Electronic Musician

Modal Electronics has taken the DNA of its $4,495 Modal 002 wavetable synth and packed it into the Argon8, a new synth that costs a far more affordable $699. This slick-looking machine offers eight voices of polyphony and is packed into a steel and a

Last August, The Bob Moog Foundation sponsored its first annual Moogmentum event in Asheville, North Carolina. While its Moogseum had its soft launch on May 23 of this year, Moogmentum was the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the museum, showcasi

Reason 11 arrives with a VST/AU plugin version, as the Propellerhead brand bites the dust The fact that Reason 11 is on the way should come as no great surprise, but there’s a big change in that it’ll also run in other DAWs as the Reason Rack Plugin.

What is it that makes drum machines and the sounds they produce so unique? Those of us who make music for our careers or for pleasure are used to the fact that ‘electronic versions’ of almost every instrument you can think of have existed since the h

If your productions favor sampled drums or you have a penchant for recording drums live, does that mean that the techniques explored here are irrelevant to your workflow? Not at all. In fact, learning how to program electronic drum sounds from scratc

Getting lost in sound design is a huge part of the fun of music and is often its own reward. Often the longer we spend working on unique and interesting sounds for our tracks, the better those tracks become. That said, sometimes when inspiration stri

How do you choose the ‘perfect’ kick drum for your track? You might be seduced by the first sound you audition that seems to provide the requisite amount of hit and thwack, but it’s worth being more considered in your choices, in two specific areas,

Through the following example, we’re starting with a more fleshed-out backing track and then building a kick drum which matches it. Normally, your thinking on this might not extend much past finding a good sonic match, but we’re considering two more

Born and raised in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents, David Morales is an era-defining, Grammy Award-winning DJ, producer and label owner. His love of dance music was grounded in the mid-’70s disco era, spending his early teens clubbing at renowned NY

Playing great lines with good feeling, and adding some expressive bends and vibrato are the key elements for a great synth solo, right? Yeah, but… it’s a synth. So you have the ability to shape and change up the sound in so many ways. Exploring ways

If you’ve ever wanted a phrase perfect for impressing people, you’d have to go pretty far to beat ‘diatonic chord substitution.’ In reality though, it’s not that tricky a concept to get around, so let’s break it down into its constituent parts to fig

Along the rear panel, the MC-707 has two stereo pairs of jack outputs, one acting as a main out and one an assignable output. These are joined by a headphone output, a pair of external input jacks (with a mono input switchable between mic and line),

$999 Roland.com Si Truss is the Editor of Electronic Musician and Future Music magazines Roland’s MC range of all-in-one grooveboxes has lain dormant since the release of the MC-808 in 2007. Much like their counterparts in Akai’s MPC line, these samp

Si Truss is the Editor of Electronic Musician and Future Music magazines $399 roland.com Like many of Roland’s classic analog instruments, the Juno-60 and 106 remain highly sought-after, despite being, essentially, simple instruments. With just a sin

from $8/month loopcloud.com The sample pack has come a long way. In these days of ‘produce anywhere’ music-making, the needs of sample users have increased significantly. Subscription-based platforms like Output’s Arcade are rapidly changing the way

$349 www.spitfireaudio.com David Fanshawe was an English composer and sound recordist who spent most of his life travelling the world, immersing himself in the sounds and musical cultures of distant communities and meticulously archiving his sonic di

Ronan has been writing about music technology and production for over 20 years. He’s also a drummer, but don’t hold that against him $399 izotope.com With both versions 1 and 2 being so well-received, the pressure is on for the latest iteration of iZ

$149 modalelectronics.com Many of Modal Electronics’ synthesizers sit behind a numerical naming scheme that gives little away about their origins, intent or architecture. However, more recently, it has been producing a range of boxes that—as well bei

from $19 Drummer, Adam Betts, has played with everyone from Squarepusher to the Heritage Orchestra, so he’s pretty much the ‘go-to’ guy when it comes to dance music tub-thumping. Here he serves up a gang of live breaks, inspired by the most sampled f

Over-compressed audio signals rarely sound great. Perhaps sounds whose volumes have been smashed to within an inch of their lives might serve a useful function but usually, not so much. We like full dynamic range and this is as true on individual sou

This month, let’s look at a technique used by industry pros to add power, depth and ‘inflation’ to mixes but which remains misunderstood by many. compressors—in both hardware and software forms—provide dynamic range control, narrowing the volume gap

A versatile and powerful vocoder with up to 100 bands, MVocoder works as an effects plugin (VST/AU/AAX) inserted on your Carrier signal by default, with a sidechain input adding your modulator into the mix, although you can swap the carrier and modul

01 Our track starts with a lead vocal floating over a delicate string pad which is super-fragile. Here, a vocal treatment to match feels appropriate. However, on the second pass, a more strident pad sound takes over whilst the beats too add extra wei

Joe is the Editor of Computer Music magazine and has been releasing electronic music for the past 15 years. Find him on Instagram, @joerossitter As the weapon of choice for countless dubstep, DnB and bass producers over the last decade, NI’s Massive

In this ongoing series, I am addressing the current state of the amplifier sim. Every month, I will plug a variety of guitars into an interface, pull up the standalone or plugin version of a new modeler, and attempt to find, or create, my favorite so

Originally from Bristol, UK but now residing in part in Berlin, experimental duo Emptyset—aka James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas—have long spanned the realms of experimental electronic music and high-concept art. Their latest project, Blossoms, might be