FutureMusic

Editor-In-Chief Si Truss, simon.truss@futurenet.com Reviews Editor, Music Technology

PLAY. RECORD. PRODUCE

The beat goes on

SCAN TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER It has,

Nord’s Stage 4 is more expressive than ever

Revamped keyboard adds a new panel layout, upgraded keyboard and improved synth section

Universal Audio’s native plugins are now available to buy in three new bundles

> Universal Audio have revealed that their native

Teenage Engineering’s new Field Desk costs just as much as you’d expect and then a little bit more

> If you thought we’d already reached ‘peak

FabFilter Twin returns for version 3

> They might be best known for their

Taiga goes “beyond the boundaries of a traditional analogue synth”

> Pittsburgh Modular describe their new semi-modular paraphonic

Spitfire Audio’s Albion Colossus brings an epic blockbuster sound

> Spitfire Audio have released a new sample

Matrix is a portable, affordable opensource grid controller

> 203 Electronics’ Matrix is a minimalist new

Generate new musical ideas in Ableton Live

How can I add interesting sonic movements to my repeated hi-hat sequences?

Palm Skin Productions Remilixir

Virgin, 1996

Track by track with Simon Richmond

Condition Red “This features Yuka Ikushima. I met

LIKE IT? TRY THESE…

Pecker 21st Century Dub Crucial ’80s dub tape

Caroline Polachek Desire, I Want To Turn Into You

Perpetual Novice

ON OUR PLAYLIST

TRACK Skrillex, Fred Again, Flowdan Rumble Atlantic/OWSLA Produced

Toumba Petals

Hessle Audio

Bonobo/Jacques Greene Fold

Outlier

UNDERSTANDING: Bus mixing

Creating a bus channel allows you to process your drums or vocals as a whole, adding that all-important ‘glue’ to your mixes

Quick synth tips: Part 4

Get more out of your synths with our series of quick-and-dirty synthesis tips

AFFORDABLE MONITORS

NEW ENTRY KRK GoAux from £349 Full Review:

HARDWARE GROOVEBOXES

NEW ENTRY Roland SH-4d £549 Full Review: FM394

STUDIO HEADPHONES

Austrian Audio Hi-X15 £89 Full Review: FM386 |

DIGITAL POLYSYNTHS

ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe £1,489 Review FM383 The Deluxe

MIDI KEYBOARDS

Novation Launchkey 88 Mk3 £200 Full Review: FM386

Trikk

Trikk gives us the lowdown on the studio setup behind his new album Fauna & Flora

UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA

UMO founder Ruban Nielson tells Danny Turner how he relishes staying true to the band’s sonically ambiguous sound

AVEY TARE

Perennially leapfrogging between Animal Collective and Avey Tare, Danny Turner asks Dave Portner how he manages to feed both fires

MISS GRIT

Miss Grit follows up previous EPs with the utterly captivating debut album, Follow The Cyborg on Mute. Hamish Mackintosh finds out more

FUTURE BEATS

DOWNLOAD THE BONUS FM ULTIMATE DRUMS PACK

SMALL CHANGES, BIG RESULTS

For our example, we’ve started with a ‘boring’

THREE GREAT HARDWARE TOOLS

FOR MODERN DRUMS Software offers the easiest and

5 ‘FUTURISTIC’ DRUM TRICKS

YOU CAN APPLY IN YOUR DAW VIDEO INCLUDED

MODERN DRUM INSTRUMENTS

Get every hit right smack in the centre as we take you on a tour of the top drum tools out there

Using MIDI effects to make interesting rhythms

> ’MIDI drums’ is a phrase that would

EXPLORING SOUNDS

WITH XLN AUDIO XO 1 When you start

Finding sounds with AI

> The two plugins on this page have

Layering drums for custom sounds

> Thanks to the surgical precision of computer-based

CRAFTING THE PERFECT HARD-HITTING KICK WITH D16 GROUP PUNCHBOX

1 D16 Group Punchbox’s signal flows from left

THE BEST ‘REAL’ DRUMS

Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 €379 1 Perhaps the

Acoustic drum plugins

> No drum round-up would be complete without

‘SMART’ BEATS

WITH AUDIOMODERN PLAYBEAT 3 1 Audiomodern Playbeat 3

IS AI THE FUTURE OF BEATMAKING?

Audialab’s Emergent Drums brings AI-powered sound generation to the DAW for the first time. We chat to the brains behind the plugin, who tells us that “drums are just the start”

CREATE A DRUM KIT

WITH AUDIALABS EMERGENT DRUMS 1 Openingup Emergent Drums,

MODERN DRUM EFFECTS

We check out a selection of today’s top plugins for getting a state-of-the-art drum sound

Processing a drum bus with multiband compression

> Multiband compression is one of the finest

HIGH-PASSING KICKS

WITH ICEBERG AUDIO SUB CUT 1With a near

Sidechain successes

> We know about sidechaining, the practice of

MODERN DRUM REVERB

WITH SMART:REVERB 1 Let’s use sonible smart:reverb to

Mid/side EQ processing for better stereo drums

> Drums carry a lot of a track’s

TUNING AND TRANSIENT SHAPING FOR HARDER-HITTING DRUMS

1 When you have a whole group of

THREE OF THE BEST

FabFilter Pro-MB $180 1 A multiband dynamics device

Transient pitches

> How does a drum’s transient work? For

LAYERING DRUMS

WITH DEVIOUS MACHINES TEXTURE 1 Texture is an

Roland SH-4d £549

Roland release yet another groovebox that emulates the company’s heritage instruments. However, as Si Truss discovers, there’s real reason to be excited here…

Donner B1 Analog Bass Sequencer £185

Donner enter the analogue synth realm with a 303 clone that sounds the part – even if it doesn’t look it. Si Truss investigates

KRK GoAux series from £349

Need to take your monitors with you? Jon Musgrave checks out a new solution from KRK

Apple MacBook Pro M2 From £1,349

Apple Silicon continues to raise the performance bar. Jon Musgrave sizes up the latest M2-equipped MacBook Pro

Noise Engineering Jam Jam £228

Rob Redman finds Jam Jam is more than the sum of its parts

Eventide H90 Harmonizer £999

Is the Eventide H90 just two H9s stuck together? Simon Arblaster goes on a sonic journey to find out

Focal ST6 Sub12 £2,149

Simon Fellows takes a deep dive into this behemoth of bass from premium audio brand Focal

Entonal Studio £79

Entonal Studio aims to take you beyond the confines of Western tuning. Si Truss scales up

Rhodes V8

Rhodes are getting into the software game, with

Impact Soundworks – Tokyo Scoring Drum Kits $299

> You would be forgiven for thinking Impact

Audiotent – OPUS £45

> Big and beautiful batch of presets for

Renegade Audio – Chopstick Dubplate: Jungle Soundclash Vol 1 £19.95

>Jacky Murda lifts the lid on loops and

Sample Magic – Neon Funk & Disco From $7.99/month

>The decadent dancefloor grooves of the glorious ’70s

Industrial Strength – RnB Soul Vocals £25.95

>Full-bodied vocal-led pack, inspired by the late great

Splice Originals – Boleros From $7.99/ month

>Following on from their takes on reggaeton and