Electronic Musician January 2014

record • produce • perform

®

DiGital
peRFoRmeR

MoRcheeBa

miDi
GUitaR
tRiCKS

RJd2

Live
Gear
roundup
Build a

Rig FoR
y
an gig!

maSteR

moDUlaR SYNthS
01.2014
$5.99

CAN $6.99

reviewS!

A MUSIC PLAYER PUBLICATION

Yamaha HS5
Dave Smith propHet 12
NovatioN BaSS Station ii
SoNY SpectraLayerS pro 2
aNtelope orion32

• Easily select from a huge variety of pianos, drums, &
other expressive sounds

The new Korg Kross packs powerful features into
a highly-portable, incredibly easy-to-use design so
that you can unleash your creativity. Everything is
laid out to help you focus on what’s important:
performing and writing with legendary Korg sounds
that will inspire.

KORG.COM/KROSS

• Quickly split & layer sounds, & create beats with drum
machine-style step editing
• Lightweight design; 9.5 lbs. (61-key synth action) or
27.3 lbs. (88-key weighted action)
• AC or battery powered
• 16-track sequencer & 2-channel audio recorder
(SD card required)

Sceptre Coactual
™

™

S

easoned Electronic Musician readers make their
own listening decisions.
So attempting to tell you how our Sceptre™ S6 and
S8 monitors sound is an exercise in futility.
Yes, we can wax poetic about how our CoActual™
transducer design, internal ARM processor running
Fulcrum Acoustic®’s Temporal EQ™ DSP voodoo solves
the inherent problems of coaxial design — while
retaining its overwhelming benefits.
But it all comes down to a critical listening session
with Sceptre (and whatever brand you previously
thought was the best high-end, 2-way monitor).
Visit your PreSonus dealer today.

©2013, PreSonus Audio Electronics,
Inc, All Rights Reserved. Sceptre and
CoActual are trademarks of PreSonus
Audio Electronics, Inc. Fulcrum
Acoustic is a registered trademark
of, well, Fulcrum Acoustic. Temporal
EQ and TQ are trademarks of Fulcrum
Acoustic. Some of the most common
side effects of using good monitors
include trouble sleeping, as well as
vivid, unusual or increased dreaming.

Baton Rouge, USA • www.presonus.com

r
a
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c o v e r f e at u r e
18 Build a Live Rig for Any Gig So your shows are booked, and you’re ready to put

together a portable sound system. Don’t know where to begin? Let us help you navigate the
forest of electronics, transducers, and copper snakes. We’ve assembled three systems, all
designed to give you maximum performance, reliability, and versatility for your buck.
26

40

alex lake

rayon richards

f e at u r e S

26

Morcheeba Head up High, the British genre-benders’ eighth album, offers up 22nd-century trip hop, courtesy
of Rupert Neve, Bob Moog, and Expert Sleepers Silent Way.

34

Rjd2 The veteran instrumental electronic/hip-hop artist/producer talks about creating the sample-stuffed
More Is Than Isn’t and the journey behind the Mad Men theme.

40

Claude Kelly The pop architect behind blockbuster hits by the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars,
Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Miley Cyrus shares his songwriting secrets.

44

Amsterdam Dance Event In 1996, ADE launched with 30 DJs in three venues. Now, it’s arguably the
largest EDM gathering in the world, drawing 300,000 fans, 2,100 artists, and 5,000 industry pros for five days
and hundreds of shows, conferences, and events. Check out the highlights.

Gear

Production tools to help you make better music

new gear

12

MOD SQUaD

16

Make Noise René Transport your patches into the next dimension

reviewS

48

Antelope Audio Orion32 AD/DA converter

50

Yamaha HS5 Studio monitors

52

Novation Bass Station II Analog monosynth

6 emusician.com 01.2014

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Electronic Musician defines the technology, techniques, and creativity that today’s musicians need
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01.2014

contents

12

reviews

16

54

Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12 Polyphonic synth

58

Sony SpectraLayers Pro 2 Spectral processor update

HOW TO

Better Sound Through Modular Living A modular synthesizer is more than just an instrument for
playing bass and lead; it can also act as an audio-hardware modular system processor. This month, we look at
ways to integrate DAW tracks with your modular system.

