Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i Future Music

CLASSIC ALBUM Trentemøller The Last Resort Poker Flat Recordings, 2006 Words by Roy Spencer © Sofie Nørregaard Trentemøller’s debut album plays like the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist. It’s a dark, brooding, minimalist masterpiece that you could happily listen to on headphones with a David Lynch flick playing away silently in the corner of the room. In fact, Lynch films were a huge influence on the producer. Those, and the works of scorers like Morricone, would actually sit next to the album more comfortably on the shelf than any of the straight-up techno Trentemøller would have been know for at the time. Tracks like Snowflake are as fragile as their namesakes, and titles of pieces like While the Cold Winter Waiting fit the frosty soundscapes he was dreaming…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Jefre Cantu-Ledesma On The Echoing Green Mexican Summer Prolific San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist Jefre Cantu-Ledesma unveils the most colourful and pop-centric album of his career so far. The revered ambient sound explorer delivers an album that’s bristling with joy, elation and bright colours, but constructed through his typically hazy and distant sound. His damaged, broken shoegaze sound combines spacy indie rock, drone and experimental electronic sounds to create a densely layered, richly textured soundscape. Hazy guitars, woozy synths, wafting melodies, and plenty of tape fuzz glide over modular synth noises and distant drum machine rhythms. The way the forward-thinking producer manages to let real beauty and fragility seep through the wall of sound and filter through the industrial drone is testament to his exquisite composition skills. Drenched…

RECOMMENDED Point G The Point G Experience Point G After the rebirth of his Point G project back in 2013, French house stalwart DJ Gregory now unleashes a eighteen-track retrospective of his much loved alias. The veteran producer resurrected Point G only after the huge response to the reissue of his 90s classic, Underwater, which Dan Ghenacia released as the first record for his Apollonia imprint. Since then, the project has enjoyed a renaissance encompassing new music, live shows and a Point G label that has dropped nine impressive twelve inches. The Point G Experience showcases the raw, stripped-back aesthetic that has become the hallmark of the moniker. Dubby atmospheres, jacking beats, hypnotic bass and lush pads provide the backbone of the Frenchman’s devastatingly simple productions. The record has real…

The Art of Arrangement Six beat programming tips to generate exciting arrangements Here are half a dozen ideas to help you take your listeners off the beat’n track 1 Even just basic variations in rhythm can inject life and interest in even the most repetitive of tracks – and they don’t come any more basic than the tried-and-tested technique of kick drum edits. At the end of every eight or 16 bars, simply add or remove kick notes to signify change. 2 Altering the length of drum hits can be subtle, but nonetheless effective. If your track has a clap with a long, reverberant tail, shorten the hit and cut off the reverb at certain sections to alter the drum groove’s flow at key points. 3 As we’ll touch upon…

Three creative effects processors This trio of effects will take your sounds in whole new directions, giving you instant inspiration to take a track to completion When laying down a solid arrangement, there’s no substitute for putting in good old-fashioned time and effort with your MIDI programming, audio manipulation and sequencing. However, it does help to have a handful of go-to tools that you can turn to when you’re looking for creative inspiration. Want to try a quick reverse effect over your beats? How about slicing the master out into rhythmic chops as a precursor to the drop? You got it! Here, then, we’ve selected three of our favourite effects processors that you can load up over track elements, that can help generate variations, edits, repeats,…

Extending an arrangement with MIDI trickery You don’t have to program or sequence every single note to get on the right creative track – sometimes your DAW has all the tools you need Having the ability to lay down inspiring beats, basses, hooks, melodies and vocals is obviously vital, but it’s ultimately useless if you’re unable to flesh these ideas out into a coherent song structure that keeps the listener immersed. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to take those initial parts and expand upon them using the modern processing technology sitting right inside your DAW. Is that two-bar riff getting a little too repetitive? Are you unsure about how to step up an epic chord sequence? You can use MIDI manipulation and processors to instantly generate accompanying…

