Computer Music

Computer Music's goal is to help its readers create great music with a PC or Mac. Each month find easy-to-follow tutorials for all sorts of music software, unbiased reviews of the latest products and answers to technical questions.

HOW TO USE cm

welcome

An all-new synths special

Bring in the new and out with the… • It’s a happy new gear, but already time to wave an old favourite ‘goodbye’

App watch • We report on the latest developments in phone and tablet music making

Get with the programmers • MIA Laboratories recreate hi-end recording studio gear in software. Founder Chris Stratos is not missing in action and tells us all about it

10 years back • Our monthly shake-of-the-head at our younger selves’ news choices…

Steinberg’s lo-fi piano for free

Ins & outs

Sissi Rada • With a background in both classical harp playing and electronic music, Sissi Rada was almost destined to end up living and working in Berlin. But no one could have predicted that after playing her harp with a vibrator in front of Brian Eno she would end up collaborating with him. “He makes the best jokes and I laugh a lot, so we immediately became close,” she says. Maybe it was written in the stars after all…

Beat it! • We open our How To Do Everything features with beats, and with our free plugins, you can get great beats… fast

All about bass • It’s all about the bass in these three walkthroughs, moving from simple bass sounds to more complex creations

Keys and more • Now it’s time for the keys to step into the spotlight as we move on to think about creating chords and harmonies

Leads and special FX • Next up we look at the bespoke sounds your tracks need, with walkthroughs on creating leads and special FX

MARTINA TOPLEY-BIRD • Martina Topley-Bird has a three-decade career during which she has worked with Tricky, Massive Attack and The Prodigy, but her fifth album, Forever I Wait, sees her embracing a new-found confidence

A PERFECT COLLABORATION • Baltimore-based producer, Benny Boeldt, helped write, record and mix several tracks on Martina’s new album, Forever I Wait

EQ & filtering • Let’s explore a few different ways to shape your sounds with EQ and filtering

Dynamics • For our final ‘How to do everything’ set of workshops, we’re looking at the moving subject of dynamics

#06 Hip-hop vocal mixing • How do you make your vocals hit hardest in a genre that emphasises beats? Ashley Thorpe has the answers

Ashley Thorpe

AUDIO EDITING FAVOURITES

#11 Creating a hollow bass • Recreating the original garage bass needs a little knowledge, while supplying the perfect patch for many current genres. Here’s how…

Dave Gale

FET COMPRESSION

Get a great guitar sound part 4 - mixing • It’s all well and good having a distinctive guitar tone and a wide range of effects at your disposal, but you always need to consider just how your guitar works with the other elements of your tracks. It shouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb, but also you don’t want it to be buried beneath the other instruments. In the final part of our guitar series, let’s take a look at how we can prevent that from happening…

Weird and wonderful guitar sample libraries

Our promise

What the ratings mean

IK Multimedia Syntronik 2 MAX €399 • Maxing out their vintage plugin package, IK Multimedia add new synths, effects and some tasty new GUIs to their already generous softsynth

Sampled vs modelled

Spectrasonics Sonic EXtensions $149 • Adding an extension to your living accommodation gives your property a new lease of life. Is the same true of Spectrasonics’ flagship plugin?

Real-time control and live...