MAsTer CLAss

60

TeCHNiQUes

66

Career Create your own mechanical license

70

Production Build ethereal effects

72

Career Convince fans to buy the music you give away

76

Digital Performer MIDI guitar tricks

POwer APP

10

D E PA R T M E N T S
Community

P L AY L i s T

46

Music reviews from Electronic Musician contributors

CrAiG’s LisT

82

The Five Top Musician Competitions at the Sochi Winter Olympics

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01.2014 emusician.com 7

www.emusician.com | Vol. 29 No. 12, DECEMBER 2013
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Michael Molenda

[email protected]
EDITOR

Sarah Jones

[email protected]
MAnAgIng EDITOR

Debbie greenberg

[email protected]
TECHnICAL EDITOR

[email protected]

gino Robair

COnTRIbuTORS

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Cerra, Kylee Swenson gordon, Emile Menasche,
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Schultz, bud Scoppa, Tony Ware, geary Yelton
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ART DIRECTOR Damien Castaneda
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8 emusician.com 01.2014

2_3 Page 5 x 9.75.indd 1

2/16/2013 9:12:48 AM

insight

The Measure of Success
I recently interviewed The National

at a Grammy event in San Francisco;
the evening focused on exploring
the songwriting process, but
eventually we got to talking about
defining success as artists.
The National are indie-rock
heroes, headlining major festivals
and opening for the likes of Paul
McCartney and the President. But
the band has paid their dues over
15 long years, releasing six albums,
building an intensely loyal fanbase,
and quietly earning acclaim while
watching peers like The Strokes and
Interpol shoot to stardom.
When I asked singer Matt
Berninger whether he viewed
the band’s success as critical or
commercial, the answer was
obvious: critical. But when asked
which was more important, he joked
that maybe commercial success
might have been the better option.
Which matters more to you,
praise or profits? Or do either

matter? Your perspective likely
depends on where you are in your
career path.
We all aspire to make a living
doing what we love, and in an ideal
world, we would find fulfillment
in making art for ourselves first,
and that process would be the only
thing that matters. And some of us
are fortunate to be in that position.
Just remember that career
accomplishments and creative
accomplishments do not have
to be at odds with each other.
As we
head into
the new
year, here’s
to achieving
our own
personal
ideal of
success.
Sarah JoneS
editor

COMMUNITY
“You can’t devalue music. it’s
impossible. songs are not worth
exactlY 99 cents and albums are
not worth preciselY $9.99.”
Google Play Head of Global
Content Programming Tim Quirk,
at the Future of Music Summit in
Washington, D.C., October 28, 2013

[email protected]

The Electronic Musician Poll

How do you feel about major music streaming services
like spotify and pandora?
They are a greaT source of income for arTisTs    

8%

51%
any
ny exposure To my music is good exposure   41%
Their royal
royalTy
royalT
y sTrucTures
s
hurT arTisTs   

10 emusician.com 01.2014

dig my rig
This is my home studio, where both of my Imploded View albums have
been recorded.
I like to get a degraded, aged type of sound for my electronic
instrumental tracks, and use all kinds of means to achieve these results,
including 1/4-inch reel-to-reel tape, and I love my
vintage analog synths, including SH101, Polysix, and Jen
SX1000.
Anything that’s done “in the box” is usually bounced
out of the box several times over to get the saturated
tape effect or some other form of mangling.
My latest album, Anomaly Domine, came out on
August 19, 2013 on Blurry Pup Records; for more
information, visit implodedview.bandcamp.com.

ask!

43%

Jerome mccormIck
vIa emaIl

OF muSIcIanS DO nOT HavE HEalTH InSuRancE
source: future of music coalition artists and health Insurance survey, august 2013

I’ve been lIstenIng to some of the great pop musIc of the ’60s and ’70s, and notIced some of
the songs have a sort of brIght sound wIth what I can only descrIbe as extra “presence.” I’ve
wanted to do covers of some of these, but I notIced that some of them are a lIttle bIt to a
lot sharp. was It standard back In those days to tune dIfferently to gIve a dIfferent tImbre?
Charlie Cameron
Spokane, Wa
via e-mail

Charlie—It’s more likely that
what you’re referring to was
the practice of mixing down
to a two-track tape deck
with its variable speed set a
little bit slow, like 2 percent
or so. Then when it ran at
normal speed the tempo was
a little faster, the pitch a little
sharper, and the rhythm a
bit tighter because a hit that
was off by a few milliseconds
would be off by somewhat
less. Furthermore, the

formant and timbre would be
somewhat brighter overall.
It was also possible to create
the same effect by running
a multitrack with variablespeed capability a little faster
during mixdown.
Although most of today’s
DAWs don’t have the
equivalent of variable speed,
during the mastering process
you can reproduce this effect
easily with a digital audio
editing program like Sony

Sound Forge. Look for a DSP
pitch-shift option, then raise
the pitch by a couple percent.
Do not select anything that
preserves duration, as that
will affect sound quality—
speeding up tempo is a
natural result of transposing
the pitch upwards. Try
this on some of your songs,
particularly ones that seem
to lag a little bit, and you’ll
probably hear the sound you
want. THE EDITORS

Sound Forge is shifting a stereo mix’s pitch upward by 34.7 cents, or about two percent,
to give it a brighter sound. note that the “preserve Duration” checkbox is unchecked.

