Innholdsfortegnelse for Autumn 2017 i Future Music

The Future Of Music Dave Smith announces a desktop version of the Prophet Rev2 True to form Dave Smith Instruments is following up the keyboard version of its popular Prophet Rev2 with a desktop module. Aside from the absence of the keys, the module version is broadly similar to its analogue sibling. Its engine is an update to the classic Prophet ’08, beefed up with twice the polyphony, twice the mod matrix, waveshape modulation on all waveforms, digital effects per layer – in stacked or split voice mode – and a polyphonic step sequencer per layer. The Prophet Rev2 will be available in October priced at $1,799. An 8-voice version will also be released, priced at $1,299.…

Classic Album Track by track with Steve Cobby “We were always interested in straddling two different camps, musically, in the nineties. There were musicians and players, and they were always very sniffy about programming and sampling. Then your DJ culture was very sniffy about playing. We always felt that we were painting with a bigger palette because we had both the digital and the analogue to draw from.” Obrigado “I’d just come back from Portugal, and was taken with the place. ‘Obrigado’ is Portuguese for ‘thank you’. We had a wall in the studio where we’d put prospective song titles, and that went straight up when I got back home. “I’m on either the Korg DW-8000 or the Cheetah MS6, here. Mr McSherry played that acoustic guitar. The drums are…

Albums Om Unit Self Cosmic Bridge A decade into his journey as Om Unit and Bristol-based producer, Jim Coles continues to experiment and grow as an artist. Self is his third studio album, following his 2013 debut, Threads and 2014’s follow-up, Innervision. Like his previous LPs, Self is built on a blueprint that intersects techno, D&B, dubwise, jungle, breaks and footwork, but this time he takes a more spacious and ambient approach to his experimentations. There’s an ’80s science fiction atmosphere that weaves itself into the nooks and crannies of Coles’ imagined dark and rugged landscapes. Stripped back and deconstructed rave tracks bristle with intensity, even without pacey rhythms and upfront 4/4s. Coles manages to inject the potency of his deep bass by allowing space to fill around each sound…

Feature FUTURE FILTERS Essential studio science: sculpt better mixes, create killer FX, add movement & much more! From surgical frequency-shaping to creative sonic carvery, the filter is one of the most essential tools in the audio professional’s arsenal. In the simplest sense, it’s a device that can be used to boost, attenuate or completely remove a signal’s frequency content, and is a fundamental process in many essential music production techniques such as equalisation, synthesis and sound design. Over the next few pages, we’re going to explore the wonderful world of filters, both in the hardware and software realms. We’ve sought advice from one of the most revered software developers in the world, who’ll break down the underlying theory and science of filters, and exactly how they work under the hood,…

Future Filters Bubbling riffs with sequencer-driven filtering Let’s dive deep into electronic territories by carving up a static chord, turning it into a bubbling rhythmic groove… Here’s UAD Moog Multimode Filter XL loaded over a sustained synth chord, which is being sent to an auxiliary delay for a splash of space. Filter modulation can cause wild jumps in volume, especially at high resonance settings, so we’re levelling out dynamics with post-filter compression. The plugin’s 16-step sequencer houses four lanes, and each can modulate one of 23 mod targets. By default, the first lane governs Filter Cutoff offset, so we’ll drag up on a few steps to draw in a simple 1/8th-note pattern. In the second sequencer lane, we’re offsetting Filter Resonance from its base value on every even 1/8th-note. Like…

Custom filter movement with MIDI triggering By hooking MIDI notes up to a filter’s input, we get the ability to control filter modulation rates at will, which is great for getting creative! Following on from our previous three-step tutorial, where we used an external audio signal to trigger filter modulation, we’re now going to branch out and use MIDI notes to instigate modulation change. As long as your filter plugin accepts MIDI, it’s pretty easy to set this routing up in your DAW: create an empty MIDI track, then route its output into your filter’s input. Then it’s simply a case of assigning this MIDI to affect one or more filter parameters, then playing or drawing MIDI notes on this empty trigger channel as your track plays. In this example,…

