of others – particularly if they have mouth-wateringly high social numbers – but if you can genuinely build up a good reputation, you might naturally see your audience quadruple. Remember, this isn’t a competition, and you’ll go further working together than going your own way. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 51 > play music now / back to live Roll up Time was, shady promoters would sell you a wad of tickets to your own shows, motivating you to tout them yourself and keep any proit. Not only was this process humiliating, forcing you to bombard friends with invitations, but more often than not meant that at best you’d break even inancially. Thankfully, things have changed, with platforms like Eventbrite, EventGenius or even Facebook Events enabling you to sell your e-tickets directly online. It’s a dead cert that you’ll want attendees to be able to gain access with their mobile, over physical tickets. Also, don’t over-complicate your ticketpurchasing page: keep things simple, punchy and make it as easy as possible for prospective attendees to complete their purchasing journey. Be sure to ask your friends, or other industry/ local scene inluencers, to share your ticket-buying link, and don’t forget to promote with pictures of your last gig, and to share shots of the gig in question once it’s done (you might need to ask a friend to take some, or, if you’ve got the cash, get a professional snapper down there!) the people in attendance. It’s vital to be able to direct them to places where they can listen to more of your music, and follow you. Of course, do direct them to streaming services where they can hear more of your tracks, but be sure to prioritise sending your prospective punters to places where they can actually buy your records. Services such as Bandcamp, CD Baby and Tunecore provide an easy mechanism to put your records for sale, and your bank account will, eventually, thank you. Though it’s essential to engage with your fans at the shows themselves, the most important provides a top-down way to manage all work you can do to build your proile is behind Gigplanner aspects of your professional touring life the scenes. You may think over-exposure on social media can be construed as vain, but you need to view these platforms as a purely professional necessity. Places to interact with fans and let the world know about your upcoming performances Web slinger Making Facebook, Twitter and Instagram proiles that bolster the reach of your music – and make people aware of your future shows – isn’t just a case of uploading your tracks, a nice photoshoot and then just sitting back; it requires some active, daily, engagement. Largely, you’ll need to understand the patterns in your most engaged fans – who are they? What else are they interested in? Where are the biggest clusters located? These are all critical questions that record labels and artist managers have been poring over for decades. In these increasingly DIY days, arming yourself with this knowledge could make-or-break a tour plan. Platforms such as Beatchain (beatchain.com) PUSH (push.fm) and old stalwart ReverbNation (reverbnation.com) can assist you here, typically in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. All of which connect with your social channels to provide insight into the responses to your Analysing where your biggest fan clusters are, via useful tools like Beatchain’sFan Map, can make gigplanning a breeze activities, fan demographics and suggestions for targeting new fans. Though you can align these services to help your tracks get wider exposure, some of their in-built tools are a huge boon for gig coordination. Take Beatchain’s ‘Fan Map’ feature, which provides detailed geographical info on where the most fan activity is taking place. If you’re savvy, that’s where you’ll book your shows (budget permitting, of course). Gigwell (gigwell.com) provides a similar service, via its massive Tour IQ database, which intelligently peruses your tour itinerary, and suggests other potential venues on your route, from arenas to cofee shops. Other tools, such as Gigplanner (gigplanner. com) can be a major help for logistical headaches, particularly when travelling longdistance for shows, playing in several diferent musical outits or dealing with a growing roster of promoters. It provides one central calendar and contact management hub, easily shareable and distinct from your own personal life “Don’t be afraid to fail publicly. It’s not if, it’s when. It will happen and you must set your just for Christmas expectations accordingly. Not Targeting those fans most likely to attend your is an essential step in the process. But, Perfection is a lie and it’s shows you have the fans, it’s important to keep them engaged until the next show comes impossible. I remember once Incentives, such as giving your having some of the most around. followers/subscribers early-access to new new videos or even special fan-only lonely and depressed days on the road only to later play a music, livestreams can really solidify that fandom, and gifting free VIP tickets via self-ran competitions show that felt like a natural heroin hit straight to the dome. also builds the connectivity. The old adage ‘a dog is for life, not just for We’ve played hundreds if not thousands of shows in our Christmas…’ applies quite well when thinking lifetimes and the idea of playing shows again after such about your fans. If you don’t nurture that enthusiasm, soon lose interest. Whether a long hiatus scares the literal hell out of us. Make every you’re a largethey’ll or small-scale artist, having an plan of audience-retaining activity can performance feel like it’s your last and you’ll never work a ongoing mean that all that hard work planning and performing is building something, and that your day in your life.” audience will never forget you. Matthew Brue, Missio 52 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 back to live / play music now < The future of live Being a live performer means a very different thing in 2021 than it did even ive years ago. With the increasing pace of internet speed, you can stream a show for thousands of people straight from your home studio. But does new technology increase the risk of losing that vital live experience, or does this all lead somewhere even more exciting? Picture the scene: you’re at the apex of the most important gig you’ve ever attended in your life – a real soul-altering, profound experience. At the crescendo of the encore, you and your friends, caught in a euphoric wave, move from your front row vantage point, clamber up on to the stage with your very favourite artist. Standing side-by-side with them, you sing your heart out, facing the thousands of rapturous faces all around you, all of whom are sharing in this dream-like, transcendent moment. The show ends, and within seconds, you’re back home on your sofa. Sound like a preposterous dream? Well, it actually isn’t – a similar experience is achievable right now thanks to the increasingly impressive development of virtual reality gig technology. Yes, the intensity of a live show – for both attendee and artist – is now replicable from your home. Companies like MelodyVR and Woov are pushing at the frontiers of something that could revolutionise how we think about the live music experience. But should we be worried about the implications, for an already struggling industry? can it really compete with the visceral, primal thrill of performing your music to real, living human beings? It’s hard to say at this stage, but with virtual environments developing in complexity, it might not be an impossibility. Unreal experiences Casting aside any cynicism about this new tech for now, the actual potential of virtual shows (which, remember, has real human beings both performing and witnessing) is mind-blowing. Many of the restrictive practicalities of putting on a real show, venue speciics, safety and security concerns – and just the small possibility that you’ll be stuck behind an inhumanly tall person – are completely forgotten in the virtual world, while the enhancement of the experience could, in actuality, only increase the enjoyment . “In terms of how live performances are set out, we can put them in unique places, or stage them in interesting ways,” Harper adds. “For our Live from LA series last year, we built our own studio and ilmed everything on a circular stage surrounded by screens which was really cool. Our show directors have some interesting challenges coming up with staging ideas The real deal “Our objective isn’t to replace live music, but to because the audience can look everywhere and ofer an alternative – which means you can still so you have to provide visuals for the full 360 degree ield of view.” Can you imagine what this attend a show if it’s sold out or in a diferent country,” explains Tom Harper, the Support Lead will be like in ten, 20 or even 50 years’ time? While virtual gigs are still in their relative at MelodyVR. “The VR experience ofers the ability to jump into a show and move around the infancy, the hunger to enhance the live space using our Jump Spot feature. This means experience will undoubtedly keep driving technology in fascinating directions. with a MelodyVR stream, the audience can occupy spots they usually might have looking at the stage – or, more uniquely (and more popular), jump on stage with the artist. The cameras we use, that are built in-house, are designed to be non-invasive – so we can put them anywhere when we record a show allowing us to get fans closer to what’s happening.” It all sounds incredibly exciting, but Melody VR ofers a “non-invasive” access-all-areas pass to gigs. Sinister or cool? Answers on a postcard Cross the streams Livestream shows have really exploded over the last year. And, it’s easier than ever to set up a live performance in your home studio. All you need is to make sure your livestream platform of choice is taking the output audio of your interface. Of course, just because you’re in the safety of your home studio, it doesn’t mean you need to scrimp on the ‘show’ aspect of the dynamic. Remember, you’re still performing here. Everyday live video platforms such as YouTube, Instagram Live and Facebook Live are typically put to use by musicians, and easy for general audience members to access, while more gigtailored platforms like Stageit offer more monetisation features for those looking to invest in a more stable pattern of livestream shows in the future. “So much has taken place during the Covid period and it’s very easy to disregard the fact that musicians and creators were at the centre of it all. I believe that taking each day at a time and allowing yourself the time and grace to gradually get back into the swing of things is essential. If I could give one piece of advice to any newcomers it would be, don’t be afraid of what you believe you’re capable of. Protect your dream, embrace the fear inside and go for it anyway.” Mike Patrick, Touring keys for The Streets and James Arthur August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 53 > play music now / back to live Live-tailored DAWs Vital environments for your computer-based live performing Apple Studio One Ableton A piece of software that often lies under the radar, MainStage is able to morph your computer into a live-ready multi-instrument and effect processor, storing sounds in ‘concerts’ rather than projects. A straightforward visual interface allows you to edit keyboards, faders, knobs, buttons and pads, all controllable via your MIDI keyboard. apple.com The most recent point update of PreSonus’s feature-packed hub introduced the Show Page, designed to allow users to luidly navigate their live performance elements, as well as manage their gig overall. Studio One 5 allows you to have total control of the most important elements of your tracks and effects, while also allowing for spontaneity via some on-the-ly patch creation. presonus.com The daddy of them all. Live does exactly what it says on the tin, with its Session Page allowing for the slick and enjoyable live performance of electronic music, and is pretty much standard for the live electronic scene. It’s available in three levels, and if you’re looking to move your sets from another DAW into this live-oriented one, then the Intro package should serve as a ine way in. ableton.com MainStage £28.99 Studio One 5 Artist £85 Live From £69 Atmosphere-enhancing kit Improve the vibe of your shows with special lighting and effects Ape Labs Chauvet Look Want some regularly vibrant lighting without shelling out for a full lighting rig? Then a few LightCans may be just what you need. Pumping out impressive coloured lighting via a 15W RGBW LED, these battery-powered beauties can be programmed with a variety of colours and speeds, and can be easily positioned to add a staggering amount of visual lair. apelabs.com purposes, but it really comes into its own when used as a live experience lifter. Sold in a pack of four, plus an IRC remote controller, the Freedom Sticks’ free-standing design makes them easily transportable, and – in sync – they can be pixelmapped to lash and strobe in tandem with the rhythm of your tracks. chauvetdj.com A little haze, particularly when used in conjunction with the right lighting, can hugely improve the attention-grabbing potential of your show. A decent Hazer such as this from Look Unique is quiet running, and provides a subtle amount of vision-clouding obscurity, as opposed to the wind-turbine, 80s fog machines of old! looksolutions.com LightCan LED Lights £85 per light 54 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Freedom Stick Pack £445 Look Unique 2.1 230V This lexible LED lighting array can serve many Hazer £666 back to live / play music now < The best live microphones If you’re a live singer, clarity and durability in a mic are both essential Neumann Aston Lewitt The titans of mic design’s bespoke live offering packs in studio quality condenser capsules rather than the typical dynamic structure of a live mic, as well as a supercardioid pickup pattern for pristine quality, anywhere. It’s highspec, but still primed for real world gigging, and can withstand huge sound pressure levels. en-de.neumann Aston have taken the studio world by storm in recent years, but while their penchant for toptier recording microphones may be praised, the Stealth proves they’re equally as capable in the live domain. With its impeccable, clear sound, solid structure and futuristic design, the Stealth could be your ultimate all-purpose performer. astonmics.com Austria’s Lewitt Audio have a raft of microphone solutions for the live artist, but for our money, the MTP 500 DM ticks all the boxes. Sporting a consistent cardioid pattern for lawless clarity and a durable zinc die-cast build, there’ll be little to no handling noise, and it can withstand all kinds of knocks on the road. lewitt-audio.com KMS 105 £400 Stealth £299 MTP 550 DM £99 Shure Sennheiser DPA It’s the world’s most ubiquitous mic for a reason. Shure’s SM58 is as likely to be found at Madison Square Garden as it is your local. It’s an industry standard, and you really can’t go wrong with one of these in your arsenal. Its cardioid pattern foregrounds your vocal and an integrated pop ilter is always handy. shure.com No-frills vocal cut-through is the objective of the e 835. Its consistent sound quality holds up even when moving off-axis, and it handles unexpected high sound pressure levels with total ease. It’s also easy on the wallet, so you’re getting a stable, solid performer for your minimal outlay. en-uk.sennheiser.com Want to invest a bit more in your live vocals? Well, Copenhagen’s DPA have been gaining plaudits for their ultra-pristine mics. The d:facto brings studio quality inesse to the stage like few others. The fact that it’s modular too, enables you to switch the