Table of contents for August 2019 in Future Music

FM| WELCOME Automated for the people Compared to, say, beat programming or crafting a bassline, talking about automation can feel a little dry. On the surface, it’s not the most creative aspect of music making – more akin to booting up a spreadsheet and doing your accounts than writing music. Surely it’s something you could just skip altogether? In reality though, automation is where things get really interesting – the process that turns a basic demo into a fully-realised composition. Whether it’s subtle volume tweaks, effects movement or changes in the tone of your instrument, automation adds those subtle timbral shifts that make your tracks feel dynamic and fully realised. It doesn’t have to be a case of clicking with a mouse either – map parameters to the nearest MIDI…

The Future Of Music u-he’s Hive 2 is both supercharged and streamlined u-he has announced the arrival of the hotly-anticipated Hive 2 plugin synth, claiming that it will be sleeker, more streamlined and supercharged than its predecessor. We first had word of version 2 back at NAMM, where we were keen to see what the Berlin-based firm had in store for the popular VST/AU plugin synthesiser. Users of version 1.x will notice that the UI has been cleaned up somewhat in a bid to make the controls easier to read and to make space for new functions. A new row of modules has appeared just below the hexagon, which features two function generators and a shape sequencer. The function generators have a West Coast synthesis vibe about them and are…

CLASSIC ALBUM Adamski Doctor Adamski’s Musical Pharmacy MCA, 1990 Words by Roy Spencer © Tim Roney/Getty Images It’s the dawn of a new decade, and Adamski is being marched back to the studio to write a brand-new album. He’d only just handed in Liveandirect – a sublime collection of UK rave and Ibiza club sets, captured across the mythical summer of ’89. That was fun. Partying shoulder to shoulder with the Happy Mondays, and living life to the fullest (on and off the decks) at legendary clubs like Amnesia. The last thing he wanted to do was come down, and shut himself in the studio with the pressure of magically coming up with a smash-hit pop album. Unfortunately he’d just made the track Killer, and it was a runaway success…

Sending effects to effects Let’s bring a simple phrase to life with a couple of bus effects, which can be shaped using automation to increase musicality Whether you need a shared reverb to glue sounds together or a delay line which you’re adding to just a single instrument, no mix is complete without spatial treatments. But it’s when you start to think of effects – particularly delay – as less of a type of spatial treatment, but rather as an opportunity to further enhance the musicality of the phrases you write that things get interesting. Here, we’ve set up a first delay with a couple of automating parameters controlling how they affect the source sound. We’ve then sent this first delay to a second, automating yet more parameters to provide…

Automate Everything Managing auxiliary automation data The only problem with automation data created on auxiliary tracks is that they aren’t ‘tied’ to a region. Whereas we tend to automate parameters on instrument and audio tracks where MIDI or audio regions exist, auxiliary automation needn’t be governed by the same rules. This can become an issue if you need to move all of the data in your track forward or back in time, to modify the structure of your track. Whereas the automation tied to regions will happily move, it can be the case that data on auxiliary channels won’t budge in quite the same way. In this way, it can help to create regions around auxiliary data, as the moment these parameters are tied to a region, moving them is…

Automate Everything Know your automation Most DAWs provide multiple modes for automation, which let you write or read automation events in many ways. Learning the difference between these becomes important if you want to record automation data in real time. If you’re someone who prefers to create automation nodes in post-production, or simply by creating events with mouse clicks, you won’t need to leave read mode. However, if you’re creating automation by manipulating a synth parameter or a mixer object in real time, learning the difference between touch and latch modes, for instance, will help. Different DAWs approach things differently: In Logic Pro, touch mode will ‘write’ new automation data whenever you engage the parameter you’re working with, but it’ll revert to the previous value when you let go. Latch…