Future Filters Uncovering the truth behind high-pass filtering From day one of music production school, you’re instructed to apply filters to non-bass elements in a mix, in order to remove clashing low-end frequencies and therefore reclaim mix headroom. Yet when applying a high-pass filter, a signal’s peak level can actually increase! Why exactly is this? And does this mean it’s bad to apply individual filters throughout a mix? Andrew Simper, coding expert and filter guru, fills us in. “This is a good point, and is definitely something to keep in mind. One drawback of using high-pass filters is that, although frequencies are cleaned up, you end up having a more ‘spiky’ signal, which eats up some of your dynamic range – but this is where nonlinear filters can help, as…

In The Studio With Dave Clarke With nearly 30 years in the industry, the now Dutch-based DJ/producer returns from a 14-year studio album hiatus. Danny Turner discovers why the Baron of Techno feels his affiliation to software has enabled him to distil his lifelong love of punk, techno and new wave © Marilyn Clark Signed under the pseudonym Hardcore by legendary Belgian techno-rave imprint R&S Records in the early ’90s, Dave Clarke’s career ignited in 1994 with the techno trilogy Red (Bush Records). This was followed by the more expansive debut Archive One, an album sparkling with hip hop and acid techno fusions. By the mid-’90s, the often outspoken DJ and producer was remixing major acts such as The Chemical Brothers, New Order and Depeche Mode. As well as being…

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 Muzzy, Spectrum We catch up with big room bass don in his Hampshire studio, to find out how he created the D&B monster from his Spectrum EP DON’T MISS: Dapayk & Padberg, Sink This Ship The German duo show us how they created their lush, synth and vocal driven track from thier latest LP. Reset Robot, Guitar Man The tech-house artist deconstructs one of his latest tracks, showing us how he does it in his Southsea studio. Black Saint, Could You Love Me? The London trio break down…

Three cost-effective sub-bass enhancers Need a tool to add punch and power to your low-end? Try these three affordable options… Usually, when creating a track from the ground up, it’s best to design or select low sounds that naturally contain adequate sub bass from the get-go, so you can build the desired weight in from the start. However, if you need to fix a bass-deficient mix, or magically imbue a non-bass signal with sub-rattling power, these tools can work wonders – try ’em on weedy kicks, limp synth basses or badly-recorded bass guitars. These types of enhancers can do more harm than good when overused, though, so apply with care. With so many bass enhancement plugins available, we’ve narrowed down three that do a single job well while offering the…

MODULAR MONTHLY Cosmic percussion from Asteroid Mini Percussion synthesis is hurtling towards us from Blue Lantern Modules Blue Lantern’s Asteroid Mini percussion synth is a flavour all its own. The big red Push button makes us feel like we’re launching into space, aided beautifully by a range of cosmic and far-out synth percussion sounds hiding under a large selection of mini pots and inputs. The Asteroid-Mini-Synthesizer – to give it its full name – is a full (albeit mini in size – 20HP) synth voice in Eurorack format. It’s based around percussion synthesis but can be pushed and pulled to do much more. It has 12 inputs, seven outputs, four switches and 17 knobs – so it’s far from simple in terms of control and sonic manipulation. At the core…

TOOLKIT Pitchshifting Tools We tweak the frequencies and explore how both large and small changes in pitch can make a big difference Broadly, pitchshifting treatments fall into two categories within music production; the processes we undertake in a remedial way to correct errors (using plugins like Auto-Tune or Melodyne), and those we use in a creative context. As you’d expect for the more creative end of the spectrum, there’s no limit to how pitchshifters could usefully make their presence felt. As we’ll see from this month’s walkthroughs, pitchshifting techniques can be used to turn single-line synth parts into ghostly pads. Equally, they can be used for subtle detuning which, in turn, can significantly increase the impact of a single sound as its presence is ‘thickened’ within a track. Most pitchshifting…

