Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Future Music

SCAN TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER It’s a full three decades since Future Music launched in 1992. While it would be disingenuous of me to try and reminisce about those early days, seeing as I was still in primary school at the time, I’ve had the pleasure of editing FM for over a quarter of its lifetime. Somehow these two facts make me feel simultaneously young and old... I’ve spent much of the past few weeks knee deep in a pile of old issues in order to put together this anniversary special. I’ve also had the pleasure of being joined by twotime former FM editor (and current ed of our sister mag Computer Music) Andy Jones in collating this issue’s cover feature. Our aim has been not so much to…

> Having previously worked on a synth with Novation and a microtuning plugin with Oddsound, Aphex Twin (aka Richard James) has now released a free “custom sample mashing app” known as Samplebrain. This open-source software works by chopping samples up into a ‘brain’ of small, interconnected sections called blocks, which are grouped into a network based on their similarity. This then processes a target sample, chopping it up into blocks in the same way, and attempts to match each block with one in its brain for real-time playing. The idea is that you’re interpreting one sound with another. There are plenty of tweakable parameters – some with intriguing names such as ‘novelty’, ‘boredom’ and ‘stickyness’ – and, pleasingly, the software is said to be “slightly out of control”. If that…

Unsurprisingly, making electronic music in 1992 was a considerably different process to what it is now. When the first issue of Future Music arrived in October of that year, digital music making technology was still in a state of relative infancy. In that first issue, we showed you how to add feel to a drum groove in Cubase – afeature that might not feel out of place in FM today, although the software itself is absolutely unrecognisable. Running on Atari ST, Macintosh or Windows, beat-making in the ‘92 iteration of Steinberg’s DAW involved dragging crude markers around a black-and-white grid that looked more like an incredibly basic spreadsheet application than an inspiring creative tool. Elsewhere, we debated the merits of the top 10 sample CDs – acutting edge format at…

The 1990s were all about virtual analogues or feature-packed digital synths. The company that kick-started the former category – so arguably also had a hand in much of the software we use today – were Clavia, with the original Nord Lead 1. With just four voices of polyphony, a basic architecture and no effects, it doesn’t seem outstanding in today’s terms but back in 1995 it was a game-changer. Synths back then were knobless, black and menu-driven machines that weren’t a lot of fun. Then out of nowhere – actually Sweden – came this red synth with loads of knobs, a wooden pitch stick and enough space on its front panel for a library of instruction manuals. Without wishing to stereotype: if IKEA had made a synth, it would have…

Massive analogue polysynth in the early 2000s? Alesis? Are you kidding? Even two decades on we’re still in shock that Andromeda actually happened, let alone it being produced by a company that is now famous for cheap speakers and controller keyboards. Yet Andromeda did happen, and it’s quite possibly the best synth – or at least one of the most important – of the 21st century. In 2001 synths were still VA or largely digital and Alesis had just restructured after filing for bankruptcy. They had produced ground-breaking products in the past – ADAT and Quadraverb being the most notable, while their SR and HR-16 drum machines were bestsellers. But rather than play it safe after near extinction, Alesis then just went for it, releasing the Andromeda A6. This was…

CRAMMED THE BEST BITS OF THE MS2000 INTO A MINI KEYBOARD POWERED BY SIX BATTERIES It has tiny keys, not enough controls for its virtual analogue engine, is quite difficult to use, and suffered pretty middling reviews on release. It even has the wrong name if you think about it (microSynth anyone?). Yet Korg’s microKorg is quite possibly one of the best – and certainly longest – selling synthesisers ever made. At the start of the century we were surrounded by virtual analogue synths, and Korg jumped on board with the MS2000 synth and rack. This was a great entry for Korg, sold well and truly opened the ‘hands-on control’ door the Prophecy unlocked. But back in 2002, someone at Korg must have been thinking about a portable version and…