THE TRACK Black Saint Could You Love Me? Warner Bros. Records, 2017 © Adam Gasson London-based production trio Black Saint have figuratively blown up with their debut single Could You Love Me?, an enthralling concoction of deep house and classic noughties R&B vibes. Future Music caught up with Justin, Jermaine and DJ James in their North West London studio so they could show us the secrets behind their slick, genre-blending sounds. How did this song come about? Jermaine Davis: “A friend of ours [Pretty Ricky’s Marcus ‘Pleasure P’ Cooper] came over from America at the beginning of 2016 and wanted to get in the studio to make house track. We got some drinks and got on a good vibe, knocked up a beat and started writing some songs.” What was…

PRODUCER’S GUIDE Elektron Digitakt Elektron have always been at the forefront of beat-making, pushing the boundaries of what we’ve come to expect from drum machines and samplers. From the Machinedrum, through the Octatrack, the RYTM and now their latest box, Digitakt, their machines often feel as deep as your mind, yet without doubt, they’ve changed many producers’ approach to beat-making. FM are among the first to get our hands on Digitakt and so in this Producer’s Guide, we want to give you an exclusive heads-up on this new machine, covering in detail the key functionality that it has onboard and how you might want to apply it. While the design is in many ways simpler than the Octatrack, we’ve been able to get up and running sampling and making beats…

QUICK TIPS 1 Hold down Track, turn filter cutoff to control cutoff globally. This works for many other parameters too (ie tuning, sample start, amp envelope attack and more). 2 Parameter locking ‘sample select’ allows you to have several samples triggering randomly or sequentially from a single sequence trig/step for really mangling beats. 3 For quick pattern variations, change the pattern’s step length by pressing function + page, then hit the trig/step button you want to be the last step of the pattern. 4 For making song forms, save several variations of the same pattern to different slots, then move between them in real time or use the pattern chain facility to automate the changes. 5 Once you’ve recorded a basic beat, enter real-time record, hold down random steps and…

Elektron Digitakt | Producer’s Guide To Adding variation to your beat Now that we’ve created a basic beat, we’ll show you how to use Digitakt’s deep functionality to really step things up! 01 > Let’s kick things off by playing with the various sample play modes (including forward and reverse looping) accessed by pressing the SRC button and turning encoder B. Set loop/length to taste – shorter for more granular sonics and longer for standard looping. Record the tweaks! 02 > Press the Amp button and add reverb to the parts you feel need it (on a per-step, or global basis). Go deep into the reverb menu (function + amp) to further detail the reverb brightness/length etc. Do the same for any parts that require delay. 03 > Pull up…

QUICK TIPS 1 If your vocal is drowning in auxiliary reverb, place a compressor after the reverb and send the dry vocal to it as a sidechain signal. With the right threshold, ratio, attack and release times, you can make the compressor ‘duck’ when the vocalist sings and ‘recover’ in the gaps between phrases. 2 Always make sure you have an EQ available in the channel strips which contain your reverb settings. Being able to refine spatial treatments to reduce bass, enhance top end, or shape tone in other ways is almost always beneficial. 3 When adding delays to vocal treatments via an auxiliary, it usually helps to send this auxiliary channel to the one(s) providing reverb. Spatially ‘smudging’ the delays in the same way as the original dry vocal,…

Korg Kronos 88 Music Workstation Korg Kronos 88 Music Workstation £3,329 Time to check out the latest generation of Korg’s flagship workstation… Dan ‘JD73’ Goldman sees what’s new! Back in 2011 I was one of the first reviewers to get my hands on Korg’s Kronos. Six years later, the second generation Kronos is now doing the business for many gigging and touring musicians. Back in 2011, the workstation concept was still going strong, but with many touring professionals and producers moving to software-based setups, (Mainstage, Cubase, Ableton etc), the workstation concept has lost some traction, with Yamaha Roland dropping their flagship workstations. This leaves Kronos remaining as the chief workstation contender in 2017. The Kronos range includes the 61-note model with synth action (one of the nicest synth actions around),…

ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL I/O Mono Station is equipped with a decent array of ins and outs. On the audio front, there’s a main 1/4-inch jack out along with a mini-jack headphone out along the front edge. There’s a 1/4-inch jack audio in too, allowing an external signal to be fed through the filter, amp and distortion circuits. Feeding the headphone out into the audio in can create a nicely gritty feedback loop. There’s a selection of analogue control outs too – offering CV and gate, along with an auxilliary CV out fed by the mod matrix. There’s also pulse clock in and out, along with MIDI in, out and thru, and MIDI USB for DAW sync.…

HEY THERE, WHAT’S THAT SOUND? Roland’s company origins lie firmly in the world of analogue drum machines. The TR-606, with its similarities to the legendary 808, had a punchier, cleaner sound than the somewhat fuzzier and less-refined tones of the CR-78, which harked back to an earlier era in terms of sound generation. Drum machines in the 60s and 70s made copious use of resonant inductor coil circuits (rather than those built from transistors), and were also pretty noisy beasts. The CR-78 only used inductors in the circuity for two sounds, though inside the TT-78 there isn’t a coil in sight. The Cyclone versions add Clap and Rimshot tones to the 606, with the TT-78 staying somewhat closer to its origins.…

Shure KSM8 £429 Playing on the heritage of the most popular vocal mics ever, can Shure update the old SMs and justify the new price tag? Jon Musgrave steps up for a mic check You’re getting a much more predictable, consistent sound in a variety of positions The Shure KSM8 is a dual-diaphragm cardioid dynamic mic designed primarily for vocal performance. Taking its inspiration from Shure’s classic Unidyne III capsule (that’s the one used in the SM57, SM58 and others), this newly developed capsule aims to reduce the proximity effect, improve off-axis frequency response and rejection, and deliver a more consistent polar pattern. The dual diaphragm design gives it one active and one passive diaphragm, so it’s also inspired, to an extent, by some of the classic fixed-pattern twin-diaphragm condensers.…

SOUNDS & SAMPLES Native Instruments Thrill £239 Native Instruments’ Kontakt is at the forefront of sample playback technology, and with comprehensive sound library support – not least because of its excellent scripting and user interface capabilities, it’s therefore not surprising that NI are keen to commission content that shows off it capabilities. The latest of these comes from Galaxy Instruments, well-known for their excellent piano-based libraries and the scoring-inclined Rise & Hit. Thrill is again firmly aimed at the cinematic, but this time with more tuned content, and with real-time dynamic control. The library consists of 1000 sample sets (totalling 41GB when uncompressed) that may be combined in a number of interesting ways. There are nearly 350 snapshots to get you started, each made from two ‘Thrills’ (which in turn…

Expanding Chord Vocabulary I have a few basic triads under my fingers but how can I make them sound more interesting? Most folks have a few basic triads in their chord arsenal but can get stuck when trying to take them forward. Our best advice is to add notes to the top of the existing three-note chord, one at a time and note the effect. Also in any three-note chord (triad), try moving your thumb (usually on the root note) down or up a note or two to change the tonality without having to jump across the keyboard – you can alter chords more easily than you think by moving the existing chord notes around by a couple of steps. Here’s some ideas… First, try inverting your chords. For example,…

Albums | Dauwd Theory of Colours Technicolour Six years on from his first release, the US-born, Wales-raised and Berlin-based producer delivers his typically inventive and expansive debut album. Theory of Colours explores a soundscape that floats between underground techno and experimental ambient dimensions without ever really settling on either. His sprawling productions meander through styles and tempos with a weightless, natural freedom. The record’s experimental edge gives it an feeling of unpredictability, taking us into unexplored territories, down exciting and unexpected tangents. Vintage synths unfurl over broken, dusty beats, otherworldly FX, whirring belts and intoxicating delays to create a sound that is as expressive as it is timeless. Dauwd’s deft arrangements build layer upon layer of modular equipment to create a meticulously crafted soundscape that develops and reveals more of…