Adding pitch width to headline synth parts If you haven’t programmed detune or pitch-widening techniques into your synth parts – you can do this at the processing stage instead Pitch has a powerful impact on our relationship with music and the individual instruments which make up the tracks we listen to. We can tell, immediately, if a singer is out of tune, and yet when we run recorded performances through pitch-correcting software, it’s often the case that the ‘out of tune-ness’ equates to only a few cents either sharp or flat. The reason notes sound out of tune is because they’re notably (if only a little) above or below the other pitches within our tracks, providing an unwelcome clash. However, if sounds are stretched both sharp and flat at the…

Reviews Lewitt LCT 440 Pure £279 The classic choc-ice condenser mic shape gets a new variant. Robbie Stamp puts it to work before it melts. The LCT 440 Pure is a great balance of simplicity, robust design and sonic performance The Lewitt LCT 440 Pure is a neat C414-esque design which balances weight with an impressive robustness. It comes with a quality accessory set: bespoke shockmount and pop filter, foam windshield and leatherette bag. Right out of the box the 440 feels like quality, to the extent that it requires conscious effort to prevent transference of this feeling into the analysis of its sonics. The LCT 440 is a simple condenser mic: fixed cardioid pattern and no pad or low-cut controls. This is unusual in the LCT range, with only…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Cobby & Litten For The Many EP In May, 2017, Cobby hooked up with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at a rally in Hull and got him to spit knowledge on a tune. Respect! ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: For The Many (Original Mix), For The Many (JC Extended Mix), For The Many (Dub) Cobby & Porky Cities Below Future Seas Cobby & Porky released three LPs as The Cutler, but here they run with their government names for this late 2016 outing of tight funk and slung-around future grooves. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Ho’oponopono, Sirens At Dusk, Black Pudding Cobby & Litten Boothferry Narrative piece set to Cobby’s production, inspired by a 1968 Arctic fishing tragedy. Commissioned as part of the Hull City of Culture…

Laraaji Bring on the Sun All Saints Records Harlem-based, new age musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner Laraaji continues his recent rejuvenation with a typically blissful, transcendental and atmospheric album of new ambient meditations. The experimental, contemporary composer has been making music throughout the last four decades, but enjoyed a wider resurgence with All Saints’ 2013 release of his retrospective, Laraaji: Celestial Music 1978 – 2011. Preceded by two gong-driven drone pieces, which was made from the same nine-hour jam session as Bring on the Sun, the new record delves further into the deep, hypnotic and cosmic ambience that has become known simply as ‘Laraaji Music’. His intuitive freeform improvisations float weightlessly and with an ecstatic sense of calm as he creates a mesmerising nebula of other-worldly percussive jams, dream-like…

Future Filters Filtering, resonance and delay How can the modern producer or sound designer go further with filters? Cytomic’s Andrew Simper gives us an overview of the various filter types, and how they can be used practically. “It’s standard practice in mixing to keep different elements of a mix apart from each other in terms of overlapping frequencies, as this keeps them sounding clear. A clean, EQ-type high-pass and low-pass filter are especially useful for this, since this is exactly what they’re designed for. A new dimension can be added by using non-linear filters as exciters. Nonlinear, synth-type filters tend to add the most distortion at the cutoff frequency, so you can use them to not only keep frequencies bounded, but also add some sparkle at the same time. “For…

QUICK TIPS Get the most out of filters It’s fun to grab a MIDI keyboard or mic and lay down musical ideas. But what next? Run your parts through an LFO-driven filter, of course! Automate settings to get your pumping alongside beats; or print parameter tweaks straight to audio for instant source material. Filter-wielding ninjas aren’t afraid of loops from sample packs. Get to know a couple of all-purpose filters inside and out, and you’ll be able to completely transform any stock loop. FabFilter’s much-loved Pro-Q 2 equaliser can be a wild, creative comb filter. Dial in multiple EQ boosts and cuts, drag and highlight all the nodes on the main display to select them all, then wiggle Frequency to move all the EQ points in tandem. High-pass at around…

