Table of contents for November 2018 in Future Music

Thermionic unleash The Kite hardware EQ Thermionic Culture have announced their latest outboard studio tool – an all-valve, stereo equaliser called The Kite. Taking its cues from the British firm’s Fat Bustard summing mixer, The Kite is Thermionic Culture’s response to a regular piece of user feedback, says Vic Keary, MD and designer: “We’ve had many requests for a version of our Fat Bustard without the summing facility, keeping the Attitude, EQ, and of course the big fat sound. So The Kite was born.” Controls for The Kite include HPF, Bass Cut and Lift, Top Shelf (for adding presence), Air and Attitude. The Kite has “semi floating” inputs and unbalanced outputs; and Thermionic Culture have already planned a transformer balanced version in purple livery, available soon. At the time of…

CLASSIC ALBUM Steel Pulse Handsworth Revolution Island Records, 1978 Words by Roy Spencer © Ebet Roberts/Redferns Exactly 40 years ago the founding fathers of UK bass culture were in Bob Marley’s studio watching an engineer kick a spring echo. It may have raised a chuckle, through a cloud of smoke, but the sound was no joke. This was dub science – a relatively new dark art of studio sound manipulation that gave body, weight, timelessness, pressure and power to your sound. Steel Pulse, a group of super tight musicians from Birmingham, were recording their debut album, Handsworth Revolution. Holed up in Island Records’ London studio (nicknamed “The Fallout Shelter”), surrounded by gear left over from Marley’s sessions, the young posse set to work with something to prove. They were at…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Ian William Craig Thresholder 130701 Vancouver-based singer/composer Ian William Craig returns after an 18-month layoff with his stunningly beautiful, atmospheric and hypnotic new album, Thresholder. Following on from 2014’s hidden gem,A Turn of Breathand 2016’s much-laudedCentres,Thresholderis the Canadian’s third studio album and continues with his idiosyncratic and distinctive sound that layers a series of tape deck loops over choral vocals and grainy, smeared textures. Like his previous output, Thresholder explores a beautifully raw, smudged and fractured soundscape that conveys emotion and thought so deeply and directly. Engulfed in blankets of fuzz, static, crackles and reverb, Thresholder feels wonderfully amorphous and free, drifting among hazy, ethereal structures that appear to have no form. Yet, Craig anchors the record with an almost invisible foundation of analogue current and…

RECOMMENDED Joseph Shabason Anne Western Vinyl Toronto-based saxophonist and composer Joseph Shabason delivers a heartfelt meditation on degenerative illness on his highly impressive second album, Anne. Named after his mother, the record offers a moving account of her struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Chopped up snippets of raw, intimate, interviews with Anne are delicately and beautifully woven into the gentle, lush soundscape that the Canadian producer creates. Throughout the layers of jazz-laced ambience, new age experimentalism and molten-synth electronica, Shabason manages to reflect the breadth of emotions involved with dealing with his mother’s disease. Warm pads wash over the top of oozing synths, glowing melodies as a haze of manipulated saxophone, haunting keys, muted brass and delicate tones mesh beneath. The result is a record that drifts and wanders like fading…

Semi-Modular Masterclass CV, GATE AND TRIGGERS “Rewiring can open up more and more doors for creative sound design” To harness the power of these semi-modular synths, you’ll need to become fluent in the languages these musical devices use to communicate. A standalone analogue synthesiser’s individual sections will be prewired under the hood: turn a knob to alter a particular voltage and change the resulting sound. The individual modules that make up a modular system, however, must be patched together with cables, in order to make those electrical connections manually. These analogue signals are known as control voltages, or CV. Again, a semi-modular synth is the middleman between standalone synths and an all-out modular rig. On the face of it, one can act as a ‘regular’ standalone synth: all of its…

Semi-Modular Masterclass Four of today’s best hardware analogue semi-modular synths 1 Arturia MiniBrute 2/2S Coming in two flavours, one with a keyboard (2) and one with a step sequencer (2S), the second generation of MiniBrutes are obvious choices for starting a modular setup. For the main oscillator, blend three waveforms to taste: a sawtooth with Ultrasaw; pulse with PWM; and triangle with gnarly Metalizer. There’s now a second oscillator, too, which can operate at extreme tunings, LFO-style. Then you’ve got dual LFOs, an ADSR envelope, plus an AD envelope that can be looped for eccentric glitch effects. However, it’s the 48-point patchbay that opens up more creative doors, serving up CV inputs and outputs for almost all parameters. And if that’s not enough, the 3u or 6u RackBrute modular cases…