The Minilogue arrived against the backdrop of a boom in affordable analogue synths. By 2016, hardware-loving music makers were spoiled for choice, with the likes of Arturia’s Mini- and MicroBrutes, Novation’s Bass Station 2 and Korg’s own Volca range all jostling for attention in the sub-£500 bracket. Minilogue stood out though, due not only to its polyphony – ararity amongst a sea of monosynths – but the fact that it felt like a proper, substantial instrument, rather than a compact compromise like many of the Volcas or Roland’s Boutique range. Although the Minilogue’s slim keys and the relatively modest voice count belies its status as an affordable instrument, the ruggedly built interface, equipped with hands-on controls for almost every parameter, allows for the sort of proper, tactile sound programming experience…

It took until the release of the Mother-32 in 2016 for Moog to properly wade into the modern modular waters. That first entry into the ‘Mother’ range was a fairly straightforward instrument, a single oscillator monosynth equipped with a 32-step sequencer, 32-point patchbay and classic Moog ladder filter. Moog’s follow-up, however, was anything but conventional. An initialisation of Drummer From Another Mother, DFAM sits in the space somewhere between drum machine and synthesiser. On the one hand, its monophonic signal path with dual oscillators and resonant ladder filter is classic Moog synth fodder. However, the snappy envelopes – with control over just the decay length – combined with its routable noise generator and basic eight-step sequencer, means the instrument is particularly well-suited to punchy, percussive sounds. Core to DFAM’s character…

CONTACT WHO: Roland WEB: roland.com KEY FEATURES TONE GENERATION: Various ZEN-Core MODEL sound engines (Juno-60, Juno-106, Juno-X, XV5080, RD-Piano, Vocoder) KEYS: 61 velocity-sensitive, synth-action with channel aftertouch DIMENSIONS: 1,072 x 333 x 118 mm WEIGHT: 11.6 kg THE PROS & CONS + Oodles of original Juno mojo in a solidly built chassis Stunning looks and familiar layout Immense, authentic sound - Tiny screen can be confusing Speakers are underwhelming Steep learning curve for in-depth sound design Roland’s Juno-106 analogue polysynth, launched in 1984, holds a cherished place. One of the first truly affordable MIDI-equipped polysynths, and an acknowledged cornerstone of ’80s music, the 106 remains sought after. Having already revived the equally legendary Jupiter line with the Jupiter X and Xm, we now get the Juno-X. With the current market…

> If you’re a fan of free plugins, you have to check out Full Bucket Music. The German developer has released some great – and great value for money – plugins that can be tracked down at fullbucket.de. Synths like ModulAir and WhispAir, plus the FB-3100 series, which emulates Korg’s PS-3100, -3200 and -3300 synths, are not to be missed, alongside a huge number of other synths and effects. Full Bucket encourage donations to keep them feeling good-natured, and so do we! The plugin in question in this article was first made available in 2012, but has recently been updated ten years after the fact. Here we’ll shed some light on Frequency Shifter 2. LFO > Full Bucket Frequency Shifter’s LFO has five LFO shapes to choose from. Using the…

> Following a limited-time production run in 2019, Moog have now formally brought the Model 10 modular synth back into production.  First introduced in 1971, this compact, fully analogue instrument features 11 discrete modules, including the 907 Fixed Filter Bank and three 900 Series oscillators. It’s a simpler beast than the Model 15, its successor, and focuses on “purity of sound, speed, and simplicity”. The new Model 10s are set to be built to order using the original engineering and manufacturing techniques and traditional wiring methods. Each module will be tested, finished with an aluminium panel and then placed in the custom wood, Tolex-wrapped cabinet. There are several enhancements for the reissue, too, including an updated power supply that supports a wider range of selectable voltages (so users outside the…