Got a question about recording, gigging, or technology?
ask us! send it to [email protected].
01.2014 emusician.com 11

NEW GEAR

highlights from
2013 Convention

3

4

1

2

1
Focusrite
Red 1
500 Series mono
preamp module
$999.99 street
highlights Based on the original
Red 1 mic preamp • Lundahl
LL1538 input transformer
• custom Carnhill output
transformer • gain range from –6
to +60dB in 6dB steps • switches
for +48V phantom power and
polarity inversion • VU meter
target market Engineers with a
500 Series rack looking for the
classic Focusrite sound
analysis Two decades after the
launch of the original model,
Focusrite has created a singlechannel Red 1 that is perfect for
portable and personal studio
setups.
us.focusrite.com

12 emusician.com 01.2014

2
Sonnox
Codec Toolbox
Plug-in
$55
highlights Audition the effect of
data compression on your mix in
real time and compare it to the
uncompressed signal • includes
several codecs from Fraunhofer
and Apple for encoding your
files • metadata editor • batch
processor • Clip Safe • 15-day
trial version
target market Recordists and
engineers planning to encode
mixes for online delivery
analysis This plug-in contains the
basic features of the Fraunhofer
Pro-Codec, but is priced squarely
for the personal studio.
sonnox.com

3
Cloud Microphones
CL-4
4-channel preamp
$499 street
highlights Provides 25dB of gain
to four dynamic and passive
ribbon microphones • accepts
phantom power without passing
it through to the mics • XLR
inputs and outputs • perfect for
use with low-cost, low-gain
audio interfaces
target market Any musician and
engineer who uses dynamic and
ribbon mics
analysis The original Cloudlifter
won an Editors’ Choice Award
because it’s so useful onstage and
in the studio. Now you can have
four of these preamps in a single
rackspace.
cloudmicrophones.com

4
Focal
Spirit Professional
Closed-back headphones
$349
highlights 5Hz–22kHz frequency
range • 40mm Mylar/titaniumalloy drivers • ear pads made
with memory foam • cable has
built-in microphone and track
selector for use with mobile
products • 13-foot coiled cable
and 4.6-foot straight cable are
provided
target market Producers,
musicians, and engineers who
want closed-back reference
headphones without a hyped
frequency spectrum
analysis After creating some
of the best sounding near-field
monitors, it is no surprise that
Focal has designed a set of
headphones for critical listening.
audioplusservices.com

All prices are MSRP except as noted

6

5

7

8

5
Sony
PCM-D100
Portable high-resolution
digital recorder
$999
highlights Records DSD
(2.8MHz), Linear PCM (up to
192kHz), and MP3 formats • also
plays AAC, FLAC, and WMA files
• separate A/D converters for
DSD and LPCM • records MP3
and LPCM files simultaneously •
limiter and lowcut filter • 32GB
built-in flash memory • supports
SD card and memory stick
target market Musicians and
engineers who want to easily
capture high-res audio
analysis The PCM-D100 rounds
out Sony’s High-Resolution
Audio Initiative by adding
audio capture to its editing and
playback products.
pro.sony.com

6
Prism Sound
Titan
USB audio interface
Below $5,000
highlights 8x8 24-bit, 192kHz
audio interface • 8 channels
of analog I/O; 4 mic preamps
with –20dB pad; 4 line inputs;
2 front-panel instrument inputs
• 2 headphone outputs with
independent volume controls • 10
digital I/O channels are available
via TOSLINK and S/PDIF I/O
target market Musicians and
project-studio owners
analysis A high-end USB audio
interface that also supports Pro
Tools HDX, among other external
I/O options, using the MDIO
interface expansion slot.
prismsound.com

7
Radial
SB-7 EarMuff
Headphone interface
for musicians
$99
highlights Mutes one side of
stereo headphones to eliminate
bleed when recording with an ear
cup removed • balanced 1/4" TRS
input • stereo 1/4" and 3.5mm
outputs • mono sum switch •
level control • mute button •
passive design; does not require
power • 3-year transferrable
warranty • solid construction •
made in Canada
target market Singers and
instrumentalists who need to
leave one ear uncovered when
recording
analysis Yet another why-didn’tanyone-think-of-that-before
product from Radial Engineering.
radialeng.com

8
Coles
4030L
Ribbon microphone
$1,099
highlights Bi-directional, figure-8
polar pattern • identical ribbon
as the Coles 4040 and 4050 •
frequency range from 50Hz
to 20kHz • lighter than other
Coles mics • made in England •
includes adjustable clip
target market Personal studios
and musicians buying their first
ribbon microphone
analysis Although the company
refers to it as an “entry-level
ribbon mic,” the 4030L is not
cheaply made. It feels well built
and provides the Coles sound
without breaking the bank.
coleselectroacoustics.com