The Art of Arrangement Stock up before you start Ever thrown yourself enthusiastically into the arrangement process, only to run out of steam due to lack of ideas? While you might think that eight-bar loop can easily be duplicated out into a five minute song, a solid loop isn’t always enough of a basis for an interesting track that unfolds enough to captivate the listener for its entirety. We’ve all been there. The solution? Make sure you have enough sonic material ready to go before you begin that journey of copying and pasting. Invest more time at the sound design and idea-creating stage, by building up a pile of track elements (drum/perc loops, basses, leads, vocals, pads, FX, etc) at the same key and tempo as the initial groove, all…

The Art of Arrangement Don’t get too attached After spending hours cultivating and incubating a seed of a musical idea into a full-blown track, you’ll be fully invested in that song idea. In fact, it’s probable that you won’t ever imagine the track laid out another way! After all, a producer’s latest track is his or her baby; a labour of love. The more time spent on it, the more you’ll be invested in that idea. Yet this emotional attachment is counterproductive to creativity. A great way to break this attachment is via the ‘car test’ – go crank the track on your car stereo and go for a drive. Alternatively, stick it on the kitchen radio, on the living room hi-fi, or even test it over a nightclub system.…

Six ways to extend a short sketch into a full arrangement Get out of eight-bar loop land and head into full-track territory with these compositional tips 1 If you have to stop midway through arranging to design a bread-and-butter sound such as an FX sweep or riser, then you’re not working efficiently. Stock up your favourite banks of go-to effects and incidental sounds that can easily be thrown onto your DAW’s timeline with minimal effort. 2 Following the previous point, the sooner you can get ‘placeholder’ elements in the track (such as crash cymbals, reverse cymbals, stock white noise sweeps, etc), the better. These make a standard, cyclical loop sound a lot more interesting and polished, even if you end up swapping the sounds out later. 3 When stock FX…

Producer’s Guide To | Elektron Digitakt Preparing to sample While being spontaneous and building on ‘happy accidents’ is a huge part of making great beats and loops, it’s worth having a wide range of samples in mind before you start making a beat, otherwise you can find your whole process slows down mid-flow and that can be a creative show-stopper! It’s worth thinking about the bigger picture stylistically and collecting sounds that will fit your style/project. One great thing about Digitakt is that the recorder allows you to not just record and sample audio, but to directly chop sections from a longer loop and save those chops as individual samples which can then be exported to the pads quickly. This means that you don’t need to be chopping samples into…

Elektron Digitakt | Producer’s Guide To Making a beat from scratch The real fun starts when you’re using your own samples to make a sequence. Here’s how to sample and make a beat… 01 > Grab some vinyl, an instrument or an iPod/phone/MP3 player. Plug into the input(s) and press ‘yes’ to arm. Press function + yes to record. Trim using the encoders; when happy, hit yes to save, then name and Digitakt will auto-assign the sample to any audio track. 02 > Play the whole sample by hitting or holding the corresponding trig/step button, then start chopping sections from the longer piece of audio you’ve recorded. Here we’re cutting a kick, snare and hats from a single drum loop, a Rhodes chord and an already sampled Moog bass note.…

In the Studio Tube & Berger 15 years into their careers and Tube & Berger have become seasoned producers of deep, club-ready dance music, in-demand remixers and global DJ superstars. Danny Turner meets the duo and discovers more about their long-awaited second album, We Are All Stars From their humble beginnings in a small industrial town in Germany, it would be fair to say that Arndt Rörig and Marko Vidovic didn’t exactly hit it off. Their first meeting on a school bus almost came to blows, until the duo discovered a shared interest in “beer, girls and music”. They joined a punk band, but later immersed themselves in the burgeoning ’90s house/techno scene, forming the production duo Tube & Berger. Success came almost immediately when their debut single Straight Ahead…

