Table of contents for Autumn 2020 in Future Music

The Future Of Music Will free VST synth Pendulum wreak havoc in your DAW? > Free VST synth plugins are pretty common, but free ones that come from well-respected developers and promise something new and innovative aren’t so easy to find. This is what we’re told to expect from Newfangled Audio and Eventide’s Pendulate, though; described as a chaotic monosynth, it’s said to feature a brand-new oscillator technique that can generate “previously unheard sounds”. Pendulate is so-named because it’s based on the physics of a double pendulum. You might think it looks random, but underneath there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organisation. In audible terms, this means that you can smoothly fade from a simple sine wave to a chaotic sonic maelstrom, stopping off…

Arturia release MicroFreak Vocoder Edition, and a nice surprise for owners of the original too > Arturia’s MicroFreak was always a “weird and wonderful” synth, and now it’s taken another intriguing turn with their new Vocoder Edition. This offers 14 digital oscillator modes, analogue filters and modulation/randomisation options aplenty, with the new 16-band vocoder mode promising to transform your voice “in the Freakiest way possible”. The vocoder engine provides three waveforms – sawtooth, pulse width and noise – and Timbre and Shape knobs that adjust the response of the 16 frequency bands. The 16 presets, meanwhile, take you beyond standard robot voices – expect ‘android translations’, harmonies and formant sequences as well. The vocoder tools aren’t limited to users of the new version though. It turns out that the headphone…

School of X “I kill my darlings… it’s part of getting where you wanna go” School of X Danish musician and producer Rasmus Littauer has spent much of the past decade behind the drum kit for acts such as Mø and Major Lazer. Recent years have seen Littauer focus his attention on his own project, School of X, resulting in the rough-edged alt-pop of his self-produced debut album Armlock.FM caught up with Littauer to talk influences, creativity and more. When did you start making music? “I grew up outside of a town in Denmark called Aarhus. I have three brothers, two musicians (Yangze and Simon Littauer). They work with complicated synths, modulars and algorithms. I think this scientific way of looking at music made me want to do it differently,…

Future drum design Layer for success… Combining multiple sound layers is a tried and tested way to add character to drum hits, and a great way to combine the solid punchiness of traditional analogue beats with the weirder effects created with the approaches discussed here. For example, pairing more unpredictable, textural sounds created with granular synthesis with a rock-solid analogue or sampled drum hit is a great way to have the best of both worlds. Some power synths/samplers, such as Pigments or Phase Plant, let you do this within the engine itself and process/save your sounds as a unified patch. Often though, the best way to approach drum layering is to work with good old-fashioned audio. Set up dedicated sound design sessions where you can layer up elements on your…

In The Studio With | Cut Copy Cut Copy With its overt nod to climate change, Cut Copy’s sixth album Freeze, Melt is their most contemplative to date. Danny Turner delves into its making Hailing from Melbourne, Australia electro-pop veterans Cut Copy were established almost 20 years ago by former graphic designer Dan Whitford. The band’s debut album Bright like Neon Love (2004) flew under the radar, but the follow-up In Ghost Colours (2008) truly signalled their intentions, hitting No. 1 in their homeland and attracting global critical acclaim. The group took a more radical approach to their latest release, Freeze, Melt. Conceived by Whitford in Copenhagen, demos were file-shared to globally dispersed band members Tim Hoey (guitars), Ben Browning (bass), and Mitchell Scott (drums). The collective then regrouped at…

YOUTUBE MORE UNMISSABLE VIDEO TRAINING FROM FUTURE MUSIC Discover our line-up of exclusive YouTube goodness. Head online for all this and more! THE TRACK Leading producers go in-depth on the sounds, ideas and techniques behind their latest releases Shadow Child – Mars Simon Neale takes us to the stars, and then behind the scenes of this ‘hypnotic breakbeat prog roller’ of a track DON’T MISS: GLXY – She Sings for Me ft. DRS Rising stars Jonathan Campbell and Thomas Alston make liquid DnB gold Pablo Nouvelle, Milambi The Swiss artist joins forces with Beninese icon Angélique Kidjo Pythius, Auxiliary Learn about the Dutch drum & bass producer’s granular approach Fickle Friends, Pretty Great Jack Wilson, songwriter/keyboardist on the making of their latest single Top producers show you…

