Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2024 i Future Music

When it comes to electronic music production, there are staple sounds – a house beat, a garage bassline, a DnB break – and then there are those unique and creative sounds you find scattered throughout the best tracks. Distinctive moments that you hear that instantly make you remember the song, or signify it as the work of a specific artist or group. It’s these sorts of sounds we’re focusing on in this issue’s cover feature. We’ll be exploring effect ideas and processing tips, not with the aim of getting you to recreate a specific sound, but hopefully inspiring something completely fresh, new and distinctive to your style. We hope you enjoy the issue……

THIS BEEFY UPGRADE COMPLETELY OVERHAULS THE EXISTING MPC SOFTWARE AKAI PRO HAS announced the public beta version of its MPC 3 software, a free OS update for owners of the MPC Live, Live II, One, One +, X, X SE, Key 37, and Key 61. This beefy upgrade completely overhauls the existing MPC software, bringing a number of useful features that includes a DAW-style arranger, enhanced Main Mode, track and pad mixer and new automation capabilities. MPC 3’s Main Mode has been redesigned to offer a convenient overview of the tracks that make up their project, providing quick and easy access to key features and improved visual feedback. What’s more, the software now features a colour-coded DAW-style Arrange Mode that collects all the tracks in a project together in one…

MINIMAL AUDIO HAS been steadily expanding its line-up of effects plugins in recent months, releasing both Flex Chorus and Swarm Reverb this year. The latest addition to Minimal Audio’s stable is Ripple Phaser, a phaser that Minimal describes as a “multi-mode phase manipulator”. Minimal tells us that Ripple Phaser can be used to introduce “liquid character and animated movement” through the use of seven different modes that cover everything from classic phasing effects to creative filtering and all-pass dispersion. Ripple’s 24 notch filters can be shaped with frequency and resonance controls, while a full modulation section lets you add movement and variety, modulating up to three parameters with its shapeable LFO and controls for randomisation and stereo offset. Get Ripple Phaser now at a discounted price of $29 for macOS/Windows…

ROLAND HAS ANNOUNCED expanded versions of two of its most popular stage pianos, the RD-2000 and RD-88. The RD-2000 EX and RD-88 EX have been updated with several new piano sounds, including a new concert grand piano and an “intimate” upright. The RD-2000 is Roland’s top-of-the-line RD stage piano, offering two sound engines that cover a variety of both acoustic and electric piano sounds and an 88-note PHA-50 progressive hammer-action keyboard. RD-2000 EX boosts the original’s range with two additional pre-installed V-Piano Expansion titles: the German Concert V-Piano Expansion captures the sound of renowned concert-class grand pianos and arrives with 17 preset Tones. This is joined by a newly-developed Essential Upright V-Piano Expansion, which is said to bring an “intimate sonic flavour” that recreates the unique character and spatial quality of…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Kampire, A Dancefloor in Ndola Strut Records BORN IN KENYA and raised in Zambia, Kampire’s skills behind the decks and ability to weave in and out of various African dance music subgenres have marked her out as one of the continent’s most exciting DJ talents. Given those credentials, she makes the ideal artist to curate this Africa-focused compilation released as part of Strut Records’ 25th Anniversary. African electronic music has proved a hotbed of innovation in recent years – and shot to a far higher level of international recognition than ever before. Rather than focus on contemporary artists, however, A Dancefloor in Ndola instead acts as something of a history lesson. As opposed to being a simple primer on the history of African music, however, the…

The idea of creating racks of effects isn’t something unique to Ableton Live. Logic, Bitwig, Reason and a number of other DAWs all have their own take on the concept, allowing users to create and save chains of effects – and the concepts we’re discussing here are applicable across the board. We’re focusing on Live here though for two reasons; firstly, the process of setting up, saving and controlling effect chains in Live is particularly easy, and second, the DAW has been updated with some truly excellent creative effects in recent versions. As we’ve already discussed, sometimes the best approach to building creative effects chains is simply to experiment – take far out presets from your favourite devices and place them one after another to see how they interact. There…