capsule, should you want to augment it further. Dpamicrophones.com SM58 £95 e 835 £70 d:facto 4018 £730 August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 55 > play music now / back to live Best live hardware Build out your rig, or ditch the computer entirely and run your shows with some of these options… Akai Octatrack Octatrack MK II £1335 Native Instruments Maschine+ £1100 Who needs computers? In the MPC Live II, Akai provide the ultimate allinone live control hub that can manage all manner of electronic musicians’ needs. Its integrated MPC software provides swift navigation of samples, effects and software instruments, while CV/Gate connectivity also allows you to bring modular synths into your rig. akaipro.com Elektron tech is favoured by many giggers, and the Octatrack MK II sampler/sequencer sits on the top of many a wish list. This little beat beast can be put to use as a sample editor, drum masher or run the foundations of your live arrangement via its 64step/8track sequencer. Sublime, but pricey. elektron.se Pioneer Korg Arturia Furthering the merge between modern electronic music and the world of DJing, the Toraiz SP-16 is a wonderful way to bolster your setup, using any of its dizzying array of performance sampling options and effects. It has an exceptional build quality, packed with inputs and of course, some signature Dave Smith analogue ilters. pioneerdj.com The dinky analogue Volcas have been impressing us for years now, and it’s entirely possible for you to build a smashing live rig if you’ve got the dosh to collect them all. Volca Beats, Sample, Bass and Keys may be a good starting point, but there’s fun to be had in concocting a rig from any permutation of the diminutive heavyweights. korg-volca.com Colliding the capabilities of a highly versatile analogue and digital sequencer with the musicality of a keyboard controller. KeyStep Pro is an astounding live hub with a raft of innovative sequencing tools. It’s capable of recording up to 64 steps with 16 notes per step as well as eight analogue drum trigger outputs and an arpeggiator. arturia.com MPC Live II £900 Toraiz SP-16 £850 56 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Volca series From £80 Taking the lead from Akai’s computerfree philosophy, Native pushed their muchloved Maschine into standalone territory. Effectively a hardware DAW (with inbuilt software, to be fair), it’s an impressively wellrounded beast that, once you’ve got the hang of its 4D joystick and unique worklow, may be the only piece of tech you need… native-instruments.com Keystep Pro £300 back to live / play music now < Best live software control Stop gawping at the screen and get performing! Presonus Zerodebug Arturia Geared towards Studio One’s new live performance options, but equally as comfortable as a Live controller, the mighty Atom is a compact, USB-powered pad controller, that lets you make quick choices on the ly, and build detailed, layered live arrangements. Its velocity and pressure-sensitive pads add natural musical expression, too. presonus.com Take things to an ultra-modern level with a Live-controller on your mobile or tablet. The app is hugely customisable, allowing you to sculpt your interface to only control the parameters that you need, or you can choose from 60 predesigned templates. A show with your telephone? Alexander Graham Bell would be astonished. zerodebug.com Enhancing the studio and the stage, the KeyLab series is a robust, well-built keyboard with 16 performance pads that allow sample and beat triggering. It’s got inputs aplenty, while its DAWcontrolling chops are impressive, meaning you can leave the laptop hidden from view, as you rock the ‘board like Jean-Michel Jarre. arturia.com Novation M-Audio Ableton Novation rule the roost when it comes to pad controllers, and the latest iteration of the Pro seals the deal with impressive new features including a more streamlined build, bigger pads and an in-built step sequencer, not to mention better control of Ableton Live (and any other DAW, for that matter). The pads are colourful and it looks cool as hell. novationmusic.com Commanding DAWs via 25 automatically mapped controls, as well as performance enhancing (read cheating!) abilities such as Smart Chord and Smart Scale, the latter of which restrains you to a selected scale. The Oxygen Pro is simply designed to make you sound good. Its in-built arpeggiator is another fun addition. m-audio.com If you use Ableton Live, the obvious choice of controller is Ableton’s own. The widely used Push 2 is literally a hardware extension of the software, with a high-res display to keep you visually clued in as you pound the expressive pads. Sample slice, bring in third-party plugins and improvise with new musical elements till your heart’s content. A solid choice. ableton.com Atom £120 touchAble Pro £21 Launchpad Pro Mk3 £300 Oxygen Pro 25 £150 KeyLab 49 MK II £375 Push 2 £520 August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 57 > play music now / back to live yarkcahT nhoJ :0tohP Chris Bergstrom: live ‘n’ Dandy Chris Bergstrom is front of house manager for The Dandy Warhols. Here he shares some lockdown experiences and knowledge for any live musicians and engineers… It was during his 16th year, while playing in bands and working at Guitar Center, loading the gear in and out at a club in Portland for $50, that Chris Bergstrom got hooked to working in the live arena. He quickly moved into live mixing, cutting his teeth with a Mexican events band, before getting a couple of in-house club gigs and then an internship at Horne Audio, the company he now runs. Following a short spell mixing the audio at a church in Portland and running his own sound company, Bergstrom left his hometown and moved to Nashville. When a good friend went on tour for two-and-a-half years with OK Go, Chris agreed to help him out for a month on a prearranged leg with The Dandy Warhols, a job ofer that would become life changing. Seven years on and Chris is running Horne Audio as their operations manager and he still goes on tour with The Dandies as the band’s front of house manager. He’s also moved back to Portland, and it’s in his home studio that we catch up with him. : How have you found lockdown? Chris Bergstrom: “Like everyone, it’s not been smooth sailing but it could have been a lot worse. Luckily the sound company got a good amount of federal money which the owner put towards payroll, so that kept that going.” : What have you been working on during the lockdown period? CB: “I’ve deinitely been keeping myself busy. Before the pandemic I had started compiling and mixing a live record for The Dandy Warhols. Around the point of lockdown it morphed into a never-ending live record which they call Warhol Wednesdays. The problem now is I’m running out of original tracks! I’ve also been doing some 58 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 recording on Peter Holmstrom’s records. He’s had a busy recording run with Pete International Airport and bunch of other projects.” : Have you got anything in the pipeline? CB: “Yes, we’re about to do a couple of drive-in theatre-style live shows at the start of June which’ll be fun. We’re still conident of being able to do the rescheduled European dates in February and there are a couple of other bits that we’re waiting for the green light for. I’m also looking at building my own mix space upstairs in the same building that Horne Audio are in.” : How have the drive-in shows been working in the States? CB: “Interestingly, you’d have thought America would have been all over that shit but no. It comes down to the strictness of individual states. In places towards the south there’s a bit more happening, but up here on the liberal left coast there’s nothing. The sound company I work for are doing the shows here, but its capacity is 300 people in a 10,000 person ield.” : What advice do you have for people from a front of house point of view and for people getting ready to play their irst live shows? CB: “Be professional. Even early on, it does matter. You’re supposed to be a professional band and an air of professionalism will go a long ways for a production crew. Even if you’re just playing a bar gig, and you’re starting out, and it doesn’t seem to have any calibre, you never know who’s going to walk into that bar. “I’ve seen the Dandies play some halls that weren’t well sold, as well as sold-out shows. They put in the same energy one way or the other. If no one’s there, think of it as a paid rehearsal, great, and crank it out as if it’s a sold-out arena – it should be the way you perform every show. Keep the professionalism the same, hone your craft, be really good at it, and then go.” : How long would you tend to allow a band to sound check for? CB: “The Dandies take an hour always. They don’t always use it. With a singer/songwriter, it shouldn’t take that long; a full band with a lot of inputs, takes a bit longer. That’s something else to factor in: if you’re a band in your early stages and you’re bringing massive kit to a bar, is that really doing you any good? Same with a guitar player. If you’re in a bar and you’re bringing a double amp stack, it’s too loud and it’s not helpful. Consider what you’re doing, and go minimalistic. What’s the minimum amount of gear you can bring to achieve what you want to achieve? You shouldn’t compromise what sound you’re aiming for, but the diference between a half stack and a double stack is not killing your show. In fact, a half stack is probably too much and do you really need an 8x10 for bass? “You need to igure out how to get comfortable with hearing yourself. I always tell bands, if you don’t know what you want on the monitors, go minimalistic. What do you have to hear? Everything else, leave it alone. Don’t just assume you want piles of kick drum and snare, and guitar because you can. That develops slowly, and that’ll be a shift. Each musician should learn things they need, so then they have that information. You can tell a sound person, ‘I’m going to need to hear this, this, and this’. Be astute, be quick and ready to be there, be present when it’s time for sound check.” : Do you have a philosophy for mixing? CB: “It depends. I know very speciically what Courtney Taylor-Taylor (The Dandy Warhols frontman) is going for. He knows exactly what he does and doesn’t want to hear. All of the band have opinions about what they want to hear, mixed levels and what vibe I’m creating. “If it’s some other band though, it comes down to what sort of show we’re going for. Some just want to reproduce their record in its exact entirety, so that when people come to the show they’re just hearing the record louder. That’s ine if that’s what they want, not necessarily what I tend to push – there’s an edge and angst to live that’s diferent than the records would be.” : What other mixing advice do you have? CB: “The primary thing is you’re never done learning. I came up in a scene of roadies where if you ask a question you get berated for asking it. I’m like, well how am I supposed to learn? So I always tell the interns to ask as many questions as possible and continue to learn non stop. “Explore heavily, music you do and don’t like, especially if you’re going to be a mix engineer of any kind, because you can’t just say, ‘I like that music and that’s all I’m going to mix’. In fact, I’ve found mixing music that I don’t necessarily like is way better for my scientiic learning pattern than it is with music I like. “If you’re trying to do studio work, you’ll pretty much be on your own to build a little world and that’s a good way to explore. Get some tracks, and just play in an environment where it doesn’t matter. In fact, try Mix With The Masters; you can download full sessions, so you can do your own versions of those songs, and that’s huge. It’ll push you forward quickly.” tutorials < Become a better producer now with pro advice, expert videos and audio examples rom our gurus Easy Guide 60 Heartbreaker chords Synth Masterclass 62 U-he Zebra CM talking filter 64 Designing a riser effect Songwriting with Dave Clews An all-new masterclass with Dave Gale Production and Sound Design with Audiotent Move your listeners totears – whether o purejoyor otherwise– with Dave’s handy songwritinghints Dave Gale talks a good game on the ascinatingworld o vocal ormants and theiruse inproduction Neil and Ed explorethe benefits o making your own efects – in this case a dynamic riser in Pigments August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 59 to songwriting #13 Heartbreaker chords Sprinkle a little magic, wonder and even soul into your chord progressions with this neat music theory device… Music is an incredibly powerful tap into the emotions. As an experiment, try watching the most emotional scene from any movie you can think of with the sound turned of. Without music, the emotional impact of the scene will be hugely reduced. So when it comes to conveying raw emotion, such as soaring joy or devastating heartbreak, there are various tools composers can use in a soundtrack to heighten all of these emotions in the viewer. The same sort of thing can be put to good use in your songwriting. If you’re starting out to write a sad song, the lyrical content is only the half of it. You’re also going to want to use a musical backdrop that reinforces the despair of an intense breakup, a forlorn memory of a longlost love, or losing your keys down the back of the sofa. It’s OK, I know, it happens to all of us at some point; it’ll be OK, I promise. Anyway, the point is, to make a sad song properly sad, you need a properly sad chord DOWNLOAD Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio iles at ilesilo.co.uk/computermusic progression, so this month I’ve made it a point to seek out one or two of the saddest chords known to mankind which – when combined with the saddest of all keys (according to Spinal Tap that is), D minor – will make anyone want to shed an empathetic tear. OK, so maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get the idea: if you’re going for a certain mood in your track, you need to know how best to create it, so read on as I equip you with a few tearjerking tools. >Step by step Building sad chord progressions TUTORIAL FILES 1 4 You’d think that for a sad chord progression, the majority of the chords would be minor, right? Well, not necessarily. With the right combination of chord shapes, major chords can play a surprisingly large part in creating some seriously sad stuf. Let’s illustrate this by starting with undeniably the happiest chord of all: C major (C, E, G). Things often sound sadder if the listener is expecting ‘happy’. So try starting your progression with a major chord and then – wham! – hit them with a non-diatonic minor chord – one that’s not in the key, that they won’t have been expecting. For an idea of what this sounds like, try a major tonic chord – C major, for example – to the minor iv chord, Fm. 60 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 2 5 We can have C major as our irst chord and then add in one or two of the minor diatonic chords from the key of C major. Here’s the full set of diatonic triads, all laid out in order, built by stacking up alternate notes from the C major scale. It’s quite interesting to note that, out of the seven chords in the diatonic set, three are minor chords. Shifting between major/minor works in reverse too. Take the irst chords of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, one of the most plaintive and haunting pieces ever written. We start on an Ebm7 chord with a high Bb melody note, which suspends over a shift to an underlying F major chord, before dropping a semitone to A: the major third of the F chord. 