Automate Everything Automating unexpected parameters Sometimes it’s the parameters you least expect which can add hidden depth to your mixes… 01 > We start with a track featuring five parts – it features some digital percussion sounds, a separate hi-hat part, a low and resonant moody loop, a repeating bar-long sequence from Signal and a bassline which joins halfway through. A few effects are set up, but nothing’s automated just yet. 02 > We start by choosing to automate the decay time to the digital hi-hat part. This is most easily done by control-clicking this parameter and choosing a MIDI controller assignment. Next it’s time for you to draw the automation line you want, which causes variations in the length of each hat. 03 > The loop contains a resonant…

The Track Making Nocturnes’ tasty textures in Apple Logic Pro Mark Dobson leverages Logic’s sound design power to weave Nocturnes’ rich sonic tapestry 01 > The genesis of the track is a sample of Japanese folk music that Mark cuts up in EXS24. “It sounds a bit weird on its own, but when the drums come in it makes a lot more sense!” he says. The sample is played back on two octaves to thicken the sound, with Space Designer and Tape Delay providing reverb and delay. 02 > Next Mark adds a bassline, which consists of two layers: a tweaked version of the My Old Soul preset from Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a Minimoog-based patch from Spectrasonics Trilian. This is run through Waves Renaissance Bass to…

Tape Effects | Producer’s Guide To Sculpting a tape-delay effect Want characteristic regenerating and pitch wobbling echoes? Find out how modern plugins with tape-delay parameters could help 01 We start with some programmed drum sounds, taken from NI’s Clik Dub Kit in Battery 4. We program separate parts for kick, hats, clap, FX snares and then add a chopped up loop to give it some extra crunch. UAD’s AKG BX 20 reverb is added to the clap track. 02 We add NI’s Replika XT delay to the clap track via an auxiliary bus. Select the Tape Delay algorithm, using a dotted 1/8th note, with Feedback providing a few echo taps for each clap. There’s a bit of the character of tape in this delay, but not enough. 03 Next, increase…

Ways to shift formants A closer look at the different methods… As mentioned earlier, formant shifting can be done in two ways, and the method you use will be determined by the reason for doing so. Most DAWs, such as Logic Pro X’s Flex Pitch or Cubase’s VariAudio, give you the ability to formant-shift sections of audio in a per-note editor display akin to Celemony’s Melodyne editor software. This is the most effective method for per-word formant adjustments on, say, a longer vocal take, as you’re able to home in and precisely shift each word or syllable to a different value. If your host doesn’t feature an editor like this, it’ll probably at least allow you to keep the original formant value intact to a degree as you shift pitch…

ADVICE Are there any good vocal synth plugins? > We’d say that creating a plugin that can ‘sing’ convincingly and is easy to use is one of the last great challenges that music software developers face. Of course, there have been attempts to do this in the past. Though not entirely realistic, Yamaha’s Vocaloid has become a cult favourite (particularly in Japan), and VirSyn’s Cantor was another early contender. There’s also Plogue’s Chipspeech, which, if you’re happy with robotic voices, is a winner. A genuinely real-sounding virtual vocalist, though, remains elusive. However, there is hope on the horizon in the form of the Emvoice One. Currently being developed, early demos of Emvoice One are promising, although they do still have a digital-sounding element to them. Many electronic music vocals are…

Gear Guide Essential Tools For Music Making HIGH-END SYNTHS Yamaha MODX from £1,242 Full Review: FM337 While programming can initially overwhelm, the sounds, versatility and portability are hard to argue with. The MODX combines the best of the Montage/Motif/DX engines, at a great price! 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…

Gear Guide Essential Tools For Music Making DAWS Tracktion Waveform 10 from $199 Full Review: FM345 Waveform is now friendlier, contains more creative tools and brings workflow improvements you’ll have missed from other DAWs. Bitwig Studio 2.4 | $169 Review: FM330 Bitwig Studio 2 was great at launch, but subsequent ‘point’ updates have made it even better, adding new synths, refined tools and – most recently – a new sampler. Propellerhead Reason 10 | €369 Review: FM327 Reason is now ready to lock and load with VST plugin support. 10 adds several new instruments and effects, helping you maximise your creativity. Cakewalk by Bandlab | free Cakewalk was recently been killed off by Gibson but saved by BandLab. It’s now free, so head over to their site and get downloading! We’re…