> Apogee have become the latest pro-level audio company to release a more affordable audio interface, following the trend set by SSL and Universal Audio. It’s called Boom, and is a 2-in/2-out device that connects via USB-C. There’s a little more to Boom than that, though, because it also has some onboard DSP. This enables you to record through the Symphony ECS Channel Strip; tuned by legendary mixer engineer Bob Clearmountain, this gives you analogue-style 3-band EQ, compression and drive. Boom offers one 1/4-inch instrument input and one combi mic/ line/instrument input. Apogee are keen to talk up the quality of the onboard preamp, which offers 62dB of gain. At the other end of the signal chain, there are two 1/4-inch balanced outputs and a 1/4-inch headphone output. Again, Apogee…

In 1993, dance music was at a peak, with the tools used to create it having been produced by Roland a decade before. One of these, the now iconic TB-303 Bass Line, had become a pillar of the dance community because of its ability to produce tearing and squealing basslines and leads that (literally) resonated with dance fans. But with only 10,000 of the original machines made, prices were starting to rise. Roland, however, were not interested in recreating something they’d done before, so it was up to smaller and faster-moving manufacturers to recreate the old sounds for the new masses. Enter Novation… The Bass Station was designed by synth legend Chris Hugget who had produced the mighty OSCar and unique Wasp synths. He was tasked with producing a synth…

PERHAPS ITS MOST FAMOUS USE IS THE MAIN LEAD OF SMACK MY BITCH UP BY THE PRODIGY In the 1990s the big Japanese synth companies finally woke up to the obsession for hands-on control and liquid analogue sounds. While Roland soldiered on with expandable modules (until their JP-8000), both Yamaha and Korg steered their oil tankers back to analogue, albeit in largely digital ways. Yamaha’s response was the CS1x, a digital sound module with knobs on. It must have taken minutes to design but was *whisper* actually pretty good. Korg, meanwhile, came up with something different: hands-on, dirty, analogueish, monophonic and a bit weird… Prophecy was a big sounding monosynth and a lot more. On the one hand it made huge 303-style sounds, utilising a touch strip controller and assignable…

The story of Bob Moog and his company name is: he invented the modern concept of the synth with the Minimoog in 1970, then lost the Moog Music company name, but by 2002 had mostly (bar the UK) got the rights back. To celebrate, what could be better than recreating the original Minimoog with some cool 21st century additions? The resulting Voyager was not just welcomed back as a fantastic nostalgia trip, but warmly received as a future classic in its own right. Yet this synth was even bigger than that. Voyager can now be seen as one of the big synth releases that welcomed back analogue synthesis at the start of the 21st century. No one thought it could ever return – there were rumours that analogue components would…

Like Clavia in the 1990s, Elektron were another Swedish company who designed products on their own terms. With the Monomachine they took the concept of the synth and sequencer groovebox into new dimensions, stuck it into an aluminium box and a keyboard shaped like a cricket bat, added a joystick, and came up with one of the best products of the 2000s. Sometimes you get the impression that you don’t buy Elektron gear to serve a purpose, you serve the gear and it will take you wherever the hell it wants. You don’t necessarily approach Monomachine with a specific idea in mind – it’s more a collaborator. What you both come up with, though, will always sound great and have attitude. Monomachine was the grittier alternative to the ‘always lush,…

As production software became increasingly powerful throughout the ’90s and ’00s, hardware samplers and sequencers began to look obsolete. Why would anyone want to work with a limited and expensive piece of equipment when soft samplers offered vastly superior sampling capacity, increased polyphony and total recall of projects? By 2010, production hardware appeared to be following the paradigm popularised by Maschine – bespoke controllers designed to work in tandem with powerful software. The past decade has seen a reversal in this though. Many of the most successful music-making tools in recent years have been those designed to draw musicians away from their DAWs without completely losing the conveniences offered by software – products such as Akai’s excellent standalone MPCs or Arturia’s Beat- and KeyStep range. With Digitakt, Elektron tapped into…

