Music Tech Focus

Editor At Large Andy has an MA in Music Technology and has been writing about it for 25 years. He has launched and edited several magazines in the subject and was Editor of MusicTech for the last four years. Naturally, he has far too many synthesiser

Welcome to your special issue of MusicTech, dedicated to Logic Pro, Apple's incredible music production tool. This in-depth bookazine has been especially created to give you all the tools you need to produce better and smarter with Logic, and is pack

Welcome to the first workshop in Logic Pro 2019, MusicTech's special bookazine dedicated to Apple's finest DAW. We have something of a sound design theme running through this issue, with a complete guide to the subject on page 18 plus a feature on mo

BEST ACID LIKE £399 Contact Novation | https://global.novationmusic.com One of two entries for Novation this time around, and it’s fair to say that the UK synth manufacturer has been so busy that it could have had three, including the original Circui

Price £339 www.spectrasonics.net This really is the daddy of all soft synths at the moment and if you want something that will take you on sonic journeys that last years, this is it. We said: ”Thanks to genuinely innovative features, a wealth of extr

Price $129 www.plugin-alliance.com This offers a massive 36 effects, ranging from subtle enhancers to in-your-face modulation combinations that take you on a wide and exciting sonic journey. You can split your audio and apply anything to any slice an

Price £9.99 We’ve said how important synths are in the world of sound design and Sunrizer is one of the best synth apps around. What makes it so great is the speed at which you can create different patches, with the onboard effects adding yet another

We’ll start with the obvious: get a pair of fantastic studio monitors, as good as you can afford. Use our monitor Buyer’s Guide at www.musictech.net to choose, but essentially, what you’re looking our for is a flat frequency response, since that mean

Once upon a time, ‘big’ synth sounds meant equally large budgets – with only the wealthiest musicians able to stack together multiple polyphonic synths in the aim of creating mix-filling synth lines. In the world of virtual instruments, however, this

Engineers have long used distortion as a means of adding ‘mojo’ to a sound – whether it’s a touch of drive across some drums, or some aggressive distortion on a synth bass. Logic Pro X has a bewildering selection of plug-ins from the versatile Distor

For a generation that’s grown up using instrument plug-ins for the majority of their production work, the prospect of integrating a hardware instrument can be slightly daunting. In truth, many of us have got used to the ease and convenience of plug-i

Of all the effects and signal processing we turn to, it’s probably reverb that gets the least attention in respect to tweaking the parameters, with most users simply dialling-in a preset and then continuing with the mix. Actively shaping your reverb

BEST FOR DEPTH £124 Contact Time+Space 01837 55200 | www.timespace.com If ever there was a Bob Moog-type figure in the soft-synth world, it would arguably be Rob Papen. He produced the mighty Blue synth and this is his latest update to Predator, a de

Using the SMPTE timecode, the cue is the position in a film for speech and music (and sound effects) and these positions are usually identified in detail in the spotting sessions. Talking of delivery, you will be expected to deliver at at least 48kHz

Price £399+VAT www.spitfireaudio.com Albion Tundra V specialises in the ethereal, sweeping, but often subtle moods and soundscapes that could soundtrack futuristic or melancholic dramas or games. We said: “Another very fine library from a British com

Price €302 www.sonokinetic.net From a company famed for its orchestral software (including titles like Grosso) Sotto concentrates on the lighter side of orchestral composition with soft beds and patterns. We said: “Beautifully conceived phrase-based

When it comes to lo-fi treatments, there’s a collection of effects that sit well together: filtering, distortion and compression. Getting that perfect ‘gritty’ drum loop, for example, often includes a dynamic combination of these effects, so that a d

Logic Pro X is undoubtedly one of the most complete music production applications going, but every now and again you glance across at a rival DAW and see a feature that wish you could use as part of your production workflow. Take Pro Tools’ Playlist

Logic Pro’s Channel EQ certainly offers everything you could ever want from a contemporary equalizer in the digital world – from high-resolution spectral analysis, through to the precision of Middle-and-Side operation. However, having grown up listen

Achieving a realistic string sound isn’t easy or cheap, often necessitating dedicated third-party string libraries, like Spitfire Audio’s Symphonic String, as well as the know-how on how to construct and program your DIY string arrangement. Logic Pro

€475 EACH Contact Faderfox | www.faderfox.de Glancing at their website, it’s obvious that while Faderfox like to make compact MIDI controllers, they’re not shy about taking on big custom jobs with built-in light shows. Their new PC12 and MX12 are som

€99 TO €699 Contact Modartt | www.pianoteq.com The piano is easily the most popular keyboard instrument ever created. My music collection would say otherwise, screaming ‘synth!’ all the way, but even if you were to add up every synth preset that’s ev

£41.95 Contact Time+Space | www.timespace.com 01837 55200 The chances are, if you are attracted to using soft synths you’ll be working on a computer with some form of DAW software, with the vast majority offering a basic selection of synths to work w

£59.95 EACH Contact Time & Space | www.timespace.com Dronar’s concept is simple and quite unique. It uses a modular approach with individual software titles that concentrate on specific sonic areas, and all of these are pretty competitively priced (u

£149 Contact FabFilter | fabfilter.com Like so many of FabFilter’s other plug-ins, the original FabFilter Pro-L limiter had become a staple of our mix and mastering sessions. Not only did the limiting algorithms each sound superb, but the graphical i

€549 Contact Orchestral Tools | www.orchestraltools.com +49 (0)7665 939 8678 Epic is a word which is bandied around quite a bit these days – but the Metropolis Ark series of libraries is truly deserving of the description. Ark 1 gave us huge epic tim

$399 Contact EastWest Sounds | www.soundsonline.com Anyone with an interest in soundtrack scoring cannot have missed the presence of ethereal vocals over the last 15 years or so. Once one score lit the vocal-lead touch paper, others followed, with fu

£91, £129 WITH EXPANSION PACK Contact Time+Space | www.timespace.com 01837 55200 One set of instruments that can be regarded as a ubiquitous part of any sonic arsenal is hand percussion. This new offering from In Session Audio aims to give a little s

Price £39.95 Contact via website www.pluginboutique.com Scaler is a chord helper/MIDI effect plug-in from Plugin Boutique that features over 100 artists and genre chord sets from the likes of Carl Cox, MJ Cole, Davide Carbone and Mike Huckaby. You ca

BEST FOR INNOVATION $179 Contact Source Distribution 0208 962 5080 | www.eventideaudio.com Eventide has always tried to push the boundaries when it comes to audio quality and manipulation and Fission is no different. It’s based around Eventide’s ‘Str