3 6 So let’s tag one of these diatonic minor chords onto our major tonic chord to try and create a sad vibe. Let’s try C major to A minor. This is a conventional, diatonic move that occurs in millions of songs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it’s not particularly sad – we can get a lot more heart-wrenching than this. There are two particular types of nondiatonic chord that make great tearjerkers, the irst of which is the halfdiminished, or minor-seven-lat-ive (m7b5) chord. This is made by taking a regular minor seventh chord – I’m using a D minor 7 shape here (D, F, A, C) – and lattening the ifth by a semitone, making D, F, Ab, C – Dm7b5. heartbreaker chords / easy guide to songwriting < Dave Clews PRO TIP In a studio career spanning more than 25 years, Dave has engineered, programmed and played keyboards on records for a string of artists including George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner and Estelle. These days, he writes articles for and other magazines and websites, and is the author of Avid Pro Tools Basics. Follow him on instagram @electricdave67 GETTING EMOTIONAL Quite often, it’s not necessarily chords themselves that are sad, it’s more the movement between two particular types of chord that evokes the feeling of sadness. By using slightly more exotic, nondiatonic chords, we’re able to convey slightly diferent shades of emotion. Rather than just being straight-up happy or sad, we can use these to convey more subtle shades of sadness, like nostalgia or disappointment for instance. Try playing around with diferent combinations of major with minor, m7b5 and #ivdim chords to see what emotions you can magic up. 7 The m7b5 chord has a particular type of yearning, heart-wrenching quality. A quick way to shape one is to play the root note of a minor triad, ind its minor third and then build a minor triad of whatever note that third is. So to get a Dm7b5, play the root note of D, ind the third of D minor – F – and play an F minor triad over the D root. Result – Dm7b5. 10 To make our # IVdim chord, all we have to do is raise up the root note by a semitone, keeping the rest of the chord shape – the# A and# C notes – intact. This gives us F dim (F , A, C). Paired with our tonic C major chord, this brings a really wistful, longing character to our progression, which now takes the form C > F # dim > Dm7b5 > C. 8 11 The m7b5 is a great heartbreaker chord to add to a progression if that’s the emotion you’re trying to convey. Let’s try it in a major key, rooted of the minor ii chord. In the case of the key of C major, that makes it a Dm7b5 chord. Moving from C major to Dm7b5 is a similar move to our C > Fm change from step 4, but with a D in the bass under the Fm. Here’s a minor key diatonic progression that, in Roman numeral form, is spelled i > VI > III > VII. In the key of D minor, that translates to Dm9 > Bb > F > C. Even though three out of these four are major chords, it has a faintly tragic, still contemporary vibe. Slipping in a dominant A7/C# passing chord back to the Dm helps make things even more miserable. 9 12 Now let’s focus on our second nondiatonic chord shape – the # IVdim chord. This is an easy one to put together. Find the fourth degree of the major scale of the key we’re in and frame the diatonic IV major chord that uses it as its root. So in the key of C major, that would be an F major chord (F, A, C). Our inal progression this month is also in the key of Dm, and features a chromatic, descending bassline that never fails to conjure up a melancholy feeling. We’ve got Dm > Dbaug > F/C > Bm7b5 > Gm/ Bb > Dm / A > Abdim7 > A7. The chords are enhanced by a wistful superimposed bell melody (shown in red). Anyone got a tissue, (snif)? August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 61 Synth masterclass with Dave Gale #03 U-he Zebra CM talking filter If synths could talk, what would they say? OK, we can’t answer that, DOWNLOAD Download the accompanying video and the MIDI/audio iles at ilesilo.co.uk/computermusic but the Zebra ilter, with its impressive Formant ilter, comes close It was once cited, by a member of the infamous BBC Radiophonic Workshop, that whenever certain sounds were broadcast on radio or television, it was guaranteed to provoke a reaction from a public who were, back then, unused to such things. This would often result in the BBC switchboard lighting up like the proverbial Christmas tree: any sound that shared the characteristics of a human voice, but was in fact electronic, would get people going. While this would often relate to synthetic devices known as vocoders (which would rely heavily on the live input of a human voice) some synths came equipped with a form of iltering known as Formant iltering. Associated with a term used in speech science, the word formant refers directly to the resonance of the human vocal tract. Zebra CM (from our free Plugin Suite) is equipped with a formant ilter, which allows for the reproduction of basic vowel sounds, which can be sequenced into a pattern. It may be stretching it to expect the Zebra CM to literally speak phrases, but via its formant control, it’s possible to create cool and unique sounding patterns, which can provide a central component for electronic music composition. Let’s try the A-E-I-O-U approach! This new synth series is designed to show you some useful production techniques employing the free synths in the suite of plugins we give you each month at FileSilo. Download them now from ilesilo.co.uk. >Step by step 1. Forming a sentence (or a cool sound resembling one) 1 4 Our irst task will be to open our favoured DAW package and load an instance of the Zebra CM plugin. We’ll start by initialising the patch, by clicking in the central display area, just below the Computer Music graphic. Select UH Initialize, as a starting point. We want to eliminate additional control of the ilter at this point; Envelope 2 is currently modulating the Filter Cutof, so we need to move this pot to the 12 o’clock position. This will result in a very heavily iltered sound, so counterbalance this by changing the main Cutof control to the 10 o’clock position. 62 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 2 5 In order to create a great formant texture, we’ll work with a more focussed oscillator timbre, at least to begin with, so let’s start by reducing the volume of Oscillator 2. Simply reduce the Volume pot in the Oscillator 2 section, with a click, hold and downward drag. Our current ilter selection, located within the ilter section, is the very common Low Pass (LP) variety. It’ll be a very familiar sound; however we’re going to select the less common LP Formant ilter from the dropdown menu. 3 6 To focus our sound even further, we want to go to Oscillator 1 and reduce the number of aliased waves that we are hearing, down to a single sound/wave source. Switching from Dual to Single, via the dropdown menu, will create a centred and more basic starting tone. The elements that will be doing the work in recreating our vowel sounds, are the Resonance and Vowel controls. Increase the Resonance to its maximum and play and hold a note. Now alter the pot labelled ‘Drive/Vow’. As the value of the Vowel pot is altered, you can hear the colours of the vowels emerge. talking filters / synth masterclass < Dave Gale PRO TIP Dave Gale is an Emmy award-winning media composer, producer and orchestrator, with an enormous passion for synthesisers, in all their forms. His varied composing style embraces everything from full orchestral and hybrid scoring, to fully electronic scores, employing synths wherever possible. He also happens to own some of the inest synths in existence but we’re not jealous, OK? TAKE A VOWEL! The beauty of the formant ilter is that it’s fairly unique. Programming a patch of this kind yields a very other-worldly sound, and it’s an ideal opportunity to try something new. Taking the time to get your vowel-based LFO sequence just right will pay a number of dividends; it could form the backbone for a track, as seen on the Air track Sexy Boy. It’s feasible that this sort of sound will stand alone, in the middle of your mix, though it could also be tuned in with a matching bass sound, providing the user crust of a bass part, which will stand out from the electronic crowd. It’s the humanistic and rather organic nature of the sound that gives the hook. We might love electronic sounds, but we generally like electronic sounds that feel humanistic a whole lot more, and it’s an important thing to employ. Chances are that if we think it’s a cool sound, many other people will agree, much like the callers to the BBC Radiophonic switchboard! 7 10 We’re going to add some modulation to our vowel control; click on the unassigned pot, located to the left, below the main Cutof pot, and select LFO2. Once the assignment is in place, apply a small value to this pot and you’ll hear modulation occurring, as you play. The default number of steps within the LFO Sequence is 16, but this can be increased to 32, if desired. We’ll reduce the number to eight steps, purely to keep things simple. It’s as easy as clicking on the Steps drop-down menu and picking a number, before creating a shape for a personalised LFO shape. 8 11 Ensure that you have LFO2 selected in the LFO section, which will reveal the associated parameters. By default, a sine wave is selected, which is currently sync’d to the tempo of your host DAW. You can vary the sync rate, keeping the wave cycle in tempo with your track. While the Step LFO efect is pretty excellent, a slightly diferent character can be created by switching from Steps over to Lines, from the User drop-down menu. This introduces an element of glide between assigned modulation points, which can be highly efective for our vocalised vowel efect. 9 12 Zebra CM comes with a facility to create basic step sequences, from within the LFO Section. By changing the Waveform setting from Sine to User, a step sequence box appears, right in the LFO section. Here we can program our own ‘amount’ settings, and make our ilter talk! As we’re using modulation for our sound, the interplay between the various controls, within the LFO and Filter sections can all be tweaked, for ine tuning and greater efectiveness. Pay particular attention to the LFO2 and Drive/Vowel pots, located in the Filter section. These will yield the most extensive changes to the tonal colour. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 63 Production techniques with Audiotent #11 Rising FX from scratch Discover the sound design techniques behind rising FX This month it’s time to design your own rising efects. Creating your own efects sounds gives you unprecedented control over their timbre and length. Simply changing the modulation rates and waveorms provides you with new variations so the efect remains interesting throughout your arrangement. For this tutorial we’ll design a dynamic FX riser that increases its intensity over time. This is achieved by using two LFOs, one of which is modulating the other’s rate. When it comes to waveforms, most can be a suitable choice for designing FX sounds. We deliberately chose a sawtooth for its rich harmonic structure for this feature, but it’s also available across multiple subtractive synthesisers. Our tool of choice is Arturia’s Pigments as it ofers creative modulation options. These include the ability to modulate unison voices, spread and phase position of the wavetable. Also, being able to adjust the curve shape from linear to exponential is a very useful option. Bandpass ilters work wonders with FX, allowing the producer to target a speciic frequency range and control its energy. This will play a big role in developing the sound we are creating today. The inal piece of the puzzle will be adding efects such as a delay and langer. These efects will increase the stereo image of the sound as well as introducing additional movement and sonic interest. >Step by step Making a dynamic FX riser 1 4 The irst step is to load Arturia Pigments – or similar subtractive synth – into your DAW. Then click Menu and New Preset. This will initialise all of Pigments’ parameters to its default state. If you play the keys on your MIDI keyboard you should only be hearing a raw, unafected sine patch. Next, LFO 2 will be used to control the speed of LFO 1. This is how the complexity of the patch is generated. We want a gradual increase of LFO 1 rate which requires a ramp up LFO. Set LFO 2 to Unipolar. Symmetry to 1.00, Triangle waveform selected and phase to 180º. 64 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 2 5 First, make sure your oscillator engine is set to Wavetable. Click Morph to disable its morphing function. This will enable us to pick the precise sawtooth waveform using the Wavetable Position parameter. We could’ve selected the analogue engine for the basic sawtooth, but wavetable synthesis gives us access to additional sound sculpting. The LFO 2 rate is currently set to Hertz. We can sync the LFO to the project BPM. This will allow us to achieve a precise duration of bars for the length of the efect. Set LFO 2 Rate to Sync Binary. Click on LFO 2 and increase the LFO 1 Rate modulation amount to 0.40. 3 6 The core sound of this FX patch is a dynamic pitch movement over time. The irst modulation assignment is LFO to Tune Coarse. Click on LFO 1 and increase the Tune Coarse modulation amount to 0.30. The rate of LFO 1 can stay at its default setting. Let’s set up an envelope to control multiple parameters and further enhance the FX patch. Set the attack to slow, around eight seconds. We want the modulation to increase as time progresses. This can be further emphasised by transforming the curve shape to exponential. Set the Attack Curve to 2.72. fx riser / production techniques < PRO TIPS CHORUS NOISE FX White noise is often used for rise, fall or impact FX. A lot of the time it can sound plain and too harsh. To combat this, apply some chorus effect: this helps soften the transients, increases the width and adds subtle movement. Ed Strazdas Ed is an experienced dance producer and sound designer, working in the scene since 2004 In order to create some additional movement to your delay lines, add a langer on your delay return channel. Try setting the langer rate to slow for a longer, shifting efect. 10 Now that we have the Envelope curve set up we can start to assign it to various destinations. Let’s set the filter by choosing a bandpass mode BP12 in the mode selector menu. Increase the resonance to 0.55 and lower the cutof position to around halway. Click on ENV 2 and increase the Filter Cutof modulation amount to 0.33. Delays are always a sae choice to help smooth out your FX patches. For this sound we stuck with the stock delay in Pigments, increasing the Dry/Wet to 25% and increasing the Stereo Spread to 0.054. Sound designer and mixing engineer, Neil is a huge fan of Eurorack modular synths About Audiotent Our Production Technique experts are rom USING A FLANGER ON YOUR DELAY 7 Neil Crockett Audiotent, a team o creative producers and sound designers who provide inspirational tools and education or proessional artists worldwide. They ocus on both techno and progressive genres, ofering presets, samples, templates, MIDI files and production tutorials. More rom: audiotent.com 8 11 To expand sound in the stereo field, increase the voicing and stereo amount o the unison. We can program these parameters so the changes happen over time. Set Unison Stereo to 0% to make the patch start in mono. Then click on ENV 2 and tweak the Unison Stereo modulation to 1. Click ENV 2 and raise the Unison Voices modulation to 0.20. Another efect worth looking into is a flanger. Not only or its distinct character but also the intensity and movement that it imparts. Dry/Wet increased to 54% and eedback dialled in at 84%. 