QUICK TIPS > Stackable 3.5mm patch cables are essential. They feature a male connection with female input above – use these to mult signals and route a single signal to multiple destinations. > Plug a signal into an inverter module’s input then back out of its output, and the polarity of your signal will be inverted. Use it to flip LFO or modulation signals upside down for back-and-forth effects. > Try modulating everything with noise! Plug a noise source’s output into an attenuator, then patch the attenuator’s output into an input you want to modulate – filter cutoff, say. You can then use the atten knob to blend in this grit and sizzle to taste. > For self-generative patches that are synonymous with modular synthesis, use modulators to modulate others.…

On Stage With Maribou State Maribou State Electronic duo par excellence, Maribou State, follow up 2015 debut, Portraits, with stunning new album, Kingdoms in Colour.Hamish Mackintosh caught up with them to talk tech, new studios and the lost art of pedalboarding © Will Ireland Chris Davids and Liam Ivory went to the same school in rural Hertfordshire though barely noticed each other. It wasn’t until attending the same university that the pair became friends over a shared passion for music and thus, Maribou State was born. After a slew of EPs, 2015’s excellent opening album salvo, Portraits, was assembled in The Shack studio, a home setup in Liam’s back garden, which garnered the duo not-inconsiderable plaudits and attention. Several tours and notable remixes down the line, Davids and Ivory decided Maribou…

Delivering underscore mixes Covering an editor’s requirements with underscores makes life easier and may be the difference between your track getting sync’d to picture or not Underscores are ‘stripped back’ versions of a main mix which offer an editor a series of musical alternatives. These can prove useful in all kinds of contexts. If a couple of characters have been introduced with a ‘main mix’, using this again (when they reappear) would make thematic sense. However, if this second scene is dialogue-heavy, running the main mix, complete with top line, might sound too cluttered. Underscores can be useful in other contexts too. Sometimes an editor might love everything except the brass; in fact, she might dislike the brass so much that she’d prefer to use a different track altogether because…

DANNY’S GO-TO GEAR SSL G/E 4000 Strips “I love these! They have aggressive compression for transients and EQ for weight. I mainly use them for kicks, snares and subs. I have the SSL 9000 stereo channel in a Mynx above it for stereo sources like pads, horns and big stereo mid-bass sounds.” Akai MPC Live/ Renaissance “When I’m uninspired by Logic’s endless options, I’ll load 100 drum samples into the MPC, get busy on the pads and see what comes out. If you can make the bulk of an idea in the MPC it will all have that same clean groove and sound much tighter.” API 2500 Bus Compressor “It has a really coloured sound, but I find it great for drum & bass and jungle. It brings a nice…

Six underrated virtual samplers you should try Sugar Bytes Egoist | €99 Available as a VST/AU plugin for PC/ Mac or as an iOS app, Egoist is an unconventional sample-slicer with a 303-style sequenced bassline synth, drum machine and seven effects. Togu Audio Line TAL-Sampler | £46 This four-layer virtual sampler emulates the signal path and associated artefacts of several hardware samplers. Serato Sample | $99 Chop, loop, pitch and stretch a sample into up to 16 segments, then jam in your cuts, MPC-style. It’s basic, but the stretching and shifting algorithms are some of the best. New Sonic Arts Nuance 2 | €99 Bored of overcomplicated, bloated samplers? Check out this CPUfriendly, streamlined plugin, which offers unison, quick drag-and-drop modulation, XY pad and more. NI/Tim Exile Flesh | £89…