Continued

01.2014 emusician.com 13

NEW GEAR

highlights from
2013 Convention
11

9

10
12

9
Neumann
TLM 107
Condenser microphone
$1,699.95
highlights Dual-diaphragm
design offers 5 polar patterns:
cardioid, wide cardioid,
hypercardioid, omnidirectional,
and figure-8 • lowcut at 40Hz
and 100Hz • –6 and –12dB pad
• parameters are selected using
a single button • stand mount
included • available in matte
nickel or black
target market Instrumental and
vocal recording
analysis The first of a new line of
mics that has an updated capsule
design and modern electronic
switching for selecting pad, filter,
and pattern settings.
tlm107.neumann.com

14 emusician.com 01.2014

10
Slate Digital
Virtual Mix Rack
Plug-in suite
$TBA
highlights Uses 500 Seriesrack paradigm as a way to host
several effects within one plug-in
instantiation • 8 modules can
be loaded into one virtual rack
• includes British-style EQs
modeled after Neve and SSL, and
two compressors • drag-and-drop
interface • iLok required
target market Musicians,
sound designers, and recording
engineers
analysis Slate Digital intends this
to be a new plug-in platform and
has plans to launch additional
modules for the format in the
near future.
slatedigital.com

11
Dangerous Music
Dangerous Compressor
Two-channel
dynamics processor
$2,799
highlights Limits peaks as it
compresses the average level
using Smart Dyn Dual Slope
Detection circuit • true stereo
operation • auto attack/release
• sidechain input with Sibilance
Boost, Bass Cut, and Sidechain
Monitor switches • soft knee
target market Professional and
personal studios in need of a
mastering-grade compressor
analysis A high-quality
compressor/limiter designed to
give you good results, quickly,
while tracking, mixing, or
mastering.
dangerousmusic.com

12
Schoeps
V4 U
Condenser microphone
$3,000
highlights Cardioid pattern •
designed for recording vocals
• retro look based on the
classic 1951 CM 51/3 mic •
capsule tilts forward/backward
approximately 45 degrees •
includes wooden case and clamp
• optional elastic shockmount •
available in blue or gray
target market Musicians and
engineers who specialize in vocal
recording
analysis Despite its vintage
look, the V4 U utilizes a
modern capsule design with a
transformerless output stage.
schoeps.de

All prices are MSRP except as noted

16

14

13

15

13
Line 6
V75-40V
Handheld wireless
microphone
$1,679.99
highlights Earthworks WL40V
hypercardioid capsule •
works with Line 6 XD-V75
digital wireless system • 24bit resolution • 30Hz–20kHz
frequency response • includes
hardshell case • operates for 8
hours on two AA batteries • LCD
shows system parameters and
battery level
target market Vocalists
performing onstage
analysis Line 6 adds a new level
of sound quality by marrying
a studio-grade capsule to
its popular wireless stage
microphone.
line6.com

14
littleBits
Synth Kit
Modular analog synth
$159
highlights 12 modules, codeveloped by Korg, that
magnetically snap together:
two oscillators, keyboard, filter,
envelope, delay, sequencer,
mixer, split, random, speaker, and
power • includes booklet with
step-by-step instructions for 10
projects • requires no soldering,
programming, or wiring
target market Kids interested in
experimenting with sound and
the adults who love them
analysis While this is a great
way to introduce young people
to synthesis, it will be just as fun
for grown-ups who enjoy synth
gadgetry.
littlebits.com

15
Source Audio
Hot Hand USB
Wireless MIDI controller
$119 street
highlights Lightweight ring
with internal accelerometer
allows you to use realtime
gestural information to control
instruments via MIDI • tracks
movement in three dimensions
• USB receiver plugs into your
Mac/Win computer • software
editor for assigning axes to
instrument parameters • range
and sensitivity settings
target market Instrumentalists
and DJs looking to take
advantage of MIDI’s expressive
capabilities
analysis This wireless ring
may soon become your favorite
modulation source for adding
excitement to a musical
performance.
sourceaudio.net

16
Universal Audio
API Vision Channel Strip
Channel-strip plug-in
for the UAD platform
$299
highlights Models five API
modules used in the Vision
console (right down to the
nonlinearities of the op-amps
and transformers): 212L
preamp, 550L 4-band EQ, 225L
compressor/limiter, 235L Gate/
Expander, and the 215L “hi-pass”
and “lo-pass” filter • preamp
includes phase and pad switches
• stereo linkable sidechain
target market Musicians,
sound designers, and recording
engineers
analysis The colorful sound of these
API modules is a welcome addition
to the UAD system, whether
you’re tracking or mixing.
uaudio.com

