Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i Future Music

It’s fair to say the bass is a staple sound of electronic music makers. When it comes to dance music, certainly, a good bassline – or at least, something interesting in the bass frequencies – can be what makes or breaks a track. If you’re an electronic musician, there’ll almost certainly come a time when you’ll want, or need, to synthesise a bass sound. While there’s no end of great samples or presets out there, learning the fundamentals for yourself can be a workflow game-changer. That’s what we’re focusing on this issue. We’re not going to show you how to recreate specific bass sounds. Instead, we’re diving into the fundamentals of what makes synth bass work, along with a variety of approaches to crafting and refining your sounds. We hope…

Cherry Audio has released its first drum machine, a plugin emulation of the much-loved Roland CompuRhythm CR-78 from 1978. The CR-78 used analogue synthesis to make sounds that are more delicate than you’ll find in later boxes like the 808 and 909. It can be heard on records by the likes of Blondie (Heart Of Glass), Phil Collins (In The Air Tonight) and Hall & Oates (I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)). As you’d probably expect, Cherry Audio’s emulation promises to recreate the sound and look of the original, but potential buyers will be pleased to see it also adds 16- or 24-step X0X-style programming for a smoother sequencing workflow. There’s a song mode for pattern chaining and looping, swing and velocity features, and an extensive preset library…

It might be free and open-source, but Audacity certainly isn’t an audio editor that’s failing to move with the times. It recently got itself a new suite of plugins that are powered by Intel’s OpenVINO AI toolkit, and it sounds like some of them could be pretty useful. First up, we have Music Generation and Music Style remix, both of which use the Stable Diffusion AI model – specifically in its Riffusion guise – to create either new music from a prompt, or existing music. Music Separation, on the other hand, does what it says on the tin: breaks a song up into either vocal or instrumental parts, or into vocal, drums, bass and a combined ‘anything else’ part. Stem Separation is increasingly common; not only does it form the…

It’s happening: Suzuki has confirmed that the new Omnichord, which it announced last year, will be called the OM-108, and will be released in July 2024.  The Omnichord has always been an instrument that’s been designed to be playable even by those with little or no music-making experience, and the OM-108 stays true to this philosophy. A set of chord selection buttons sits to the left, and a strummable touchstrip enables you to play them (as well as individual notes from the chords). There’s a definite ‘can’t go wrong’ vibe here, and you can choose the flavour of your chords with the major, minor and seventh buttons, also dialling in sus4 and add9 variations where appropriate. The OM-108 uses analogue circuitry to emulate the sounds of the classic OM-84 models…

Trance and techno pioneers Juno Reactor began life as a loose and lively art collective. Head honcho, Ben Watkins, fondly remembers the time he and his wife drove a surface-to-air missile past Big Ben as an anti Gulf War protest. As the ’90s soldiered on, he and his ever-evolving lineup focused more on the music, turning out three albums that pushed the envelope for the electronic music genre, before work began on their masterpiece – Bible Of Dreams. The album was pieced together in Watkins’ Dickensian warehouse over by Shoreditch, a studio space made sonically perfect thanks to a recently installed system that was hand-crafted by sound expert (and now Watkins’ label boss) Robert Trunz. “That changed it all,” Watkins says. “He put in a really big Raindirk Symphony desk,…

Electronic music makers have a bit of a reputation for being solitary creatures. The phrase “bedroom producer” is often used to describe modern, laptopbased music makers, and it’s a term that suggests a somewhat lonely image of creativity; the solo musician hunched over a screen with just their music gear for company. This is a bit of a misnomer though. Electronic music is an inherently sociable artform, designed to be consumed in communal environments, and a quick scan of the latest dance charts and playlists will make it evident just how many great tracks are a product of artists working together or remixing one another. Even if it’s not done in person, modern communication technology makes it easier than ever to collaborate remotely. Doing so can be a great way…

> Whether or not you believe in the healing powers of sound, there is no doubting the appealing audio qualities of so-called singing bowls. The tone any given object is capable of making is broadly defined by its shape and the manner in which it is struck. Circular objects tend to give off a relatively unchanging sound spectra, and one often heavily dominated by a single fundamental frequency. Singing bowls are no exception, giving out a pure tone almost like a sine wave. It is with this spirit in mind that Spitfire have embraced the recording of seven quartz crystal bowls. These were played by composer Aska Matsumiya in the spacious surroundings of Hackney Round Chapel in London and recorded using six different beaters with three variously distanced mic positions.…

Baby Audio Atoms $99 Full Review: FM407 Atoms is a characterful and natural-sounding electronic instrument. Come for the otherworldly pads, stay for the surprisingly hard-hitting bass. u-he Diva €179 Diva is a little long in the tooth these days, but it’s still one of the most powerful and popular virtual analogue synths going. Cherry Audio Sines $49 Sines is a unique and original synth based around the complex interaction of sinewave oscillators. It’s a bargain at under £/$50. Kilohearts Phase Plant $199 Review: FM350 Phase Plant’s modular design comes with a slightly high learning curve, but it also brings masses of power and flexibility. FabFilter Twin 3 £109 An update to a modern classic. Fabfilter Twin 3 is the perfect balance between vintage influence and contemporary design. Arturia Pigments $199…