In The Studio With Ekoplekz Bristol’s Ekoplekz returns to the fray with Bioprodukt, a new album of his trademark lo-fi mesmerism. Hamish Mackintosh spoke with the saturation-meister about his music-making ethos and his flexible approach to gear © Joseph Branston Never one to rest too long on his electronic laurels, Nick Edwards, otherwise known as Ekoplekz, has just released Bioprodukt, his umpteenth album proper and his fourth for the much-respected Planet-Mu label. Bioprodukt showcases many of the traits that Ekoplekz has become known and loved for: the murky, lo-fi production, bubbling basslines, dubby delays and acidic squelches all remain; supplemented in this instance by firmer beats and, for want of a better phrase, a sunnier disposition in parts. With such a distinctive sound to decipher, we headed to Nick’s Bristol…

FM CHOICE State-of-the-art reverbs UVI Sparkverb | £129 Sparkverb is capable of a wondrous array of algorithmic reverb treatments with a parameter set to facilitate fine tweaks. It even lets you build new reverbs by morphing existing presets. Valhalla Shimmer | £50 Shimmer prioritises upper frequency content and allows pitch modulation, making it capable of anything from sparkle to lushness to air to floatiness to… you get the idea. AudioEase Altiverb | €499 Considered by many to be the class-leading convolution reverb, and with a host of impulse responses onboard, it’s capable of everything from the refined to the outrageous. FabFilter Pro-R | £149 Offers twin envelopes to shape both Reverb Tone and Decay Time, providing a unique approach. Its Distance dial is extremely useful for controlling proximity. Waves H-Reverb…

Elektron Digitakt £659 The Swedes’ new digital sampling drum machine boasts Elektron depth at a lower price. Si Truss makes some taktful remarks  Despite having several quality synths to their name, along with last year’s Analog Heat and Drive effects, Swedish outfit Elektron are arguably best known for their cult drum machines and sequencer-driven grooveboxes. Their latest addition is Digitakt, a sampling drum machine and MIDI sequencer. With a purely digital architecture, Digitakt is Elektron’s first non-analogue offering since before the release of the Analog Keys in 2012. It also comes in at a significantly more affordable price point than any of their existing grooveboxes, around £350 cheaper than the Octatrack and £500 cheaper than Analog Rytm. We get controls for filter type, cutoff and resonance, along with an ADSR…

SEQUENCING, SAMPLING Kronos’ powerful sequencer features 16 MIDI tracks and 16 audio tracks, and includes real-time and step recording, a drum track, audio editing, WAV file import and simultaneous recording of up to four sources to the onboard 62GB SSD drive. It’s great for quick idea capturing or full song productions, though it could really do with a proper piano roll display for deeper editing. Korg does have a Kronos sound editor and librarian (standalone and plugin) but unfortunately it can’t edit sequence data. You can sample and re-sample in any mode, import audio files (WAV/AIFF/MP3) via USB and drop them into Kronos to use as part of a Program, Combi or Sequence. You can also multisample any keyboard or instrument with SPDIF/USB, or from the rear 1/4-inch audio inputs,…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Trentemøller Late Night Tales A standout episode of the celebrated chillout compilation series, featuring many of Trentemøller’s early influences. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Waves Become Wings, Poor Boy, Minor Key, Mary Of Silence Mazzy Star Among My Swan The Psych-folk outfit is very dear to Trentemøller’s heart. He even bit some lyrics from them for titles for his own music. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Rhymes Of An Hour, I’ve Been Let Down, Disappear Basic Channel Phylyps Trak Massively influential dub techno duo from Berlin. Check out their small batch of vinyl-only releases to see the influence on Trentemøller tracks like Nightwalker . ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Phylyps Trak, Phylyps Base, Axis David Lynch & Alan R. Splet Eraserhead Original Soundtrack…