THE CHEAPER, THE BETTER 1 Top end effects like the Eventide H9 or Elektron Analog Heat+FX are wonderful tools, but don’t be discouraged if your budget doesn’t stretch to these. Cheap processors can often generate some of the most characterful results. Korg’s Monotron Delay is probably our favourite device in the bracket, but there’s a wide variety of excellent cheap effects out there, particularly in the stompbox realm. Cheaper effects may be noisier, rougher and grittier, but such defects can add character. USE YOUR SYNTHS AS EFFECTS 2 Many modern hardware instruments feature an audio input. In some cases this is routed straight to an instrument’s output – handy for chaining instruments in a live setup – but others will process incoming audio using built-in filters and/or effects, letting them double as…

01 Step FX includes three step modulators each with up to 128 steps. These are the key to creating controlled and evolving effects. We’ve created a reasonably simple patch that combines a low-pass filter and reverb. It assigns the cutoff, resonance and reverb mix to the three step modulators and each modulator sequence is a different length - 128, 32 and 16 steps respectively. 02 Step modulators not only set values for parameters but also duration. You can see here that our Reverb Mix sequence has a bunch of levels and durations. Use this to create a gated feel to a part, or momentary effects. Steps can also be tied, and there’s an envelope for each step modulator. 03 Once you have this set up, the final piece of the…

JOE MEEK WAS one of the first producers to really exploit pushing audio gear to its limits, cutting his teeth as a studio engineer in the late 1950s. On a very simple level, but radical at the time, he would send everything to the max, getting compressors to pump and limiters to deliver such hot signal levels that everything was at a maximum, at the same level on tape, so mixing requirements were at a minimum (as mixing gear was also at a minimum). But it was his radical studio practices that really sealed the studio deal, and according to who you believe, he invented close miking (to focus on the target and reduce room noise), artificial reverb to lessen the need for said room sound; he created synced delays,…

1 Minimal Audio’s new Ripple Phaser takes phasing to new heights, widths and depths. It can sound like a 24 peak phaser – already quite cool – or a lot more. 2 This preset, for example, turns a plucked guitar into a swirling, peaky pad that moves around the spectrum like a ghost in a far off cave. For the first time, presets are worth fully exploring. 3 With this one, our guitar now sounds like it has a ticking clock under it – pan right and it’s a kick drum under Captain Kirk shooting someone. Make mistakes with this one and it doesn’t matter – you just may be the future of music.…

For the most basic patch we can use a multi-effect module. There are lots to choose from, including many DSP-based modules, or go more old school analogue. The first thing you need to do is to get your low level input up to Eurorack’s hotter signal, so you will need an input device. For this we’ve chosen to use Ears, which has a built-in amplifier, suitable for most instruments. For the effects portion we’ve chosen Ghost, paired with Z_DSP, with the halls of Valhalla card installed. This gives a heap of options for effects and modulation and easy integration with a wider setup if you need it. For now, we’ll make it super simple but with a neat trick to make drive sounds more dynamic. > First up you’ll need to…

KIRCHHOFF EQ ATTEMPTS to innovate further by providing us even more functionality than Pro-Q 3. It does this by including comprehensive controls and numerous filter types, some based on vintage analogue hardware. Although it technically does include more features than Pro-Q 3, like its Attack and Release dynamic band controls, the GUI is not as intuitive and can become hard to read when resized across higher resolution screens. It’s certainly handy to have such an extensive, diverse set of EQ tools available within one plugin, however, if you’re a seasoned engineer, you likely already have go-to EQs for specific purposes within your effects chain and are familiar with the unique audio colouration of each of your favourites. Either way, it could be worth jumping into Kirchhoff EQ and comparing the different…

WITH ANALOGUE-STYLE EQ in the digital realm, there are some inherent benefits over hardware control: automation, preset saving and multiple instantiations are some of the obvious advantages of analoguestyle EQ plugins. But there’s room for other innovations even in the world of analogue EQ plugins: customisation of distortion circuitry, dynamic operation, and extending the behaviour of their subject’s analogue quirks are all possible here. Pulsar Audio’s 8200 even adds a de-esser/de-harsher into the deal, giving you the signal smoothing qualities that some modern plugins can achieve, only with analogue-style operation. Pulsar 8200, the EQ with a de-esser onboard 1 The Pulsar 8200 is an analogue emulation EQ, suitable for adding cohesion and character to any track compared to typical digital EQs. Let’s show this with a drum loop and the…