Instant bass enhancement and focus with a resonant filter Adding resonance to a high-pass filter is a time-honoured technique that many producers swear by. Here’s how to do it in your DAW easily Little Labs’ Voice of God is an iconic bass-boosting hardware device (also available as a UAD-2 plugin) that’s found fame in countless studios thanks to its ability to impart chest-shuddering low end into even the wimpiest signals. As magic as it might seem, the Voice of God is essentially just a resonant high-pass filter under the hood, and can be replicated with any equivalent filter effect. You can use any filter or EQ as a bass-boosting device. First, apply a high-pass (or ‘low-cut’) filter over, say, a kick drum, then carefully set its cutoff value around the…

THE TRACK KSO Nasty Stepper Man, 2017 © Adam Gasson Iconoclastic bass music maven Kissy Sell Out has forged a unique path through the dance scene over his eleven-year career, highlights of which include remixing the likes of Calvin Harris, Mark Ronson and The Human League, hosting a Radio 1 show, and even bootlegging R.E.M.’s Nightswimming in a Baltimore club style. Most recently, he’s launched a new bassline-influenced label, Stepper Man, which features releases from a selection of upcoming artists as well as Kissy under his original and new KSO monikers. Future Music hooked up with the muscular man himself in his Shoreditch studio to find out more about his current direction, and the jump-up D&B-influenced track Nasty in particular. What was the inspiration behind KSO - Nasty…

PRODUCER’S GUIDE Producer’s Guide to mixing bass Even with years of mixing experience and an ultra-precise monitoring set-up, the art of mixing low frequencies within a track is never easy. Every record is different: some productions partner a thunderous kick drum with a funky low-mid bass; others keep kicks light and allow the bassline to be the low-end shining star; while others pass primary sub duties between both the kick and bass somehow. No matter how a track’s bass end is built, there are countless pitfalls to avoid, in terms of sound selection, synthesis, arrangement and mixing – but get that bottom-end to translate across all playback mediums, and you’ve probably got a hit on your hands. So in our guide, we’ll walk you through the most vital aspects of…

QUICK TIPS 1 Depending upon your monitoring, it can be tough to decipher a kick drum’s key. To solve that, simply throw a saturation plugin on the kick, overdrive it into hell, then audition its bloated, tonal timbre against the melodic parts in your track. 2 Sub bass is non-directional, and most clubs output a mono signal, so keep subs central for maximum low-end power and focus. Widen a high-passed parallel signal to give subs width. 3 Use an analogue-style high-pass filter to remove unwanted sub from a bass part, then overdrive the filter to create warmth and emphasis around the cutoff point. 4 When synthesizing sub bass, start and end clicks at non-zero crossings are annoying. Raising amp envelope attack and release can relieve those pops a bit, but…

FM CHOICE Six top pitchshifters Eventide H3000 Factory | $349 Famous for their range of hardware Harmonizers, Eventide’s plugin lets you do wild and crazy things with pitchshifting, with modulation options aplenty. Antares Auto-Tune | £399 It’s most famous these days for its T-Pain-alike hyper-tuned vocal effects, but Auto-Tune is highly capable of more ‘natural’ and creative pitchshifting capabilities too. GRM Shift | €200 With a pitchshifting algorithm which should make you sit up and take note, GRM Shift is capable of everything from subtle detune to more radical pitch offsets. Celemony Melodyne | from €99 Melodyne does polyphonic tuning, pitch correction, formant shifting and more. Melodyne’s feature set makes it a go-to choice for creative professionals. UAD Eventide H910 Harmonizer | $249 This lets you warp pitch in a…

Reviews Cyclone Analogic TT-303 Bass Bot V2 £389 The TB-303 legacy looms large. Bruce Aisher checks out Cyclone Analogic’s take on this diminutive classic Back in 1981, nobody could have predicted that over 35 years later a little cheap single-oscillator synth-andsequencer combo would still provoke such interest, but such has been the fate or Roland’s TB-303 Bass Line. Originally conceived as a basic bass accompaniment machine to partner Roland’s TR-606 drum machine, the 303 was initially embraced by early synth-pop artists, but ultimately found fame with the rise of Chicago house music, especially when some strands of its sound become harder-edged, giving rise to acid house. Phuture’s Acid Tracks is the archetypal acid track, and makes use of only a TB-303 and a TR-707 drum machine. This was characteristic of…

