Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Electronic Musician

QUICK SYNTH STRINGS You can make vast-sounding synth strings by using saw waves, your synth's unison control, and a splash of spacious reverb. Unison, which stacks copies of the oscillator to create a bigger sound, should be turned up above two voices on each of the oscillators you're using, with the voices distributed across the stereo field using the spread, pan and detune controls, or whatever the equivalent is on your synth. EQ the low end out if needed, and you've got quick synth strings. UNISON VS BASS Unison detune can create gnarly bass noises, but you could find that there's noticeable variation in the level of the lowest harmonics, leaving the sub bass uneven – most undesirable for modern dance productions. Solve this by using highpass filtering to kill…

REVIEWS | EXCITE AUDIO VISION 4X Audio analysis tools are a key component of modern music production so it's tempting to upgrade your DAW offering with something more capable. Vision 4X (VST, VST3, AU, AAX and standalone) from Excite Audio and Dutch trio Noisia is such a plugin and bundles six key analysis and metering tools into one workspace. These are VU and RMS meters, spectrogram, bar graph analyzer, waveform display and phase correlation meters. The plugin uses a single resizable window divided into four panes and these can be rescaled collectively within the window by dragging the panel divider to achieve 4, 2 and 1-panel configurations. Clicking on the tiny cog in the bottom left reveals a side panel with further settings including an option to rotate the display…

One probable question that you're likely to address fairly quickly is whether to go for the Standard or Pro editions of the V8. The Standard V8 is equiped with the basics, much like a traditional Mk1/2 Rhodes. You'll get the classic sound, which includes overdrive and the classic ping-pong effect, but it will lack some of the niceties that will make life easier, at least at the instrument level. With no standalone version available at present, you'll likely be working within a DAW or performance software, and with this comes assured access to many of the effects that might be disabled on the standard edition, such as phaser, chorus and delay. Arguably, you might find third party effects to be more flexible, in production terms, but the undeniable speed and access…

REVIEWS | GFORCE SOFTWARE MINIMONSTA2 The mere mention of the Minimoog will bring a smile to the faces of most musicallyminded people. But, there are times when you want just that little bit more. GForce Software are on hand to provide and deliver a Mini, with a hell of a lot more. Classics reimagined We love the original Minimoog, and with plenty of great reimaginings in the software domain, we're rather spoilt for choice. If you're only interested in the basics, you will not be disappointed; a quick trip to the preset patch browser reveals the Init Patch button, which will reduce this plugin to its barest essentials and a good place to start our critique; the architecture is reassuringly familiar to all who've previously used a Minimoog, with three…

Recent models may have come in black, but as far we're concerned, the MPC color is gray, so we're delighted to see that Akai has returned to this retro scheme for its MPC X Special Edition. Launched to celebrate the Music Production Center's 35th birthday, this takes the meat of the standard MPC X, which was released in 2017, and adds some 2023 garnish. Actually, garnish probably isn't the word, because the improvements here are far more than decorative. In fact, there are some very practical additions: RAM has been doubled from 2GB to 4GB, and the internal storage capacity has been raised to 48GB, up from 16GB. The additional memory should mean faster loading times and better performance, while the extra space ensures that you can store more large…

TUTORIALS | GET DYNAMIC Music would be very boring indeed without variation, and that's exactly what musical dynamics are all about: variations in loudness. Examples might be a quiet verse leading into a loud chorus, a synth line that gradually increases in volume, some notes within a pattern played louder to accent them, a singer belting out certain words for emphasis, and so on. There may be unintended variations too, such as a bassist or drummer unable to play each note or hit at a constant volume where required. Fixing unintentional problems is one thing, but even deliberate accents and changes in volume will almost certainly need some control to fit the norms of what we as listeners expect to hear in a finished, cohesive mixdown, free of unexpected jolts…

em REVIEWS Since Roland's Jupiter-4 synthesizer first brought the Jupiter moniker to our attention in 1978, it's fair to say that it has since become a byword for synth excellence. The Jupiter-8 that followed in 1981 was a massive 8-voice, polyphonic analog synthesizer with a unique sound that quickly established itself as the Rolls Royce of analog polysynths. This is why functional examples of the Jupiter-8, and its more affordable, MIDI-equipped successor the Jupiter-6, are currently fetching astronomical amounts on the secondhand market. So it was with a happy heart that synth aficionados the world over received the news in 2019 that a new Jupiter for the 21st century was entering production, in the shape of the Roland Jupiter-X. The Jupiter-X is a digital synth, based on Roland's current ZEN-Core…

We use meters to gain an objective view of our audio and part of that process is comparing it to other audio and in particular our favorite reference tracks. With this in mind, the Vision 4X bar graph analyzer includes a choice of 17 reference curves with styles including DnB, hip hop, techno, dubstep, classical and jazz. Each reference includes a pair of line curves with shading in between, and the separation of the curves indicates the dynamic range of the reference. The curves are based on mastered tracks so that dynamic range may be smaller than your mix master. Even so, one can still see from the two-part curve how the dynamic range varies across the frequency range. Alas it's not possible to import audio and generate your own reference…

REVIEWS | STEINBERG HALION 7 Steinberg's HALion (standalone, VST, AU, and AAX) is a do-everything plugin and features sampling, virtual instruments, a wealth of sound design and synthesis options and over 37GB of content. Version 6 was a big chapter in its story, a life which began as a humble virtual sampler way back in 2001. The Wavetable Zone was added to VA, granular and organ engines, the sampling options were increased and piano, brass and string instruments were included. Version 6 was designed to improve on HALion in some key ways. It had very much become a fabulous sound design tool, with plenty of elements to twist and turn the ingredients into something new, or create entirely fresh instruments. It did feel a little cumbersome, though – almost too…