9 12 We can make use o the additional wavetable parameters that’s at our disposal to urther develop the sound. Make use o the same ENV 2 and assign it to the Phase Mod Sync/Retrig, dialling in an amount o 0.80. Lastly, its a good practice to export your synthesised FX patches as a WAV or AIFF loop. This makes it easy to quickly reuse the same sound in your new projects without loading up unnecessary CPU power. You now also have the option to reverse the audio sample or a diferent type o efect. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 65 NATIVE UNION ECLIPSE USB CHARGER WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE TO WORTH £69.99 CHARGE MULTIPLE DEVICES The Native Union Eclipse features three USB ports, enabling you to charge all of your devices at once HIGH SPEED CHARGING High speed charging of up to 7.8 amps thanks to Smart IC technology BUILT-IN CABLE MANAGEMENT Dedicated interior space for a neat desk with a minimalist design subscriptions < Choose your package… DVD ULTIMATE FREE SAMPLES BREAKS The only breakbeat and vinyl grooves collection you need 2 NEW PACKS OVER 2500 3 CLASSIC PACKS INCREDIBLE SAMPLES PRINT PRINT + DIGITAL QUARTERLY DIRECT DEBIT QUARTERLY DIRECT DEBIT ONLY £17.50 ONLY £18.75 Every issue delivered direct to your door Available at a fraction of the cost of buying separately Never miss an issue, with instant access on your digital device Get huge savings with our best value-for-money package IT’S EASY TO SUBSCRIBE magazinesdirect.com/cmu/98ap Offer closes 14th July 2021. 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Lines are open Monday- Friday 9am- 5pm UK Time or e-mail: help@ magazinesdirect.com. Calls to 0330 numbers will be charged at no more than a national landline call, and may be included in your phone provider’s call bundle. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 67 reviews < Our promise We bring you honest, unbiased appraisals of the latest computer music products. Our experts apply the same stringent testing methods to all gear, no matter how much hype or expectation surrounds it. What the ratings mean 1-4 A seriously lawed product that should be avoided 5 This product’s problems outweigh its merits 6 A decent product that’s only held back by a few laws 7 Solid. Well worth considering 8 Very good. A well-conceived 70 TONE 2 WARLOCK and executed product 9 Excellent. First-rate and A powerful, easy-to-use softsynth, with groundbreaking architecture at a good price. What is this wizardry? 72 Orchestral Tools Tallinn 74 Audiomodern Opacity II any better than this! 76 UVI 8-Bit Synth 78 The 6 Best Muti FX 81 Toontrack Gospel EZX & EBX Expansion packs 80 JMG Sound Orbitron Awarded to products that challenge existing ideas and do something entirely new among the best you can buy 10 Exceptional. It just doesn’t get A product has to really impress us with its functionality and features to win this one If the product exceeds expectations for its price, it will receive this gong In the opinion of the Editor, the best product reviewed in the magazine this month August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 69 > reviews / tone2 warlock SPECTRUM WAVETABLES There are 84 of these, based on different instruments or other sounds 2000+ PRESETS Select from 20 banks (four user) for an almighty number of varied preset sounds EFFECTS VOLUME AND SHAPING Two modular Controls the overall output effect slots, each volume over time with 18 effects MODIFIERS 25 algorithms to choose from to change the sonic character LFO 20 LFO types can control over 20 parameters at variable speeds and amounts ENVELOPE This ADSR can be routed to the same 20+ parameters as the LFO OSCILLATORS Two main sonic blocks act as the main engine, each with tuning controls HYPERSAW For stacking oscillators and can be used with any Spectrum Wavetable FILTER SECTION A massive 38 types allow you to tweak a sound quickly LOOPMODE AND LOOPSPEED Allow you to edit how the Spectrum changes over time Tone2 ARPEGGIATOR Choose from 20 types and rhythmic patterns GENERAL CONTROLS Includes a fabulous Random option for easy sound creation Warlock $69 Warlock is Tone2’s attempt to deliver a power and workflow combination that is a rare partnership in sotsynth design. And it’s damn cheap too… Surely the big draw of the virtual synthesiser is that you are not limited by any physical restraints as you would be in the real world, just by how much grunt is delivered by your computer processor. You want dozens of ilters and oscillators? No problem. Hybrid design? Yes please. A lime green GUI? Well, maybe. But then the ability to have unlimited features can have an adverse efect. Many software synths have become unwieldy, weighed down by their own bloated oferings, unable to focus on anything in particular, jacks of all trades and full of so many options that you become terriied of the choice and loading them up. A powerful, feature-packed synth with a smooth worklow is something of a dream, then, but that’s what Tone2 are attempting with Warlock. Grunt, diversity, ease of use and amazing sound quality. Surely what we all want, right? What’s that you say? Less than 70 bucks? 70 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Can this be, then, the golden synth ticket we’ve been waiting to unwrap? Looking at the specs though, and things do start getting a lot more interesting. 84 oscillatortypes (and up to 24 per voice), 38 ilter types, 18 efects, an arpeggiator with 22 modes, a Lots in, nothing out? Random button for instant sound generation First impressions don’t, shall we say, deliver a and over 2000 of said sounds (not, we hasten to massive level of frenzied excitement; the interface is not exactly enticing. This, however, is add, generated randomly but expertlyprogrammed – see later) are just some of the deliberate. You shouldn’t judge a book by its stats we can throw at you. And already you can cover and this is – if we stretch that analogy a see that Warlock is delivering in its promise, at little too far – perhaps attempting to do War & Peace with a touch of Enid Blyton simplicity. OK, least with the numbers. maybe that is overstating things, but Warlock is presenting, as Tone2 say, “a reduced userUnlocking the detail interface to facilitate an eicient worklow” with While the power might be hidden, it is there to “a limited feature-set, but huge sonic range”. In tap into – and we discuss the Warlock’s that respect it is an attractive proposition but Harmonic Content Morphing architecture more don’t expect the larger graphics of the in the box to the right. company’s fabulous-looking Icarus2 and What Warlock does well is put the minimal Gladiator3 – this has all their best bits behind a number of parameters you need from this synth simple UI mix. architecture on display for you, with each tone2 warlock / reviews < “A good old play with Warlock will soon have you feeling your way around its wavetablelike innards” control having a dramatic efect. This means that on a sound design level you can simply change a waveorm here or a morphing action there and you will instantly hear an obvious sonic development. On a basic level, there is no need to really understand what is going on – although it helps, and reading both the Warlock and the more detailed Gladiator manuals rom the Tone2 website pays dividends. Yet experimentation oten yields that ‘Eureka’, just-come-up-withyour-own-sound-but-not-quite-sure-how kind o moment. And as good as these manuals are, having a good old play with Warlock will soon have you eeling your way around the edges o its wavetable-like innards. Or, i you really want to take that simple philosophy urther, just dive into the 2100-odd sounds! One o the first things that might strike you, as it did us, was the quality o what’s on ofer – let alone the width – many presets with a great dynamic, both in terms o movement and range. Basses thud when they should, arpeggiations sear and tear through with a twist o the Filter and Resonance controls, and there are plenty o incredible growls, bassy twists and show-of leads or dance music. In act, i anything, that is the ocus, which is air enough these days. We’d have liked some more unusual textures, but the beauty here is that you can change core Spectrum Wavetables in an instant – along with many other parameters like Modifiers, Loopmode/speed and the many filter and efect types – to easily twist anything on ofer to something new and more out there. And then there’s the Random button to do it in an instant. It’s all very creative and very quick. Drop-down menus are used to select both the Spectrum Table and the morphing algorithm Harmonic Content Morphing Warlock uses the same type of synthesis architecture as used in other Tone2 synths like Gladiator. Harmonic Content Morphing (HCM) synthesis delivers a sound “not possible with subtractive, additive or FM synthesis alone”. It essentially uses diferent waveforms as the core ingredients but allows them to morph and change the harmonic content over time. The architecture comprises 84 Spectrum Tables (and, yes, you can think of as wavetables) each with up to 256 snapshots, each of these the equivalent of a traditional single oscillator waveform. can just get in there and make any o the many sounds on ofer your own, with just one or two clicks. That said, we’d love to see an option to switch it rom ‘Simple Mode’ to ‘Slightly Less Simple Mode’, throwing in some o the larger graphics rom Gladiator3 into the UI mix or unveiling some extra modulation or surgical parameter tweaking. But maybe we’re missing Go to War? the point – that is what Gladiator is or ater all – Part o the appeal o a great instrument can undoubtedly be its almost ‘come hither’ looks, or maybe Tone2 have that ace up their sleeve or beckoning you to make sweet music together. version 2. Whatever your thoughts on the UI, the most We’re being a little unair on Warlock, criticising it or not having those as its appeal lies in instant important aspects o any sotsynth are: does it programmability or all levels o synthesist. You sound good and will you use it? On the ormer, the answer is ‘most definitely’ – the dynamic range and quality is there to behold, and the diversity o Warlock’s output can be heard with one sweep through any bank. And on the latter ‘in use’ question, here’s the thing: we ound ater a ew days o use, that Warlock had barged its way into most o the projects we are currently working on, and seems to have absolutely no intention o leaving, which is high praise indeed. This synth delivers more than pretty much any synth o its price (and more than many costing a heck o a lot more). You won’t want to ask too many questions along the way, but enjoy the ride you most certainly will. There are two banks of 18 efects each to choose from Web tone2.com The Spectrum Tables can be modiied with 25 diferent algorithms These include names like Shrink (for a warmer sound), Multi 1 (for thicker sounds) and Multi Hyper (multiple noisy waves playing simultaneously). You also get two further modes, Loopmode and Loopspeed that deine how the Spectrum Tables are played back and how fast the morphing is performed. Combined, these alter the harmonics of each Table over userdeined periods, giving you a lot of control over the sound, with a minimum of fuss, which is essentially Warlock summed up in a sentence. Alternatively Plugin Boutique Carbon Electra 225 » 8/10 » £25 Similar dance style, more complex but still easy, and now silly money Rob Papen Blade 2 292 » 9/10 » €99 Diverse sound, and the higher price gets you some excellent depth Verdict For Big sound, little price It’s easy and simple. Don’t ask more! Lovely ability to come up with new sounds, easily Lots o power, just well hidden Against Looks aren’t going to win too many awards Deep sound designers will snort (the rest o us will gloat) Warlock is a rare beast: cheap, powerful, lexible and easy; exactly what Tone2 set out to do with it. A cracker 9/10 August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 71 > reviews / orchestral tools tallinn: baltic voices and strings LIBRARY The main Library tab is where all of your licensed OT titles sit for browsing PERFORMANCE Where you play the samples and have them mapped across the keys MIXER Mix your articulations with this tab – see right – and select your interface outputs OPTIONS Select your Key Switches and MIDI Controller Map parameters here ARTICULATION LIST Each one you have loaded may be edited here MAIN BROWSER Tallinn sits within SINE so can be combined with other Orchestral Tools WHAT’S LOADED Here are the sounds you have downloaded. Simply select the ones you want for a Performance INFO Shows RAM used, number of voices plus the load the CPU and disc is under VOLUME AND SHAPING Envelope, main volume, Legato and other controls are found here KEYBOARD RANGES Performances are triggered here across defined ranges Orchestral Tools Tallinn €399 Tallinn is an orchestral library with a murderous plot twist and subtitles, ideal for your Scandi-Noir atmosphere. Does it make a killing? The Nordic or ‘wintery’ sound has, of course, become a thing in recent years thanks to a glut of Scandi-Noir TV dramas. Usually comprising (in equal parts) beautiful landscapes, gritty inner cities and plots so twisty you need a slinky to navigate them, they feature ‘cops on the edge of the law’, ultra violent murders and stunning, often low-key scores. These (the scores, that is, not the murders thankfully) have almost created a genre of music in themselves. Not particularly deined, they can be anything really – moody, terrifying, a whisper of pad here or orchestral tension there – as long as they ladle on the atmosphere and drama, and make you feel inadequate about living in a rain-soaked city in the UK. It was a bandwagon that even we jumped on – yes, we know, amazing right? – last year with our own Scandi Noir sample sound packs, which still remain among the most popular downloaded collections we’ve ever produced. 