Automate Everything Managing ‘silences’ with automation Use automation to stop effects ‘dead’ and manage delay feedback levels for great results 01 > We begin with a delay-heavy bassline, kick drum, pad and lead synth. After a bar break (at Bar 10), the arrangement develops with a drum loop, finger snaps and a second bass. We want to clear more space out of the mix at Bar 10, in order to make this transition more dramatic. 02 > We address the Omnisphere bass pulse first. The delays are coming from Omnisphere’s internal effects and we want to kill the delay returns and the natural release tail of the core sound too. An abrupt volume automation cut does both, with the ramp coming back up in time for the second phrase. 03…

Track and region automation Sometimes you want automation to be tied to a short, repeating event and sometimes you want it to unfold over many bars In the following example, we’re going to look at the difference between track and region-based automation. Broadly speaking, track automation allows any parameter to unfold, evolve and change over as long a period as you like, with automation events that aren’t tied to a specific region and which needn’t conform to a repeating pattern. Region-based automation does the opposite – it allows you to create an ‘automation pattern’, which is tied to a particular musical event, so that rather than having to draw the same nodes over and over again, you can make them once and then have them repeat as often as you…

Automate Everything Why automation matters © Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images As should be apparent when you’re working through the walk-through examples on these pages and reading each passage of text, the potential of what automation can do is woven into the very fabric of what it is to make music. And this, of course, should come as no surprise – remember that music-making existed long before technological processes allowed us to work with electronic instruments, recording environments and sample libraries. And if you choose to look at a score of a Beethoven symphony or a mid-19th century folk song, you’ll see musical directions aplenty which, in today’s mixing terms, we’d manage using automation. Dynamic markings in orchestral scores, whereby f (forte) means loud and p (piano) means quiet, are two specific…

YOUTUBE 'THE TRACK Leading producers go in-depth on the sounds, ideas and techniques behind their latest releases Phildel, Glide Dog Phildel drops a dark, moody track from her new album... We chat Logic, VSL Strings and eerie vocals with the Brighton-based musician DON’T MISS: Ishmael Ensemble, The River ft. Yazz Ahmed Producer Pete Cunningham tells all Sophia Saze, Self The Dusk & Haze boss on her continuous cassette album Huxley, Evolution We head to Brighton to meet with tech house guru Michael Dodman Throwing Snow, Simmer Ross Tones breaks down a dancefloorfocused cut from his latest LP, Loma Steinberg Studio Sessions Top producers show you the world of Steinberg in our monthly video series DON’T MISS: Watch as Michael Gray breaks down his remix of disco classic You Make…

Make an authentic-sounding tape hiss Just as vinyl crackle immediately conjures a particular sonic association, so tape hiss does the same. If you don’t own a tape emulator, here’s how to generate your own high-frequency noise Tape emulation plugins do a whole lot more than simply provide the characteristic ‘hiss’ we all so readily associate with tape. The best of them, as we’ll see elsewhere in this article, emulate the delicate balances of a number of a tape machine’s moving parts and some even emulate different tape types too. However, if you don’t have access to a tape emulation plugin, or if you want to produce your own approach to a tape-hiss effect (perhaps to add a little quasi-authenticity to a loop you’re making), follow the three steps below. As…

Baked to perfection With no option except to record to tape until the digital recording revolution began, engineers, producers and audio archivists have been left to entrust some of the world’s most precious audio recordings to tape’s long-term health. And it turns out that, as a medium, its staying power isn’t entirely optimal. Tape degrades over time, leading to a condition referred to as ‘sticky shed’ syndrome. The adhesives upon which tape relies is susceptible to moisture and becomes weaker and less reliable over a long period of time, resulting in the tape squeaking and screeching on playback. Tape baking is now a common practice; by placing tape reels in an oven set to a low temperature (about 60°C is recommended) for a few hours, the tape ‘recovers’ for at…