01.2014 emusician.com 15

MOD
SQUAD

Make Noise
René
Transport your patches
into the next dimension
By GINO ROBAIR

16 emusician.com 01.2014

Zach Smith

SequencerS are an important part of a
synthesist’s toolkit. But even with multiple
outputs at each stage and the ability to store
sequences, skip steps, and scan through the
voltages in either direction, a step sequencer
can sometimes feel one-dimensional.
Consider how musically useful it would be
to move through a series of notes in a nonlinear way while adding varying degrees of
unpredictability.
With René ($500), Make Noise has reimagined the step sequencer by taking as
inspiration the Cartesian coordinate system
developed by the module’s namesake,
René Descartes. The result is one of the
most interesting controllers ever put into a
module.
At its most basic level, René is a 16-step
non-linear sequencer, in the Eurorack format,
that allows you to create complex, realtime
pattern variations using CV and gate input
to navigate a two-dimensional space. The
module’s microprocessor also provides
logic functions, stores sequences, and offers
playback modes that expand the unit from a
mere compositional tool to an exciting liveperformance controller.
Each axis—x and y—has a clock input, a
modulation input, and a CV offset input with an
attenuator. There are two CV outputs (one of
which is quantized), as well as individual gate
outputs for the x and y axes. The functionality
of each input and output is based on the
operating mode you choose. All of this may
sound complex, but the module is very easy to
use in the basic modes, with the results getting

The Make Noise René is a versatile, realtime controller that pushes the step-sequencer
paradigm to a new level.

more and more interesting as you dig deeper
into the feature set.
René has a 4x4 grid of knobs for setting
CV levels, a matching grid with touch pads
for programming or performance, Page and
Latch pads, and a row of analog I/O on 3.5mm
jacks. Touch the pads to play any of the 16
steps individually, or scan through the grid
in several ways—forward, reverse, back and
forth (Pendulum mode), or with one of the
eight factory preset patterns in Snake mode.
You can momentarily pause a sequence in one
spot by touching a pad; lift your finger, and
the sequence picks up where it left off. Add in
the logic operations or the unique Seek and
Sleep modes (which provide fast and slow
“behavioral” movement through the grid), and
you will soon be creating sequences that sound
organic and alive.
You can save four sets of mapped pitches
(referred to as Stored Quantized Voltage
levels) to a preset and, using the touch pads,
select which set plays back from the quantized
CV output. Then, as your stored scale plays,
you are able to use the knobs in the grid
to independently control the voltage level
of each step that goes to the unquantized

output, without disturbing the scale levels you
stored. The Glide function lets you introduce
portamento between steps.
One might argue that much of this
functionality could be done using a computer,
yielding even greater control over your
modular system. However, René’s usefulness
lies in the elegance of its interface, which is
easy to navigate once you learn the various
pad combinations used to select playback
modes. More importantly, the module’s
ergonomics are well suited to a hardware
system designed for performance, making
René a great candidate for a shallow
horizontal case, or skiff, that you can use as a
portable control surface.
And while René may seem expensive within
the Eurorack’s ecosystem of inexpensive,
single-function modules, you will find it to be
indispensible and worth the investment once
you experience how powerful it is. n
More Online
Watch Gino Robair demonstrate
the René.

Emusician.com/January2014

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BuIld a

LIVE

RIG
for ANY GIG

18 emusician.com 01.2014

Ready to put together a P.A. system,
but don’t know where to begin? We’ve
assembled three complete options for
three performance scenarios.
BY STEVE LA CERRA
One Of the questions we get asked frequently at Electronic Musician is, “What kind of P.A. system
should I buy?” Purchasing P.A. gear can be a confusing prospect, due to the many categories
involved (mixers, mains, monitors, crossovers, outboard processing, etc.) and the huge number
of offerings within each category. How do you make the right decisions so that you get the
most from your purchase? Have no fear, EM is here to help you navigate through the forest
of electronics, transducers, and slithering copper snakes. We’ve assembled three unique P.A.
systems for working musicians, each designed to facilitate gigging in specific situations.
The criteria for our suggestions include maximum performance, efficiency, reliability, and
versatility for your money. We feel it’s important to be able to incorporate components from a
smaller rig into a bigger one when you’re ready to work larger venues, or scale down a larger
system for use in smaller rooms so that you don’t have to rent a 20-foot truck to do a cocktail
hour! So, let’s take a look…

01.2014 emusician.com 19

1

Build a

LIVE

RIG
for ANY GIG

The On-Stage®
Stands SS7761B
is made of light
aluminum but
can support up
to 120 pounds.

The Radial ProDI
provides TRS in and
through, XLR out,
ground lift, and is
built like a tank.