01 One general rule of thumb that’s useful when starting a patch with an Odyssey is to push the sliders down and the buttons up. Then, as Korg has kindly done with its Init preset on the plugin version, you raise the two oscillators (1), then raise the amp (2) and filter (3) to hear a sound, and tune the oscillators (4). 02 As with pretty much any other synth, detuning (1) the oscillators from one another creates amazing sounds. Add some glide with the Portamento (2) and you’ve already got a classic Odyssey sound. 03 Now choose a square wave on each oscillator by switching beneath each (1) or add noise. Similarly, the noise source can be switched over to Ring Mod here (2). In order to hear this…

There are only a handful of producers in musical history who have become household names through production alone, rising to prominence without writing and recording their own music. And among that rare few, there is only one that claims he has “no technical ability”, knows “nothing about music”, and doesn’t even know how to use a mixing desk: Rick Rubin. Whether Rubin’s puzzling statements are true or not – a question we’ll return to in due course – they’re an illustrative example of the producer’s inscrutable allure, the guru-like mystique that has had artists of the highest calibre knocking at his studio door for decades. Rubin’s worked with them all: everyone from Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash and Neil Young to Ed Sheeran, Jay-Z and Adele have made use of his…

POLYSYNTHS Oberheim TEO-5 £1,499 Full review: FM413 Inevitable comparisons to the Take-5 aside, TEO-5 does deliver enough of its own character to make it one of the best mid-priced polys around. Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave £3,279 Review FM406 Simply one of the most powerful synths, wrapped up in aneasytousedesign. Sequential Trigon-6 £2,799 Review FM395 Combines the best of Sequential with some classic Moog flavour, but this is a synth with its own attitude and heart. UDO Super Gemini £3,595 Review FM408 One of the best performance synths on the market. Pricey, but it does plenty to warrant the outlay. ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe £1,499 Review FM383 A great-sounding, flexible poly that can reach a wide range of tones and textures. Arturia PolyBrute 12 £3,463 Full review: FM410 The PolyBrute was already a fantastic…

ORIGINALLY INTENDED AS a repository for software emulations of its own synths, Korg’s Collection has now been expanded to include instruments that come from different hardware stables. We’re certainly not complaining, though, particularly as version 5 of the bundle is headlined by the classic ARP 2600 synth. Korg does have a relationship with this instrument, of course, having previously rebooted it to great acclaim as a hardware product. As well as promising to accurately emulate the original synth, this plugin version also offers various improvements. These include a second filter, a drive section, new modulation sources, MIDI control, a sequencer and up to 16 voices of polyphony. An emulation of the Vox Super Continental combo organ beloved by British bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s is also here. Again, there’s a…

POPULAR FREE AUDIO editor Audacity has had a major update. Muse Group has updated both its Audacity audio recording/editing software and the Muse Hub portal of apps, plugins and sounds. As before, both of these are free to download, though some of the content in the Hub has to be paid for. Audacity 3.6 has been given a visual refresh, and the software also gets a new master channel. What’s more, new compressor and limiter effects have been added. We’re told to expect more “major improvements and features” in the upcoming Audacity 4. New apps in the updated Muse Hub, meanwhile, include Ace Studio, Samplab and WavTool, all of which are powered by AI. Ace Studio enables you to automatically turn MIDI and lyrics into a complete vocal track, which sounds…

EFFECTS PLAY SEVERAL important roles in music production. For one thing, they’re an essential part of both mixing and mastering. Used to gently mould the raw elements of your track into a cohesive whole through subtle control of dynamics, shaping of key frequencies and using tools such as reverb and saturation to define tone and character. At the other end of the spectrum, however, they can also be some of the most radically creative tools in our production arsenal. A good effects unit – whether a plugin, a desktop device or an effects pedal – can not only bring sounds to life, but can alter them beyond recognition and inspire totally new ideas. It’s this sort of processing we’re focussing on this issue. This is how effects can ‘elevate your sound’…

Logic Pro not only includes a massive library of sounds, but also has a fine array of stock effects. These include a lot of standard processors such as parametric and classic EQs, a very well spec’d compressor, reverbs, delays and modulations. However, when you want something a bit more creative it really delivers. In this tutorial we’ll look at the best of Logic Pro’s creative plugins and the more interesting and extreme effects they can deliver. Individual effects Most of Logic Pro’s plugins are individual effects. A good start point is Autofilter. This not only includes a great choice of filter shapes and slopes, but also envelope control, distortion and a tempo-syncable LFO that can create some impressive stereo effects. Check out the Stereo Rhythm preset for starters. Sticking with…