DIY washing machine impulse response In this example, we’ll show you how quickly you can create an impulse response to add to your mix. With the help of a washing machine... Ideally, impulse response recordings should include as much frequency content as possible, so that the sounds you feed into them can ‘light up’ the bass, mid-range and treble frequencies in the reverb tail. But sometimes a more lo-fi approach can work well too and in this example, we’re going to see how quickly we can make something interesting. We’re starting with a phone recording inside a washing machine drum, whose echoes are brief and metallic. But by taking this sonic snapshot into Logic Pro X’s Space Designer convolution reverb, we can start to use the included overtones to shape…

Design a reverberant space In this walkthrough, we’ll use Logic Pro’s Synthesized Impulse Response utility to build a bespoke, atmospheric piano treatment 01 >We start with a dry piano part from Una Corda. This is a slow, open, reflective part and it feels like it would be appropriate to build a textural, evolving space around it. It certainly feels too dry in its existing form. 02 >Rather than loading a sampled impulse response of a real space, we’re going to use Space Designer’s Synthesized IR to sculpt a space from scratch. The default patch provides a 3-second decay time with a fairly orthodox, exponential decay. Low and high frequencies are evenly spread. 03 >We increase reverb length to 6.75 but decrease Size to 45%. We turn definition down to 43%,…

Broken beat | Retrospective Three broken beat essentialsKaidi Tatham & Dego – Got Me Puzzled, 2003 FabricLive 12 – Bugz In The Attic, 2003 1 Broken beat was never really an album genre, with the focus much more on club-friendly tracks rather than full-length releases. If you’re looking for a bigger fix, a good starting point is the 12th instalment of London superclub Fabric’s open-minded mix series, FabricLive. Broken beat supergroup Bugz In The Attic highlight the eclecticism of the scene, moving from subtle jazzy territory to heavier sounds and even taking in the dark proto-dubstep garage of Artwork’s Red. Cousin Cockroach – This Ain’t Tom N’ Jerry, 2002 2 An alias of Dennis McFarlane, best known as Dego, founder member of hugely influential London group 4hero, this 2002…

REVIEWS Arturia PolyBrute £2,259 The French brand mark their anniversary with a new flagship polysynth. Si Truss attempts to tame the beast… CONTACT WHO: Arturia WEB: arturia.com KEY FEATURES 6-voice digitally-controller analogue polysynth. Features include multitimbral morphing engine, virtual modulation patchbay, three digital effect modules, 61-note keyboard equipped with velocity and aftertouch sensitivity News of an Arturia polysynth wasn’t a total surprise. Since the early-’10s, the French brand’s lineup of synths has grown to encompass budget analogue (MicroBrute), semi-modulars (MiniBrute 2/2S), a behemoth monosynth (MatrixBrute) and eccentric digital synthesis (MicroFreak). Their 20th anniversary seemed an obvious moment to unveil a new flagship instrument. You may spot the similarities between the PolyBrute and MatrixBrute; most obviously in the inclusion of a similar button matrix, but also in the general architecture. Although it…

ROUND-UP CLIPPERS Give your signals the buzzcut with this handful of distorting, maximizing, brickwall processors that go from soft to hard FM | STUDIO ESSENTIAL ! LVC-Audio Clipped-MAX $50 The actual clipping operation in Clipped-MAX can vary each time you see it. The plugin has four modules that can run at once. The main ‘clipper clipper’ is on the master page, offering the confusingly named ‘makeup’ parameter to get things working and the margin control as a soft/hard ‘ratio’. The ‘Shifter’ page leaves the clipping threshold dynamic, reacting to the volume of the input at any time to give a consistent impact on dynamic range. In multiband operation mode, you set Clipped-MAX up as a six-band (or fewer) processor, giving you the power of single-band operation but tailored differently across…