In The Studio With | Thomas Dolby Thomas Dolby The new wave synth icon has spent the summer touring the US talking technology and showing off Roland’s crop of Cloud-based synthesisers. Leo Maymind caught up with him to talk synths, sounds and streaming... A laptop on stage is not an uncommon sight these days, of course, but most performers try to minimise the screen’s involvement in the show in the eyes of the audience. If you can spot the computer at all, it’s usually off to the side, lid half-closed. Even complex pop shows with synced visuals and lighting tend to usher the laptop off-stage, keeping it safe so any sweat or beer is not going to damage its fragile components. But new wave star Thomas Dolby is taking a…

iZotope RX 7 iZotope RX 7 $399 The most comprehensive audio restoration package is at it again – James Russell reaches for the superlatives Every year, Massachusetts’ iZotope bring out another version of RX, and the question arises: “What more could I possibly want from this audio and music repair and restoration toolkit?” Every year, though, more features we didn’t think we needed are added, quickly becoming quite indispensable. The toolset for 2018/19 sees iZotope continue to use machine learning to create their newest repair algorithms, adding the literally superhuman Dialogue De-Reverb and Music Rebalance to the system. Elsewhere, the program matures by adding multitrack editing (up to Dolby Atmos 7.1.2), new pitch and time processors, and a Repair Assistant to diagnose problems and offer solutions. The headline feature is…

Mutable update and enhance Tides Mutable Instruments have decided to update one of their most popular Eurorack modules, Tides, in the form of a special 2018 edition. For the uninitiated, Tides is a ‘digital asymmetric triangle function generator’, which can be used in AD and AR modes (for envelope generation), or looping (as a VC-LFO or VC-DO). The triangle generator is followed by a wavetable waveshaper providing linear, exponential, logarithmic, sinusoidal, or arc-sinusoidal shapes for the A and D segments. Then, a second processor applies either a 2-pole low-pass filter to the waveform, smoothing its sharp edges, or a rubbery wavefolder, adding kinks and bounces to the waveform. This latest revision differs from the original in the introduction of additional output modes, which produce variations of the main signal that…

Logic Pro X 10.4.2 lets you move your Sound Library to an external drive It might not even be a full point release but Apple’s Logic Pro X 10.4.2 update still contains a few significant new features. Most notably, you can now relocate Logic Pro X’s not inconsiderable sound library to an external storage device, great for those struggling for space on their weeny internal SDD. Elsewhere, Smart Tempo has got smarter: it can now analyse the tempo across multiple multitrack recordings to define the project tempo, and also analyse the tempo of MIDI performances recorded without a metronome. Improvements have also been made to Alchemy and the automation workflow, and there’s a new mixer mode. Housekeeping hounds, meanwhile, will appreciate the ability to add a photo to notes. Apple…

Extrawelt Unknown Cocoon Hamburg duo Arne Schaffhausen and Wayan Raabe have been making music together in various guises for over the last 20 years, but it is as Extrawelt that the experienced duo have forged their most distinctive sound. Their fourth studio album under the moniker, Unknown, is a wild exploration of synth-driven, acid-heavy robotics. Stepping away from dancefloor-focused techno, the duo swoop into timeless electro, stripped-back boogie, cosmic synths, spacey ambience, old school breaks and futuristic experimentalism. Industrial-leaning, but infused with emotion, the record combines snapping drum machines, rugged synth lines and grumbling bass with warm melodies, jangling echoes and otherworldly effects. As old school as it is futuristic, Unknown chugs along with purpose without spilling into overdrive, letting us be swept along on its journey. Rough and tough,…

Feature Semi-Modular Masterclass SEMI-MODULAR MASTERCLASS Powerful standalone instruments in their own right, semi-modular synths also come with a world of creative patching possibilities The universe of modular synthesis is inhabited by bearded scientists who spend all day plugging electronic components together to make bleeps ’n’ bloops. Yet this geekiness is rewarded by the creation of the most unusual, experimental, unheard sounds that would be impossible to create any other way. This constant pendulum between science and music swings back and forth, intimidating newcomers and ‘proper’ musicians who are used to Junos and Jupiters. This is exactly why the world of semi-modular synths is so exciting: you start with a complete instrument, which is probably powerful enough straight off the shelf; but once you’re comfortable, you can begin tinkering with its…

Attenuators explained Use attenuation to control the level of a CV signal Let’s dive deeper into semi- and full-modular techniques. Again, using the MiniBrute 2 as an example, if we patch LFO 1’s output into the Filter Cutoff input, we break the prewired ‘LFO to pitch’ connection, and we can now modulate that filter frequency with the LFO. Simple! However, unlike regular mod matrix patching, we have no control over the amount or depth of modulation – the LFO is constantly at max strength. Handily, this is where CV attenuation comes into play, which can be used as an intermediary ‘level amount’. Patch the LFO’s output into an attenuator’s input, then patch the attenuator’s output into that Cutoff input. Voila: you can now twist the Attenuator knob to increase or…