It might be that we *whisper* sometimes give too much credit to music gear here at Future Music, and put it on pedestals reserved for human genre creators and influencers. However, there are many examples of studio gear that were released, and then used and abused to major effect, and it’s these that deserve more respect. But we’re not talking about instruments, like when Chuck Berry (arguably) played the first rock riff on an electric guitar, or when Phuture invested not a lot of money in a TB-303, and pushed it to extremes to help invent dance music. No, those are way too famous and, frankly, sexy. Instead we’re going more geeky and looking at some of the best examples of when vintage studio outboard gear was pushed beyond its…

1 Meek would go all out with his compression and while we don’t have either his Fairchild or Altec to hand, we can get hard compression fairly easily in plugin form. We’ll start with fast attack and release times, so set these to around 10-20ms and 100ms respectively. 2 Now we set the Knee dial to a maximum and dial the Threshold to 10. You should start hearing an increase in punch. We’ve now pushed the Ratio and Makeup dials up. Experiment with these until you get as much pump as you wish. 3 Finally, according to joemeekpage.info, the frequency spectrums of Meek’s Tornados and Heinz recordings were as follows: “the bass is particularly present at 125Hz, the mids at 2.5 and 6.3kHz, the highs at 8kHz”, all of which…

01 All sorts of creative effects can be squeezed out of a Roland Space Echo, so here’s a rundown of this curious device and how to create some classic dub effects. From left to right, you start with 12 main modes based on how the echos are combined with the delay, and which delay heads they use. We’ve set it up with some drums going through it. 02 Set it to mode 1 and you already have a fairly dubby laidback sound. Now adjust the two (linked) Repeat Rate dials and you’ll hear some amazing pitch effects as the virtual tape is sped up or slowed down which alters the time between the initial sound and its repeat. 03 Now try the Intensity dial – and you’ll need a delay…

1 Plug your instrument into Ears as in the previous walkthrough. As we’ll make use of the envelope generator for a couple of things. Patch this into a mult, taking the first copy to the distortion CV input of Ghost, so that you get a falloff in the dirt of each note. Use the output knob to balance your signal. The distortion can increase the perceived volume quite a lot, so you might need to tweak to suit. 2 Patch a second copy into the FRQ socket of Batumi, giving you dynamic control over the LFO speed. Now patch the first sine wave output from Batumi into the repeat CV point on Ghost. This means that every time you strike a note you’ll get a swell of repeated that fades…

EQs come in all shapes and sizes, but the basic concepts are the same: take a signal with one distribution of frequencies, and output a signal with boosted or cut energy at certain points in the spectrum. While every piece of analogue equipment has the potential to do this as a side effect, early analogue EQ units used passive gain reduction circuitry then boosted band output using tube amplification. The sound had tons of personality. Early EQ units like the Pultec are often unintuitive to modern producers, but the standard ‘parametric’ workflow got going later with units like the GML 8200 (which we’ll discuss later), establishing the “bands with Frequency, Gain and Q” workflow that was the established standard with hardware equalisers. As this workflow evolved, so did the quality…

1 We can use Scaler EQ’s harmonic bands to boost frequencies within a specific key and attenuate any that are outside of it. This offers a unique, theory-friendly approach to EQing unlike others. First choose a sample loop in any desired key and import it into your DAW. 2 Load an instance of Scaler EQ to your sample’s track, and match the key to your sample’s key. Do this by clicking the A Min/C Maj (by default) drop-down menu and selecting the corresponding key. Or click Detect Key and play your sample to auto-detect the key. 3 Now when we place a boosting band in our visual EQ spectrum, we see that it only applies the boost to harmonics in the scale we’ve selected. Then if you apply an attenuation…

IN WHAT CAN only be described as the most astronomical coincidence in the history of synths – or alien conspiracy – Alan R Pearlman, co-founder of ARP, worked for NASA before forming the iconic synth company. His first release (1970’s ARP 2500) greeted aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind; his second (1971’s ARP 2600) voiced R2-D2. Odd indeed. Anyway, it’s Pearlman’s third release on discussion here, as while those opening gambits were out of this world, the Odyssey was what really took ARP on a ‘voyage’. Odyssey was released just at the right time and with just the right specs. Interest in synths in 1972 was growing fast, and with a keyboard and portability placed (literally) front and centre, Odyssey ticked all of the boxes for an audience who…