SOUND DESIGN Vintage strings Learn how to recreate this evocative pop staple There’s something truly special about the sound of a vintage string machine. Their sound has defined countless R&B, disco, and synthpop tracks. For disco and R&B, that list is endless, with the sound of the ARP Solina String Ensemble dominating songs from the Ohio Players, Rick James and Prince. Nearly every one of Duran Duran’s early hits was based on the Crumar Performer string machine – usually through a phaser – while Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart was based on the ARP Omni (or was it the Omni II?). Modern manufacturers have released gear dedicated to reproducing the sound with varying degrees of authenticity. Waldorf’s Streichfett, Roland’s Boutique VP-03 and others served to reintroduce the sound…

Make a Statement with Softube’s simple new EDM plugin lead synth > Designed to complement its Monoment Bass plugin, Softube’s new Statement Lead synth puts the focus on creating EDM, DnB and house lead sounds, and all with minimal production fuss. Although it’s designed to be beginner-friendly, Softube assures us that Statement’s sounds are based on carefully recorded and processed sounds from “rare and expensive” hardware synths, at a high standard, and there are drive, reverb, delay, multiband compression and spatialisation effects, too. Of course, an instrument like this needs a decent selection of presets, and we’re assured that there are no fillers among the 150-plus found here. Use them as is or as starting points for further tweaking. Regular price will be $99, but you can purchase it for…

The Future Of Music Transform your Roland 707 drum machine into an 808, 909 or LinnDrum with this ROM expansion > Roland’s sample-based TR-707 and TR-727 drum machines are certainly classics, but they’re far from the most versatile beatmakers ever made. Now though, HKA Design have released a ROM expansion kit with the potential to add extra range to your 707, giving users the option of eight drum banks, and samples from Roland’s 808 and 909, the LinnDrum, LM-1 and DMX. Not wanting to disrupt the 707/727’s interface with toggle switches, UK-based design engineer Harry Axten has opted for a switching system by pressing one of the first eight step keys while powering the unit on, while each preset bank will restore on restart. Keeping things nice and simple. The…

Creating percussion sounds with FM synthesis The free plugin Dexed emulates the classic DX7 synth engine but is far easier to program. Let’s use it to shape a custom kick The classic DX7 approach to FM synthesis uses multiple sine oscillators (known as operators in this context), which can modulate one another to create complex timbres. Since each operator has its own amp envelope, it provides a great toolkit for shaping punchy percussive sounds. Here we’re going to use a three-operator setup. Operator 1 is our fundamental sound – the carrier – while operators 2 and 3 are used to modulate it. By adjusting the decay times and levels of ops 2 and 3, we can use them to shape our sound’s ‘attack’ stage. Starting from an Init preset, we…

Future drum design 6 creative modern hardware beatmakers Looking for a hardware groovebox that goes beyond the usual 808/909-inspired sounds? Take these for a spin Elektron Model:Cycles Model:Cycles takes the polyphonic FM engine found in Elektron’s excellent Digitone synth and adapts it specifically for percussive sounds. It lacks full sound editing, but there’s a selection of engines equipped with well-configured parameter controls to suit each sound. TRY THIS: The sequencer is the real highlight here. Try creating percussive lines with automated pitch sweeps and use the Chance parameter to randomise hits. Erica Synths Bassline DB-01 Don’t be fooled by the name, thanks to punchy envelopes and programmable pitch sweeps this analogue synth does percussion just as well as it does bass. TRY THIS: Filter modulation and pitch sweeps can be…

Get creative with | Ableton Live Generate new musical ideas in Ableton Live PROBLEM: How can I keep my loops sounding interesting across a long period of time? It can be easy to get bored when programming loop-based elements of a composition. Often the simplest ideas are the best, but sometimes only really come alive with some creative effect processing. This approach will explore how we can use generative effect processing techniques to add variation by randomising effect parameters. Using Live’s Follow Actions to determine when these effects are applied, we can set up a 01 Next to any source audio or MIDI track you want to process, create a new Audio Track and rename it to FX Routing. Set its Monitoring to In. Record a silent clip to this…