Semi-Modular Masterclass Connecting two semi-modular synths We take the MiniBrute 2S and mix in the Behringer Neutron to create our own weird and wonderful hybrid, the ‘Bruton’… 1 After firing up the MiniBrute 2S and plugging its output into our audio interface’s first input, we program a 16-step, one-bar-long riff on its pitch sequencer. Once the analogue synth has been tuned, let’s go further and get a second semi-modular synth involved… 2 We set up the Behringer Neutron in front of the ’Brute, making sure it’s within patching distance. The MiniBrute 2S features an external input… so how about we take the Neutron’s output and run that through our first synth? To do this, we patch the Neutron’s Out > Output into the ’Brute’s Ext In > Ext input. 3…

Semi-Modular Masterclass LFOS AND OSCILLATOR MODULATION A synth’s low-frequency oscillator is essentially a ‘regular’ inaudible oscillator that operates at low speeds, and is used to modulate other parameters – kind of like an extra hand wiggling a knob for you at the rate and shape you set. LFOs in the semi-modular world are especially useful, as signals can be piped wherever you choose thanks to those patchbays. Plug an LFO’s CV output straight into an oscillator’s frequency/pitch input, and the LFO will wobble the pitch: instant vibrato. Plumb an LFO output into amplitude input and you’ll modulate volume for tremolo goodness. Plus, making those physical connections yourself will help you plan out your modulation strategy and get to grips with what’s going on from the start. “What’s also great is…

PRODUCER’S GUIDE Working to picture This isn’t a Producer’s Guide to the creative side of writing music to picture. You’ll find few references to melody, to harmony, arrangement or ensemble groups. If you have an interest in writing soundtracks, hopefully you’re developing a unique voice in this field and discovering sounds and textures to provide an emotional underscore to the picture you’re working to. Instead, this article is about the technical considerations which surround the job of writing music to picture. How can MIDI controllers dramatically aid the musicality of your scores? What are underscores and what makes an effective alternative mix? What are templates, how should you build one and why do they help? How do you go about converting your MIDI parts into effective scores? These are just…

DOs & DON’Ts DO: Learn how to respond to directorial feedback. Yes, you’re the musical mastermind at the heart of the soundtrack and you need to stand up for your work. But don’t be a diva who can’t collaborate. Film music is collaborative, so take constructive criticism and do your best to interpret it musically. DON’T: Try to sound like Hans Zimmer. He’s doing an excellent job of that himself and the most common myth in film music is that you’ll get more work if you can imitate the sound of someone who’s successful. Develop a strong original music voice and you’ll get more work and won’t feel as though you’ve sold your soul to the devil. DO: Be organised. On large jobs, create to-do lists of everything required. A…

Lo-fi sampling with TAL-Sampler Like the old-school flavour of retro dance tracks? Then Togu Audio Line’s crusty, dusty sampler instrument will tickle your tastebuds Primitive digital samplers from the likes of Akai and E-Mu gave early dance music a raw, crusty aesthetic that’s tough to recapture in modern DAWs. Those hardware instruments converted audio signals to digital 0s and 1s at low sample rates, and their A-D and D-A converters imparted unique aliasing artefacts that can’t really be replicated by sample-rate reduction or bitcrushing alone. Enter the TAL-Sampler. Unlike straight-up ‘degrading’ insert effects that process a sound further down the signal path, this four-layer software instrument emulates those ADC and DAC artefacts at the initial sampling level, and lets you switch between several classic sampler algorithms to give you the…

MODULAR MONTHLY Pattern creation and manipulation The Abstract Data ADE-33 Event Boss redraws the limits of rhythmic control Abstract Data firmly placed themselves on the map with the quick and simple clocking, pattern generation, tempo synced (or not) modulation of the ADE-32 Octocontroller. The ADE-33 Event Boss is the Octocontroller’s most trusted partner in crime – if the crime is quick, fun, interactive and CV controllable rhythm generation that is. The Event Boss works on the idea of ‘events’ – things you plug into the inputs such as gates, clocks, triggers, square wave LFOs etc. One key point is that the Event Boss doesn’t sync to the signals you put in, it simply reads and manipulates them. Steady clocks can become patterns, triggers can become longer gates, phases can be…

