April 2021

Electronic Musician

Record * Produce * Perform

Electronic Musician1 min read
Electronic Musician
Editor-in-Chief Si Truss simon.truss@futurenet.com Content Director, Music Scott Rowley scott.rowley@futurenet.com Art Editor Steve Dawson steve.dawson@futurenet.com Production Editor Jem Roberts jem.roberts@futurenet.com Editors at Large: Francis Pr
Electronic Musician2 min readTechnology & Engineering
Working With Limitations
I recently purchased a new laptop for use primarily as the focal point of my modest home studio. Rather than simply port over every DAW, plugin and sample library I have installed on my current hard drive – one of the perks of the job is that I've am
Electronic Musician8 min readTechnology & Engineering
New Gear
Korg has revived yet another classic from its illustrious history and given it the hybrid treatment, with the new Modwave wavetable synthesizer that promises to take the DW legacy and create a “monster synth” with a little help from Motion Sequencing
Electronic Musician2 min readTechnology & Engineering
Masterlab DynaQ 2
When we think about splitprocessing plugins, we tend to think of multiband ideas, where the extent and type of processing changes based on the frequency in question. There's also straight parallel processing, where two signals can be processed differ
Electronic Musician3 min readTechnology & Engineering
The Perfect Kick Drum
The kick drum, or bass drum, is the powerhouse behind the music. In a club, it’s the kick that’s nailing the four to the floor, and at a rock gig it’s the kick that’s making your chest compress. The kick started life as a hollow log being whacked by
Electronic Musician1 min read
Sub, Punch And Honk
Together with mid and high click, the balance and length of the sub, punch and honk elements are what shape the bass drum sound. These combine to give you a either a long, subby, 808-style kick, a house-esque, clicky all-rounder, or a top-heavy Metal
Electronic Musician4 min read
The Perfect Snare Drum
The snare drum is huge! Not that it’s ever been unimportant in the grand drumming scheme of things, but the rise of several forms of dance music has seen more attention focused on the snare than at any time since the massive T’pau-style extremes of t
Electronic Musician1 min read
Six Ways To Beef Up A Snare Drum
Duplicate your snare sound, pitch-shift it up or down and blend it with the original for instant depth and texture. It can also be worth pitchshifting ambient mics down on a kit recording for extra fatness. If your recorded acoustic drum track is giv
Electronic Musician1 min read
Cymbal Programming Tips
‘Be’ the drummer! If you’re aiming to program realistic sounding hi-hats and cymbals, it’s important to remember the mechanics of what a real player would do. A drummer only has two arms, so make sure no more than two cymbals are ever hit at the same
Electronic Musician2 min readTechnology & Engineering
Ddmf Comprezzore
Compressors don't always surprise you. The usual controls of Ratio and Threshold abound, unless you're using an even simpler LA-2A-style gadget; and timing controls are in-play as well. Often, a compressor will differentiate itself from the pack by i
Electronic Musician3 min read
Dynamics And Timing
As you’ll have no doubt noticed, our drum part so far, while making sense in terms of playability and pattern, still sounds totally mechanical and unrealistic. This is because we drew all the notes in by hand, snapped perfectly to the grid and at a c
Electronic Musician9 min read
Fraser T. Smith
Fraser T. Smith has been a force ubiquitous to the UK music scene, contributing his talents to 18 number one albums and picking up Grammy and Ivor Novello Awards. Over his 25-year career, he’s worked with Adele, Sam Smith, Gorillaz and Florence and t
Electronic Musician4 min read
Exploring The “Blip”
There is a classic video clip online of Toto’s synth genius Steve Porcaro teaching synthesis techniques from back in the ‘80s, and he describes his trick of adding a fast pitch transient to the front of his brass sounds, as “the blip”. This has becom
Electronic Musician3 min read
The Perfect Hi-hats And Cymbals
The hi-hats are a pair of cymbals mounted on a stand, one upside down and the other the right way up, both held in place on a central spike and connected to a footpedal at the base of the stand. By operating the pedal, the drummer brings the hi-hats
Electronic Musician3 min readTechnology & Engineering
Doepfer A-100
