Electronic Musician

The new ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN is a “must have” resource for anyone who makes music, plays music, and shares music. Every issue includes "gig tested" product reviews on music gear, tons of how-to's, and interviews with today's stars revealing the secrets of their songwriting approaches and audio-production concepts.

Old and new

Electronic Musician • Vol. 36 No. 4

NEW GEAR

SOFT OPINIONS • The ‘Netflix of Plugins’ is already with us, but is this really how we’ll be paying for all our software in the future?

NAMM 2020 IN SOFTWARE • Music hardware releases may have been center-stage at NAMM 2020, but the new crop of software announcements feels especially unique this year

Mixed In Key CAPTAIN PLUGINS

GO GRANULAR! • Discover the finer points of granular synthesis – we break it all down using common instruments and effects

CARIBOU • Dan Snaith returns with Suddenly, the first Caribou album in five years. We track him down in his North London studio to talk synths, sampling and the importance of combining home life and music

Riffs and Techniques Using Mono Legato Triggering • Using Mono legato mode we can simulate guitar-style hammer-ons, trills and other cool lines

Non-harmonic tones • You don’t have to slavishly follow the notes of your underpinning chords when writing melodies – Dave suggests an alternative…

Roland TR-606 Drumatix • Overshadowed by its more famous peers, this diminutive silver beatbox packs a huge wallop and can still be found at reasonable prices

Jeff Babko • Jeff Babko has been the keyboardist on Jimmy Kimmel Live for the past 17 years, and was also featured in the recent Steve Martin and Martin Short Netflix special An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life. He played keyboards on Frank Ocean’s groundbreaking release Channel Orange, as well as on the recent film scores Frozen 2, Toy Story 4 and Ford v Ferrari. Find out more at jeffbabko.com

Wavestate • The Wavestation is reborn in a revamped package. Let's see if this is going to be more than just a trip down memory lane…

Poly 2 Preset & Anywhere • Let's examine this bumper selection of Eurorack modules from Polish firm Polyend

Cassette • Turn your studio clock back with this evocative new saturation and modulation plugin

Grain Scanner • Ableton’s tone shaping, experimental resynthesis instrument is here. Let's dive under the hood

Ultra Analog VA-3 • Now in its 14th year, the developers of this venerable virtual analog synth have doubled down to come up with its biggest upgrade yet

Launchpad Mini Mk3 • Launcher control surfaces continue their rise. In this case, is small also beautiful?

Real Strings: Latin Strings

MASTER BUS FX • Go beyond the corrective with our creative guide to processing your stereo output – from tape stops to transitional tricks

More master-output magic • A handful of masterful ideas for treating your two-bus

MORE MASTER BUS TIPS AND TRICKS

SOUND DESIGN: CHOIRS AND VOICES • Recreating one of the most iconic pad sounds in a synthesist’s toolkit

QUICK TIPS

Ambient Kontakt Instruments • Assume the lotus position, take some cleansing breaths and peruse these six chilled-out sampled atmosphere and pad generators for the full version of NI Kontakt

A New Kind Of Wet • Get great granular loops by dipping your guitar signal in Stream