FM| RETROSPECTIVE ’80s synth-pop The wild collision of synths, sci-fi and arthouse influences defined the sound of early ’80s pop © John Rodgers/Redferns In retrospect, the concept of early ’80s synth-pop was unlikely: punks, analogue synths, sci-fi, art school androgyny and dancefloor politics colliding into a beautiful, messy heap that briefly ruled the charts. No other genre would so perfectly express the idea of being bored with the present and fascinated by the future – other than perhaps early ’80s Detroit electro as it morphed into techno, which shared a similar aesthetic and outlook on the world. The sound emerged at the tail end of the 1970s. There’s no exact starting point, but Tubeway Army’s 1979 single Are ‘Friends’ Electric? feels like a key moment for the sound. The punk…

FM Explainer | Formant Basics Creative formant shifting Four ideas to take your formant shifting into a more creative zone for some interesting effects … 01 For a pitch-tastic breakdown effect, repeat a section of your track’ vocal over and over before gradually automating a plugin’s formant shift amount over the course of the break. This will cause the vocal’s timbre to smoothly rise, creating rising intensity. 02 For an interesting vocal-thickening effect, duplicate your main vocal to a second audio channel, then lower the pitch of this parallel copy. This allows you to maintain the vocal’s original quality but blend in lower-timbre density to taste. 03 Go further by creating another duplicate copy of your vocal, then shifting this third copy’s formant amount up high, creating a shimmeringly bright…

USB CAPABILITIES While it doesn’t support Elektron’s Overbridge software, Model:Samples can function like an audio interface in order to stream its stereo output tracks directly into your DAW via USB. There’s a weird lack of information provided about this though. While the instrument is referred to as ‘class compliant’ on Elektron’s site, and there are allusions to sending/receiving audio in the settings section of the manual, nowhere does it explicitly explain what the audio-over-USB capabilities are and how to take advantage of them. Given that Model:Samples is designed for the entry/intermediate level of the market, this lack of clarity is a baffling own goal on Elektron’s part. The USB connection can also be used to import user samples into the instrument. This is done via Elektron’s simple but effective Transfer…

MASTER EFFECTS The only non-analogue element of Impulse Command’s design is its master effect processor, with its range of eight effect types, which generally lean towards spatial and ambient effects. There are four delays – including ping-pong and long decay varieties – plus two reverbs, a flanger and a bitcrush effect. Each can be tailored by the two Aspect rotaries and dialed in via a wet/dry control in the master section. Three of the effects also have a third adjustable parameter, controlled via the step sequencer. This allows for the level of reverb or delay to be sequenced or, in the case of the bitcrush effect, to modulate the bit rate of the right channel using the sequencer. These effects sound great in general, and suit the overall sound and…

WHAT’S A MELLOTRON? First released in 1963, the Mellotron remains a unique keyboard instrument. Vaguely similar to a modern sampler but using a strip of magnetic tape for each key instead of digital storage, the Mellotron allowed rough approximations of things, like string sounds, brass and choirs, to be played back polyphonically, years before the first samplers hit the market. It’s best known as that woozy, warbling flute intro to the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields, or the keyboard backing ’60s hits like David Bowie’s Space Oddity and Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale. Since then it’s found its niche in experimental rock and psychedelic music; and when bands want an endearing lo-fi keyboard sound.…

ROUND-UP Kick-only instruments Forget your serious snares and hard-won hi-hats – we put our BD eyes on some cool, virtual instruments just for kicks… Sonic Academy Kick 2 £50 Forget the little boys’ instant kick generation plugins, the Nicky Romero-inspired Kick 2 is a high-tech laboratory for low-end hits, and can even muster a few snare sounds. The main attraction is the set of five curve editors – Pitch, Amp, and Clicks 1, 2 and 3 – with which you can create and drag nodes, lines and curves to define envelopes, bringing everything into harmony to fully customise your overall kick signal. The editors themselves are easy to use, and the waveform displays update dynamically based on both the curves you draw and the parameters you set in each sample’s…