Reviews Analogue Solutions Mr Hyde £255 Bruce Aisher testdrives the first of Analogue Solutions’ new range of desktop signal processors Mr Hyde is a straightforward multimode filter plus modulating LFO combo Analogue Solutions have been hard at work designing and building analogue music gear for nearly 25 years. Predating the current analogue and modular revival, and with an ever-evolving product range, AS are known for producing analogue synths and drum modules that stick as close as possible to the principle of 100% analogue audio signal paths (and analogue LFOs and envelope generators). It would be easy to dismiss them as a company stuck in the past, were it not for the fact that they were one of the earliest brands to embrace the Eurorack format. Mr Hyde is the first…

Reviews M-Audio Hammer 88 £399 Stuart Bruce chips away at this full-size weighted keyboard with an excellent selection of virtual instruments It’s comfortable to play and feels very positive under the fingers At first glance, the Hammer 88 is a very simple and rather elegant-looking master keyboard which feels solid and satisfyingly heavy, while still being a simple one-person lift. The keyboard itself is weighted but is certainly at the lighter end of the scale – it’ll suit anyone used to a piano, and synth users won’t take long to adjust either. Additional control on the front panel is minimal: a volume slider, some up/down buttons and pitch and mod wheels. To the rear are connections for sustain, soft and expression pedals, plus a USB connector and a standard MIDI…

Reviews Dato Duo €329 An open source, family-friendly synth designed to be played by two. Si Truss buddies up… Whenever a new compact or affordable instrument appears on the market these days, there’ll be some that deride it as a mere ‘toy’, no matter the quality of its sound or extent of its feature set. In the case of the Dato Duo, however, this dynamic is reversed; despite being pitched on Kickstarter primarily as a family-friendly educational tool, beneath its colourful surface lies a deceptively well-spec’d synth/sequencer combo. Duo has a two-sided interface for playing by two people facing each other, but can also be operated solo. It’s designed so newbie synthesists can tweak its various knobs, buttons and sliders without any sonic mistakes, by offering control over the synth…

Beat building – Arturia Spark 2 I’ve got Spark 2 software with a MIDI keyboard for input – how do I go about beat making? Arturia Spark’s onboard engine sounds excellent and the extensive sound library has lots of sonic depth/punch and girth but also plenty of clarity too in the mids/top-end. The engine itself is very flexible offering samples, modelling and some tasty processing effects. So it’s a great alternative to an MPC Studio/Maschine, particularly if you buy the Spark hardware controller to use as your input device. If you don’t have the controller, use any MIDI pad controller/keyboard to input events into the sequencer. Here’s how to make a quick beat… First off, load up an instance of Spark into an instrument slot in your DAW. Here we’re…

IK unveil the iRig Keys IK Multimedia has announced the iRig Keys I/O – a combined 24-bit/96kHz audio interface and MIDI controller keyboard designed to work with iOS, Windows and MacOS. Coming in 25- and 49-key variations, the iRig Keys I/O is kitted out with velocity sensitive full-size keys, eight velocity sensitive pads and programmable touch-sensitive sliders, buttons and knobs. Take a look around the back of the unit and you have balanced stereo and headphone outputs, plus a combo input jack for line, instrument or mic input with 48V phantom power. You’ll also find gain control for the combo port and a sustain pedal input jack. The more mobile producers among us will be pleased to know that Keys I/O can either be powered by USB, four AA batteries…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Ariel Pink Dedicated to Bobby Jameson Mexican Summer Three years on from his widely-acclaimed album Pom Pom, LA’s outspoken, prodigal DIY singer and songwriter Ariel Pink is back with a glittering new album. His eleventh LP overall and his first for Brooklyn’s zeitgeist imprint, Mexican Summer, the new record sees the innovative artist returning to more of the home-spun, bedroom lo-fi sounds that first announced his uncompromising, subversive and singular style to enlightened circles. Inspired by the life of Bobby Jameson, an LA cult figure who was on the verge of popularity in the ’60s but never broke through, instead facing issues with drugs and attempted suicide, this record finds Pink returning to basics and spinning plenty of his idiosyncratic charm. Melting together psych pop, spun-out…