72 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 The professionals [like we’re not?! – Ed] have quickly climbed on board too, including the likes of Spitire (whose Albion Tundra is described as an orchestral library ‘on the edge of silence’), Loopmasters et al. Now Orchestral Tools are in on the action, but rather than get their usual (and rather brilliant) local Berlin orchestra to try and recreate some Nordic chill, they went up “Some may want to combine it with other instruments. We think that might be missing the point” north to track down the real thing. And Tallinn: Baltic Voices and Strings, is the result. It’s not grim up North at all Tallinn, in case you didn’t know, is the capital of Estonia and sits on the Baltic sea, gazing out over to Finland to its north, St Petersburg in Russia to its east. Orchestral Tools captured both the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir for the vocals on Tallinn plus the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra for the strings. (There’s a great background story and video to enjoy on the OT website should you wish.) The collection makes use of OT’s excellent SINE player, a kind of stripped-back Kontakt which is in its early years of development – and some might say all the better for it. Essentially you can use it to manage whatever OT titles you have a license for. It’s pretty elegant, a bit monochrome, but very practical. We have more details of the process in the box (right). orchestral tools tallinn: baltic voices and strings / reviews < “A single note of the sustains or a simple rif of the portatos creates an entire score in our minds” What you get with Tallinn are instruments in the form of the aforementioned vocals – male and female choirs with 16 singers – plus a chamber string ensemble with ive violins, four violas, three celli, and two basses. Almost as a bonus, OT recorded two church organs at the venues. While there isn’t the full orchestral here, the focus on strings and voice does give you all of the atmosphere you could ask for. SINE allows you to download individual mic positions and articulations or group them together and download all the same type. Some will load individually across the keyboard; or load others like the chamber basses as key switches (where diferent key presses change the articulation played back). It doesn’t matter either way as SINE allows you to automatically assign keys, MIDI channels, MIDI CC or program changes to play diferent samples. We immediately throw ourselves into both choirs and are irst struck by the recording quality and then the no-nonsense approach – no attempting to cleverly recreate words or vocals phrases, this is pure instrumental atmosphere. You’re also stuck with the reverb of the church in which they were recorded; we say ‘stuck’ but as this is the choir’s ‘home’ church, you are talking about a building and group of people that have been together, as it were, for years, and in perfect harmony. SINE ofers little in the way of added efects, nor in this case, should it. Of the strings, the sustains and portatos are our favourites – a single note of the former or a simple rif of the latter creates an entire score in our minds, the tremolos coming in when things get ‘dangerous’. The chamber basses also ofer an incredible dynamic to underpin our score which is rapidly coming together. All we need are some quality actors and subtitles. As this is a vocal and string collection, the organs feel a little like they’ve barged in, and if there is a criticism it’s that we’d have perhaps liked less of them and more vocal variations in the choirs. This is a minor observation though, Performances in Tallinn and all OT Sine-based instruments are where you map sounds across the keyboard to play them SINE’s mixer helps you create entire performances Sine vibes Orchestral Tools’ SINE player is a standalone or plugin ‘instrument’ although really a shell like Kontakt that allows you to manage your Orchestral Tools libraries. Once you purchase a library you can browse all of the instruments within it in their various articulations and room mic positions. You can then choose to download individual parts of an instrument, or the whole thing, which is a neat way of avoiding downloading chunks of content you’ll never use. Once downloaded, simply head to the Library tab and double click an instrument or articulation to play, which is then accessed via the Performance tab. as even the organ sounds get you after a while, and you start to hear how they it in with the remainder of the library. Tallinn loud and clear Tallinn is absolutely stunning, make no mistake. Stripped back, perfect in execution and sound. It won’t be for everyone, mind, and some may want to combine it with other instruments and libraries for perhaps a fuller sound, although we think that might be missing the point. It is aimed at starker scores, the kind of thing where one note or voice delivers more weight than an entire arrangement – think any 21st century drama with the word ‘killing’, ‘bridge’ or missing’ in the title. This isn’t for depth, or complete fulsome happiness, more tension and intrigue. That said – against our own advice – we can’t wait to combine it with something else anyway, just to hear the results. A damn great synth perhaps, just to see how an electronic backdrop will sit with it (although we suspect that will ruin everything), or more likely, one of OT’s own Creative Soundpacks like Umbra or Amber. Either way, and probably best used alone, Tallinn is delicate, uncompromising, dramatic and will make you think, and even rethink your compositions, the mark of a great title. Web orchestraltools.com As you load in more articulations, they appear in the Articulation List to the right hand side of the UI (see above) which can then be edited according to note position, MIDI cc and so on. One other neat feature is the Mixer tab which has all of the loaded articulations spread across a virtual mixer. In this way you can set up complete performances, using multiple Orchestra Tools titles all controlled and played within one environment, creating huge walls of sounds, or individual multi-parts all from one instance of SINE either on its own or within your DAW. SINE focuses on practical rather than lash looks – a winner in our books. Alternatively Spitfire Audio Albion Tundra $449 One of Spitire Audio’s best titles has a little more lexibility at a higher price Orchestra Tools Amber 287 » 9/10 » €149 This detuned string quartet can deliver similar chilled vibes for less Verdict For Amazing recordings Incredible atmosphere Choir and strings to die for Bonus organs SINE is a great way to use it all Against A few too many organs OT’s own Creative Soundpacks can bring you some of this atmosphere cheaper Restrained and beautiful, Tallinn captures incredible strings and vocals in their perfect home environments 9/10 August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 73 > reviews / audiomodern opacity II Audiomodern Opacity II £88.99 Craving expressive guitar textures, but lacking the nouse to conjure them? This suite presents a six-string universe ready to explore… Whether it’s moodily swelling, emotively plucking or chordally washing into our ears, cinematic guitar is a mainstay across the modern soundtracking world. Though this playing style is also prevalent in ambient music, it’s really in the generation of score-ready textures for working composers that Audiomodern pitch Opacity II – a highly manipulable guitar sample player, loaded up with some exquisitely well-recorded axe work. Comprising 14 sessions delicately performed by Washington-based Terre Grande guitarist Justin Hodges, Opacity II’s recording quality is the irst thing that hits us after loading up the software within Kontakt. Sumptuous arpeggios, gloomy swells and echo-sodden notes abound as we cycle through these preset Sessions. Each of the 14 tempo and key-deined Sessions contains four groups of looped performances, comprising elements such as Chords, Phrases, Sequences and Melodic Textures. Each of these groups have 12 diferent recordings of diferent approaches to these sound types that all gel together harmonically. This variation can be further increased by dragging across the individual sounds from other Sessions, too. You’ll note that this is Opacity ‘II’ and follows on from the inaugural version which was only released in 2019, therefore there aren’t major changes to the sound palette in v2, aside from a few additional Sessions and an amazingly efective Reverse mode that can transform the feel of your parts instantly. Two of the biggest The edge is fine Throughout our experiments with Opacity 2, we kept running into a heavily delayed, palmmuted, plucked sound that of course, put us in mind of a certain beanie-hat-toting Irish rif merchant. We also stumbled upon the exact tone of Slowdive’s Sugar for the Pill and other familiarly delay-sodden fare. These examples proved that beyond soundtracking, Opacity 2 could be put to work in Indie-land, if you 74 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 boons with this sequel are the ability to alter your cabinet, selecting between the tonal characteristics of 11 diferent cab options, modelled after some of the big hitters from the amp world. You can further ine-tune their Size, Air, Balance, Distance and Wetness, as well as a slower or faster rotation, which can bring all kinds of interesting efects to the table. The other big addition is a brand new, performance mode. Performance mode lets us harness four hugely diferent individual guitar tones (the ones which make up each group) in playable, modiiable form across your controller keyboard. This can be a cool way to create and save your own individual patches, should you not actually be a guitarist yourself, or ind yourself smitten with these pre-designed tones. With a range of ways to explore this software, we opt to load up Session 05 which corresponds nicely with the tempo of a project we’re currently working with. Carving out a few chord shapes near the centre of our keyboard triggers a spectrum of textured patterns, interacting in ways that make our hairs stand on end. Though changing between the groups is smooth, mis-ingering results in a tonally ofputting chime sound. It’s certainly recommended that you get to grips with the keyboard layout for your Session, and how certain sounds within slot well together, before recording anything. Though the tone of all these sounds is immaculate, further efects can be applied on a per-group basis. We can apply more needed some subtler harmonic elements particularly. There’s much to explore here and Opacity’s potential certainly extends beyond its intended target audience. Often when experimenting with Reverse mode, certain phrases take on a completely diferent, dream-like, quality – when treated with further efect processing, who knows where these possibilities may lead. or less Delay, Chorus, Stutter, Filter and Reverb space to any of the pre-designed patches, or ones we craft ourselves in performance mode. Opacity II certainly provides hard beneit to the non-guitarist sound designer, granting customisable control over the numerous facets of a peerless player’s sound, though simply harnessing the preset Sessions and Groups may be enough to ill that space. Guitarists shouldn’t write this of either – Opacity 2 provides a way to re-think your typical approach to writing for the instrument, while making us wish we could wrench the same emotion from our axes. Web audiomodern.com Alternatively Heavyocity Scoring Guitars 2 £85 If you want to get even more hands on with guitar textures, this suite may be a more appealing prospect Rob Papen Rhythm Guitar 132 » 9/10 » £80 This more groove-based package also comes with an onboard synth to take sounds in edgier directions Verdict For Simple and intuitive way to incorporate pro-level guitar texture Performance mode allows more individual expression Amp sims and efects Against Some minor slowdown when Session switching Building on an already versatile, crystal clear-sounding toolkit, Opacity II perfects the cinematic guitar engine concept 9/10 > reviews / uvi 8-bit synth MAIN PAGE The central hub of control, with an overview of each sound layer SID LAYER Control global settings for SID layer’s selected preset, Volume and Pan PRESET BROWSER Cycle through 375 patches, organised into category type EDIT PAGE Edit the modwheel settings, plus voice mode, pitch and stereo width CHIPS LAYER Control global settings for Chips layer’s selected preset, volume and pan MODULATION PAGE Control settings for the step modulator, and affect the LFO waveshapes EFFECTS PAGE Apply a range of colourful effects, including Phasor, Thorus and Drive FILTER Apply filter settings such as envelope, velocity, depth and resonance AMPLITUDE Adjust velocity, attack and standard ADSR envelope ARPEGGIATORS PAGE Build up expressive arps, with options for Step, Speed and Gate settings UVI MASTER VOLUME Satisfyingly rendered as a classic arcade machine joystick 8-Bit Synth €99 Recapturing the endearing charm of classic arcade machines, 8-Bit Synth may seem gimmicky at irst, but a vibrant instrument lurks within Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a boom in media aimed at scratching that 80s nostalgia itch, from Stranger Things’ infatuation with the era’s cinematic tropes (and a lush synth soundtrack), Wonder Woman’s recent colourful adventures in 1984 and the trend for the bleeps and bloops of classic, 8-bit video game soundtracks that pepper EDM and even creep their way into mainstream soundtracking. It seems that as long as there are sentimental memories to conjure, the past will never die. With that in mind, Paris-based UVI has painstakingly built what, at irst glance, appears to be the ultimate retro sample library and performance instrument, speciically tailored for 8-bit music-makers. First bundled as part of their gleefully fun, humungous Toy Suite (2019), the 8Bit Synth now stands on its own two feet… Sid games Taking its inspiration largely from vintage video 76 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 games, arcade machines and early computersounds, 8Bit Synth provides 30,000 individual samples, and 375 retro-tinged patches, all of which are neatly organised into a diverse array of categories, including Bass, Leads, Chords, Composite, Drums, FX, Plucks and Polysynth, all selectable via the familiar UVI Workstation framework which houses this (and, indeed all) “The building blocks of a quirky chiptune track… or lavourful sprinkles over more conventional fare” UVI software. These presets have been carefully sampled, and are ready to serve as the building blocks of a quirky chip-tune track, or as lavourful sprinkles to layer over more conventional fare. Though it may seem a niche product, a cursory skim through some of these presets showcases the variety of sonics on ofer, ranging from the purposefully nostalgic such as Crispy Dream, which provides a rewarding ‘twinkle’ efect, reminiscent of picking up a coin in Super Mario to the more sound design-oriented DMG Artefacts, which presents a shifting sea of processed sound. Of course, these presets are highly tweakable, mainly via the Amplitude and Filter controls, which are presented as the central options on the Main window. The sound engine running the show here is actually divided into two. The irst layer harnesses the cherished tone of the three-voice uvi 8-bit synth / reviews < “Its visual ethos being inkeeping with old school arcade machines, it’s less work, more like a game” SID chip, originally used within the beloved Commodore 64. The second consists of a variety of Chip sounds cribbed from machines like the GameBoy and Mod Machine. These layers can be blended in a whole range of ways, leading to some interesting aural creations. 1up The UI is comfortingly child-like, daubed with decals that are based on some of those iconic video game characters. The arcade machinefeel is complemented further by the circular page selection buttons that run down the lefthand side, culminating in a rendering of a classic joystick, which controls the master volume. The ive main control pages are Main, Edit, Modulation, Efects and Arpeggiator, and it’s on the Main view that we can easily select which layer to activate, edit (via the Amplitude and Filter controls) and modify global settings such as Pan and Volume. The Edit page is where the nuts and bolts of 8Bit synth can be manipulated. Here, we can toggle between mono and poly voicing per chip (or both) adjust portamento depth and time, scale the pitch in octaves and route our controller keyboard modwheel to familiar parameters such as vibrato, ilter and tremolo. The Modulation page justiies the inclusion of ‘Synth’ in the product’s name, as it’s here we can go to town on step modulation, LFO speed, waveshape, sync and mode, as well as deeper, layer-speciic, modiications. The Efects page contains EQ settings, as well as Drive, Chorus (or, UVI’s patented ‘Thorus’, rather), Delay and Reverb amongst others, all of which have powerful bearing on the resulting shape and feel of the tone. The inal page is perhaps where some of the most fun experiments can be undertaken. The Arpeggiator invites us to build up rolling arpeggios, with myriad options for speed, steps and note velocity. This is where we can really start to bring some of the retro tones to life, layering up evolving, bright rifs that scream to be foregrounded in our mixes. The Step Modulator allows for us to breathe some life into our sounds, and re-shape our waveforms With the hard work done, you can focus on the fun of efecting and tweaking your 8-bit excursions Would you like chips with that? Formerly the domain of dedicated enthusiasts, chiptune music is typically made via the use of trackers. Making 8-bit music was originally a delicate procedure, though there are now many software trackers to choose from, many of which loat around the web as freeware and, if you’re curious about delving further, you should certainly take for a spin. The most noticeable diference to a traditional DAW being that the track lanes are vertically aligned. Shared characteristics among multiple trackers are the ability to modify samples, notes, efects, patterns and orders. Notable artists in the 8-bit genre include 8bitpeoples label founder Nullsleep and renowned soundtracker Jake Kaufman (aka Virt). 