Chihei Hatakeyama Mirage Room40 The Japanese sound-design artist’s latest is rich in beauty, emotion and atmospheric presence. Mirage’s aural complexities are influenced by the sounds Hatakeyama experienced wafting through the labyrinthian bazaars whilst travelling in Turkey. Highly textured, dense and full of murky tones, the album lingers like a distant memory. His compositions are built of hazy layers, dimmed melodies, elongated pads and distorted field recordings. Hazy, delicate and dreamlike, the atmosphere is intense and deeply immersive, creating a feeling of something just out of reach. Its post-ambient experimentations emit style and grace that adds an artistic and cinematic feel to the whole album. Haunting, solitary and forlorn, yet underpinned by a sense of inner peace and calm, Mirage feels laid bare with a gentle and quiet confidence. It’s within…

Building inspiration into a synth preset Designed to encourage change and movement, this strategy for inspiration can unravel complex arrangements in a flash It helps to cast your eye forward to the job of arrangement right from the beginning of the sound design process. If your sounds are built to alter and morph in interesting ways, you’ll never get stuck for ideas when you need to develop that initial idea into a concept that unfolds organically. In this tutorial, we’re going to start with a sequenced synth patch we created for FM317’s Cutting-Edge Synth Power cover feature. Not only is this riff a great starting point for a progression, but it’s also crammed full of macro assignments that can be automated over time. If you’re a…

QUICK TIPS For creative arrangements > If one or more of your track elements just don’t seem to work in the context of the bigger picture, then don’t be afraid to delete and move on. > If you feel like copying the structure of another track, try using examples from genres other than the one you’re creating to inspire fresh twists on tried-and-tested formulas. > Don’t get bogged down creating a minute-long intro designed for DJs until after you’ve made the core section of your track. This way, you’ll have lots of sonic material from later in the track to use for your intro. > For an interesting touch of variation, switch up your chord arrangements by using a different synth for each note of the chord.…

YOUTUBE MORE UNMISSABLE VIDEO FEATURES FROM FUTURE MUSIC Meet our line-up of exclusive YouTube goodness. Head online for all this and more! Top producers go in-depth on the sounds, ideas and techniques behind their latest releases Reset Robot, Guitar Man The tech-house artist deconstructs one of his latest tracks, showing us how he does the business in his Southsea studio DON’T MISS: Heist, Pillager The prolific D&B maven talks us through the productions skills and tools he used to fashion his hard-hitting banger Pillager. Alan Walker, Alone Get in the studio with the masked master as he deconstructs the techniques behind Alone. Roosevelt, Wait Up The Greco-Roman artist invites us into his Cologne studio to break down the production tricks behind the opener to…

Adding Expression There are many options for adding expression to your sequences with Digitakt. Here are a few ideas to explore… Like other Elektron products, the trig/step buttons aren’t velocity sensitive so you can’t add velocity directly when using these to sequence; but there are several workarounds. The first port of call is to connect a MIDI keyboard as Digitakt receives and records MIDI velocity into its sequencer from external controllers. You could also employ MIDI pads or an electric pad kit connected to Digitakt’s MIDI in; basically anything that transmits MIDI notes/velocity. Then of course you could map your controller’s knobs or sliders to one or more parameters on the Digitakt; for example you could control reverb level, filter cutoff/resonance, volume, LFO rate and delay time. Check out the…

MODULAR MONTHLY Making it rain Intellijel teamed up with Cylonix for the Rainmaker, a rack unit of complex delays and comb resonator action Cylonix and Intellijel teamed up a few years ago to make the updated version of the Cyclebox, and since then, the two have developed their digital oscillator ideas with the Shapeshifter, and created complex and immediate delays with the Rainmaker. Simply plugging in your audio inputs into the Rainmaker and tapping the audio outputs allows a range of controls and sonic exploration right on the front panel. At its core, the Rainmaker is a 16-tap stereo spectral rhythm delay and comb resonator, but in simpler terms it’s a big bundle of audio awesomeness! The digital processing runs at 96kHz and 32-bit, allowing plenty of headroom and a…