Sylvan Esso Sylvan Esso The US synth-pop duo tell Si Truss how a new studio, a love of modular and touring as a 10-piece band inspired their new LP When Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn formed electro-pop outfit Sylvan Esso in 2013, Meath was performing with her traditional folk vocal trio Mountain Man and Sanborn was creating Flying Lotus-esque electronic grooves as Made Of Oak. Despite these disparate seeming backgrounds, the duo’s musical tastes and ambitions clicked pretty naturally, resulting in a pair of attention-grabbing albums – 2014’s Sylvan Esso and the Grammy-nominated 2016 follow-up What Now? Much like synth-tinged pop luminaries like Robyn or Christine and The Queens, Sylvan Esso are at their best when pairing infectious dancefloor grooves with rich, emotive motifs underpinned by a hint of tonal…

MATRIX RELOADED The MatrixBrute’s titular button matrix makes a return here, in a more compact, 12x8 form. Functionally, it fulfils the same roles, acting as a handy preset browser, a controller for the multi-lane sequencer and, most usefully, a digital patchbay for assigning and editing modulation routings. For the PolyBrute, 12 modulation sources are fixed down the left-hand side of the grid, and up to 32 modulation routings can be freely assigned across four banks along the top row. Editing modulation patches is a simple case of holding the relative grid button and twisting a knob to apply the required depth. While modulation routings themselves are fixed for both A and B states of each patch, the depth of each can be morphed so, combined with the ability to assign…

SOUNDS & SAMPLES Rob Papen – Punch 2 €149 Rob Papen entered the plugin game only a few years after the VST spec first introduced the ability to receive MIDI data in 1999. In other words, his name has been associated with virtual instruments for nearly 20 years. It may not come as much surprise, then, to find that Punch, the RP virtual instrument dedicated to drums, first arrived almost 10 years ago. However, it’s intriguing that it’s taken so long for a new version to see the light. Punch 2 is a drum module that covers a lot of bases, and straddles both the worlds of DSP modelling and sample playback. In view of the fact that it comes with over 1500 samples, it falls into both the soundware…

Vintage strings Method 1: Phase Plant By using ensemble effects we can synthesise the sound of vintage string machines 01 Start with an analogue oscillator and select the pulse waveform. Since each vintage string machine had its own specific pulse width, experiment in the 5-20% range. Once you have a thin reedy pulse, drag-copy the oscillator to the position below and raise its tuning by +12 semitones to create both ‘cellos’ and ‘violins’. 02 Vintage string synths had very little low and high frequency content, so you’ll want to add in two filters after the oscillators. Set one to low-pass and increase cutoff to 6 kHz. For the high-pass cutoff, start at around 200 Hz. Then create a pad volume envelope with full sustain, soft attack, and long release. 03…

Method 2: Xfer Serum A similar recipe of chorus and macros to get your desired flavour of string synth in Serum 01 Start by setting Osc A to the Basic Shapes wavetable and select the square wave index. Then, change the Warp mode to PWM and set it to between 10-30%. Once you have a width that you like, use the Copy Osc A->B option in the main menu, then raise its tuning to +1 octave. 02 Make sure both oscillators are routed to the filter, then select LH 12 from the Multi folder. The main cutoff knob controls the low-pass, so set it to around 6000 Hz, then set the high-pass cutoff via the second Freq knob. Set up the amp envelope with a soft attack, long release, and…

Essential Tools For Music Making MIDI KEYBOARDS Novation SL MkIII from £540 Full Review: FM338 Well-designed and versatile. For those who work with both hardware and software, this may be the best studio centrepiece on the market. Akai Advance 49 £399 Review FM293 Combined with Akai’s VIP software, the Advance controllers remove the disconnect between controller and DAW. Roli Seaboard Block £279 Review: FM322 A unique and high-quality MPE-capable, expandable, two-octave controller with a price that makes Seaboards more generally accessible. NI Komplete Kontrol A-Series | from £119 Review FM338 A quality controller combined with a well-rounded software bundle. NI Komplete Kontrol S-Series Mk2 £499 Review: FM324 Komplete Kontrol MkII brings a whole sonic universe under your fingertips like never before, with deeper DAW integration too. Arturia KeyStep Pro £339…