Universal Audio Apollo Twin X £880 As with Apollos before it, the Twin X is pricey for the amount of ins and outs it offers, but the quality of the build, preamps and design, plus DSP in Duo or Quad justifies the outlay. Audient iD4 MkII £138 Review: FM373 A simple 2-in/2-out design coupled with smart, user-friendly features and impressive build quality. Possible the best budget interface out there. Universal Audio Volt 76 from £215 Review: FM379 UA’s first affordable interface are great, with a spritz of hard-to-resist recording history magic on top. SSL 2+ £226 Review: FM356 The 2+ more than lives up to the promise of offering the Solid State Logic name and sound from a piece of budget-friendly audio gear. Arturia MiniFuse 2 £115 Review: FM377 MiniFuse…

SoundGhost makes fun, intuitive plugins that are easy to use; last year brought its granular reverb plugin Scatter, but this month the brand has announced the release of a new plugin: Jumble. Jumble is described by SoundGhost as a "randomised sample explorer". Drop any audio into this sampler plugin and its sample playhead will shift between random positions within the loop to create new patterns and ideas in sync with your DAW's tempo; the length of the gate can be adjusted along with the rate that the playhead shifts to a new position. The plugin's amp section lets you adjust the fade in and out times for each sample snippet, along with a handy gain knob. Jumble is also equipped with a state-variable filter with low- and high-pass modes along…

The proverb is that "anyone who loves the law or sausages should never watch either being made", but Swedish duo Dada Life appear to disagree. Famed for their much-loved Sausage Fattener plugin, they are now giving you access to their Secret Sauce. This takes the form of a three-plugin bundle that contains a reverb, a riser effect and a stereo widener. The term secret sauce is often used to describe that almost intangible stardust that the best producers seem capable of sprinkling on their tracks, but Dada Life seem to think that they’ve managed to distil this into something practical and real. “They say you should never give away the secret ingredient,” they explain. “Well, we just did!” The first cab off the Secret Sauce rank is Space-In-Your-Face, a reverb…

Oeksound is one of those companies that brings plugins that make your music sound better, but you're not always quite sure how or why. The company's new Bloom processor looks to continue the trend; after reading and re-reading its press release, we're still not sure what it is or how it works. But knowing Oeksound, it will work. Oeksound doesn't release that many plugins, but they have all made a big impression. 2018's Spiff was originally designed as a corrective vocal processor, but turned out to be an equally useful tool on almost any sound source. And as for Soothe2, well that is one of the great plugins of our time, one that we would describe as "a dynamic EQ plugin that no producer should be without". Big pressure for…

Jlin, Akoma Planet Mu US producer Jerrilynn Patton – aka Jlin – first emerged from the 2010s footwork scene, starting out under the mentorship of artists including DJ Rashad and RP Boo. While the frantic rhythms and staccato sample chops of footwork are still an important element of her sound, Jlin’s ambitions and musical output have stretched far beyond the edges of the genre in the years since her debut release, leading to collaborations with some of the leading lights of electronic music, ambient, contemporary classical and visual arts – and scored her a Pulitzer nomination along the way. It’s testament to the level of respect that Jlin commands as a producer that this latest album comes complete with starry guest appearances from Bjork, Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet.…

Many modularists were sad to see the end of Hexinverter Electronique and were relieved when Erica Synths declared it would bring back some much-loved modules, including the Mindphaser, a complex oscillator featuring lots of modulation, that blends East or West Coast. While larger than other options, at 30hp, it’s packed full of features, yet remains readable and usable. The layout and labeling are clear, with pathways from patchpoints to controls, so you know where you are. Complex oscillators, as opposed to a dual VCO, work interactively, where the output of each VCO combines, with one being the carrier and the other the modulator. Nothing new there. But the Mindphaser takes things a lot further than some other complex oscillators, with options for modulation and sound design. The two VCOs are…

Ableton Live 12 From £259 While some new features are better implemented than others, Live 12 is a generous update stuffed with ideas and real potential. Steinberg Cubase 12 £497 Review: FM382 Version 12 is a solid and dependable update to Cubase, and offers some excellent new features and small, but important, updates to others. Universal Audio LUNA free UA might not want to call LUNA a DAW, but let’s be honest... this is a slick and stylish recording environment and a great freebie. It’s no longer just for Apollo owners either. Tracktion Waveform Pro from $119 Review: FM345 Waveform is now friendlier, contains more creative tools and brings workflow ideas you’ll have missed from other DAWs. PreSonus Studio One Pro £345 Now up to version 6, Studio One now…

Elektron Analog Heat +FX £829 This revamp of Elektron’s analogue distortion adds a full chain of effects that can be full reordered and modulated for wild, tranformative results. Eventide H90 £935 Review: FM394 Countless synthesists swear by Eventide’s H9 pedal, and the H90 doubles down on the format by placing two H9 processors in Korg Monotron Delay £49 Over a decade on from its original release, Korg’s analogue ribbon synth/delay processor remains a must have, and the best way to spend £50. OTO Bam €480 Review: FM314 This characterful digital reverb unit is the highlight of boutique effect brand OTO’s all-round impressive range. Dreadbox Hypnosis €220 Review: FM353 Dreadbox’s brilliantly old-school analogue delay and modulation processor, now reborn as an affordable DIY kit.…