Boss RC-505 for live effects? I really dig the RC-505’s effects, but how do I set it up to use as a live input-effects machine? The RC-505 has five stereo tracks for looping and features some excellent input (and output) effects, which allows it to be configured as a hands-on effect box that works very well with live keys and drum machines (as part of a compact live rig). Using the A, B and C IFx buttons, you can assign three independent effects, which can be switched in and out on the fly. You can also use up to three effects singly or simultaneously for more complex layers, then simply turn the nicely grabbable input effects dial to manipulate as you play... Connect your source audio to the inputs/ main…

Gear Guide Essential Tools For Music Making AUDIO INTERFACES Universal Audio Apollo x6 £1,800 Full Review: FM340 The new series is, sonically, now a match for any rival interfaces. If you’re tempted by the UAD ecosystem, this is highly recommended. Steinberg AXR4 £2,200 Full Review: FM342 Stunning audio quality with ultra high-resolution recording rates and gorgeous preamps designed with Neve’s involvement. Apogee Element 46 | £859 Review: FM318 If you’re happy with your studio interface being controlled via software, Apogee’s Element range offers great quality and features. Audient iD4 | £120 Review: FM312 This compact interface delivers audio quality and stripped-back functionality for a thoroughly reasonable price. A great budget interface. Arturia AudioFuse £519 Review: FM321 A nicely designed, highly configurable interface ready to have almost any sound source thrown…

Gear Guide Essential Tools For Music Making DRUM MACHINES & SAMPLERS Arturia DrumBrute Impact £279 Full Review: FM335 The Arturia DrumBrute Impact isn’t the most versatile-sounding drum machine, but its sequencer is great and it packs a whole lot of punch for its price. Elektron Digitakt | £659 Review: FM320 With deep sequencing and a powerful sound engine, Digitakt is the ‘affordable’ Elektron groovebox we’ve been dreaming of. Elektron Analog RYTM | £1,499 Review: FM331 Though the MK1 remains a great box, there are plenty of reasons to upgrade to the MKII – user sampling, individual outs, and QPER feature are all indispensable additions. Akai Force | £1,299 Review: FM343 More than just a standalone sampler, Force is a full DAW-in-a-box, with synth and effects. If you can afford the…

Filter | The Future Of Music FM| FILTER Is the age of automatic mixing finally upon us? New plugins from iZotope, Master The Mix and Initial Audio promise to help you mix with ‘intelligent’ algorithms Machine learning and automatic mixing have been buzzwords in the music technology realm for a few years now. Put simply, the idea is that smart plugins can learn from the audio we feed into them in order to offer tailored suggestions and customised presets that adapt to the specific task at hand. It’s not exactly a brand new concept – we’ve seen the idea applied to mastering by the likes of LANDR, and even unmixing full tracks in the case of Audionamix’ Xtrax Stems – but it’s definitely becoming more common. One case in point…

In the studio with Adamski “It all started in my flat in York Way, Kings Cross, London. I had the Roland TR-909, Ensoniq SQ-80 sequencer/synth, and the Casio FZ-1 sampler from the first album. “The main thing was the SQ-80. I didn’t really know what I was doing, though, so I’d end up doing things that you weren’t supposed to do, like transposing something five octaves off the end of the keyboard – it’d go into a weird scale that was kinda alien and odd – that’s how that ‘squiggly’ acid sound on Killer came about. That started as a preset ‘bell’ sound, and I just fiddled around with it and it became that. “By the end we were up in a studio on the Sunset Strip [West Hollywood] called…

