Table of contents for 09-2021 in Beat English

The common thread: Beat issue 09/2021 For many years, Beat has been inspiring its readers not only with practical and musical topics, but above all with the tight integration of editorial content. From the very beginning, Beat has been about creating, about the structured building of ideasand the common thread - in the magazine as well as in the tracks. This navigator shows you the highlights of this issue andallows you to see the big picture. Studio insights: Sunroof The duo Sunroof is releasing its debut electronic album these days - and 40 years after Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller became friends. Danny Turner found out how the legendary producers‘modular jams have finally come to fruition. Page 54 Review: Moog One The “Ultimate Moog Synthesizer“is what the manufacturer themselves call…

Alexander Franz ADAM AUDIO / FOCUSRITE / NOVATION Musician, live act, Techno freak www.adam-audio.de I really enjoy performing technoid DAWless live gigs where the Elektron Octatrack and the Novation PEAK are indispensable for me, but smaller groove boxes like the Novation Circuit Tracks also work incredibly well live. At home in the studio I am currently producing a lot for my second project A/FIN, which is more in the direction of dark disco/indie. For me, good monitors, like my ADAM Audio A77x, are indispensable here. I‘ve just dived into the Dante world and use the Focusrite Red16 Line with a RedNet A16r with enthusiasm, which allows me to route and use outboard effects in Ableton with almost no latency. Does it make more sense to convert the tracks into loops…

Roger Robindore APOGEE Product evangelist www.apogeedigital.com Imagine that you could apply plug-in processing anywhere in your signal path - on the microphone preamp, on the hardware input using the built-in DSP, or in your DAW using your computer‘s native CPU. Now imagine a simple and intuitive way to do all of this from the session in your favorite DAW! Only Apogee‘s Symphony Desktop USB interface offers this flexibility, plus the legendary audio quality of our flagship Symphony I/O MkII. Create the most suitable workflow for you today with Apogee FX plugins, the Channel FX Rack plugin and the intuitive touch screen control surface of the Symphony Desktop! What is auto input monitoring and why do I need it? Roger / With automatic monitoring, the signal of a channel is sent…

1 What‘s the difference between Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase and Logic? All programs are comprehensive DAWs with MIDI and audio tracks, plug-ins, automation, etc. The most striking difference is in Live‘s unique clip mode, which on the one hand allows jamming with different clips or patterns per track (see tip below) and on the other hand has made DJing with Live so popular. 2 How good are Live‘s in-house plug-ins? The quality and use of synths and effects are of course always to be judged subjectively, but in addition to the usual standards such as flanger, delay and reverb, Live actually offers some highlights that no other DAW offers. These would be, for example, the compressor „The Glue“or the Upwards-compatible Multiband Dynamics effect, which provides frontal sounds especially with…

1 Virtual setup Let‘s start with a basic set of sounds in mind: Which instruments are indispensable for your musical style and must be part of an arrangement? We have a melodic techno/trance track in mind, for which we need a beat, plus some percussion, of course a bass and melodic elements such as lead, arpeggio and a pad. Vocals and effects should not be missing either. 2 Intro Create a separate track for each instrument. With this basic setup we go to the virtual setup. Our track will most likely begin with an intro without a beat. So the pad and effects only make sense here. Thus we create clips eight measures long for the two tracks. In a second section of the intro we add the vocals. 3…

Lukas Rimbach GIK ACOUSTICS EUROPE Studied sound engineer www.gikacoustics.de Lukas Rimbach is a studied sound engineer and has been working at GIK Acoustics Europe since 2014. In his everyday life, he advises interested parties and customers on their room acoustics projects. He also works as a lecturer at several universities and runs his own recording studio for music production. GIK Acoustics is a US-based manufacturer of acoustic modules that are used in countless recording studios around the world. With their professional design and free consultation service, GIK Acoustics‘bass traps, absorbers and diffusers are popular with hobbyists and professionals alike. Do corner bass traps have to fill the entire height of the room? Lukas / In short: No, but: It is generally recommended to include as many corner bass traps as…

MPC project data at: bit.ly/BeatDL188 Project info Material: MPC Live, Live II, X, One, Touch, Studio, Renaissance, MPC Software 2 and MPC Beats Time required: 1 hour Content: Extract drums from existing loops or tracks and build your own beats from them. Difficulty: Advanced 1 Start The procedure is quite simple: We either sample a section of a track (Don‘t forget to sample-clear it if it‘s not your own!) or import a loop from a sample library. For our workshop, we recorded a few seconds of a track and created a loop from it for the sake of simplicity. 2 Chopping This allows us to quickly split the SAMPLE EDIT into 16 SLICES using the CHOP function and REGIONS. With SHIFT+CONVERT, we create a new DRUM PROGRAM without events and…