RECOMMENDED Shigeto The New Monday Ghostly International Four years on from his last solo album, No Better Time than Now, Zachary Saginaw releases his most diverse and ambitious Shigeto record yet on Ghostly International. The New Monday sees the dynamic producer shifting into a more dancefloor-orientated sound. His trademark jazzy textures, abstract excursions and sophisticated musicality is still there, but is fused together with more bass-driven elements than ever before. Inspired by his move back to Michigan after several years in Brooklyn, Saginaw straddles house, techno, footwork, jazz and hip hop in what feels like a love letter to the rich heritage of Detroit’s ever-evolving music scene. The record shares the same expansive, forward-thinking outlook as No Better Time... and The New Monday sees Saginaw traversing genres, tempos and atmospheres with…

Using mix elements to trigger filter modulation With Cytomic The Drop’s external sidechain input, we can use any audio from our DAW to trigger modulation – here’s how to make the most of it We asked Cytomic’s Andrew Simper for filter-modulating tips. “Since The Drop has a secondary audio input, you can use any audio signal as the source for modulation. This opens up a world of creative possibilities, because suddenly you can have a virtually unlimited number of mod sources. You can use the regular summing in your DAW to process modulation signals and send them to the plugin; or you can use delay, reverb, EQ, compression, or anything else you can do to an audio source. In other words, you can get some seriously cool sounds!” To put…

Future Filters Audio-rate filter modulation Imagine a sine LFO smoothly sweeping a filter’s cutoff up and down. When the LFO is cycling around at a speed below 20Hz, we perceive this low-frequency oscillation as an obvious wobble of the filter’s frequency. Speed the LFO rate up into audio-rate territories, however, and the wobble increasingly blurs, introducing complex harmonic overtones and noise-like dissonance into the filtered signal. This is akin to FM synthesis, whereby the frequency (pitch) of one oscillator is used to modulate another’s for a similar sort of harmonic complexity. As it’s such a dissonant effect, audio-rate filter modulation is usually best used for trashy drum-mangling, sci-fi FX design and lo-fi degradation. Cytomic head honcho Andrew Simper goes deeper into the complexities of coding this type of rapid filter…

Future Filters Cleaning up a sample with draw-your-own filtering Filters are essential tools for sample-loving producers. Let’s look at how they can be used to remove unwanted elements from a sampled loop. We’re starting with this rugged breakbeat loop. As with most breaks, our bar-long loop contains kicks, snares and ‘in between’ hi-hats and ghost hits. Although the hits are weighty, there’s plenty of muddy frequency content swimming around in the break’s bass and low-mid regions… Before we filter, we’re using a multiband gate (with three bands active) to clamp down on the two lowest bands (bass and low-mid) immediately after the loudest peaks punch through. In contrast to static EQ or filtering, this keeps the high-mid and treble loose, but tightens low-end punch. Our multiband…

Mixing Bass Understanding low frequencies It’s important to be aware of typical bass trends in your chosen genre. Songs destined for radio play are all about midrange elements like vocals, guitars, synths and pianos; and while pop producers often take inspiration from bass-heavy underground music in a stylistic sense, there usually won’t be a massive amount of sub frequencies in the mix – most punters are consuming music through puny speaker systems that don’t have the ability to reproduce low bass. When producing for smaller speakers, the key thing to emphasise in the mix is the impression of bass, via clever mixing of the low mids and midrange. The midrange region is probably the most important area of any mix to get right, as it’s where all the important elements…

