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A plug-in in which you can freely arrange the most important effects for your sessions comes with the unlimited combinable MixBox Special Edition, which IK Multimedia gives to all Beat readers. On board are 24 modules, including a channel strip, vari

Whether it‘s Rock, Pop, EDM or Hip-Hop, nothing captivates the listener like an infectious bass line, a hypnotic riff or a distinctive melody. These elements make up the hookline of a song, the melodic phrase or line of lyrics with the highest recogn

All beginnings are difficult… is not just a saying, there is an incredible amount of truth to it. Often it is enough to overcome the initial hurdle to get the flow going. To make this easier, it is useful to simplify the access or to keep the way as

In the workshop before, we introduced Magenta Studio to create simple melodies as basics. We can take that a step further, because ChatGPT‘s AI not only knows smart answers to questions, but can also compose music. The steps to get there are simple:

It is already impressively strong when designing images and automatically generated videos are on the rise, but the AI is not really convincing when it comes to sound. The results have a lot of randomness and chaos. Nevertheless, the tools can be inc

In music, there are major and minor keys. Each major key comes with a parallel minor key three half steps below it. Both keys have the same key signatures. The circle of fifths is a great tool for determining keys, finding out their accidentals, and

We have a melody as a starting point, which we like in terms of rhythm. However, we find the sequence of notes rather boring. But that‘s not a problem because we can use our DAW, in this case Logic Pro X, as an idea generator to rewrite the melody. W

The most important musical element of a song is to repeat melodies or hooks as often as possible so that they remain in the listener‘s memory. However, skill is required so that the listener doesn‘t skip the song. Multi-effect plug-ins like DS Audio

Our intro consists of four bars. Here you should be economical with the instrumentation. Compose a simple chord progression on the piano or let an acoustic guitar play. Verse 1 begins with main instrument and vocals. Take two to four measures and the

In Hip-Hop, the melody is usually played back via instruments or a sample and not via the spoken vocal artist. Often with auto-tune as an effect, rappers these days are increasingly using their voices to bring melodies into their tracks. In our arran

A typical characteristic of Pop songs is a start directly with the chorus and in addition already the lead melody. With Melodic House this also works, whereby Gorgon City bring here the first verse instead of the chorus. In addition, the main melody

For intros of Techno tracks there are no surprises: a kick with high-pass filter, a riser and vocal phrases over the first eight bars. It starts: the kick rumbles, accompanied by a driving bass and already after eight bars a combination of shaker and

The free AI-based Magenta Studio is recruited from five tools that are available together in a plug-in for Ableton Live and also as standalone applications. All of them can output MIDI files. Generate is capable of generating up to 16 beats or melodi

Beat / Why don‘t you explain to us why you built and set up your studio the way you did? MXWELL / In the beginning, everything started small with a PC, a small mixing console and Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro studio headphones. Later, I expanded my studio m

Beat / You seem to be a big fan of conceptual approaches. What was the starting point for New Horizons? Peter Mergener / In 2019, on the anniversary of the first moon landing, I released the CD Astronaut. With New Horizons I wanted to stay with the s

Everyone dreams of being a DJ. But what do DJs dream of? Some in the music industry think that streaming is the answer to all unanswered prayers in the booth. And so they are preparing for a future in which no track is too obscure, no request has to

Beat / It‘s been a turbulent time for you since the last album „Noire“ (2018), hasn‘t it? Ronan / Yes, a lot has changed. In 2019 I found out that I had to leave my old studio because all tenants were given notice. At that time I was still on tour wi

powered by Tobias Fischer is your host for the BEHIND THE BEAT Producer Podcast. Each episode features one of the most exciting producers of our time for an in-depth exchange. This time, we speak to Girts Ozolins, founder of leading modular manufactu

Do you want to see all the effects in this rack? Click on the button in the upper left corner. MixBox SE transfers the concept of the API System 500 to a plug-in and combines all important effects for music production in one rack. You can choose betw

As a basis, we use an unspectacular, standard EDM kick drum. We feed this into a mixer channel and load fruity reverb 2. In the plug-in, we set the Wet control to 100% and Decay to 3.5s. Using Edison, we record the reverberated sound of the kick drum

First, open Live‘s preferences. Select the Look Feel section and check that Scrub Area is Always Active set to On. Next, create two audio tracks. In the first track, load a drumbeat composed of kick, snare and hi-hats. Load a simple percussion loop i

Although the MPC is equipped with a large number of chords for the PAD PERFORM Mode, there is still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to progressions. Conveniently, you can create such progressions yourself and then use them standalone. By

You can apply the following technique to any loop that is at least one bar long. Less is also possible, but then there is so little „bacon“ on it that it makes the results less productive. We actually use the Amen break, downloads for it can be found