You can find more Cubase workshops and video courses at: www.MeinHomestudio.de Project info Material: Cubase Artist or Pro Time required: About 10 minutes Content: Layering of a snare with an octave sound; sonic fine-tuning with effects from Cubase. Difficulty: Beginner/Advanced 1 Drums in the project Create a new project at 120 BPM, add a new instrument track and open Groove Agent SE on it. Load the preset kit Rough Beat Kit 01 and click on the Pattern button to access various grooves from this kit. Now drag Groove 1 onto the newly created instrument track while holding down the mouse button. 2 Duplicate the snare Select the 2 bars of the groove and activate the Cycle function. Then, duplicate the instrument track by right-clicking on the existing track and using…

Beat / What inspired you to create Forest Kingdom 3 and how does the library complement the Forest Kingdom series? Eduardo / Definitely nature. I have always loved nature and sounds. Forest Kingdom 3 combines both. For me, there is no better way to travel than through music. Closing your eyes and playing a keyboard full of inspiring sounds is unbeatable. The sound of flutes and ethnic percussion was also a big inspiration, which is why you‘ll find so many of them in Forest Kingdom 3. The library complements the Forest Kingdom series in many ways: The first thing you notice is the beautiful new interface. Then, you find more instruments, more soundscapes, some bug fixes and some new features, like „Blow Intensity“, which have been implemented in the old…

BACK TO THE 80S! Over 90 analog sounds for Retro, Synth and Chillwave await you in the latest soundset, Starwave, for our Zampler//RX, as well as for Akai‘s MPC series. Look forward to powerful basses, gripping leads, shimmering keyboard sounds, as well as warm pads with an extra retro feel - perfect for Synth Pop and Synthwave and all related genres. The soundbank can also set charming accents with an 80s touch in Electro-Pop, Trance, Ambient, New Wave, Disco and House & the like. www.zamplersounds.com Facts Starwave for Zampler//RX: ▲ 2.1 GB Soundbank ▲ 1,462 Samples ▲ 97 Patches ▲ 30 Basses ▲ 55 Keys, Leads & Synths ▲ 12 Pads Starwave for AKAI MPCs: ▲ 1.1 GB Samples (optimized for MPCs) ▲ 92 Patches (Basses, Keys, Synths, Leads &…

Beat / Your performances fuse elements which some would consider un-combinable. What draws you to these combinations? Giorgia Angiuli / Curiosity has always been a key element in my life. I enjoy experimenting with new techniques and languages and I like to play new instruments. I was inspired by many different artists, from Radiohead to Björk and even including sacred music concerts … I need to express myself the way I feel in the moment, creating a mix of all the influences I encountered in my life, without accepting compromises or emulating trends. I first studied classical music, then started playing with a nu metal band and only after that set up my solo project of electronic music. I prefer playing live to DJing, because I can express myself with…

Elme: Shimmer As an additional creative outlet in addition to their main projects Oh No Noh and Wooden Peak, Markus Rom and Sebastian Bode joined forces to form Elme in order to express their preference for experimental electronica. The almost half-hour EP „Shimmer“is a high-quality gem, which is especially recommended for lovers of sophisticated, cinematic electronics. The seven instrumentals are playful, atmospheric and adventurous at the same time. The duo‘s sound moves somewhere between Electro à la Boards Of Canada or The Future Sound Of London, film music, ambient and a little jazz, creating profound soundscapes that can be heard well in the background or can be dissected in detail with the help of headphones. And despite all the joy of experimentation, the Elme sound remains accessible at all times…

SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD: www.bit.ly/BeatDL188 4 GB: Drums, Loops & Vocals für Hip-Hop, House und D&B Our highlight Tracktion RetroMod FAT brings the powerful and multi-faceted sound of modern Moog synthesizers to your DAW, including crisp basses and punchy leads, of course, as well as pads and much more. Also on board is the equally powerful and beginner-friendly DAW Avid‘s Pro Tools | First, which includes 16 tracks, 23 compressors & EQs, and excellent sampling and time-stretching tools. AIR Music‘s Xpand!2 workstation and UVI‘s PlugSound library provide inspiration. „Back to the 80s!“is the motto of the new Starwave soundset for our Zampler//RX, as well as for AKAI‘s MPC series, which provides 90 powerful basses, gripping leads, shimmering keyboard sounds and warm pads with an extra dose of retro feeling. No less inspiring…

