Next to Aphex Twin, there is perhaps no-one more synonymous with the cringe inducing term “IDM” than Tom Jenkinson, better known to most as Squarepusher. Part virtuoso bass player, part programming wizard, Squarepusher has had a fantastically eclectic career, wowing both bedroom producers and wannabe Fleas alike.
This summer’s Netflix one-to-watch has undoubtably been the Duffer Brothers’ nostalgia soaked Stranger Things. Incase you’ve been living under a rock, the story follows a group of kids, a mother (played by Winona Ryder), two adolescents and a cop searching for Will Byers, a boy who vanishes in the first episode.
Massive is wavetable synthesiser released by Native Instruments back in 2007 to great fanfare. It’s known for its brutal sub ripping basslines, formant filtered vocaloid patches and grizzly distorted effects.
Native Instruments’ FM8 is monster of a synthesiser capable of a vastly broad palette of sounds ranging from brutal Skrillex transformer-type bass to searing pads and leads to late 80s/early 90s rave sounds and beyond.
If you caught our eurorack introduction and have the bug to start embarking on your own system, then you’re in the right place. If you didn’t, I do highly recommend reading it, as some of the terminology in this will be more properly explained in the first part.
There have been countless words written about kick drum synthesis and layering kicks within Ableton and Logic (in these pages and elsewhere), so I thought I’d try and bring something new to the table.
Native Instrument’s Massive is probably the de facto go-to wavetable synth these days. Lately it’s had huge success off the back of the later waves of dubstep, particularly the abuse of the Modern Talking and Brutal Electro sounds found in it.
Vocoders and Talkboxes are often confused in that both sound like synthetic voices and are often created using synths; they also require pretty much zero singing ability to use, which is great if you want to add lyrics to your track without being able to hold a tune.