FILTER NI finally step out of the box with Maschine+ Plus, Guitar Rig gets a major update for Komplete 13 > The past year has seen Native Instruments make headlines on several occasions for reasons other than their products, with controversies over mass redundancies, a later-reversed decision to discontinue a host of older products, criticisms of how the company handled internal racism and, most recently, a change of management at the top. NI now seem to be bringing focus back to the gear itself, with a string of big announcements capped off by the long-awaited arrival of a fully standalone Maschine. NI launched the first iteration of their controller-centric beatmaking system back in 2009, at a time when standalone samplers and MPCs had fallen out of fashion in favour of…

Algoriddim’s Neural Mix Pro player lets you separate vocal, drum and instrument tracks > Having previously added its Neural Mix tech to their djay app, Algoriddim have now released Neural Mix Pro, a standalone music player and editor for the Mac that lets you separate instruments and vocals in any song and export individual tracks so that they can be used in your DAW. This “real-time music source separation” technology clearly has massive potential for those who want to grab samples and create remixes, though you’ll need to consider the legal implications of doing this, obviously. A browser lets you sort and select tracks, and there’s also a Loop Editor to trim your audio to perfection. You can also change the key and tempo of songs that you play –…

Reason Studios’ Friktion is an expressive string synth that “simply sounds real” > For their latest Rack Extension, Reason Studios are stepping into the world of strings – specifically, physically modelled ones. Friktion Modeled Strings is designed to put you in full control of your string instrument, whether that be a violin, viola, cello, bass or something that you create yourself. You can dictate everything from the shape of the instrument to the way it’s played, right down to the specific finger placement and bow pressure. And all, we’re told, with no complex setup. Friktion Modeled Strings works not only in the standalone version of Reason (version 10.1 or later), but also in other DAWs via the Reason Rack Plugin. It costs $99/109 euros, but you can download a 30-day…

Universal Audio replace the Arrow interface with the new Apollo Solo >A new Universal Audio Apollo audio interface is always an event, but news of the Solo version isn’t quite what it seems. Yes, it’s the most affordable Apollo in the range, but it also appears to be pretty much identical to the pre-existing Arrow interface. Not a bad thing – we raved about the Arrow a couple of years ago – but it explains why UA are calling the Apollo Solo a “reimagined” portable desktop audio interface, not a fully new one. What's worth noting is that, while the Arrow is a bus-powered Thunderbolt 3 interface, the Apollo Solo is also available in a USB 3 configuration (via a USB-C connector) with external power supply. This model is Windows-only;…

In the studio with El-P “I made the album in my apartment in Brooklyn. I had the turntable and an Ensoniq EPS-16 Plus sampler. It was kinda fucking thoroughbred, at the time. The filtering and the sequencing and effects were really unique to it. You really could get something out of that, creatively. And changing the envelopes would fuck with the samples too. “I had a Kaoss Pad. We used that quite a bit as a sort of an effects pedal, to a degree, with DJ Abilities. “I had one of the shittier Oberheims. An OB-12. It barely worked. I bought it as a display model from Guitar Center. There was none of that sophisticated shit. It was a while before I managed to make sense of all that. The…

Future drum design Weirdo toms with additive synthesis Additive synths let us build up timbres from scratch. Let’s use this approach to create an oddball percussive hit that combines two sonic elements 01 > As well as being an FM synth, Ableton’s Operator has oscillator waveform editors that can be used for additive synthesis. For this approach, we need the synth set to its 11th, final algorithm, which disables all frequency modulation. We’ll use oscillators A and B to stack two additive elements. 02 > In the Osc A waveform editor, draw in a custom waveform with a strong fundamental (the far left partial at full) joined by random single partials spaced fairly evenly across the harmonic range. This gives us a ‘chime’-like sound, great for percussive hits.  03 >…