We’d suspected it for a while, but it now seems that the Access Virus synth, once the gold standard for virtual analogue instruments, has been discontinued. A report on Amazona.de cites an interview with Christoph Kemper of Kemper Amps fame (as well as being the mastermind behind the Virus). He confirmed that the Virus TI 2, the final model in the range, has been out of production for a few months. The TI 2 was released back in 2009, the last in a long line of Viruses that included the likes of the Polar, Snow and Darkstar. There were both keyboard and desktop models, and for a long time after the release of the first version way back in 1997, the Virus seemed to be the synth that every producer…

The Dirtywave M8 Tracker Model:02 doesn’t particularly look much like a musicmaking device, but the software trackers that inspired it didn’t look like traditional sequencers either, so maybe that’s appropriate. This is the successor to the original M8, and promises the “same brains with improved physical features”. To recap, the original M8 was a handheld tracker that was powered by the Teensy microcontroller and took its inspiration from Game Boy tracker Little Sound DJ. It offered users eight monophonic tracks/ voices, each of which could potentially be used for one of the built-in synthesis engines or to trigger external MIDI hardware. The Model:02 takes this concept and adds a new machined aluminium case, a larger 3.5" IPS TFT display (up from 2.8") and improved battery life of up to 12…

Marrying the snarling savagery of post-punk with an array of wider influences that spans dub, trip-hop and electronica, Folly Group is one of the UK’s most exciting new bands. With a fresh and experimental outlook, the group’s debut album, Down There!, sets frontman Sean Harper’s sharply observant lyrics against a patchwork of angular guitars, restless percussion and squealing synth lines to exhilarating effect. Alongside Sean, Folly Group’s Louis Milburn, Tom Doherty and Kai Akinde-Hummel self-produced the record in the backroom of a vintage gear store, making use of the various bits and pieces of equipment that would pass through the shop. This experimentation led to an eclectic palette of timbres and textures that mirrors the band’s complex, genre-blending musicality. We spoke with Louis Milburn to hear more about the making…

Artificial intelligence is well and truly here, and even past naysayers must be finding it harder to deny its inevitable further symbiosis with human life across the board. AI has been with us for a while in music technology, with noise removal and restoration software being the most viable use case, and some compelling uses in mixing and mastering technology too. More recently, as AI booms across disciplines, we’ve seen more powerful uses of AI in music tech, from the generating professional singers of Voice-Swap and the sampleinterpolating powers of Synplant 2 to tools like Riffusion that will generate whole songs – or at least snippets – that sound pretty legit. Perhaps one of the least expected areas of musical workflow to be impacted by AI is that of sample…

Electronic music is a spectrum. On one side, we have the crowdpleasers, the big-room bangers, the tunes you might hear on an AI-generated playlist at the gym, soundtracking your spinning class. By and large, these follow many of the same rules as conventional pop music; tonally, timbrally and rhythmically colouring within familiar lines to produce familiar – and often brilliant – results. On the other end, we have the weird, the wonky and the experimental; music that harnesses the near-limitless potential of 21st-century technology to create sounds like nothing that came before them. No electronic act is more closely associated with this abstruse corner of music than Autechre. Rob Brown and Sean Booth met as teenagers in the late ’80s. Speaking to Future Music in 1994, Booth recalled how the…

Arturia Keylab Essential Mk3 €199 Full Review: FM399 Better and slicker than its predecessor, Keylab Essential 3 delivers great control features, quality design and good DAW integration. Akai MPK mini mk3 £90 Review FM363 A very decent upgrade with genuinely pro features, fixing its position in the top rung of mini keyboard controllers available. Novation SL MkIII £540 Review: FM338 Well-designed and versatile. For those who work with both hardware and software, this may be the best studio centrepiece that’s on the market. Novation FLkey | £89 Review FM383 Novation’s FLkey range has provided FL Studio users with the pro-level controller range they’ve always deserved. Arturia MiniLab 3 £90 Review: FM392 A great value keyboard with an updated feature set that makes this one of the best mini controllers around.…

Ableton Push From $999 Review: FM397 | Push finally lives up to Ableton’s vision of controller-as-instrument, and standalone mode is a great new way to use Live. Akai APC64 £339 Review: FM402 A fabulous evolution of the classic APC form, and the standalone functions will bring it into all kinds of new situations. Novation Launch Control XL £150 Review: FM285 Slightly long in the tooth and less slick than the current gen ‘launch’ range, but still the best mixer-focused device for Live. Novation Launchpad X £180 Review: FM356 Neat, compact and more flexible than ever before, the Launchpad remains a must-try tool for Ableton Live users. Novation Launchkey Mini £100 Review: FM349 The Mk3 is a small but perfectly formed MIDI controller that works great with or without Ableton Live.…