> Polaris is a collaboration with electronic music composer BT (Brian Transeau), who has had an enduring interest in pushing the boundaries of dance music and beyond (as hyperbolically put by Spitfire). Nevertheless, it is clear that Polaris distills elements from the areas that interest him in terms of sound design. In short, Polaris takes recordings of a modern string orchestra and those derived from a range of synthesisers, and combines them in a number of creative ways. The best way to get a sense of the underlying content (the undiluted sounds and audio performance recordings) is to use the dedicated plugin in its so-called ‘standard’ mode. When presented in this way the software allows you to browse and select from a range of presets, each with their own underlying…

CONTACT WHO: Akai WEB: akaipro.com KEY FEATURES All-in-one sampling and sequencing workstation running Akai’s MPC 2 software. Can also be used as a controller for the desktop version. Akai’s MPC series grew by… one with the new MPC One, released in 2020. A smaller, more portable version of their MPC Live, the One featured the same familiar 4 x4 pad layout, 7” touchscreen, four Q-link knobs and an array of workflow buttons, albeit with less hardware ins and outs but with a more affordable price tag. It’s quickly become the MPC for producers who want to dive into the MPC workflow but haven’t had much experience with these machines in the past. The MPC One is billed as a standalone production device, and with the ability to chop and sequence…

> Universal Audio have made good on their promise to bring the UAD Spark native plugin subscription service to Windows, so PC users can now access some of the company’s best-loved instruments and effects in their DAW without any additional UA hardware. Launched in March 2022, Spark was previously exclusive to macOS. The caveat is that you’ll need to pay $20 a month for the privilege (or $150 a year), though there is a 14-day trial option so you can try before you buy. Owners of UA’s Volt USB audio interfaces receive an extended 30-day trial, and if you already have a perpetual licence for any of the Spark plugins, you’ll receive the native version for free. Spark contains virtual versions of some of the greatest pieces of hardware in music…

> Best known for their expressive controller gloves, Mimu have now released Jellyfish, a “granular dream weaver” plugin. Essentially, you’re getting a granular synthesis engine that can accept real-time audio input and generate all-new sounds – drones, pulses, soundscapes and more. The Jellyfish comes with a library of its own samples or you can import your own or use the live audio option. There are two modes – Drone keeps looping the audio so you’ll always hear a sound (useful for pulsing effects) while in Event you’ll only hear a sound when you start interacting with the Jellyfish graphic that can be moved around the waveform to trigger different parts of the sound. If you want to play The Jellyfish from your MIDI keyboard, use the MIDI Markers feature, which…

Often when writing drums and fills we end up repeating the same patterns, or unconsciously imitating what we are used to hearing. A way of finding inspiration is to let our software create patterns for us, and we can then decide what we like and what we don’t. For the sake of simplicity, in the following example we will write snare fills over a simple dance groove. But don’t limit your imagination to simple things, this technique can be applied to different drum elements, or even melodic lines. We’re using the Live 11 chance function on the MIDI clip, combined with velocity range and a Sample & Hold LFO to change the pitch of the sample. This way we will create potentially infinite variations of snare fills. To take it…

ITS QUALITY, DIVERSITY, EASE OF USE AND EXPANDABILITY, GAVE IT THE KIND OF MOMENTUM NOT EVEN ROLAND COULD HAVE FORESEEN In the 1990s, the world of the synth was (broadly) divided into smaller, newer companies trying to make the sounds of yesteryear for the kids of tomorrow, and the old guard trying to make every other sound. There were virtual analogues for dance music and great big digital workstations designed for everything else. The big Japanese companies, mostly kept their feet in this latter camp, producing keyboards and modules full to the brim with presets, polyphony, multitimbrality, effects… you name it. And Roland were the biggest proponents of the all-singing sound module. In the middle of the decade, their JV-1080 was an unassuming release, just another of these power-packed modules,…