In The Studio With Bok Bok The UK club chameleon and Night Slugs co-founder returned in 2017 with four of his grittiest tracks since his entry to the scene. Leo Maymind talks hardware, the merits of bitcrushing and vintage chip burners with the DJ and producer The past few years have been busy for South Londoner Alex Sushon, better known as Bok Bok… although you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell from looking at his solo discography. Much of his time has been spent DJing, both in the UK and abroad, and running the now-ubiquitous Night Slugs, the label and club night he co-founded in 2008 with James Connoly, aka L-Vis 1990. Sushon’s background in graphic design – he previously worked at an advertising agency – means he also oversees…

In The Studio With Primitive Trust For their new project, Will Saul and Tom Mangan take inspiration from self-enforced gear limitations and “wigged-out synthwork and propulsive rhythms.” Danny Turner catches up to talk production philosophies Some bands take longer to form than others. Despite being admirers of each other’s work for over a decade, it was a chance meeting at a music festival in Morocco that cemented the friendship of Will Saul, head of Aus Music, and Tom Mangan, previously of Cass & Mangan/Deadset, and owner of label/clothing brand Millionhands. Coincidentally, Mangan had just moved within 20 minutes of Saul’s Somerset home and recently set up his woodshed studio. It was here that the duo would create the foundations for the project Primitive Trust. Three EPs have now been released,…

QUICK TIPS 1 Use Pitchshifting tools to teach yourself more about harmony. By understanding which notes work alongside others, you can create pitch treatments which blend musically with your tracks. 2 Don’t forget that your DAW is likely to contain offline processors for shifting pitch as well as plugins. Creating a ‘permanently’ pitch-adjusted audio file is a good idea if the original is consistently out of tune, getting it fixed for good. 3 Another creative way to work with shifting pitch is to load an audio file into a sampler and use pitchbend to warp and blend pitch in unusual and imaginative ways. 4 Pitchshifters also form the backbone of plenty of voice effects in film and TV. Cartman from Southpark and Alvin (of Chipmunk fame) are but two characters…

TT-303 VERSIONS Although the TT-303 V2, on review here, is both cosmetically and functionally different to the first version, the version labelling is somewhat confusing. Hence the reason that we’re referring to the different hardware iterations as MkI and MkII in the main review. The main point of confusion is the fact that the first Cyclone TT-303 was updated with a new OS during its lifecycle - OS V2 - and as such you would see earlier references to the TT-303 V2. Following this logic, the new TT-303 should be V3. Yes - its confusing! Ultimately, the latest TT-303, whilst being less charming – or copyright infringing – in its looks, is better in the vast majority of areas.…

MULTIMODE FILTERS Low-pass filters are a mainstay of any subtractive synthesis system, allowing the spectral content of rich raw waveforms to be varied quickly and intuitively. Other types of analogue filtering are quite easily achievable - and many vintage polysynths offer a global high-pass filter to thin out the low-end, or even semi-independent HPF and LPF in the case of some vintage Yamaha synths - but it is perhaps less common to find multimode designs like the one on this new AS unit. Oberheim’s SEM module was one such example which, like Mr Hyde, features a sweepable 12dB/octave filter. SEM-style synths have been at the core of Analogue Solutions’ product catalogue for many years.…

Reviews Soundcraft Ui24R £899 The popular remote-controlled digital mixer range has a new arrival. Jon Musgrave hooks up the latest 24-channel design It’s a great unit that’s flexible, easy to use, and given the spec, is priced pretty competitively Soundcraft’s Ui mixers combine a wi-fi equipped hardware interface with remote software control. The Ui24R marks a bit of an upgrade over previous models (the Ui12 and Ui16), and not only in terms of scale but also in terms of spec – key improvements include 20 quiet Studer-designed mic preamps, 22 track audio recording and playback via onboard USB stick (USB A), and full 32-channel USB DAW I/O (USB B). The Ui24R also has considerably more connectivity, with ten combi mic/line inputs (two switchable to Hi-Z), ten further XLR mic inputs,…