8Bit Synth presents a way into this world previously restricted by the need to adjust your process to the upsidedown approach, demanded by the tracker. UVI have done the hard work for you, and provide ready-to-go samples from both computers and gaming systems. The plugin’s familiar parameters and controls, and of course, the ability to work with it within a DAW environment, allow your lo-i concoctions to live happily alongside all manner of instrumental bedfellows. All these options are remarkably easy to understand, and with its visual ethos being in-keeping with old school arcade machines, it feels less like work, more like a game. The editing of parameters like the amp envelope and LFO routing are made extraordinarily simple, and arguably child-friendly. In fact, aside from 8Bit Synths’ own attributes, it’s also potentially a great ‘way-in’ piece of software that could be used to quickly – and enjoyably – demonstrate the principles of synthesis to newcomers. Alternatively have yielded a treasure trove of classic video game-recalling textures and tones. As we’ve previously said, the application of these can vary massively, but during a few hours of initial experimentation, we amusingly built up our own little video game themes, that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a seaside arcade back in 1989. If you’re an indie game developer, with a penchant for the retro, then this could prove a valuable tool. For the rest of us, a satisfying diversion into the quirky realm of 8-bit provides fun – and nostalgia – by the bucket load, coupled with the potential to build out some truly original sounds by probing its nuances. Web uvi.net Verdict Game over By taking a fastidious approach to sampling, UVI AudioThing miniBit €20 Similarly meant for quick-ire chiptune sonics, its waveforms came from classic consoles Plogue Chipsounds 147 » 8/10 » £86 Realistically emulating vintage 8-bit sound chips, this is a more serious synth, but harder to learn For Meticulously sampled retro sounds Diverse efects, arps and modulation options to sculpt sounds to taste Dual-layer engine blending Awesomely fun and instantly accessible Against Limited long-term appeal Hard to remember a more enjoyable time with a plugin. 8-Bit Synth doesn’t just provide aural nostalgia, but heaps of sound modifying potential. UVI wins. 9/10 August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 77 > the 6 best the 6 best … Multi FX One plugin to do it all, or just one plugin that seems to? Here are six of the best efects with multiple ambitions Baby Audio Spaced Out $69 10/10 cm293 Leapwing Audio Al Schmitt £139 10/10 cm296 One of a couple of multi-efects here that attempts to capture the sound of a legend, in this case the recently and sadly-departed producer to the stars, Al Schmitt. “Leapwing’s irst foray into the world of signature plugins is a triumph. If you need a speedy route to polish your productions, and are OK to leave some decision making to a bona ide studio icon, it’s a great buy.” leapwingaudio.com 78 / COMPUTER MUSIC August 2021 This updated Space Echo ofers plenty of reverb, delay and modulation power for a multitude of madness. “Another cracking, great value, hi-spec tool from Baby Audio. Get in, tweak your XYs, add whatever you want and smile. It’s quite brilliant.” babyaud.io Apogee Clearmountain’s Domain $349 7/10 cm273 Our second ‘signature’ multi-efect delivers the fabulous sound of Bob Cleamountain. “It sounds top notch in every regard; a fantastic multi-efect for mixing and sound design. Crazy pricetag.” apogeedigital.com the 6 best < Cableguys ShaperBox 2 $99 8/10 cm278 Valhalla DSP Supermassive £Free 10/10 cm291 More bundle than multi-efect, even though each o its seven efects – including the recent new addition, DriveShaper – is oten almost a multiefect in itsel. “ShaperBox 2 is a slick, powerul multi-efect that ofers a deep well o creativity that more than justifies the price.” cableguys.com As you might expect, this is designed or creating big efects, yet as with other Valhalla plugins, it has a simple UI. It’s a reverb and delay and the best bit is that it’s ree (but shouldn’t be). “In all honesty, Supermassive is too good to be a reebie, and though you’ll no doubt continue to use mainstay reverbs or amiliar tasks, i you want something new, individual and just a bit more un, we can’t think o better. Download it, enjoy it and thank the guys at Valhalla DSP or their generosity.” valhalladsp.com Output Portal £134 10/10 cm273 An oldie but a goodie here: a granular-based multiefect with a ocus on deep grain manipulation and modulation, all behind a beautiully-animated UI, and it’s now an efect classic. “Sounding every bit as good as it looks and truly endless in its potential, Portal is one o the greatest efects plugins ever made. Utterly essential.” Think we liked it… output.com August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 79 > reviews / jmg sound orbitron JMG Sound Orbitron €129/£110 Providing an original method of efecting your sonics, Orbitron’s fresh concept conjures living, breathing modulation. Is it a hit? Re-thinking staid ways of working can lead us down unusual creative routes. The usual approach to shaping our softsynth sounds with modulation efects, say, involves stacking or chaining said efects, with occasional automation bringing in certain modulations at key points. While an established approach, JMG and United Plugins’ Orbitron plays with an entirely other dimension: sounds – and modulation efects – quite literally, orbit each other. Your audio track is visualised at the centre of the plugin’s UI, as a small white dot within a larger X/Y circle. This white dot moves in a circular motion between four diferent modulators, each of which can be assigned to 12 diferent in-built FX types. The result is a strikingly organic sound that can repeatedly transition between shimmering chorus, earteasing phaser, frequency-chewing chaos or space-age resonators. Even the most mundane of tones can become something new entirely. sit better within an existing track. This works well, though that’s not the only option. Randomisation functionality leads to more unpredictable lavours, while a manual mode equips us to ine tune, and lock, bespoke efect blends. It’s also possible of course to override the entire orbiting concept, and simply use any of the (pretty top tier) efects individually. Playing with the three dice icons in the top right of the UI generates more unpredictable changes to your setup. Escape velocity Onto the efects themselves, which are largely superb. Amongst the usual efect suspects, we ind Ininite Combs, which can conjure an animated ininite rise and decline of pitch, Kinetic Resonator and Chaos Vortex, whose names describe what they do pretty succinctly, while Space Time is a particularly cool audiomangler, feeding in a series of quirky, sci-isounding delay lines. Each of the FX quadrants is equipped with Depth, Rate and Width knobs, Say you want a revolution? Though at its heart Orbitron is an efects plugin, as well as bespoke sliders which vary depending on the efect selected, for speciic adjustments. it’s the novel ‘orbiting’ concept that is really taking our dry tones to a new level. While other Each also has its own X/Y circle, if you want to efects plugins typically allow for simple routing set amount-deining orbits per-efect In our tests, we explored the potential of of modules, Orbitron’s always-moving conceit efecting not just synth sounds, but guitar lines means that the end result is never settled, blending numerous efects to craft hybrid sonics and even a few of-the-wall vocal performances with a spectrum of typical efects, as well as a we’d never normally stumble upon. more chaotic jumble. As with any plugin that The default approach with Orbitron, is to tempo-match the orbit, so that its efect-cycles promises ininite possibilities, the end results Organised chaos To get a handle on just how massively impactful Orbitron can be, cycling through the series of efect and orbit-presets lays bare several characterful aural cocktails. Crafted by a party of producers and sound designers, these presets are carefully assigned to categories that describe how they’re made. Solo consists of presets that use just one FX section (if you just need to 80 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 use a simple chorus or phaser for instance). Using this type of preset disables the other FX sections to free up CPU. Multi has up to four FX sections of the same type to provide more lush, organic versions of these efects. Hybrid, as the name implies, jumbles up often quite diferent efect types which can result in some unpredictable – but often mindblowing – textures. were hugely variable, though by and large, each efect-soaked sound felt immediately more ‘alive’ as our audio made its gradual rounds between the quadrants. On a technical level, CPU-lag wasn’t detectable, even considering that, when bypassed, the efects remain in sync with each other (with the software keeping a clever eye on performance drain). Getting used to Orbitron’s concept may take time, and for some efect combinations it just doesn’t work, but this is an otherwise wonderfully idiosyncratic piece of software, that breathes fresh life into our sounds. Web unitedplugins.com Alternatively Waves Kaleidoscopes £75 All manner of versatile modulations efects can be easily chained, for blended, colourful sonics MeldaProduction MMorph £127 Lets you morph between two sound sources, with similarly organic-sounding end results Verdict For A fresh concept that presents a fun re-think of efects programming High quality transformative efects Randomisation can often result in astonishing new directions Against Quite pricey Requires time to understand Its unique concept shows that clever efect blending can yield far richer sonics than traditional modulation approaches 8/10 gospel ezx & ebx expansion packs / reviews < Toontrack Gospel EZX & EBX Expansion packs €75 In the search for new bass and drum grooves that will move the spirit, we go to Church and get Gospel with Toontrack Toontrack can ofer you something or pretty much every occasion. The beauty o their catalogue lies in its expansion capabilities; you begin with their basic packages, such as EZDrummer 2 and EZBass, and build your library through their extensive line o expansion packs, celebrating a wealth o musical styles. The latest genre to get the Toontrack makeover is Gospel. Firstly, we’ll need to point out that these are expansion packs, so you’ll need to have a copy o EZBass and EZDrummer 2 installed, in order to proceed. Superior Drummer 3 users can also import the Gospel EZX drum expansion pack, without the requirement to cross-grade to EZDrummer. Where the Gospel EZX fixes aim, is with content leaning firmly in the direction o celebratory and worship music, which arguably ties into the Soul and Funk genre too. Stacked with new kit sounds and percussion, Gospel will compliment the existing EZDrummer deault content beautiully. The 1.2GB o sampled content, captured at Paragon Studios in Nashville, centres around three diferent drums kits, with the usual Toontrack ability to mix and swap sounds with comparative ease. The kits reflect diferent eras o Gospel, rom the 1940s to the present day, engineered by seven-time grammy-award-winner, Danny Duncan. The diverse nature o the kits is pretty striking, rom brightness and punch, through to Get hip to Toontrack! The sheer volume and breadth of Toontrack’s expansion pack range, covers just about every style going, from heavy duty rock, to sensitive latin percussion, all captured at some of the inest and most legendary recording facilities in the world. The comparative simplicity of these packs, residing within the Toontrack ecosphere, is not coincidental. While EZBass is the comparative newcomer, it’s gathered traction very quickly, with bass expansions being darker and ully rounded sounds. Thanks to a substantial set o mixes, procured by Danny Duncan, there’s plenty o production-ready kits included. Some o these can sound a little flabby, dependent on the groove material employed. We were aware o some sonic limitations, such as a lesser ability to handle some o the subtle drop-sticks, surrounding the main backbeat. It’s ar more stark in isolation, but once placed in context this perception dissipates quickly, in part thanks to the impressive kit playing o Calvin Rodgers. As with all EZDrummer expansion packs, it’s the ease o use, and extensive selection o sounds and MIDI grooves that make or a winning ormula, but as ar as Gospel goes, it’s the ability to link in the drum pack with the bass expansion that makes light work o the genre. The Gospel EZB expansion is a great addition to the rightly applauded EZBass package. In contrast to the deault Toontrack EZBass content, Gospel eatures the most gloriously captured MTD USA 535 Andrew Gouche AG5 five-string bass. This means that it extends to beautiul tonal 5-string depths, oten ound in modern unk, soul, and o course Gospel. Included is a generous amount o suitable and stylised MIDI content, which is transerrable in key within the EZBass package, thanks to Toontrack’s ingenious onboard programming system. It’s just as easy to drag and drop into developed to keep pace with the wealth of drum catalogue content. For greater detail, Superior Drummer 3 stands out, with the added functionality allowing the user to encompass the ever more expansive SDX packs, with even larger amounts of sampled content, when compared to the EZX expansion packs. If you’re working in production that requires variation and quality, there’s no better place to turn for your rhythm section source material. your DAW, while sonically the pack allows or nity-switching between bridge and neck position, or a contrast in sound reproduction. All instances concentrate on finger-playing, rather than the use o any plectrum. Toontrack have pulled of another master stroke with these two associated expansions; the bass is rich, ull and unbelievably realistic, while the drums sound punchy, stylised and very classic. Web timespace.com, toontrack.com Alternatively Ujam Phat v2 £90.00 An alternative drum system that allows expansion Ujam Royal £109.00 This virtual bassist pack provides a huge range o fingered playing styles and phrases, triggered via MIDI key commands Verdict For Outstanding bass/drum sounds Ideal or unk, soul, pop and gospel The bass expansion is exemplary Expansions ull o highly usable presets The ease-o-use quotient is of the scale! Against Some snare sounds lack variety and nuance More MIDI content is always welcome Usable well beyond this genre. The drum performances are spirited and classy, while the bass sounds utterly sublime Gospel EZX - EZDrummer 2 9/10 Gospel EBX - EZBass 10/10 August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 81 PRODUCER’S GUIDE TO ELECTRONIC MUSIC THE HISTORY, GEAR, PIONEERS AND TECHNIQUES ON SALE NOW downloads Get this month’s content from filesilo.co.uk free plugin MELDA CM PLUCK 84 free samples 88 free videos 92 How to get this exclusive DIY plugin, plus a whole suite of other Melda efects and goodies… GROOVY BREAKS BREAKBEAT SPECIAL! NEW & CLASSIC PACKS! Two all-new packs of vinylinspired breaks (and three classics return!) OUR EXPERT GUIDES ON FILM Watch our synth and songwriting masterclasses come to life here plugin suite THE CM PLUGIN SUITE DL An in-depth guide to all of the plugins in our mighty collection can be