FROM DEPECHE AND JARRE DOWN EVERYONE NODS SAGELY WHEN YOU SEE A VIRUS IN THE STUDIO In the 1990s, Access were creating MIDI controllers for the likes of Oberheim and Waldorf but it wasn’t a direction the company would pursue for long. “We found that building our own synthesiser would be much more fun,” they decided. More fun and successful as it turned out. What they built would define tracks and genres well into the next century. The Access Virus (which became ‘A’) was their first release. While probably not a name synth manufacturers would choose these days, this Virus was very much something people wanted back in the ’90s. On the face of it, it was an out and out virtual analogue machine but actually had a few digital…

WITH EXTRAORDINARY DEPTH, REAL-TIME CONTROLS AND A DYNAMIC SOUND, IT WAS LIKE NOTHING ELSE In the 1990s, you could criticise Roland for not reacting to the needs of the market which was demanding classic analogue Roland sounds. To give them their due, they were trying to forge ahead in other areas. By the start of the 21st century they’d pretty much tried everything including virtual analogue with the JP-8000 and real-time sample warping with their VariPhrase VP9000. They’d reached a ROMpler peak with the finest sound modules, and gone off road with the frankly odd D-Beam technology that was finding its way into so much Roland gear. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t, but they just carried on ploughing their own synth path regardless. What to do with…

Maschine was essentially (if obviously, indirectly) pitched as an MPC for the laptop generation. With its square frame and 16 pads ready for sample slicing and finger drumming, the similarities between Native Instruments’ beatmaker and Roger Linn’s original MPC concept are great. What sets the two devices apart, however, is Maschine’s reliance on software. Whereas – at least back in 2009 – all MPC models made use of internal sampling, Maschine handed off all the actual music making processes to its accompanying software application, which would run on the user’s computer. What made Maschine’s design quietly revolutionary, however, was just how tight the bond between that software and the hardware controller was. We’d already seen plenty of MIDI devices designed to fit a specific application, but Maschine presented a software…

No other brand had the enduring effect on dance music that Roland did with their early ’80s run of synths and grooveboxes. For much of the ’00s, however, Roland were reluctant to revisit the machines that provided the foundations of house and techno. That all changed in 2014 with the arrival of the Aira range, launched with a trio of instruments that, between them, aimed to emulate the sound of some of the company’s most iconic instruments. Those initial Aira instruments were a mixed bag. The 303-inspired TB-3 although capable of producing some solid acid sounds, housed them in a garish, touchscreen-equipped unit that missed the appeal of the original. Of those first Airas, the TR-8 drum machine was the highlight. While it’s black-and-green styling and lack of analogue circuitry…

>An amazing rinse-out round of loops, samples, MIDI, and Serum presets, taking us back to the DnB days of yore. The blistering beats and basslines in this 1GB+ old skool pack are ready to transport you to a time when heavily chopped Amen loops, ravey synths, and cone-melting dub bottom-end was tearing up the dance. The 150+ loops run at 160-165bpm and work a treat against each other, with the dynamite one-shots, multi-sample kits, and three fully loaded construction kits only sweetening the deal. Vibe-wise, the shadow of scene superstars like (Timeless-era) Goldie and Dillinja loom large over this one. So, if you’re after an authentic taste of that early ’90s sound, you’ll wanna wheel this lot up right now. Roy Spencer loopmasters.com VERDICT 9.0 Industrial Strength – Blue Note…

Over the past 30 years, we’ve been first-hand witnesses to a lot of changes in the ways we make music. Having spent much of this 30th anniversary issue taking stock of where we’ve been, let’s take a punt at guessing where we’re going. What will music technology look like in 30 years’ time? In 2052 we may well be laughing at everything that we got wrong… Everything, everywhere A recurring trend throughout the development of music tech has been a slow march toward simplified connectivity. Through the introduction of MIDI, downsizing of audio interfaces, the implementation of things like Firewire, Thunderbolt, USB-C and Bluetooth, over the past few decades it’s become far simpler to get the various devices in your studio to talk to one another, and those connections are…