Music Tech Magazine

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 four years. Naturally, he has far too many synthesisers. Dave i

Performing your music to an audience is always a daunting experience, whether you’ve never played live before in your entire life or if you’re on show 52 of a non-stop tour. There’s always that potential for things to go wrong, for your gear to fail

elektron.se The first in Elektron’s more affordable ‘Model’ series (well, it’s probably going to be a series), Model:Samples is an accessible machine that shouldn’t be dismissed. Even though it’s a sample playback-only device, which could be consider

Play with the presets on your FM synth(s), paying attention to what it does well and what it doesn’t. Electric pianos, electric organs, hard basses and bells are where FM’s excels, but it’s not so good at warm, evolving pads, filter swoops and the li

Peter Gabriel (AKA 'Melt') 1980 The former Genesis frontman’s third self-titled album was Hugh’s breakthrough moment. In spite of all his great work since, he still sees it as his most creative record. Tonight 1984 Recorded at the height of Bowie’s c

Having explored some ‘quick-fix’ mastering solutions in our last workshop, we’re now going to take a more in-depth look at a more professional solution to mastering – where the mix and mastering process are distinct and separate elements. We’ll see h

Chords are likely to be at the heart of almost every piece of music you create. Cubase recognises this with its Chord Track, which serves a number of purposes. It allows producers to rapidly sketch out the harmonic structure of an idea, while retaini

Getting to know the tools of your trade is key to any aspect of working life, but particularly sound design. You’ll need to pick one synth – preferably one that has a wide range of sounds – and get to know it section by section. Explore the very fund

The controller-keyboard market throws up many a varied beast in terms of specs, build, uses and target audience. I’ve recently reviewed everything including keyboards that control hardware, keyboards that integrate with software, keyboards that take

Vienna Symphonic Library – which is affectionately known by the acronym VSL – deserves a great deal of kudos for numerous innovations through the years. The Symphonic Cube, released back in 2002, was one of the first packages to truly acknowledge the

Bitwig’s increasing stature in the DAW world has enabled the now well-established company to push the envelope further into new frontiers of experimentation. With The Grid, it has developed a new feature in its DAW software that bridges the physical

One of Native Instruments’ first-ever synths was the Pro-Five, a software take on the classic Prophet-5. Pro-Five eventually became Pro-53 in 2002 which pretty much became a classic soft synth in its own right (yes, we’re all old enough and far enoug

BOUM, from France’s OTO Machines, is a hardware compressor/saturator/filter (or ‘analogue stereo warming unit’ as described on the company’s website) that appears to have something to offer producers of all types. For hardware-based musicians, especi

TC Electronic’s new ‘Icons’ range looks back at classic studio technology and replicates it for the modern age. Providing tactile hardware control over an intricately crafted software emulation, TC aims to allow access to legendary and heritage gear

Crafting the perfect low end for your mix is a tricky business. Go in too hot and your bass will swamp the mix, causing issues when it comes to the final mastering stages, or go in too cold and your track could sound thin and lack weight. BASSROOM is

Aim a shaft of white light at a prism and the resulting refraction throws us beautiful shards of splintered and separated colourful light. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this recently released Eurorack module from Qu-Bit aims to deliver a very similar resu

Focal has a great reputation for studio monitors – we’ve loved both its Alpha range and Twin monitors, for example. But can it transfer this expertise to headphones, which more and more of us are using either as main monitors (when we have restrictiv

Contact technics.com Nine years ago, Technics – once a major player in the hi-fi game and manufacturer of what’s undoubtedly the definitive DJ deck – ceased production of all turntables. Its hiatus eventually proved short-lived and if you needed evid

Because many producers and songwriters work in isolation, it’s often assumed that everyone else works that way. But actually, in a lot of cases in the professional world, a great many people are involved in a production. So view your collaboration as

The world of software synthesis promises us sonic adventures at every turn, but there are probably far too many virtual-analogue synths for the good of humankind out there. So it’s always good when we see something a little different – whatever that

Make saves of any new mixes or ideas that sound like they’re taking the song away from the original concept. An original idea can explode into multiple different ideas or spawn new ones, so keep them separate (and name them logically). Revisit them o

Price £34 (also on Loopcloud) loopmasters.com Genre-blurring producer and multi-instrumentalist Ginger Snaps has crafted a pack of lively funk, disco and soul sounds in this new release from Loopmasters. There’s just over 1GB of 24-bit audio that cov

If you have too many options (in terms of both technology and song concept), you might never get anything done. So set yourself some boundaries – the length of the tune, how many tracks, the various sections – focus on them and stick to them. The ide

Yamaha’s QY700 dates back to 1996 and is a large, mains-powered beast, dedicated solely to creating MIDI compositions. Even now, with the renewed interest in hardware sequencing, there’s nothing quite like it on the market. The QY700 is made of plast