Quik Lok A300

ProCo S12NN-25 speaker
cables feature ProCo’s
Excellines 12-gauge cable
with Neutrik connectors.
Audix OM2

The Electro-Voice ZLX15P has two XLR/TRS
inputs, each with its
own control.

Audio-Technica
AT2010
Shure SM58

Best Acoustic Performance by a Soloist
Our first system accommodates a solo
performer working gigs in coffee houses,
cocktail lounges, and small bars. The goal here
is fast setup and ease of use. This system will
fit into the smallest of cars (no need for a van)
and you can move it without assistance (or
an ambulance the next morning). The thing
about this rig is that—even though there is no
mixer—you won’t outgrow the gear when you
graduate to larger rooms because you’ll be able
to re-purpose the components into a larger
system. [Editor’s note: all prices shown here are
street prices.]
Our solo performer system is built around
the Electro-Voice ZLX Series of powered
loudspeakers. We’ll start with a single ZLX15P ($499) for the house speaker and a
ZLX-12P ($399) for a monitor. Both of these
are two-way systems, the ZLX-15P using a
15-inch woofer and the ZLX-12P employing a
12-inch woofer. The ZLX-15P has two XLR/
TRS inputs, each with its own gain control,
20 emusician.com 01.2014

so you can connect a microphone and one
instrument without a mixer. The ZLX-15P’s
link output can be used to feed the input of the
ZLX-12P, which we’ll use as a floor wedge. To
accommodate larger rooms a second ZLX-15P
can be linked to the system.
Either of these speakers can be set on a floor
stand with a standard 1 3/8-inch pole. The OnStage® Stands SS7761B ($49.95) is constructed
of aluminum so it’s light but it can support up to
120 pounds at heights up to 6.5 feet. Add $29.95
for a travel bag that holds two stands.
There are tons of great vocal mics designed
for live sound at very reasonable prices. It’s
tough to beat the industry-standard Shure
SM58 ($99), but if that’s not the right mic
for your voice, check out the Audio-Technica
AT2010 or Audix OM2 (priced similarly). A
Quik Lok A300 ($39.95) serves as our mic stand,
featuring a tripod base, fixed-length boom arm,
and adjustable height from 38 to 62 inches.
We’ll need cables to connect everything,
and ProCo microphone cables are a no-brainer.

The Ameriquad Series uses four conductors
with a 96-percent-coverage braided shield and
Neutrik XLR connectors, and has a 20-year
warranty. Price varies with length; we’ll budget
for two 20-foot ($30) and two 30-foot ($35)
cables. The 20-footers can be used to connect
the mic and instrument to the first ZLX, and the
30-footers can be used to link the first ZLX to a
second and/or third. We’ll add two ProCo EG15
Excellines instrument cables ($16.99 each), 15foot with TS connectors at each end: one for a
guitar or keyboard and a second for backup.
Although the ZLX input will accept
instrument-level input, a DI box will maximize
performance with a keyboard or guitar. Since
there’s no phantom power available, we’ll go
with a passive DI such as the ProDI from Radial
Engineering ($99). It provides TRS input and
through connectors, an XLR output, and a
ground lift switch, and it’s built like a tank so
you’ll have it for the rest of your life.
Total system cost: approximately $1,350;
add $550 for another E-V ZLX-15P and stand.

Build a

LIVE

RIG
for ANY GIG

2

The Mackie PPM1008
combines an 8-channel mixer
with two 800-watt amps.

Sennheiser
e845

22 emusician.com 01.2014

JBL EON510

Radial Engineering
Pro48 active DI

Planet Waves
PW-CMIC-25

The JBL JRX225 is a twoway cab with dual 15-inch
drivers and a 1-inch horn.
K&M 21070

Best Acoustic/Electric Performance
By a Duo or Trio The next step up the gear
ladder adds more power and more inputs to
accommodate two or three performers, each with
an instrument. This system utilizes a powered
mixer for the nucleus, negating the need for
external power amps and their associated wiring.
Our mixer is intended to be located at the stage
and will be operated by the performers.
The Mackie PPM1008 ($899) is up to the
task, combining an 8-channel (6 mono plus 2
stereo) mixer with two 800-watt power amps.
Each mono channel has an insert and 3-band
EQ with a sweep midrange; the first four also
have built-in compressors. Two of the inputs
(5/6) may be switched to high-impedance to
accommodate instruments without need for a
DI, while channels 7 and 8 provide both 1/4inch and RCA jack inputs. Onboard effects may
be fed from one of the aux sends.
A useful feature of the PPM1008 is that
the two power amps can be configured for
use in three different ways: main/main, main/
monitor send 1, or monitor send 1/monitor send
2. Front-panel outputs allow you to “tap” the
main L/R out so if you need more power for the
mains you can add external power amps and
use the PPM1008’s amps to run two monitor
mixes. On smaller gigs where you only need one
main speaker, you can use one amp for the main
speaker and the other amp for a monitor, and
have separate house and monitor mixes.
This system uses two JBL JRX225 speakers
for the mains ($449 each). The JRX225 is a