Automate Everything Under your frequency control You’d be forgiven for thinking that volume is perhaps the most immediate parameter to consider when you’re first entering the mix stage. Of course, the volume balance between sounds is crucial and nothing throws a mix off course like one element being obviously too loud, or one sound being completely drowned out by others. But as we soon learn, volume is a hugely dynamic parameter and often, setting the balances between sounds is an ever-shifting picture, with volume automation lines an essential part of the mix-management process. However, just as crucially, it’s the relative volume of frequencies within individual sounds which needs consideration, and this is where automation can begin to play a more nuanced role within your mixes. Here’s an example. Let’s suppose…

Automate Everything Volume Automation vs Multiband Compression We have expectations of our synths and sample libraries, which they occasionally can’t live up to. We’ve all played up a scale on a given sound only to discover that above a certain key, the sound becomes more resonant, or louder, or more shrill, or that as we’ve played down a scale, the bottom end seems to get quieter, or weirdly inconsistent. And yet you’ll never hear a commercial release where this is true, which suggests that the producers of those records have found ways of dealing with such issues. Automation is, of course, one way of getting on top of rogue inconsistencies, with volume automation, on a note-by-note basis, occasionally just as necessary as it would be if your lead line was…

Dynamic automation changes Dynamics effects are essential mix tools, but think again if you consider them unworthy of automation. Here we’re going to see how compressors and gates can be made to dance In this setup we’ve got five parts in our track, starting with a rich synth pad and a second synth which is gated. In the second half, a kick joins the mix and we also have two side-chain triggers, both of which are silent. One is a copy of the kick drum part, which triggers the compressor on the synth pad. The second is triggering the gate on the second synth. We’re going to pick out some key parameters from the compressor and the gate, to see how we can use dynamics plugins to affect a mix.…

THE TRACK Ambassadeurs Nocturnes Phases, 2019 © Joe Branston Mastering engineer Mark Dobson’s electronic music project Ambassadeurs is a must-listen for genre enthusiasts – a unique hybrid of house, techno, dub and hip-hop with soundtrack and Foley aspects, the Ambassadeurs sound has found plenty of fans including remixees Kraak & Smaak, Nostalgia 77 and Villette. We caught up with Mark in his South London studio to discover the myriad production techniques used on the forthcoming single Nocturnes. Your tracks are pretty musical. Are you musical? “I started out playing guitar in bands; played bass in a jazz band for a bit, then I moved onto piano. I started producing the bands that I was in and recording everything, and I became so interested in the process of doing that, that…

Tape Effects | Producer’s Guide To Tape emulation comparisons Here we compare the subtle differences between a few tape emulation plugins. Listen via high-quality speakers or headphones 01 We start with six tracks; four are drum parts (kick, clap and two hat tracks) and two are synth sequences, taken from libraries created for u-he’s Zebra by The Unfinished. We want a minimal arrangement with plenty of top and bottom end to test the tape effects that we are going to add next. 02 Here’s the same mix but with UAD’s Studer A800 emulation inserted over the output buss. To start with, we’re choosing the Ampex 456 tape setting, allied to a tape speed of 7.5ips (inches per second). Make sure you’re listening on high-quality speakers or headphones and pay particular…

Tutorial | Modular Monthly Patch in those utilities and let’s get modulating! Let’s use the Lifeforms Mod Tools to combine multiple signals for some complex modulation fun 01 As big fans of doing things randomly, let’s start with the sample & hold. By default the LFO square output clocks the sample & hold and the noise feeds the input. Patch the output into a filter cutoff for a stepping random tonal change from the filter. 02 Sample & hold doesn’t need to be random; by default on this module and on many others it’s sampling noise, which is the source of the randomness. Try using the LFO mode on the function generator as the input and you can create stepped LFO shapes. 03 With the sample & hold we can’t…

Synth-pop | Retrospective Three ways to get the synth-pop sound using software 1 ValhallaDSP VintageVerb The range of production quality across ’80s synth-pop was vast, from DIY home recordings all the way through to slick pro studio sounds. One thing you won’t hear is the glossy sheen of modern reverb plugins, for the simple reason that they didn’t really exist in the early ’80s. Try a dirtier approach instead, like tape echo, spring reverbs or just a retro algorithm. Digital reverbs of the early ’80s have their own distinctive sound compared to modern alternatives. As a software option inspired by the retro models, we like Valhalla’s VintageVerb, a bargain at just $50. 2 UVI BeatBox Anthology 2 You’ll hear a mixture of live drums, analogue drum hits (often from regular…