Andreas Preuss ESI AUDIOTECHNIK GMBH Product development & technical service www.esi-audio.de My personal tip on the subject of checking the mix: You can save yourself the time of playing out and searching for devices to check a mix by simply using the ESI eXtra 10 headphones for the mix check. In addition you get the Realphones ESI Edition from dSONIQ for free, which you can use directly in the DAW. In the software you can easily simulate the sound of in-ears, hi-fi speakers and so on and thus do the mix check without leaving your seat once. Am I allowed to sample sounds from YouTube? Andreas / Legally, the current situation is like this: You can use samples, but you have to alienate them so much that you don‘t recognize…

Matthias Basedow MEINHOMESTUDIO Music producer, studio owner, Beat author www.MeinHomestudio.de “My name is Matthias Basedow, I work independently as a music producer and run a studio in Leipzig together with Paul Marx. Together we design the learning platform MeinHomestudio.de and help people to produce their own music: from the idea to the finished mastered song. In numerous video courses from all areas of production, we teach individual approaches to music production in Cubase. Our community unites many creative people: Here you can find producers of every genre, age and level of knowledge. On MeinHomestudio.de you can register as a free member and become part of the producer community.“ How do I improve the acoustics of my studio cost-effectively? Matthias / If your studio space is quite empty, thick carpets, irregularly…

1 How can I easily rearrange a Cubase project? While DAWs such as Ableton Live, Image Line FL Studio and Bitwig are a good choice for loop-oriented work, in Cubase audio and MIDI objects are arranged linearly on a timeline. In a linear arrangement, rearranging the individual components is often quite time consuming. Fortunately, there is the arranger track in Cubase, which makes this process very easy. You can use the arranger to define sections such as intro, verse, chorus, break and outro and play them in any imaginable order - with a click of the mouse instead of time-consuming moving and copying orgies. After trying out a wide variety of playback sequences, it is also possible to convert them to the linear arrangement. 2 Can I use Cubase as…

Which song structure has proven successful in popular music? Beat / One of the most popular and at the same time most accessible song structures consists of the parts verse, chorus and bridge. An intro often serves as an introduction to the song. The goal is to grab the listener‘s attention, be it with a gripping groove, catchy vocals or by introducing a hookline from the chorus. You can then tell your story in the stanza (verse). The chorus (or chorus) conveys the main textual message or emotional impact of a song as a climax and should be as memorable as possible. Distinctive melodies and hooks are a must here! If the verse and chorus are very different, a pre-chorus is often used to transition between the two parts. To…

1 How can I quickly locate send or aux channels in the mixer? A produced track is often made up of various instrument tracks. There are also send and aux channels - also known as „busses“-which are used, for example, to place the instruments in different reverb rooms. Some tracks even have several “busses”, which makes the mixer confusing. In the mixer view, hold down the “Shift” key and then click on the “Send” to be localized for the track - for example Bus 2 - and the respective bus track is highlighted by a glowing frame. 2 Is the take lost if I perform a song with my MIDI keyboard but have not activated recording? First of all: the answer to this question is „no“. There is a useful…

»For the last five years, I‘ve really only been listening to soundtracks and library music. « Beat / Gaspard, how did this solo album come about? Gaspard / I felt like I wanted to finish all of the melodies and pieces that had accumulated over the years. I record things all the time, for example, singing them into my cell phone. It was supposed to be an instrumental record because I haven‘t listened to traditional pop music or music with lyrics for a long time. For the past five years I‘ve only listened to soundtracks and library music. So it felt natural to escape from the duo constellation for a while and create something more personal on my own. Beat / So the work on the album primarily consisted of…

Project data in issue downloads: www.bit.ly/BeatDL188 Project info Material: Maschine MK1 – 3, Studio, Plus and Software Time required: 1 hour Content: Create a Deep House beat with groove and lots of stereo width Difficulty: Advanced 1 Basic beat We start with the beat, whose base we‘ll build with the Boundary Kit from the Maschine library. We use the kick from Pad 5 and place the hi-hat from Pad 7 quite classically in the off beat. Then, copy the notes to the 16th note behind it and adjust the velocity of the duplicates down to 99. To do this, we set SWING to 18% at 124 bpm. 2 More width For more stereo width, we copy Pad 7 to Pad 11 and pan one pad to the left and the…