One of TEO-5’s highlights is its modulation power, delivered in a very slick, tactile route with two LFOs and two envelopes. However, you also get a more in-depth way that opens a lot more modulation doors by way of a 19-slot modulation matrix, with 19 different sources and 65 destinations. The LFOs are single (per voice) or Global (applies to all five) so you can apply a more consistent modulation to chords or a more dynamic one as you play individual notes. It’s easy to apply LFOs to anything: just hold their Dest buttons down and choose a destination onscreen. Or, there’s a shortcut section where you hold the Source button down, move what you want as your source (LFOs, mod wheel etc), then hold the main Destination button and…

CONTACT WHO: Intellijel WEB: intellijel.com KEY FEATURES All in one synth voice, ADSR envelope, VCA with drive options, Multimode filter, Extensive mod matrix If you’re dipping your toe in the modular waters, or looking to build a small rig, a good place to start can be with a synth voice, which will give you all the key ingredients to get started. The benefits are clear. Not only do you get all you need to produce something musical but you get it in a neat package with lots of normalled connections, minimising patching, unless you want to. Intellijel’s massively popular Atlantis has been heavily revised in its latest synth voice, now named Atlantix, much like their previous reincarnation of Metropolis(x). This module still has its roots in familiar Roland SH-101 territory…

SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER THAN THE 10K BEHEMOTH THAT WAS THE MOOG ONE THE SYNTH COMMUNITY has been abuzz in recent months with the news that Moog will release a new analogue synth this year, a flagship poly set to replace the recently-discontinued Moog One as the flagship in the brand’s line-up. Following a busy few months for the brand – which was acquired by InMusic last year, and has recently released two semi-modular instruments, Labyrinth and Spectravox – Moog has finally lifted the lid on Muse. Muse is an eight-voice, bi-timbral synthesiser with a 61-key semi-weighted keybed, equipped with velocity and channel aftertouch. Its two analogue oscillators per voice are derived from the Moog Voyager and are capable of FM, PWM as well as hard sync. These are joined by a…

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS’ Traktor Pro hasn’t received a major update since Traktor Pro 3 was released in 2018. Now NI has finally revealed Traktor Pro 4, bringing a ton of creative tools to its flagship DJ software, including stem separation and flexible beat grids. Traktor Pro 4’s AI-powered stem separation makes use of sophisticated machine learning algorithms developed for iZotope’s RX 11 software – a company Native Instruments now owns – enabling you to isolate and mix stems for bass, drums, vocals and other instruments for any song in your Traktor library before tweaking per-stem, MIDI-mappable controls for volume, filtering, and effects. The software has also introduced flexible beatgrids, helping you accurately mix tracks that feature tempo changes without falling out of sync. These grids can help you pull off looping and…

YOU MAY know Cristian Vogel as an electronic artist – the Chilean-born, Copenhagen-based musician has been turning out forward-thinking techno and electronica since the ‘90s and has appeared in this mag several times – but Vogel is also a developer, designing equally innovative music software under the banner of NeverEngineLabs. Until now, Vogel’s software has been built for the Kyma system, a sound design environment that runs on a dedicated hardware platform. This year, though, Vogel has cooked up his first VST plugin, ShifterMesh, and it’s a unique multi-effects processor with a highly unique UI. ShifterMesh is a frequency shifter at its core. Frequency shifters work in a similar fashion to pitch shifters, with a big difference: they shift all of the frequencies that constitute a sound up or down…

Since debuting in 2022 with I was born by the sea, Hull-born artist Richie Culver has shaped a bleak and poetic vision of ambient music, where mangled samples and distorted textures paint a monochrome backdrop for his grimly evocative spoken-word. While last year’s Scream If You Don’t Exist featured guest turns from Billy Woods and Moor Mother, Culver’s latest LP is a self-produced and self-released affair that distils his potent and distinctive style down to an even more powerful concentration. A multidisciplinary artist, Richie Culver works in painting, photography and performance in addition to his music-making, while exploring more abrasive and industrial sounds via the alias Quiet Husband. In recording his most recent project, Hostile Environments, Culver sent loops and field recordings through his CDJs and mixer into a Teenage…