Six formant-shifting tools Celemony Melodyne 4 | £379 There’s a reason why ‘melodyning’ has become a verb for vocal tuning. Overkill for simple formant-tweaking tasks, but utterly essential for detailed per-note adjustment. Antares Throat Evo | $99 If you want to alter the personality of a voice, this plugin can completely remodel vocal characteristics – vocal chords, tract size, mouth/throat/lips shape and more – in real time. Zynaptiq Elastique Pitch 2 | £145 A concise but effective real-time processor. Slap it on a channel, then ramp the Timbre dial up or down to shift the signal’s formants in either direction independently of pitch. Soundtoys Little AlterBoy | $99 This is a must-have for creative pitch and formant-shifting. Sweep formants locked or unlocked to pitch, dial in colourful Drive, and blend…

FM| REVIEWS Elektron Model:Samples £410 The Swedes’ latest sampler strips back the functionality for accessibility. Si Truss asks if it can still pack a punch There was a time when the words ‘accessible’ and ‘Elektron’ were rarely seen together. Despite a devoted cult following, the Swedish company had a deserved reputation for creating high-end gear with deep, slightly impenetrable workflows. That changed with the release of their Digitakt sampler and Digitone synth, both of which – while hardly entry level – were designed with immediacy in mind, at a sub-£1000 RRP. Model:Samples is an even bigger departure: with a street price under £400, it’s the first Elektron instrument within reach of cash-strapped bedroom producers. Its design is considerably less intimidating too. Broadly, most of the functionality is kept accessible from…

Reviews | Analogue Solutions Impulse Command Analogue Solutions Impulse Command £1,020 Tom Carpenter’s latest instrument pairs a stereo monosynth with unpredictable sequencing and modulation tools. Si Truss takes command Helmed by designer and synth aficionado Tom Carpenter, Analogue Solutions have become a mainstay of British synth design, noted – unsurprisingly – for their analogue components. AS were dedicated to the analogue cause long before its resurgence: they were one of the first big adopters of Eurorack and producers of CV and gate-equipped gear back when that still seemed like an anachronism. That said, however, the brand have never been ones to simply rehash ‘vintage’ ideas. For all the old-school circuitry, AS instruments have their own personality distinct from retro inspirations. Similarly with their latest, the Impulse Command: while built around…

SOUNDS & SAMPLES Spitfire – London Contemporary Orchestra Textures £249 A couple of years ago the London Contemporary Orchestra collaborated with Spitfire to create a string-based library focusing on new or rarely heard articulations. These were all recorded in a relatively dry setting, with IR reverb being used to add further ambience. For their second sampling venture, the LCO have been placed in a huge hangar in Suffolk, and this time with the full instrumental gamut on show. Being the LCO, however, means that the obvious route is rarely taken, with the instruments or small ensembles focusing on specific aspects of the attack (hit), sustain or decay of the overall sound – and with unusual playing techniques coming once again to the fore. The results of these recordings have been…

GEAR GUIDE SEMI-MODULAR SYNTHS Korg Volca Modular £190 Full Review: FM342 A West Coast synth in a compact package. It may be slightly fiddly and a little complicated, but if you’re willing to give in to its experimental ethos, the Volca Modular is endless fun. Dreadbox NYX 2 | £250 The V2 update to this compact semi-modular from greek brand Dreadbox is capable of some huge, creative sounds and packs a great modulated reverb. Moog Grandmother | £879 Review: FM336 Not a complete all-rounder, but this a fine semi-modular synth with genuine Moog pedigree. You might just consider selling your grandmother to get one... Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900 | $629 Review: FM341 A characterful semi-modular that wears its influences on its sleeve, but still has its own unique style and…