THE ALTERNATIVES Elektron Analog Four MkII £1,010 With its mix of analogue synthesis and digital sequencing, Elektron’s synth module is quite probably Medusa’s closest competitor. elektron.se Dreadbox Abyss £1,069 Dreadbox’s flagship four-voice poly lacks all of Medusa’s digital capabilities, but adds a collection of killer analogue effects processors. dreadbox-fx.com Novation Circuit Mono Station £349 Novation’s compact monosynth offers a similar combination of analogue elements and an innovative, pad-based sequencer. novationmusic.com…

THE ALTERNATIVES Korg SQ-1 £80 One of the cheapest ways to get into analogue step sequencing. The SQ-1 has two 8-step sequencers that can be set to playback in a variety of ways and with some connectivity options. korg.com Doepfer Dark Time £425 Dark Time is another dual 8-step CV/Gate analogue sequencer (with USB and MIDI interfaces for external interfacing). doepfer.de Koma Elektronik Komplex Sequencer €1699 Komplex is a monster of a standalone step sequencer, with the four fully-independent pattern generators only the start. MIDI devices can also be played from the device, which makes this a perfect way to integrate analogue and digital devices. koma-elektronik.com…

THE ALTERNATIVES Intellijel Atlantis £649 Although inspired by the non-modular SH-101, this Eurorack module hosts an impressive set of CV input and output sockets taking it closer to 500 Series territory. intellijel.com Frequency Central System X Modules from £100 Frequency Central currently produce four Model 100m clone modules – Envelope, Filter, Oscillator and S&H/Noise. frequencycentral.co.uk Original 5 Module Roland 100m System (used) from £2800 Configurations vary, but a five-module system with case is now nudging towards and over the £3k mark these days. ebay.co.uk…

Yamaha MODX Series Keyboards Yamaha MODX Series keyboards from £1,242 Montage now has a trio of new siblings using the same FM-X and AWM2 technology. Dan ‘JD73’ Goldman gets Mod-X-ing! Much like Korg with their Kross and Krome, Yamaha’s flagship Montage engine (which features their AWM2 and FM-X tech) has now trickled down to their brand new MODX range, replacing the MOX range in the process. There are three models in the MODX range including 61 and 76-note synth-action models and an 88-note weighted model. For this review, I’m going to be taking a look at the MODX7 and 8 (the 76-note synth-action and 88-note weighted models). Firstly let’s take a quick look at the form factors. The 88-note weighted action GHS (Graded Hammer Standard) MODX8 weighs 13.8 KG (a…

Using MatrixBrute as an external audio processor Is it easy to set up? It is indeed. The MB is one of the finest external audio processors around (plus you happen to get a super-versatile analogue paraphonic synth in with the deal too)! We use ours for distorting drums and adding colour, plus the all-analogue BB (bucket brigade) effects sound great on anything, like having a suite of Moogerfoogers in one machine! Take the instrument you want to process, a jack lead (mono) and then set things up as follows… Around the back of the MatrixBrute you’ll find a section labelled audio in. Plug in your audio source here via a mono jack lead. You can choose from a line level source or instrument level (guitar/bass/etc) via the switch. You also…

LISTEN AT LOW LEVELS “Sometimes it fixes track level issues, especially in small or untreated rooms. Try listening to your mix at a barely audible audio level. The focus of your mix should be quiet but clear. Everything else can be barely audible. Listen to instruments that start to disappear, maybe they’re too low in the mix? Then check again at a regular level.” Close your eyes when adjusting EQ and compression “You don’t want numbers to influence your decisions, just the sound. You’ve made a 24dB boost at 800Hz? You’d feel sick looking at that EQ setting on the screen, but if it sounds good, who cares?” A lot of electronic sounds need a gentle roll off above 5k “I first read about this one in Curtis Roads’ book…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Matumbi Point Of View Sublime UK reggae album from 1979, shaped and sculpted by dub pioneer, Dennis Bovell, who also provided lead vocals. Essential. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Point Of View (Squeeze A Little Lovin'), Come With Me, All Over The World (Money) Aswad A New Chapter Of Dub Forget their modern commercial output for a second and head back to 1981, were this super tight crew of musicians, with a young Mikey Dread at the controls, flesh out a new direction for UK dub. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Dubfire, Flikaflame, Shining Dub Maxi Priest & Caution You’re Safe Mid-’80s debut, and an early high point for ex-Saxon soundbwoy, Maxi Priest. Smooth lover’s rock from a giant of the scene, seen? ADD THESE TO…