What makes the Minimoog what it is? Any seasoned user will tell you it's in the gutsy and full-toned sound of the original hardware. Some will say it's the simplicity. While it is easy to reminisce, there is no doubt that synthesis has moved apace since the original machine debuted. It's hardly surprising that attempts to hark back to the original sound will be favorably looked upon by seasoned users. One of the many additions to the Minimonsta form can be located in the upper portion of the plugin window. The XLFO and XADSR sections allow cross modulation. Drawn from either dedicated LFOs or envelopes, the LFOs will also sync to your DAW. However, if this ability doesn't interest you, the handy Retract button removes these parameters from view, along with…

IN THE STUDIO | GRYFFIN Dan Griffith, aka Gryffin, is a DJ and San Francisco native, a songwriter and record producer who is fast carving himself out a fanbase of millions across Spotify and YouTube. He released his debut (and critically acclaimed) album Gravity in 2019, after making a name with a variety of melodic house tunes, including ‘Heading Home' with Josef Salvat (a Number One on the Spotify US charts) and ‘Just For A Moment' ft. Iselin (which has hit 51 million views on YouTube and counting). Since then he's worked with Maroon 5, Carly Rae Jepsen, Aloe Blacc, AlunaGeorge, One Republic, Olivia O'Brien, and MØ among many others. So when he teamed up with Norwegian and Ed Sheeran remixer DJ Kygo late last year, the project was almost…

em TUTORIALS WHAT ARE THEY? Compressors even out a signal's dynamic range or shape its dynamic response, but can't always act quickly enough to catch the fastest peaks. A limiter is a compressor that reduces the fastest peaks via a very fast attack, release and a ratio of 10:1 or higher. Designs vary depending on attenuation: analog-style ‘limiting amplifiers' are simply heavy-handed compressors, and add flavor; a digital ‘brickwall' limiter, a transparent design with infinite ratio, gets its name from its output ceiling that acts as an absolute barrier. To engage a limiter's gain reduction, there is usually a dedicated input gain control: increasing this turns up the signal, pushing it harder into the limiter. The output ceiling is a set dB value past which no audio can go: the…

REVIEWS | RHODES V8 Some instruments are iconic: the Minimoog, Stradivarius violin, Steinway pianos, and we'd like to suggest one other instrument which fits a similar cult status, which can be referred to by a single word: Rhodes. Electro-mechanical software design So what is a Rhodes? In essence, it is an electric piano, but it resides in the electro-mechanical design camp. An original hardware Rhodes provides a piano-style keyboard, which triggers hammers that strike an element known as a tine. You can think of these as being the equivalent of strings on a piano, the added quotient being that the tine moves across a pickup, much like those found on an electric guitar, inducing an amplified signal (there is a little more to it than that, but that's the bare…

The level of modulation in HALion 7 has always been high but Steinberg have given it an overhaul with v7. Changing how sounds dynamically morph is easier than ever. The controls display their modulator sources once you click them, and a drop-down menu allows you to add new ones. HALion also lets you go in and edit Sources to quite a degree and again, it's super-simple to do this. The Modulation system works particularly well in areas of HALion like the all-new Spectral Zone where you can apply velocity, for example, to the Purity or Accelerate parameters for some great real-time changes as you play. Create more lively filtered action in a bass sound, for example, or jittery speed effects depending on LFOs or other sources. Modulation often takes second place…

You would be forgiven for thinking Impact Soundworks' Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits might be a bombastic ensemble-based collection geared toward ‘big' film score work. However, after reading further on the product page – and seeing the picture of a relatively modest-sized conventional drum kit – it became clear that this isn't really the case. In fact, after loading this Kontakt-based library for the first time, my primary thoughts were that it offered a well-recorded and immensely playable drum library that could work well in a wide range of contexts. It was only when exploring the ensemble-based presets that I sensed it might also be able to turn its hand to ‘big score' work. However, it was also apparent that my own biases as to what represented a scoring drum kit…

TUTORIALS We often discuss theory through the lens of acquiring knowledge, but this month we're going to round up a few pieces of software that know it all already, and can help you to get it right. Some of these tools will be able to suggest chords to fit into a progression, or a melody that will go over the top of what you have already, while some are just facilitators for getting your notes in order, or doing something you already know more quickly. Some of the tools we'll cover could be thought of as ‘cheat codes' or ‘easy mode' for writing music, but that's not quite the right way to look at them. But this doesn't mean that our new AI overlords have made a knowledge of music…

Oberheim DSX Modern electronic music studios more often than not contain a hodgepodge of equipment from different manufacturers that – thanks to MIDI – can all communicate. This wasn't always the case. Before MIDI, very few synth manufacturers offered communication between instruments, and then it was via gates, triggers and voltages. Most followed the 1-volt-per-octave pitch standard put forth by Moog, while others, like Korg and Yamaha, chose an entirely different, and some might say incompatible, approach. Roland, Oberheim and PPG further complicated the issue by incorporating digital communication busses designed to be used with their own gear. The proprietary Oberheim Parallel Buss allowed that company's flagship devices to be interconnected to form the ‘Oberheim System'. At its heart was the DSX, a polyphonic sequencer that offered nine tracks, at…