Audix
OM5

two-way cab with dual 15-inch drivers and
a 1-inch horn. Capable of producing SPLs as
high as 133dB(!) the JRX225’s HF compression
driver is mounted on JBL’s proprietary
Progressive Transition™ waveguide for low
distortion and smooth frequency response, and
features SonicGuard™ circuitry to protect the
high-frequency driver from excessive power.
Stage monitors are also from JBL: two
EON510 ($399 each) compact multipurpose
monitors, each with a 10-inch woofer, a 1-inch
HF driver, and onboard Class D amplification.
The EON510 can be used with a line or miclevel input and can be daisy-chained so we’ll
run the Mackie’s monitor send to the first
EON510 using Rapco Horizon 1/4-inch TRS
cables ($18.99/20 feet) and then link the
first EON510 to the second, providing one
monitor each to two musicians, or allowing
three musicians to share two monitors. The
Mackie PPM1008 has two sends so we’ll either
designate the FX/MON2 for a second monitor
send, or use it to perform double duty as a send
to the second monitor mix and the internal
effects simultaneously.
Since the Mackie PPM1008 and the JBL
JRX225s offer Speakon™ connectors, we opted
for a pair of ProCo S12NN-25 speaker cables
($40 each, 25-feet long). These are available
in a variety of lengths from 10 to 100 feet and
feature ProCo’s Excellines 12-gauge cable
terminated with Neutrik connectors. We like
the idea of using Speakon connectors because
they lock in place and can’t accidentally be

removed by inquiring patrons(!). Planet Waves
PW-CMIC-25 25-foot microphone cables
($19.95 each) feature nickel-plated brass
connectors, low-capacitance wire, and a lifetime
guarantee. (We’ll get five.) Due to the fact that
our trio includes electric bass and a keyboard,
we’ll tap RapcoHorizon for four 20-foot G4
instrument cables ($20 each) with 95-percent
spiral shield and a 20-gauge inner conductor.
Just in case we host a guest appearance
from a visiting musician, we’ll add a direct
box. The Mackie PPM1008 provides phantom
power on the mic inputs. We can use it to run
a Radial Engineering Pro48 active DI ($99).
The Pro48 was designed to handle high-output
instruments such as active basses and acoustic
guitars and has a 15dB pad to accommodate
the hottest of outputs.
Although we expect only two or three
musicians, we’ll get four microphone stands:
three K&M 21070 ($59) boom stands for the
vocal plus one Quik Lok A341 ($30) short
boom—in case we have to place a mic on a
“guest” guitar amp. We’ll add a small variety of
vocal microphones, starting with the Shure Beta
58 ($159), Audix OM5 ($159), and Sennheiser
e845 ($140). These dynamic mics complement
a variety of voices and offer excellent feedback
rejection. To these we’ll add an ol’ reliable: a
Shure SM57 ($100), which can serve as a vocal
mic or for that guest’s guitar amp.
This system will spill into your backseat but
still fits into a midsize car.
Total system cost: approximately $3,700

3
Yamaha
MSR400

The Presonus
StudioLive 16.4.2
operates at 48kHz,
and has 16 input
channels featuring
TRS line and XLR
microphone inputs
with phantom power,
plus a TRS insert, and
built-in effects.
Onboard biamplification
enables the QSC K12 to
achieve SPLs up to 131dB.

Loudest Bar Band in an Electric
Performance This system is intended for
use with a full band in large, noisy bars, and
will probably require someone to run it. It’ll
fill a small van, but since we’re pulling down a
couple grand per show, we don’t mind. We’re
going whole-hog here, miking the entire stage
and adding multiple monitor mixes for a
system that rocks.
Selecting a mixer was a tough call, but
in the end the PreSonus StudioLive™ 16.4.2
digital mixer ($1,499) wins the race. Operating
at a sample rate of 48kHz, the StudioLive
16.4.2’s 16 input channels each feature TRS line
and XLR microphone inputs with phantom
power, plus a TRS insert. Every input “Fat
Channel” and aux send output has a highpass
filter, noise gate, compressor, EQ, and limiter—
so we won’t need any outboard processing for
mains or monitors. Plenty of aux sends are
available on the 16.4.2, so we can easily route
six discrete monitor mixes and still have two
effect sends to the internal digital effects. In
addition to the XLR main outs, TRS main
outs enable us to feed additional speakers
to areas of a bar or restaurant that would
otherwise not be able to easily hear the P.A.
Four subgroups are available; they’ll come in
handy for subgrouping our drum channels.
Mixer snapshots, Fat Channel settings, and
effect settings can all be stored and recalled via
library. A variety of recording facilities include
a FireWire interface, S/PDIF out, and balanced
analog direct outputs from each channel.