Francis Harris Trivial Occupations Scissor & Thread New York-based producer and label owner Francis Harris delivers a beautiful, intimate record on his own Scissor & Thread. Trivial Occupations, his third LP under his own name, is his most delicate, personal and atmospheric work to date. Far-removed from the dancefloor aesthetic of his other well-recognised monikers, this album sees the New Yorker sink into a dreamy, atmospheric soundscape that explores various moods, colours and genres. Mostly ambient, downtempo and ethereal, the whole album has a cinematic artistry. Beautifully composed and arranged with real freedom, Trivial Occupations meanders through jazzy textures, off-kilter grooves, experimental structures, trippy, downbeat electronica and even an excursion into dancehall. Soft, muted piano keys interplay with haunted strings, airy synths, mournful horns, grainy guitars shuffling percussion and fluid…

Semi-Modular Masterclass Shaping timbre with semi-modular patching Let’s alter timbre using Arturia’s MiniBrute 2S, a semi-modular monosynth. Time to head over to that 48-point patchbay… 1 We’re starting with a simple square wave oscillator. When we raise VCO 1’s FM knob, the synth uses VCO 2 to modulate VCO 1’s frequency. We can create a grittier FM effect by heading to the patchbay and plugging the Noise oscillator’s output into VCO 1’s FM input. Easy! 2 The triangle oscillator features the ‘Brute’s signature Metalizer effect, which is a wavefolder of sorts. By plugging VCO 2’s Out into the Metal Mod input, we’re telling the second osc (currently a saw) to quickly modulate the amount of Metalizer for a gnarly effect. 3 Let’s disconnect cables, zero all oscillators and crank Filter…

Semi-Modular Masterclass Five of today’s best software powered semi-modulars 1 Madrona Labs Aalto With its West Coast aesthetic and cable-connecting workflow, this vibey synth plugin strikes the perfect balance between semi-modular eccentricity and software convenience. Trigger the FM-esque complex oscillator with its multiple sequencers for Buchla adventures in the box. 2 Green Oak Crystal It looks a bit dated by today’s standards, but this famous subtractive-meets-FM synth gives you everything you need to experiment with semi-modular adventures… and it’s free! Although it eschews patch cables for a more traditional mod matrix, there are tons of modulators to get things moving. Also available on iOS for a mere $4.99. 3 Max for Cats Pallas Operating in Ableton Live’s Max for Live environment, Pallas is an eight-voice, three-oscillator semi-modular soft synth that…

Neutron bomb Get to know Behringer’s little red synth… While Behringer’s unashamed clones of iconic synths and drum machines may steal the limelight, it’s their little red synth module – a unique creation – that has really grabbed our attention. For £300 you get a paraphonic two-oscillator synth with PWM and sync; multimode resonant filter switchable between low-, band- and high-pass; two ADSR envelopes and an LFO; 32-in/24-out patchbay; plus overdrive and a Bucket-Brigade delay. And the synth can be mounted in a Eurorack case! What’s not to like? In this walkthrough, we’ll take a quick look at some of the Neutron’s most useful features. Oscillators Engage the oscillator section’s Paraphonic switch, then play two MIDI notes at the same time to pitch either oscillator independently. Alternatively, activate Sync, which…

Producer’s Guide To Working To Picture Working from templates The demands of writing music for picture can be brutal. Talk to any film composer and you’ll hear stories of sleep-deprived writing sessions for crazy directors who have sacked another composer with the mixing deadline just two weeks away. Of course, everyone loves a harrowing tale and not every job is always so grueling but it’s true that writing music for picture is a remarkable job where you can easily have no work for months on end and then find yourself chained to your studio for 18 hours a day, seven days a week on a diet of adrenaline and strong coffee. “Learning on the job isn’t really an option” As a result, learning on the job isn’t really an option for…

