From deep within their Alps-based Bond-villain lair (well, probably an industrial estate in greater Grenoble, but we all need escapism right now) Arturia have brought forth their newest V Collection. And it’s more of the same vintage-emulations-with-

Two very important tactics in the string arranger’s pocketbook are inversions and suspensions. Inversions are just triad chords played with a note other than the root note in the bass. As an example, imagine a C major triad played with the notes C-E-

No review of a major league DAW is complete without a mention of the lite option. However, in the case of Cubase, that doesn’t really exist as, wisely in our opinion, Cubase 11 comes in three tiered versions – Pro, Artist and Elements. This provides

For many musicians, 2020 was a bit of a year to forget: cancelled gigs and tours, delayed releases, public polls telling us art has little value in the era of the pandemic. But there have been blessings too. I’m an electronic musician and producer

Popular music tech YouTuber Andrew Huang is getting into the app dev game. Working with Oliver Greschke (Elastic Drums and Elastic FX) and Christian Blomert (TouchAble, Studiomux), he’s released Flip, a 9-track sampler, sequencer and performance tool

Taken from 1991’s album Woodface, this unique track features a sublime string arrangement, courtesy of veteran Argentinian movie composer Jorge Calandrelli, deliberately designed to sound like it was recorded on a sound stage in 1950s Hollywood. It r

SpectraLayers is an extremely powerful cross-platform tool that lets you edit frequency via a spectrogram display with time domain on the horizontal axis and frequency on the vertical axis. This makes it useful for both fixing audio problems like unw

cm How did you personally get into music software development? EN “I came to music software very much from the user side. As a working musician, I started using MOTU Performer way back in 1987 (!) and also things like Unisyn for helping to edit and

When recording in controller information simultaneously when playing in notes, make it a habit to start recording the bar before and wiggle the controller to set the initial value so that the samples don’t leap in too loud and immediately drop in lev

When we last looked at this bundle it had five plugins and included the ERA-D reverb and noise remover. Since then, ERA-D has alas become a legacy plugin. However, Accusonus have been busy expanding and reworking their offering and the result is ERA

It was time for Computer Music to go unplugged – if that’s not a contradiction in terms – in February 2011 ( 161), as we showed you how to “record, mix and master an acoustic band”. We also brought you a guide to ‘extreme freeware’ – we really were l

“A lot of [Claude VonStroke’s] success,” reads his Resident Advisor biography, “can be attributed to a good attitude”. While this is undeniably true, another sizeable chunk of the man born Barclay Crenshaw’s success is in his business strategy of tak

Included with both the Pro and Regular bundles, Audio Clean-Up Assistant is a host plugin that allows you to chain up to five single-knob ERA plugins in series. Plugins are selected from the dropdown menu, and you can use more than one of the same pl

Described as “the holy grail of Aphex Twin memorabilia,” Aphex Twin’s old Yamaha CS-5 synth plus his etchings (which served as the liner notes to one of his albums) was put up for auction recently. Sadly, despite some whopping bids, it failed to meet

Raggadagga (w. Catz ’n Dogz) bit.ly/cvs_rgdg Jolean (w. Get Real and Green Velvet) bit.ly/cvs_jln dirtybirdrecords.com soundcloud.com/claudevonstroke twitter.com/vonstroke facebook.com/claude.vonstroke

Six modules to shoot your audio back in time like some kind of retro DSP cannon, RC-20 offers: Vinyl, Wow and Flutter, Distort, Digital, Space and Magnetic sections. Using different combinations of each, the plugin lets you put any kind of vintage ti

For the second month running, our 15 Questions With… interviews take us to the other side of the world, this time with Aussie producer Benjamin David, aka Mild Minds. With a mix of beats, tempos and moods David’s Mild Minds project covers every pace,

Pop music obviously derives from ‘popular’, but like all art forms, whatever is currently popular changes. While individuality is always to be encouraged, if you want your tunes to fit well against the current landscape, they’ll inevitably need to co

The last few months has seen a number of high profile and impressive new reverb plugins hit the shops, showing that there’s still plenty of mileage in refining this everyday effect. However, without wishing to detract from any of those plugins, for u

Editor: Andy Jones, andy.jones@futurenet.com Art Editor: Mark White, mark.white@futurenet.com Managing Editor: Kate Puttick, kate.puttick@futurenet.com Scot Solida, Dave Clews, Ronan Macdonald, Ben Rogerson, Jon Musgrave, Robbie Stamp, Oli Bell, Cath

Despite the relative lack of drums and the simple repetition of four chords, this arrangement works because of the diversity of the elements used. Almost every section has something unique – a particular combination of sounds, a different vocal melod

Supermassive’s modes are named after constellations, which makes for a cool interface but isn’t particularly informative. There are eight original Modes and, of these, Gemini and Hydra produce the most typical reverb effects. Both Centaurus and Sagit

Mixing is traditionally the role of some elusive deity-like genius. A super-hero with supersonic powers. If they can spare the time, and if you can afford them, they appear with a thunderclap before you in a small crater, and blinded by the ethereal

In a studio career spanning more than 25 years, Dave has engineered, programmed and played keyboards on records for a string of artists including George Michael, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner and Estelle. These days, he writes articles for and other mag

Web www.d16.pl Format PC/Mac, VST/AU/AAX A new Silverline plugin from D16, Spacerek takes on the concept of reverb, doing its stuff by fusing “modelled virtual spaces to a dynamic delay network”. Whatever the underlying mechanisms, Spacerek is capabl

Most people don’t have good mixing rooms, let alone perfect ones. It’s the combination of speakers and room that determine the sweetness of your sweet-spot. Most problems occur with low frequencies, but small spaces can also play havoc with your ster

In our previous instalment, we took you through the most common uses of the humble voltage controlled oscillator, better known as the ‘VCA’. We discussed its rather pedestrian role as a volume control at the end of any synthesiser’s signal path. We

Dope samples, samples samples samples. Yes, Mr. T is here with his first sample set in 25 years. And, as you’d expect from the studio don behind household names like Tommy Jones and Kylie Mc-Nog-Nog, it’s of a very high standard indeed. Across 200 lo

Achieving a basic starting balance for your mix can be a bit ‘chicken and egg’. Mixing is basically about judging one sound in the presence of another sound. Go back to first principles; what you don’t want to do is overload your outputs. Luckily, wi

We’ve shown you how you can use your VCAs to shape a waveform by using audio-range signals to modulate its amplitude. This ‘amplitude modulation’ is an easy way to generate clangorous tones. If that’s your bag, consider employing VCAs in your FM, or