TOOLKIT Modern Reverbs We get a room with today’s state-of-the-art spatial processors, exposing some techniques along the way Compared to the days when reverb and delay effects were accessed via auxiliary send and return systems on hardware mixing consoles, we really are spoiled for choice and flexibility when it comes to modern spatial treatments in our DAWs. Most software mixer channels can access generous numbers of auxiliary sends (as opposed to the ‘fixed’ number of 4, 6 or 8 common to most hardware consoles), and can do so with a different chain of effects for each channel. This means that sounds within our mixes can benefit from both ‘global’ and ‘bespoke’ spatial treatments. Despite this modern flexibility, reverb has always done the same job: placing sounds ‘in a space’. Any…

Reversed reverb with a modern twist Backwards spatial effects are popular on percussion and drum sounds, and DAWs make it easy for each hit to feature its own spatial processing Reversed reverb treatments have been popular for a long time and, therefore, it’s easy to dismiss them as clichéd. But as we’ll see through the following steps, there’s no shortage of ways to vary each reverse. Here we’re going to be selective about how many iterations we use and how they fade in. A next step after adding fades of varying lengths would be to introduce further effects treatments. Imagine each of these reversed reverb tails featured its own filter envelope to match its length, or try one-stop effects on each one – glitches, distortion, bespoke EQ treatments or a…

Novation Circuit Mono Station £479 Circuit’s intuitive sequencer meets the Bass Station II’s analogue synth engine. Si Truss takes another lap around the Circuit… Circuit Mono Station is, in loose terms, a hybrid of two of Novation’s best instruments: a combination of the meaty analogue synth engine of the Bass Station II, and Circuit’s excellent sequencer. Housed in a chassis similar to – but slightly taller than – Circuit, Mono Station’s interface is roughly divided in half, with the upper section housing the synth controls and the lower portion controlling the sequencer. The synth itself is like a remixed version of the BS II. At its heart are a pair of digitally controlled analogue oscillators – switchable between sine, triangle, saw and variable-width square waves – accompanied by a sub…

Cyclone Analogic Analog Drum Machines Cyclone Analogic TT-78 and TT-606 £389 (each) The French company have cloned another two classic Roland drum machines. Bruce Aisher puts them through their paces Mythology has always played a massive part in music making, be it bluesman Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil in return for musical skill, or the magical timbre and timing of an 808 drum machine, the allure remains. In music technology terms, this often means ever-inflating prices on the secondhand market, even for kit that is severely limited in functional terms, and that presents an opportunity for anyone willing to create a reliable, cheaper, and often even more featureful remake. Step forward, Cyclone Analogic! The French company gathered much attention – and some infamy – a few years…

STUDIO ESSENTIAL! SSL 4000 G Bus Compressor £229 The SSL 4000 G Bus Compressor is the latest hardware classic to be ‘updated’ for the UAD platform; as UAD-2 has allowed for accelerated processing and therefore ‘more detail’, so UA have revisited classics including the 1176 and LA-2A, redesigning them for greater accuracy. The G Bus Compressor is famed for its use on a mix’s output channel strip, providing power, punch and, above all, a cohesion to a summed mix that is frequently referred to as ‘mix glue’. UAD’s update adds new features including a Mix dial for parallel treatments (useful on string or drum groups, for instance) as well as a sidechain filter and a Headroom control too. Elsewhere, the feature set will be familiar to many, with the characteristic…

Stereoping Synth Controller from €195 Bruce Aisher gets twiddling with these custom hardware controllers for some of the most impenetrable classic synths Back in the 1970s, most synthesizers featured a knob or slider for each parameter. By the mid ’80s, the introduction of affordable microprocessors meant that many synths featured little more than an LCD screen, a smattering of buttons, and a solitary data slider. It reduced costs and democratised music technology, but it also made for less-than joyous programming experience. MIDI-based software editing eventually came to the rescue, and the advent of the DAW and virtual instruments meant that synths, samplers and drum machines could be complex yet accessible. Fully tactile, multiparameter engagement was still limited, which in turn led to the exploration of hardware control options to get…