Project info Material: Bitwig Studio 3 Time required: 30-60 minutes Content: Record hardware and software synths and map them as a multisample in the Bitwig Sampler and save. Difficulty: Advanced/Professional 1Crash course While the workflows differ when recording hardware versus a plug-in, the setup is identical: on the track of the instrument we place a MIDI clip containing the notes C1, C2, C3, C4 and C5, each 5 seconds long. Depending on the desired realism, you can, of course, insert further notes. 2 Synth sampling The length must also be adjusted according to the sound, but should not exceed 20 seconds; otherwise, the multisample will be too bloated later. Now separate the clip before each note and name the snippets with a placeholder followed by a minus and then the…

Project info Material: Hit‘n‘Mix RipX Deep Audio Time required: About 60 minutes Content: Break music down into stems and edit creatively Difficulty: Beginner/Advanced 1 Ripping In RipX Deep Audio, load a song with vocals that you want to rip into individual stems. In the ripper dialog that opens, you can specify which song elements are to be extracted, as well as the quality that influences the ripping process. Afterwards, you will find the individual stems in the RipX folder. Then drag them into the RipList. 2 Noise removal Double-click on the vocal track to display the individual vocal fragments in the piano roll. If background noise can still be heard during the singing, select the desired area or select a specific fragment. Remove the noise using the Noise Removal function.…

Vember Audio Surge Flexible Hybrid Synth, ideal for animated sound textures. Acon Dynamics BE All-rounder with compressor, expander and gate. Thorn Solo One of the best and most flexible monosynths out there! Zampler//RX REX and SFZ Player with mod-matrix & sequencer Areena Reverb Universal reverb effect with natural sound. 2.1 GB: Starwave for Zampler & Akai MPCs SPECIALIST FOR WACKY FILTER EFFECTS TAL Software TAL-Filter-2 Whether it’s filter sweeps over several bars, autowah or trance gate effects, dubstep wobbles or rhythmic stereo effects: TAL-Filter-2 is the perfect tool for filter, amplitude and pan modulation. Thanks to the diode clipper and the resonance reaching up to self-oscillation, even biting sounds are possible with the multimode filter. Download: www.bit.ly/BeatDL188 | Info: www.tal-software.com win | mac WONDER WEAPON FOR PUNCH AND POWER e-phonic…

Already the logo on the invitation mail to Apple‘s spring event led us to expect colorful things. However, only a few people were aware that the new iMacs would be a brightly colored reminiscence of the first iMac from 1998. The new iMac with a 24-inch screen replaces the 21.5-inch model and comes in seven colors ranging from yellow and orange to red, purple, green, blue and gray. Now with M1 power! The new iMacs are the first of Apple‘s desktop computers to use the in-house developed M1 chip, which already displaced Intel‘s processors from the MacBook Air as well as from the 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini for the most part at the end of last year. The switch to the company‘s own ARM processors, which are ultimately…

As an absolute sample freak, I want to be able to record all sound generators via the sample editor and MPC at any time. In the editor setup (WaveLab Elements) I have to choose one input channel, so spontaneous sampling of all channels is not possible. So I used the simple trick of connecting the S/PDIF output of my interface directly to its S/PDIF input. In the editor, I have specified the S/PDIF channel as the input. To avoid feedback, I muted the S/PDIF channel in the software mixer of the interface for all other outputs. As a result, every signal that gets into the interface is now looped through to the sample editor via S/PDIF, so that I can record anything at any time. All you need is a…

Martin Hubner CORDIAL GMBH Internal sales www.cordial-cables.com Martin Hubner is a constant in the sales team of the well-known cable specialist Cordial GmbH. His favorite topics include everything that has to do with studio equipment and cabling. His personal tip for the readers of BEAT magazine: „On the Cordial website you will find a WIKI section - an extensive and constantly growing collection of interesting articles from the field of cabling: www.cordial-cables.com/de/wissenswertes/wiki. You can get there directly using the QR code. In addition, there are always exciting knowledge posts about cables on the Cordial social media channels Facebook and Instagram. Why are there cinch cables only up to 6m? Martin / Unbalanced lines such as cinch cables are usually less well shielded. The longer the cable, the greater the loss…

Stefan Iselin MAGIX SOFTWARE GMBH Community manager www.magix.com Stefan Iselin works as community manager for Magix. Magix has been offering beginners and professional users technologically sophisticated yet user-friendly solutions for editing and publishing music, videos and photos since 1993. The product range in the musical area includes entry-level products such as the Music Maker, but also solutions for advanced and professional users such as Samplitude, Acid and Sound Forge. With his project Neyon, Stefan Iselin also explores the area between electro-pop and dance. How do I record vocals? Stefan / The be-all and end-all for good vocal recordings is first and foremost the signal chain with a high-quality microphone, preamplifier and audio interface. The positioning of the microphone and the level of the preamp are also very important. In order…