found as a PDF at ilesilo.co.uk Log in at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic Register this issue for instant access to our plugins, samples, videos and files on your desktop computer Free for digital readers, too! downloads < The home of great downloads, exclusive to your favourite magazines Secure andsafe online access, from anywhere Freeaccess for every reader –print anddigital Download only the iles you want,when youwant All the downloads from all your issues, in one place Get started 01 Register your FileSilo account and log in. Even if you have a subscriber ID, you’ll still have to unlock each mag separately or migrate your old Vault account (see step 3) 02 Head back to the Computer Music page (filesilo.co.uk/computermusic) and choose an issue to unlock. You’ll need to answer one question to prove you’ve purchased the issue Read on your tablet, download on your computer 03 You can migrate your old Vault account over to FileSilo to retain the issues you’ve added – head to filesilo.co.uk/vault and enter your Vault email address. Reset your password via the email you receive, and log in > free software / melda cm pluck DOWNLOAD > Free software Get this great plugin for your PC/Mac at filesilo.co.uk/computermusic MELDA CM PLUCK We have a free Melda plugin this issue, but while getting it, you could end up with 39 more! Time to enter the MSoundFactory We have something a little diferent or you this issue, and hopeully the first o many ree plugins we give away on the Melda MSoundFactory plugin platorm. What MSoundFactory allows you to do – as well as playing sounds rom many Melda and thirdparty plugins – is create your own bespoke instruments and efects using the modular process we detail rom p38. Melda have created CM Pluck or us which we’re giving you this issue, but by the end o this tutorial you will not only get MSoundFactory Player to use it with, but a bundle o ree Melda efects – some 40 in total! First, you’ll need to install the free MSoundFactory Player to play CM Pluck – think of that as like Kontakt Player – but it’s easy to do and once you have that installed, you will be able to play future plugins that we give you for the MSF format and of course any released by any other companies. And also, while you download that free Player, you might as well download Melda’s MFreeFXBundle which gets you another 39 cracking free efects plugins. DEMO MODE MSoundFactory will run for 15 days in Demo mode before switching to Player Next, and another free bonus, MSoundFactory Player comes with a huge amount of other free content including MSoundFactory Essential (a massive 3.1GB set of samples), MDrummer Essentials (all the electronic drum sounds you need), MonasteryGrand (a lovely piano instrument), plus a load more sample options should you want them. The tutorial over the next few pages shows you how to get all of this free content and how to run and install CM Pluck. GENERATOR This tab allows you to define what generates a sound in MSoundFactory FILTERS You can home in on a sound and plugin with sets of filters you can switch in and out PRESETS We’ve created a few presets for CM Pluck that you’ll (hopefully) be able to load in here GLOBALS The third main tab in the instrument area is for setting up global parameters and general controls SOUNDS Again divided up into folders for samples and presets from instruments CM PLUCK And there’s our very first DIY plugin. Bless… FILTER SECTION Filter and Resonance control frequencies while Length has some envelope control OSCILLATOR The core components of CM Pluck are edited here to shape the sound 84 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 BACKGROUND See how the background was added and the plugin designed from page 38 EFFECTS You can add, control and edit a lot of effects from this tab melda cm pluck / free software < > Step by step 1. Getting started with MSoundFactory Player 1 First you need to download Melda’s software management app, called MAudio Plugins, from their website. Go to MeldaProduction.com and navigate to the top right Downloads tab and click it. 2 4 Once downloaded, they will install correctly and automatically so you just open up your DAW and it should scan – as Logic is doing above – your 40 free new plugins. 5 The page above will open giving you the option of downloading MAudio Plugins for Mac or PC. Choose your platform and download it – it’s reasonably big, a couple of hundred MB. So far only MSoundFactory should be visible within your plugins list, as shown above, so navigate to it and load it up as you would any other plugin. 3 6 Now you get the chance to select the Melda plugins you wish to download. We need MSoundFactory to run our free CM Pluck instrument, but while you’re here why not download the entire Melda MFreeFX bundle. See we’re actually giving you 40 free plugins this issue, not just one (OK Melda are, not us…) Now open it like you would any other instrument. It will appear with tags for all the sounds and instruments within it and some demo plugins (both left). Now to load in yet more free content! Navigate to the top right and click the red ‘Install Factory Data’ tab. POWER TIP > Only once 7 Now choose the essential Essentials (top two options) and you might as well go for the MonasteryPiano too. There are other sample options and more free stuf but we’ve just gone for these for now. 8 Now to load in CM Pluck. You’ll need to head over to FileSilo as you would normally to download our content. Create an account if you haven’t already and the CM Pluck instrument will be located under the CM Plugins folder. Download it. It might seem like a lot of downloading, but you only need to download the MAudio Plugins app and all of the content for MSoundFactory once and you will be good to go. You should also note that the Player is actually the full MSoundFactory for 15 days before it expires back to being just the Player. If you like the full version you can buy it for £255, but this tutorial and CM Pluck should work ine in the free Player alone. August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 85 > free software / melda cm pluck > Step by step 2. Using CM Pluck 2 Now navigate to wherever you downloaded the CM Pluck older rom FileSilo (Step 8 last page). Find CM Pluck and load it in. (You’re looking or a file called ‘CM pluck.mproduct’). You’re there! 3 4 Double-click on CM Pluck and it will load in the main MSoundFactory Player window. Our very first CM DIY plugin! Here’s a quick run through o the main controls. 5 There are two main sections on CM Pluck. On the let you get the main Oscillator controls and on the right the Filter section. It’s a simple but efective string sound producer. 6 7 Pulse Width Modulation tends to sound more dramatic and hollow the urthest let you dial it, while Sub introduces a nice, weighty sub oscillator to proceedings. 8 1 To install CM Pluck within MSoundFactory Player, head back into that plugin and hit the bottom bar called ‘Install Manually Downloaded Products…’. 86 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 On the right, the sliders are controlled by mousing up and down (not let to right). Filter and Resonance do as you might expect, increasing the high-end requencies o a bass sound to turn it into a lead, or example. 9 CM Pluck should now be available to load in as one o the instruments in MSoundFactory Player, in the instrument section, bottom right as shown. Ours wasn’t there first time around, but closing and opening our DAW revealed it so try that i you can’t see it. The Oscillator controls help atten the sound up – Unison especially which adds thickness, while Shape adds a bit o movement to the sound. Length and Warmth are more about the envelope o the sound, defining how quickly it resonates or reaches its particular requency band – these are well worth experimenting with to get some added movement. melda cm pluck / free software < 10 13 We’ve created some presets for CM Pluck which we will attempt to supply at FileSilo. However the Player is restricted in certain areas of this to only licensed users, so just in case our presets aren’t available, we’ll show you how to create your own. You can create most of your preset changes using the front controls of CM Pluck, although we found more lexibility using the efects. Once again, some editing like this will be lost when MSF reverts to Player, so make sure you explore these options within your 15-day trail – or pay for the upgrade. 11 14 It’s a good idea to create your presets within the 15-day trial period as when MSF reverts to the Player version after this time, some functionality will be lost. Firstly you can just play with the controls until you come up with a good sound – CM Pluck does basses, leads and some pads too. Tweak and when you want to save, just hit the preset window as shown. To call up an efect, double click on the title (Distortion, Lo i, Amp, Flanger and so on) and press the Enable button on each one. Here’s the Distortion. Once enabled, its available parameters become available to tweak. 12 15 The left hand window allows you to specify a folder to save your presets to and the right hand window allows you to name them. Hit OK and your preset will save in the desired locations. We generally used the top three efects in the Efects block to ilth up our sounds; the Lo-Fi option is capable of taking things too far if you push it! POWER TIP > The future? 16 The Delay efect was also used in some of our presets as it quickly transforms a dull single bass sound and can also be sync’d to tempo. The Reverb was tempting to put on all of our presets, so go easy! 17 The bottom three efects are used for more subtle compression and EQ, and Enhancer allows you to focus on speciic frequencies. We’ll have more on MSoundFactory in future issues plus more updates (free of course!) to CM Pluck. Our DIY plugin is at v1 now but we have big plans for it! CM Pluck is worth experimenting with and getting to know simply to learn about the power of plugin creation using a platform like MSoundFactory. Once you get your head around how simple creation of plugins can be, you might well start developing them yourself. If so, feel free to send your eforts in and we will distribute them. Look out for more of these MSF free plugins in future issues too! August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 87 > your free samples / all-new samples New breaks samples It’s a breaks-themed sample collection this issue with two all-new packs and loads of classics! Get them on the DVD or download direct at filesilo.co.uk GROOVY BREAKS Dusty Breaks We gave you the Ultimate Bass collection last issue, and now it’s time for a break. Many breaks! Here’s what Robbie from Cyclick Samples says about his new breaks collection… “This sample set provides some semiraw sources for use as breaks, chopped or otherwise. All the loops are two-bar phrases, though some were originally one-bar recordings doubled up. The drum kit used is listed below as are the mics and preamps used. I played for ive to 10 minutes to a click at a given tempo and then edited out phrases I liked, or at least were in time. “Mics used: Coles and STC 4038 ribbons as overheads, Royer R121 outside the kick and the Beyer M88 inside, Beyer M201 and SM57 as snare top/bottom, Calrec CM1050 on the hats, Sennheiser THE DRUM KIT MD421s on the toms, a Telefunken AR51 Beverley Blue Badge 60s/70s behind the drummer, a Reslo ribbon drumkit (13/16/22) close to the ground almost a metre in Beverley Blue Badge 70s steel front of the kick, a Mapling Super Stereo snare 14x6 Ear (toy) mic next to it and a pair of Joe Zildjian A Custom 17” crash Meek JM47 cardioid condensers hung Sabian AAX 16” Studio crash from the roof about 5m of the ground. Agop Istanbul Alchemy Finally, beats 16 to 24 in the 95bpm set 14” hi hats are played with maracas instead of sticks Various hand and there’s a tambourine on the hi-hat… percussion items because I felt like it!” 88 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Groovy Breaks Oli Bell from Groove Criminals explains how he nearly got carried away with his breaks creation this month… “We’ve been layering dirt and dust over some tasty breaks this month here at GCHQ (not that one). All the beats were programmed in the box using a combination of Battery and Geist and drawing on our frankly huge library of real drum sounds that we’ve built up over quite a few years of recording sessions. We do have a secret sauce for processing loops to make them sound like we have grabbed them from the back of the crates (which may or may not involve tape), but plugins like Vinyl Strip, Maul, Time Machine and the Abbey Road collection all sound brilliant when going for the dusty beats vibe. “The cut-up breaks took some older loops we had made – some indeed for Computer Music issues long past – and threw them into Geist to slice, dice and rearrange into something new. We enjoyed that so much we dug out our (dusty) Akai MPC 1000 and fed it drum samples to make some beats with more of a cut up hip-hop vibe.” GEAR USED Apple Logic FXpansion Geist NI Battery 4 Akai MPC 1000 Waves Abbey Road Vinyl, Chambers, plates and J37 Audio Thing vinyl strip FXpansion Maul Tone Boosters Ferox and Time Machine Various hand percussion from the vault / your free samples < Classic Breaks FROM THE VAULT To go along with our new breaks collections we have raided the mighty Vault for not one but three classic packs! Breaks and dusty vinyl grooves galore… This month, we’re bringing you three classic sample collections to complement our two new breaks packs. We have Bespoke Breaks from issue 261 and Crate Diggers Delite and Relite (both from our 21st birthday issue). Each contains breakbeats and vinyl-inspired goodies to underpin any music style. First up, it’s Bespoke Breaks… Robbie from Cyclick Samples said: “Nothing livens up a basic electronic beat like a break. Whether it’s splattered across the mix, bleeding across the other instruments or lightly tapping away in the background, filtered into a polite state, the breakbeat gets things moving and grooving in a way that usually only a tambourine can (break+tambourine=dancing eet). To this end, here are 286 beat loops, all reshly chopped out rom the Cyclick Samples archive, processed and blended to taste.” “Processing has, on the whole, been kept away rom the extremes so that there’s more latitude or your own tweaking. I’d suggest high-pass filtering or some percussive efects, chopping up to make more breaks, or just some heavy transient shaper work to squish or tighten into place.” Next up we have two collections boasting a crate-digging lavour with some ready-made vintagelavoured loops and hits. For Cyclick’s Crate Diggers Delite: “This is a collection o bass, guitar, drum, percussion, synth, keyboard and orchestral loops given a sampled vinyl eel. The vinyl crackling and pops are real, taken of 7- and 12-inch records (33 and 45 rpm), also included in the collection as loops.” For Groove’s Crate Diggers Relite: “All the vinyl noise, crackle and tape noise was taken directly rom our TEAC reel-to-reel or the beginning grooves o a stack o old charity shop records. “All the breaks and percussion loops are either programmed, played or taken rom our own stash o drum sessions (occasionally a bit o all three). Dirt, crackle, stabs etc were all added during the process or bags o dusty, grimy character. “Other stuf o note includes our 1969 Hammond drawbar organ on the organ stabs, a ew hits taken rom some very uncool 80s drum machines and the vinyl snippets; some were aked and others heavily processed samples rom some unloved wax.” All these samples are in the Free Samples folder on the DVD or at ilesilo.co.uk under issue 297. INCLUDES… 65 67 74 80 158 25 120bpm breaks 130bpm breaks 140bpm breaks 170bpm breaks One-shots Processed breaks SELECTED GEAR USED Cyclick and Groove Criminals samples archives UAD2 plugins iZotope Neutron & Ozone plugins Eventide plugins Soundtoys plugins NI Kontakt Steinberg Nuendo iZotope RX Advanced And A LOT of old records August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 89 > your free samples / loopmasters Loopmasters 01 02 03 04 LMHypnoticHouse&Techno2 LMTERR-CosmicElectro LMTheScore-CinematicFunk Tone KitchnDustyTrap 90 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 05 06 07 08 297 samples LMGustavoM&Evoxx-IndustryBrazil LM Vadim-TropicalDancehall LM OtherWorlds-Soundscapes2 LM DariusSyrossian-RealHouse2 mode audio / your free samples < Mode Audio 297 samples GuestsamplistsModeAudiodeliveranothershowcaseof theirfabulousreleasesthisissue,includingAltitude,Colour Field,FlareandLuminous.There’saspecial15%off discountcodefor readers–seethefolderfordetails. % 15 OFF Mode Audio samples August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 91 video Download this month’s videos: filesilo.co.uk/computermusic BUILD YOUR OWN PLUGINS Watch along as we use Reaktor and Max to make our own plugins Read the full article from p16 COMPOSING HEARTBREAK CHORDS SYNTH MASTERCLASS FORMANT FILTERING /experts Our resident music production gurus walk you through their specialist fields every month 92 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Read the full article on p60 Read the full article on p62 > 15 questions with / rural tapes 15 questions with… RURAL TAPES Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen’s Rural Tapes project has attracted collaborators like ex R.E.M. stars Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey plus Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. But in this studio the computer is used for just one thing: recording… It takes all sorts to make music, and they are all in this issue of Computer Music! With rising star Loraine James on p44, we saw how one laptop and a small bunch of mostly freeware plugins can suice. Now it’s time to visit a studio where the only software is used as a recorder, and it’s based on a remote farm in Norway. Yet it’s a studio and project that has attracted some star names. Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen is the founder of bands including I Was A King, Heroes & Zeros and The No Ones with R.E.M. members Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck. His new Rural Tapes solo project features those collaborators plus Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti) and saxophonist Terry Edwards (PJ Harvey, Tom 94 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 Waits). Here Arne explains his production philosophy which is a world away from a laptop with plugins, and how he attracted such big players to feature on his Rural Tapes solo outing (not to mention the organ player from the Boston Red Sox…) us how you got into music 1 Tell production in the irst place? Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen: “I’m a composer and musician from Norway, currently living and working on an old farm in the south where I have my studio in the barn. I’ve played music since I was a kid, but I never had a plan of becoming a musician. I got into the music business as a drummer with my old band Heroes & Zeros in my early 20s, and I’ve worked in music ever since. Today I play in diferent bands, compose music for theatre and dance performances, act as a producer for other bands and artists, and I’m always up for cool projects that come my way.” and how did you become 2 When successful in music? AKM: “Being successful was never a goal. I just want to have enough fun work to do and earn enough for my family to live a nice, normal life. I get just as much out of making music for a children’s theatre piece as playing a huge show with a band. Doing diferent work is what I appreciate the most, as long as I can feel proud about the things I take part in. I have had some commercial success over the years: Heroes & rural tapes / 15 questions with < Zeros released three albums on Universal Music, toured the world, and had a song on FIFA 08 among other things. Over the last few years I’ve also been playing with R.E.M’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey in the bicontinental jangle pop band The No Ones. We’re not longing for world domination though; we’re having fun making music and releasing albums we appreciate ourselves.” is your overall music and 3 What production philosophy? AKM: “Originality is important to me. I don’t want to use too many clear references when I work with new music. I don’t listen to a song and want to do the same thing. If I work with other bands or artists, I want them to explain to me what they are searching for, instead of playing me a reference to show me what sound they want. I believe that if you work that way, you’ll end up as a copy pretty quickly, and rarely better than the original. Of course, everyone is inspired by other artists, but at least I try to ind ways to let references transform into my own music early in the process.” us about your ‘computer music’ 4 Tell production history? AKM: “While recording albums with diferent bands and at a time when playing music suddenly became my job, I had no interest in studio equipment. I composed and performed music, and that was it. I had a passion for instruments and what I could create with them. I collected old organs and knew nothing about compressors, preamps, microphones or plugins “As I gained experience in recording albums with the bands I played with, my interest in production grew. I got a home studio, irst consisting of an HD-recorder, later a laptop, and I produced sketches and demos. A lot was intended for the bands I played with, but many of them somehow turned out to be what Rural Tapes is today. Eventually I became interested in equipment such as old tape echo machines and analogue synthesisers. “Much of the money I made playing music “Have an internet-free studio: no Instagram, no distractions…” was invested in such gear and later I upgraded to a studio with better recording equipment. No extravaganza, but better microphones such as AT 4050, SM7B, a pair of Fatheads, Sennheiser 421s, a bunch of SM57s and so on. I also have an old RCA MI6203, which is great together with a Shure SM57 microphone for guitars, or as a room mic for drum recording. But most of all, I enjoy working with knobs. Hands on and outboard gear is my preferred way of working with music production.” us about the rest of the gear in your 5 Tell recording studio AKM: “I am not a geek for studio gear. I work most through old outboard stuf, although I don’t have much. My studio in the barn is not connected to the internet, so I still use Pro Tools 11, which I’ve had for the last seven/eight years or more. I haven’t upgraded since, and love it like that. I can really recommend having an internet-free studio. No Instagram, no Facebook, no distractions. For recording I use an old stationary Mac, SSL Nucleus controller and Lynx Aurora, Dynaudio BM6a MkII speakers, a 4-channel API 3124+ preamp, 4-channel Daking preamp (I love those!), a couple of single Daking EQ preamps, UA 6176 and a Joe Meek single EQ preamp. Outboard gear includes an AKG spring reverb, Space Echo RE201, Analog JBX Disk Echo EM200 BMX, various Tandberg tape recorders and tons of diferent efects boxes like Electro Harmonix, FET and so on.” are your favourite plugins? 6 What AKM: “I don’t think I have ive favourite plugins! My go-to units are the Space Echo, all the diferent Tandberg recorders, the AKG reverb, Electro Harmonix Memory Man and even run stuf through my vintage Korg MS10 synth. For me, it’s all about the textures these units are creating, and I also love the fact that they live their own lives from time to time. They all have personality. Everybody inds their own way of working, and maybe I’ll get more into plugins later at some point. But for now I’m really happy with my setup.” do you tend to start a track? 7 How AKM: “I’ve worked a lot with improvised music, and enjoy using improvisation as a method for creating and composing. I can start with a drumbeat, a weird sound, a drum machine, a series of chords, a simple melody or a ield recording. Sometimes I can press record and tape for hours. Then I can pick out parts that I like and keep on layering them. There are no rules for the process of creating music in my world. I work very intuitively and usually I don’t have much planned before I start. Sometimes I end up using plain structures for a song and sometimes the lack of structures can be better.” do you know when a track’s done? 8 How AKM: “Finishing a track can take a day or it can take years before it feels ready. Both can be equally good, but I’m getting better and better at making decisions and closing projects. Sometimes that’s important to be able to move on. I don’t just work on single tracks, I can go in and out of projects all the time, composing an album as a whole. Sometimes the end of one song gives me ideas on how to start another song. I also think it’s important to allow yourself to make something that is rubbish. You don’t need to show it to anyone. But that way you can get it out of your system.” you have any production tricks? 9 Do AKM: “It’s probably a cliché, but reamping tracks through my Space Echo. I don’t need to use a lot of the echo or reverb, but I love the textures and the warm compression things get just going through it. For lack of a better explanation: the tracks often fall into place after a small visit through the Space Echo.” Arne’sfave plugin? The Roland Space Echo RE-201. It plugs into a wall, so we guess it counts…? August 2021 / COMPUTER MUSIC / 95 > 15 questions with / rural tapes 15 Rural Tapes: the clue’s in the name, but Arne believes there’s room in the world for both real and emulated kinds else have you worked with for the 10 Who album project? AKM: “The Rural Tapes LP contains a fair dose of collaborations. On this album I’ve been lucky to get contributions from great musicians from all over the world. Some of them old band fellows from way back, some of them totally new acquaintances, musically. Lars Løberg Tofte, who I’ve played with for more than 20 years, does all bass guitar on the album. He is a safe card for me. I know what I can expect from him and I often like to produce a steady basis comp using him. But I also wanted to step out of my usual musical framework and invite new people in to create a broader palette. I’ve done most of the keys myself, but I’ve had the honour of playing some shows with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor a couple of years ago, and I knew he was a great Rhodes player. There were tracks where I wanted something more loose, and asked him to join in on them. What he sent back was stuf that I never would have been able to come up with myself, and it took especially the track Pardon My French to a whole new level, which also afected what sax player Terry Edwards did on the same track. Suddenly the song had transformed from a chill Airish tune to a chaotic, psychedelic explosion. Another example from the making of this album was when I played together with Boston Red Sox organ player Josh Kantor at a festival in Egersund, Norway some years ago. I met him a couple of years before this and knew he had some serious skills both on keys and accordion. I brought some recording gear to the festival and asked him to do a short recording session in my hotel room. He showed up with a tiny accordion and I think he listened to the songs once and gave it a couple of takes of improvised stuf and suddenly it was a wrap. Simply magical.” on your gear shopping list? 11 What’s AKM: “I don’t know if this is what you really wanna hear, but if I suddenly had 10.000€ extra, I’d probably spend it on a Clavinet, a Vibraphone And from being in ‘the industry’? AKM: “I guess my best advice for dealing with the industry is to treat people nicely. And just be real. And if you think you make great art, keep on doing your thing, no matter what other people think.” have you got coming up? 16 What AKM: “I’m releasing my irst solo album these days, as Rural Tapes. It has taken a while to complete this release, mostly because I’ve had so much other stuf to do. But when the world locked down last spring, I used that as a possibility to inish the album I had been working on for so long. It’s for the most part an instrumental album, which draws lines to 70s krautrock, ilm music, classical music and jazz. Also, I did a short tour with I Was A King last October, which I think was pretty cool. People seemed to miss going to shows a lot, and even if it was only 3050 capacity shows due to Covid, they turned out to be really good. I think we have a lot to look forward to, post Corona. Hang in there.” “I’ve also been asked to compose music for three new dance and theatre productions the next year. I also look forward to releasing an album with a new instrumental duo consisting of only bass guitar and drums, called The 5 Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, and I’m working on new albums with both The No Ones and I Was A King.” and a Würlitzer before I’d even think about any studio gear. Sorry about that. I could maybe spend the remaining 50 dollars on another vintage Tandberg recorder...” studio tech would you like to see 12 What being developed? AKM: “I guess that’s a question beyond my knowledge. I’m living in the past and enjoy that way too much.” advice for playing live? 13 Any AKM: “Believe in being on the same level as the audience. When I play gigs, it’s like, ‘we’re in this together’. Of course, a concert wouldn’t be anything without a performer, but nor the audience. We’re both equally important to make the show work. I can enjoy gigs with an audience of 10 people as much as a gig with 3000 people, as long as there is a connection there. I also enjoy concerts most when they are actually performed live. If the sound is dominated by recorded tracks, I get bored right away. I enjoy hearing mistakes on a concert, Rural Tapes’s debut album Rural Tapes is out now because it shows the human via Smuggler Music. side of a band. And I must say I miss that a bit, I think live production has become a bit too professional as it is now.” from working in HEAR MORE 14 And the studio? AKM: “Experiment, try new things, don’t necessarily do what everybody else does, but use your own ears. If you try out a new thing, the worst thing that can happen is that it won’t work. Relax and make others comfortable in the studio. I’ve learned that you Lost in Sound (feat. Scott McCaughey) bit.ly/rur_tapes_lis get the best out of people if they feel comfortable and are not afraid to do mistakes. The Observer And if you do, maybe you can use it to create bit.ly/rur_tapes_to something cool. Mistakes can be good! And if you’re an absolute killer working in the box and smugglermusic.com/rural-tapes happen to meet a dude with his mind in the 70s, https://ruraltapes.bandcamp.com/ trying to convince you to buy all sorts of $50 tape units; stick to your plugins! There is space facebook.com/ruraltapes for us both.” “There are no rules for the creation of music in my world” 96 / COMPUTER MUSIC / August 2021 WWW BACK ISSUES Catch up on what you’ve missed – all of these issues include FileSilo downloads! ISSUE 296 July 2021 ISSUE 295 June 2021 • Hardware DAWs: the end • Modular Synthesis For of software? 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ISSUE 286 February 2021 October 2020 ISSUE 285 September 2020 Next issue It’s a vintage one… > next month CLASSIC SYNTH VS PLUGIN SYNTH ON SA WEDNESDLEAY 14 JULY Moog, ARP and Roland hardware v software! We pit three classic monosynths versus their desktop and iOS equivalents for the ultimate synth shootout. And you decide which sounds best! Are these classic hardware synths really worth worshipping or does software really cut it? 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