Open a new Cubase project and drag and drop the enclosed file Water.wav onto the Sampler Control area in the lower zone. Activate the Slicing Mode on the left side and set the Threshold value to -40 dB. This will automatically place hitpoints at the

Import the two enclosed audio files into a project at 120 BPM. In it, you will find the groove from our current Cubase workshop, as well as a single track with the hi-hat playing in an offbeat rhythm. We want to set the scene for this hi-hat with the

We build a kind of „chord machine“ that spits out endless potential Techno loops. As a basis, we use our Thorn BEAT with three oscillators. The waveforms are arbitrary, you can let off steam here later. But tuning is important: OSC 1 may rumble low d

12 MAG ISSUES STARTING AT 71,90 EURO / YEAR ACCESS TO OVER 100 ISSUES IN THE ARCHIVE GET OVER 800 GB OF INSTRUMENTS & SOUNDS PLUS GIFT OF YOUR CHOICE! Want it? Get your subscription here: www.plugins-samples.com Find your favorite subscription gift a

Avant: Modern Keys comes with some tasty keyboard sounds, arpeggios and textures. But it‘s when you create your own hybrid sounds with atmosphere that this Kontakt instrument unleashes its full potential. To do this, load the Avant Modern Keys Init s

Monotonously repeating beats can quickly make House tracks seem uninspired. Rhythmic filter effects can work wonders for this. You can try this on an existing track of yours, or simply use some of the drum loops from Studio One‘s Loops folder. Then,

LOVE is touted as an Instant Ambient FX plug-in and is basically a multi-effect, as it combines several effects units under the hood, with the Granular Engine at its heart. The manufacturer is Dawesome (known for the soft synths Abyss, Novum and Kult

Spitfire‘s Albion series is one of the most popular scoring tools for „broad brush strokes“. Albion Colossus is the first in the series to use Spitfire‘s inhouse player rather than NI Kontakt. The player is, unfortunately, not multitimbral, which mak

Roland SH-101 is probably one of the most popular mono synthesizers due to its clear and easy-to-learn synthesis, its powerful and punchy sound, and its intuitive sequencer. Accordingly, there are already some replicas of the synthesizer classic from

Using Spectral Modeling Technology, Sampleson breaks down the sound of physical instruments into their individual spectral parts, only to reassemble it in the form of a virtual instrument after frequency analysis based on the resulting sine waves. Th

Kolin takes its inspiration from the Collins 26U, a legendary Vari-MU compressor/ peak limiter from the 60s. The plug-in has been on the freeware market for a while now and enjoys a certain popularity, which will increase with its latest update: Beca

The „Advanced Content Creation Studio“ presents itself as visually simple and professional, without big design gimmicks. However, it is not particularly compact: With a width of 33 cm, a depth of 38 cm and a height of up to 10.4 cm, the DLZ Creator d

Thanks to the multi-faceted selection of Pads, Textures and Atmos, WAVE RUNNER is predestined for styles such as Ambient, Chillout, Downtempo and Trip Hop. Reason enough to use the soundset to produce an atmospheric Chillout track in the style of Sol

The basis for this unit was the early Blue Stripe compressor in the form it was once modified for producer Chris Lord-Alge (Tina Turner, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, etc.) - originally for lack of suitable spare parts. Lord-Alge, in turn, accor

The compact synthesizer with flexible digital sound generation and analog filter still enjoys great popularity, which is also due to the constant expansion through free updates. Firmware 5.0 adds another highlight with sample import and a granular en

While the new Mac Pro, the US company‘s flagship computer, is still a long time coming, Apple is stepping up the pace in the notebook sector at the beginning of the year: The iPhone creator has updated its MacBook Pro lineup - or more precisely, thei

Step by Step: 24 workshops to the finished song The Start Window gives you all the tools you need to get started making music. The first menu item „New Project“ allows you to easily start producing your next song. But before you click on „Empty Proje

If you want to work with MIDI, you must create a software instrument track. Software instruments in the GarageBand library can be made to sound this way. For example, you can play MIDI regions from a MIDI keyboard or draw them in the piano roll. Even

Create a drum track and program a basic beat; optionally with some percussion. Create another MIDI track, select a pad sound, and load it into the track. Record a short phrase with long sustained notes. In Live, open the Gate‘s Sidechain option. Unde

Before we start producing our song, let‘s open GarageBand‘s notes feature at the top right of the main window. Here, you can easily make notes on, for example, the recordings. We use this function to create a rough track plan with Track Number, Instr

Artificial intelligence is making waves and can now clone voices – whether they belong to celebrities or anyone else. Want Eminem or Drake to rap on your track? No problem. How about The Weeknd or Pink singing for you? That‘s possible too. We‘ll show

What do you get when a renowned software manufacturer and sought-after sound designers join forces? The impressive answer is the bass drum synthesizer PunchBOX, which combines the excellent drum modules and effects of D16 with the club-proven samples