Preston Whiting BLACK LION AUDIO Chief operations officer www.blacklionaudio.com “I‘ve been with Black Lion Audio for almost a decade. My current role is chief operations officer, but I‘ve been everything from intern, mod technicians, shipping agents to cleanup crew. Before joining BLA, I worked as a cable TV, internet and phone technician for seven years. The training in RF theory that I received as a cable technician was fundamental to my success at Black Lion Audio and prepared me for working with audio circuits and signal transmission.“ Preston / Let‘s start with the benefits of power filtering: The sockets in your home or office are connected to a power grid that is primarily designed to distribute power for you and your neighbors. This system is very effective when it comes…

»Griots was created under special circumstances. I’d sleep and be awake completely randomly, working all hours of the night and day. « Beat / Up until a few years ago, most people only knew you for your jazz work and as a drummer. Now, you‘re releasing your second album as an electronic producer. It‘s quite a remarkable and somewhat surprising transition … Gerald Cleaver / Yes, my musical involvement with electronics is very new. I’ve been at it for about 4 years, at various levels of engagement. And the extent of my gear were plugins. Since then I dealt with Logic and Ableton, using Arturia sounds and I picked up a couple of synths. But what really changed the game for me is VCV Rack, a modular synth emulation. Being…

Project info Material: Logic Pro X (Version 10.6.2) Time required: 30 minutes Content: Create unique ambient pad sounds using on-board tools in Logic Pro X. Difficulty: Advanced 1 Piano, guitar and more To create a pad sound that fits perfectly into any ambient track, you should use a classical instrument such as a piano, guitar, or strings as the basis. It doesn‘t matter whether this is available as a virtual instrument or as a sample. In addition, you should deactivate all effects at the beginning or do without them. We need the unadulterated basic sound. 2 The classic We are going to use a Logic classic - the Boesendorfer Grand Piano. This can be found in the library under Pianos. After removing the effects that are loaded with the preset,…

Project info Material: Ableton Live 11 Time required: 30 minutes Content: Sensible distribution of instruments in the stereo image; exact positioning of stereo signals; modulation options of the panorama; track doubling and track delay; generate stereo width for mono signals. Difficulty: Advanced 1 In the stereo field The center in your mix belongs to the kick, as well as the vocal and lead tracks. Subbass and the bass range of your kick should also not be widened with stereo tools. The easiest way to give your mix more width is to distribute the individual tracks in the stereo panorama. Make sure that the mix still remains balanced. 2 Correcting volumes For each track moved to the left in the stereo field, place a counter element on the right side. An…

Project info: Material: FabFilter Pro-R or Oril River, FabFilter Pro-C or DAW Compressor, FabFilter Pro-Q or DAW Equalizer Time required: 30 minutes Content: Show advantages and disadvantages of placing a compressor before and after effects. Difficulty: Advanced 1 Compressor & Reverb Load a drum loop into your DAW that is not too full in terms of sound, such as a percussion loop; place a compressor on its track and let it pack a punch. This means a relatively low Threshold with a high Ratio, so that the loop pops properly. In our example, we use the FabFilter Pro-C, with a Threshold of -40 dB and a Ratio of 4:1. 2 Reverb This is followed by a Reverb with a relatively short decay time (Decay), which you set to 50% wet.…

Download workshop data here: http://bit.ly/BeatMixdown Six basic rules for tidy mixes 1 Volume Your most important tool for achieving a good mix is the level faders. Make a decision about how you want your instruments weighted in the mix, and adjust the volume ratios accordingly. You can also use, as a guide, which instruments are in the foreground and background of reference songs in the same musical genre. 2 Dynamics There is a distinction between microdynamics and macrodynamics. The former refers to the dynamics within a recording or audio track; in other words, the movements of the transients. Macrodynamics, on the other hand, refers to the differences in loudness within a complete song. Microdynamics can be influenced with the help of compressors, limiters and transient processors. The compressor is a…

Project info Material: Ableton Live 11, Ableton Push Time Required: 60 minutes Content: Match individual performance Live set to Push Matrix; plan combination of MIDI instruments for Live playing and stems; prepare stems in production process; flexibly design song parts and integrate them into performance template. Difficulty: Advanced 1 Ensuring flexibility To help your audience visually understand what you‘re doing on stage, haptic elements in their live setup, such as a Push, are helpful. Equally important is the ability to interact with your audience; therefore, your set should be built in such a way that you can react spontaneously and flexibly adjust the arrangements. 2 Maintain an overview Set up your performance Live set so that it is optimally adapted to the matrix of your controller. That is, limit yourself…