CHAIN SIMPLE EFFECTS Even mundane effects processors can become vital components in your sonic adventures when several plugins are chained together. A good way to approach adventurous sound design, therefore, is to purposely stack up several EQs, distortion stages, modulation effects, reverb treatments and other creative effects. Multiple variations on the same theme can have interesting effects – for example, several phasers that are placed one after the other can create watery, slippery tones, or try pairing pitch/frequency shifters working in opposing directions for oddball results. AIMLESS SOUND DESIGN It’s often easiest to produce truly unique sounds when doing so without a specific compositional purpose in mind. Open up an empty DAW session and start running varied sound sources through unusual combinations of effects just to see what weird and…

Bitcrusher looks simple, but has all you need to degrade your sound precisely. The core processes are adjustable bit resolution (1-24 bit) and adjustable downsampling (1-40x). These are joined by Drive, output Clip Level and three clip Modes-Fold, Clip and Wrap. These control how signal behaves when it hits clip level. You can use Bitcrusher for static effects, but you can also try automating some parameters. Finally, you also get a global wet/dry Mix, which gives a great way to blend in more extreme effects. 1 Gradually reducing the bit resolution may not sound immediately obvious on transient heavy beats, however on sustained sounds, obvious noise creeps in until eventually you get the classic audio breaking up effect. Use the Drive control in conjunction with the Resolution and Clip Level…

1 Baby Audio’s new Humanoid is a vocal processor with a difference. It has a Synthesize feature that transforms vocals into any waveform you like, so effectively creates a synth sound out of them. 2 But what if we go off road, put a guitar through it, and turn it into a robot vocal and then a synth sound?! The first part is easy, just up the Quantize and Robotify levels for more robot style voweling, and use the Formant to go male or female. 3 Then we use the central area to up the Transformation of our guitar vocal into a synth. The result is… alien. But we think we’ve just invented a new genre.…

AS MORE WAYS were discovered to use recording gear in more colourful ways, artists and producers were asking what that meant for their music, none more so than The Beatles. Alongside Joe Meek (see previous page), producers like George Martin pieced all the gear together to see the studio itself more as a creative tool or instrument. The Beatles, Martin, and studio boffins like Geoff Emerick and Ken Townsend became the ultimate gear misusers – or as they might prefer, experimenters. Yes it might have been because Martin and team had access to the best equipment, but when they got it, they weren’t afraid to take it away from its chosen path. Record John Lennon through a Hammond Leslie speaker, you say? Why not? Play a bunch of tapes backwards and…

A brief history Alan R Pearlman and David Friend co-founded ARP Instruments in 1969, with Pearlman wanting to use his electronics expertise to create the kinds of noises he’d heard on Switched-On Bach, the Wendy Carlos album created entirely from a Moog Modular, and a work that has influenced many a synthesist and synth player. ARP’s first synth was similarly modular, the 2500, but sales reached nowhere near the number in its title, faltering at around 100. (If you were wondering how much one of those would fetch these days, it’s anywhere from £39,000 to £250,000.) The 2500 might not have been successful – aside from its role in creating intergalactic peace, of course – but the best modules from it were then housed in the 2600 which introduced the…

KEY FEATURES 5-voice analogue polysynth; 44-note semi-weighted Fatar keyboard with velocity and aftertouch; two VCOs, a sub oscillator plus noise; SEM state variable filter; two LFOs; two DADSR envelopes; extensive modulation; 64-step polyphonic sequencer; multimode arpeggiator; two effects generators (dedicated reverb + multi-effects) plus overdrive The problem with writing about Oberheim’s new TEO-5 is trying to hold back on the inevitable comparisons with other synths it is – or is not – based on. It has the sound of many a classic Oberheim synth packed into its solid and compact body so could be seen as a cut-down OB-X8, although one that is not so cut down in features as it is in physical size and polyphony. (TEO-5 has five notes compared to OB-X8’s eight.) There again, we could see…

Slate & Ash – Cycles, £279 SLATE + ASH IS the Bristol-based sound design team of Simon Ashdown, Will Slater and James Worster, and CYCLES is their latest creation. Developed as a Kontakt-based instrument, it is built around two audio manipulation engines – a looper/splicer and granular synthesiser. Whilst there are a few overlaps in terms of functional building blocks (such as sequencing, modulation and effects), their core playback elements are very different. Let’s begin with the Loops section. Here you’ll normally start in ‘array mode’, where different loops are triggered by successive keys (and with transposition taken care of by keys in the lower half of the keyboard). Alongside other modes, there is also the option to spread a single loop chromatically across the whole keyboard for conventional polyphonic…