Future drum design Granular layers with Pigments Randomised grains can be a great way to add a bit of strange, unpredictable texture on top of straightforward drum sounds 01>We’re going to combine a simple clap sound with some granular weirdness, so we can have a mixture of the basic clap but with some extra added character. Arturia Pigments is great for this as it has multiple engines. We’ll start from the Default patch. 02 >We switch engine 1 to Sample mode and import a basic 707 clap. We’re doing this for simplicity, but each engine can also do virtual analogue and basic FM synthesis, so feel free to get creative with your own foundation sound! 03 >We’ll also use engine 2 in Sample mode. Here we import a longer clip…

Joachim Pastor | The Track Making the music for Right Now in Ableton Live Joachim uses a selection of softsynths to create Right Now’s chilled-out instrumentation 01>“I like to record my own guitars, but this track was made entirely in-the-box and I used Spectrasonics Omnisphere instead,” Joachim reveals. He uses multiple instances of the ‘Jazz Guitar Fingers A’ patch, panned with different effects in order to create a wide stereo sound. 02 >Sonic Academy ANA 2 is used to create the track’s brassy stab, and Joachim runs this through a plate-based patch in Slate Digital VerbSuite Classics to give it a long tail. This is then compressed with a sidechain input from the kick to create a strong pumping effect. 03 >Omnisphere is called in again…

Impulse response ghost rhythms One of the joys of working with convolution reverbs is to use non-reverberant spaces. Here’s a new way to build rhythmic sequences 01 >We start with a basic programmed rhythm using the ‘Simple Waveform Kit’ in Battery 4. We identify three or four short sounds and program a simple syncopated pattern which we ensure is quantised. 02> To turn this rhythm into an impulse response file, it needs to be converted to audio. We do this using Logic’s Bounce In Place function, muting the original MIDI file in the process. We label the audio file ‘Rhythmic IR’. 03 >Next, we set up a plucked synth sound, using Logic Pro’s Retro Synth. Ordinarily, a synth sound like this might be used to program a more detailed, syncopated…

RETROSPECTIVE Broken beat This west London sound broke free from four-to-the-floor rigidity, creating an underground sound that lives on © Naki/Redferns Maybe you’ve never heard of the broken beat scene that emerged out of west London in the late ’90s, but you’ve probably heard its influence. Also known as ‘bruk’ (from Jamaican patois for broke/broken), the broken beat scene never really crossed over to commercial chart success or created any household names, but the influence of its choppy grooves, jazz influences and open-minded approach lives on today. The term ‘broken beat’ was coined by IG Culture, London-born Ian Grant, who first found success as a member of Dodge City Productions, a hip-hop duo who straddled the worlds of rap music and acid jazz, the late ’80s subgenre, which acted as…

TESTBENCH Serial compression While the parallel compression technique runs a compressor in parallel with an original signal, serial compression runs two or more over a signal in series. Is the result like throwing a single compressor at a signal? No, serial compression can give you a hugely more transparent tone while still compressing the daylights out of a signal if needed. Let’s explore this using the Venomode Complexer 2 compressor. This effect hosts three compressor stages, routable three ways: as a multiband setup, each affecting a different frequency band; as a stereo setup, each compressor affecting left, right or both channels; and as a serial setup, with each compressor’s output signal running into the input of the next. Standard compression The audio waveforms we’re working with on the left-hand side…

GEAR GUIDE HIGH-END SYNTHS ASM Hydrasynth £1,299 Full Review: FM360 An impressive first release from a new brand. Hydrasynth looks and sounds great, invites exploration, is built to last and is hugely expressive. What’s not to like? Korg Prologue from £1,299 Review: FM332 Despite a few surprising omissions, this sounds inspiring. A unique character, plus the analogue voices layered with VPM sounds and effects sound magical! Moog Sub 37 $1,579 Review: FM286 With a richer set of features and fewer operational hurdles than its predecessor, the Sub 37 is a superb and highly desirable upgrade to the Phatty family of Moog synths. Sequential Prophet X £3,359 Review: FM336 The Prophet X is a fresh and inspiring hybrid synth that encourages you to explore sound making in new ways. The results…