Computer Music's goal is to help its readers create great music with a PC or Mac. Each month find easy-to-follow tutorials for all sorts of music software, unbiased reviews of the latest products and answers to technical questions.
Whenever you see this icon, you can grab the files on your PC or Mac by going to filesilo.co.uk/computermusic. Tutorials featuring this icon make use of our own Plugins – find out all about them at filesilo.co.uk. This icon means there are extra files to help you follow a tutorial feature: project files, audio examples, etc. There’s extra video content wherever you see this icon. computermusic.co.uk computermusic@futurenet.com facebook.com/computer.music.mag twitter.com/computermusicuk youtube.com/computermusicmag instagram.com/computermusicmag…
“Music I won’t listen to, games I won’t play…” I used to be as guilty as the next person when it came to using plugins, believing that more must equal better. And indeed when it comes to free plugins, you don’t get a much better deal – in terms of quality and quantity – than our very own Suite. The more the merrier, we cry! But over recent years – and brought much more sharply into focus with my recent upgrade to Monterey that necessitated a big plugin clear out – I’ve come to appreciate the quality versus quantity thing. So we’re in the midst of a Suite review – more on that in two issues – and for this issue’s regular, biennial (yes, I thought it was biannual too)…
If you believe anyone you talk to, or any news story you care to read, we’re on the cusp of – indeed, standing on a cliff edge staring into the darkness of their terrifying souls – both the Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence taking over our pathetic, war-mongering, organic bags of flesh lives. If you’re young, enthusiastic and less cynical than we are – that’s 99.99% of you, then – you’ll be excitedly embracing these new terms and this new future rather like those whippersnappers in Ready Player One. What could possibly go wrong with a virtual environment replacing reality and the whole shebang run by machines with more intelligence than us, after all? But as musicians, we’re one step ahead. Artificial Intelligence has been with us for a while, and…
Another one of those future predictions has always been a robot replacing the human voice (and we’re not getting drawn into the argument that Auto-Tune has effectively already done this). One company a step ahead in this is Emvoice, whose One app uses a cloud-based system to create a vocal of any words using a granular system. “What you’re hearing is a real singer’s voice interpreting your own words,” they say. They’ve just added another ‘vocalist’, Thomas, whose EDM vocoder style voice joins Jay and Lucy in the One lineup. We blame Daft Punk for everything. emvoiceapp.com…
Omega ‘FM without the hassle’ is a common theme among plugin and app developers, and it’s one that’s been picked up by Bleass, who have just released their Omega synth. Said to be “not just easier than other FM synths,” but “easy. Period!”, this gives you the glistening FM sounds you’re familiar with but in a simple-one screen interface. As well as the four operators, you also get an analogue-style waveshaper and multimode filter. Throw in a choice of 11 FM algorithms, modulation features and effects, and it sounds like it has plenty going for it. $10/£9; standalone/AUv3. bleass.com Euclidean Sequencer You might not know exactly how Euclidean sequencing works –and we won’t try to explain it here – but if you like polyrhythms, this’ll be up your street. 4Pockets’…
cm How did you get into music software? DB “I’ve always been obsessed with music, but after travelling to Ibiza and experiencing house music in some of the best clubs, I started to DJ, then obsessing over the sounds and invested in a studio. There were just a couple of companies making samples. I felt I could do better, so I started doing my own – that’s how Wave Alchemy was born!” cm How did you become successful? DB “Our goal has always been to empower producers with creative tools and the best sounds. When we started (in 2006) we were samples only. We built a loyal following and wanted to find a way of delivering our high-quality content in a more streamlined, creative and artistic way, which led to…