In The Studio With Danny Byrd Danny Byrd Absorbing an eclectic mix of house, UK garage, R&B and jungle influences, Danny Byrd is an iconic figure on the drum & bass circuit. Danny Turner chats to the DJ/producer about the process behind his signature style © Olly Curtis The jewel in Hospital Records’ crown, Bath-based drum & bass pioneer Danny Byrd has forged a reputation for infusing the genre with a cross mix of generic styles. With a notorious flair for mixing and production, Byrd’s discography is defined by hit remixes such as Liquid’s Sweet Harmony and classic dancefloor tracks including Ill Behaviour, which punctured the mainstream top 40 in 2010. Albums such as Supersized, Rave Digger and Golden Ticket are a celebration of Byrd’s unique take on drum &…

QUICK TIPS 1 Wrap a sampler’s loop points around a nice segment of a chord sample, flip its playback mode to back and forth, then pitch the sample up and down until you find the sweet spot. 2 If your sampler offers real-time timestretching, play with settings as you trigger chords to find unique timbral interactions you’d never normally create using other means. 3 Samplers are great for generating ‘scratchy’ timbres: pitch a sample down an octave, bounce down the sample (to bake in the sampler’s stretching artefacts), load it into a fresh sampler and pitch it back up an octave. 4 Try swamping a sound in 100% wet reverb, render the signal to audio, then load that back into a sampler. A great way to design ethereal riff and…

FM Toolkit Virtual Samplers Hip-hop sampling with Serato Sample The DJ mavens’ debut virtual instrument is ideal for MPC-style sample chopping in your DAW 01 > Unlike traditional samplers, Serato Sample bridges the gap between digital DJing and speedy, hip-hop-style sample chopping. After firing up Serato Sample in Ableton Live, we drag and drop a jazzy chordal loop onto the main interface. The loop’s waveform populates the centre area. 02 > 16 pads sit along the bottom of Sample’s interface – we click the first one (labelled Y) to activate this first cue point. We can now play the sample by clicking on this pad, or hitting MIDI note G1. Drag the waveform’s cue handle to move the start position of this cue point. 03 > Let’s now set up…

MIDI - GETTING CONNECTED Although Generator is strictly analogue when it comes to controlling external devices, MIDI does find a place in the shape of MIDI In socket. Unlike many other sequencers, MIDI Clock is not supported. However, Analogue Solutions use a clever system for allowing Generator to keep track with your DAW, and support any type custom timing groove. The unit responds to MIDI notes received on Channel 2 only, and its universe is limited to just four notes. C(60) is used to clock the sequencer, which moves through the steps each time a note is received. So getting everything to work in sync is simply a matter of programming a repeating sequence of notes in your DAW and sending them to Generator. Adding swing is simply a case…

THE ALTERNATIVES Yamaha Montage7 £3,540 Montage also comes in a 76-note synth-action version with double the MODX7’s FM-X polyphony, a higher quality case/ keyboard, more direct parameter buttons and better convertors. uk.yamaha.com Korg Kronos 2 73 £2,568 Korg’s flagship workstation features nine engines including acoustic and electric piano, a PCM (sample-based) engine, physical modelling, virtual analogue engine, MS20/Polysix emulation, FM (with DX import) and CX-3 organ plus effects, sampling and sequencer. www.korg.com Yamaha SY77/99 from £250 used The forerunner to the Montage (and DX7 successor), the SY77 was a super-powerful, warm-sounding, six-operator AFM synth/ workstation, with a sample-based AWM2 engine, effects and 16-track sequencer. Gumtree, eBay etc…

Mackie Onyx Producer 2.2 Mackie Onyx Producer 2.2 £129 Mackie pride themselves on their ‘built like a tank’ ethos. Jon Musgrave sizes up their latest compact interface A compact workhorse device that should last for years The multitude of compact 2-in/2-out USB interfaces can be bewildering, not least because, for such a simple concept, there are a lot of variants and price points. Mackie’s latest units, the Artist 1.2 and Producer 2.2 (which I have on review), are at the simpler and more affordable end. Even so, with high quality Onyx mic pres, balanced analogue connectivity and operation up to 24bit 192kHz, they’re perfectly capable of getting clean signals in and out of your DAW. Throw in the robust metal case and you’ve got a compact workhorse device that should…