Music Tech Magazine Issue 118 DVD Content FULL

Our friends at PinkNoise Studio have put together an exclusive pack of 15 chord sounds including guitars, steel drum, organs, ethnic plucks, trance stabs and synth hits, all crafted with a Nord Modular G2X and Korg MicroX. The sounds were recorded into Sonar X1 in high quality, before being processed with a range of UAD compression, EQ and reverb plug-ins, before finally being edited in Sound Forge. 

It’s no good having a huge collection of high-quality synths and sampled instruments when you’re struggling to come up with a good melody or chord progression. It’s here that MIDI loops can come into their own, giving you a nudge or idea for a track that you can make your own by further tweaking the pitch or groove. Equinox Sounds has put together a collection of 30 progressive dance music chord progressions and melodies for you to use in your projects. Many of the loops actually feature a bass note progression, chords and a melody in the same file, so be sure to experiment by placing the different lines on individual tracks and assigning different instrument sounds.

Astrophonica label owner DJ Fracture and ProducerTech have joined forces to produce a new online course looking at cutting-edge drum and bass production techniques in Ableton Live. From setting up a session, creating beats and bass lines through to the final mixdown, the course is taught entirely using Ableton’s internal devices and instruments from the Live Suite, so you won’t need anything apart from Live itself to follow them through. On this month’s disc you’ll find a trailer plus an 11-minute taster taken from the drum production module with drum programming and layering techniques.

Compression is one of the most essential tools for getting your mixes sounding tight and professional, but can also be one of the trickiest to master. Groove 3 has teamed up with producer and engineer Sedric Pieretti for an in-depth overview of the topic and they’ve been kind enough to provide a massive 47 minutes from the course for you to check out for yourself. Topics include common compressor controls, attack and release, the knee, buss compression techniques and a description of the differences between compression and limiting.