Modular synthesizers have been around for 50 years, and they’re more popular than ever. Yet for a couple of decades they were considered to be a dead technology fraught with limitations. Too cumbersome to haul on stage, and too esoteric, modular syst
Electronic Musician5 min read
Get Real!
Many computer musicians shy away from programming their own acoustic (as opposed to electronic) drum tracks, understandably concerned that since they don’t know how to play a real drum kit, any attempt to create a performance on a virtual one will fa
Electronic Musician5 min read
String Articulations
If you’re new to string or brass arranging, the term ‘articulation’may be unfamiliar. It describes the use of a different technique to play the instrument, achieving a particular sound or effect in the process. With a violin, for example, there are m
Electronic Musician5 min read
Sequential Pro 3
from $1,400 sequential.com In 2015, when Yamaha handed back the Sequential moniker to Dave Smith, there was much rejoicing from the community (and I expect similar feelings were expressed within the walls of the company) and a new era dawned, bringin
Electronic Musician3 min readComputers
Valhalla DSP Supermassive
Free valhalladsp.com The last few months has seen many high profile and impressive reverb plugins hit the shops, so there’s still mileage in refining this everyday effect. However, without wishing to detract from any of those plugins, for us the reve
Electronic Musician3 min read
Ghost Notes, Accents And Fills
Our groove sounds pretty authentic and ‘live’ so far, but there’s still more to do if we’re to make our drums sound like they’re being played by a real drummer with a real drummer’s brain. To bring syncopation and a feeling of forward motion to the g
Electronic Musician11 min readComputers
Steinberg Cubase Pro 11
$552 steinberg.net Steinberg has spearheaded music software development for over 30 years, and through Cubase, which started as a MIDI sequencer, introduced a whole generation to the block-based arrange screen now used in the majority of today’s DAWs
Electronic Musician2 min read
AAS Chromaphone 3
$199 www.applied-acoustics.com The previous version of Chromaphone was one of the most realistic-sounding – and downright fun – plugins I’ve ever played with, so what could be added for a new version? While most of Chromaphone’s basic mechanics remai
Electronic Musician3 min readComputers
Accusonus ERA 5 Bundle Pro
$39/month, $299.88/year, $999 forever accusonus.com When we last looked at this bundle it had five plugins and included the ERA-D reverb and noise remover. Since then, ERA-D has alas become a legacy plugin. However, Accusonus have been busy expanding
Electronic Musician2 min readComputers
Korg Volca Sample 2
$150 korg.com According to our friends at Korg, the original Sample remains the bestselling entry into the popular Volca range. While it was never my favorite – the Drum, FM and Kick take the top three spots – I definitely see the appeal. With ten tr
Electronic Musician3 min read
Conrank Wubbly Jubbly
$40 For the dubstep don dada’s debut sample pack he’s only gone and whipped up a fat batch of big and brash sounds to loosen your fillings, and rattle your neighbor’s windows with. The 641MB of goodies inside this cheeky little offering are all top-n
Electronic Musician3 min readTechnology & Engineering
We Got The Beat Repeat
Don’t be put off by the name of this Ableton plugin. Though Beat Repeat was designed for drums, because it creates controlled or randomized repetitions of any incoming signal it can be a valuable tool for spicing up static guitar loops and pads as we
Electronic Musician4 min read
Goose
Since debuting on influential UK label Skint back in 2006, Belgian four-piece GOOSE have consistently impressed with their blend of synth-powered electronic sounds and rock band dynamics. Fifteen years and four studio albums on, their sound is still
Electronic Musician10 min readComputers
Rack Masterclass
Digital music production offers a lot of advantages over its old-school analog counterpart. We have easy automation, infinite recall of files and versions, and many other advantages besides. If one of the worst things about working solely on the comp
Electronic Musician3 min read
Kontakt Vocal Instruments
A huge selection of vocal phrases – with a separate NKI for each. There are whole phrases, “Let the bass drop”, “Put your hands up” and the like, plus ‘keys’, ‘pad’ and ‘lead’ patches fashioned from vocal samples – granular synth style – and a few in

Electronic Musician

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