RapcoHorizon
16x4 snake

Peavey PV15PM

QSC KW181

Loudspeakers will be QSC K Series
powered speakers. We’ll start with the
K12 two-way, full-range speaker ($849),
incorporating a 12-inch low-frequency
driver and a 1.75-inch high-frequency driver.
Frequency response of the K12 extends
down to a very respectable 50Hz but we’re
going to up the ante (or rather lower it) in a
moment. Onboard biamplification (500 watts
each for the LF and HF drivers) enables the
K12 to achieve SPLs up to 131dB, and K12
components are protected from thermal and
excursion damage. QSC’s Tilt-Direct™ pole
mount enables the directivity of the K12 to be
adjusted by 7.5 degrees to prevent reflections
from low ceilings. Each K12 features two rearpanel Combo™ jack inputs plus XLR outputs
for daisy-chaining—enabling them to be used
sans mixer on gigs for a solo performer.
Our K12s will live atop QSC KW181
powered subwoofers ($1,399), which utilize a
single 18-inch driver with a 1,000-watt Class
D amplifier for response down to 38Hz and
SPL up to 135dB(!). Included with the KW181s
are mounting poles for the K12; their threaded
design ensures secure, wobble-free support.
Integrating the KW181s and the K12s is a
breeze because the K12s have a low-frequency
contour switch with an External Sub position
that tailors the frequency response for use
with the KW181s.
There’s a good chance that this system
will be run by an engineer at front-of-house,
so we’re going to start our connectivity with

MSR800W
subwoofer

ProCo Stagemaster
SMA1604FBQ-50

a 16-input x 4-return snake (16 XLR x
4 TRS). The RapcoHorizon 16x4 100-foot
snake runs $549 and would give us plenty of
length for any gig, including a small theater,
but for shorter runs we’ll consider the ProCo
Stagemaster SMA1604FBQ-50 ($329). Both
are rugged enough to stand up to heavy use
and feature stage boxes with XLR female jacks
for the inputs and TRS female jacks for the
returns.
We’ll be using two of the snake returns for
our monitor mixes in this rig. The drummer
gets a Yamaha MSR400 ($499) two-way,
biamped cabinet with a 300-watt amp for
the 12-inch woofer and a 100-watt amp for
the high-frequency horn driver. To satisfy
her never-ending appetite for low end in the
monitors, we’ll augment the MSR400 with
Yamaha’s MSR800W subwoofer ($799). The
MSR800W’s bass-reflex cabinet houses a 15inch driver, producing low-frequency response
extending down to 40Hz. The XLR input and
adjustable highpass output make it perfect
for linking to the MSR400. The rest of the
band needs monitors, too, so we’ll add three
Peavey PV15PM powered wedge monitors
($419 each), a low-profile, biamped design
with a 15-inch woofer, and a 1.4-inch titanium
diaphragm compression driver. A Combo™
jack input accepts mic or line level signals and
a 1/4-inch TRS is provided for linking—so we
can chain a second monitor later if necessary.
Notice that we have not given the lead
singer any monitors. She’s getting Sennheiser
01.2014 emusician.com 23

Build a

LIVE

RIG
for ANY GIG

The Shure
SM57 is an
old standby.

Countryman Type
85 active DI

The Sennheiser ew300
stereo in-ear system
operates in the UHF band.

Radial
ProD2

Audix
D6
SKB Shallow X Rack

ew300 IEM G3 in-ears ($999) with
ER•4™MicroPro earpieces from Etymotic
Research ($299). Operating in the UHF band,
the ew300 is a stereo system. Two of the aux
sends from the PreSonus mixer will be linked
to create a stereo ear mix, and two more aux
sends will run through the returns of the
snake to the stage for two wedge mixes. This
still leaves us two aux sends on the PreSonus
StudioLive for the future when other band
members add wireless in-ears.
Continuing with the wireless theme, we’ll
give our vocalist a handheld wireless mic
from Audio-Technica. The ATW-3171 ($599)
boasts true-diversity operation and a choice
of 200 frequencies. The receiver has remote
battery monitor so whoever is running the
P.A. will know when it’s time for a new
battery before there’s a mishap. An SKB
Shallow X Rack ($99, two spaces) will secure
our wireless gear during transport.
Microphones abound in this rig, starting
with the drum kit. We’ll use an Audix D6
or AKG D112 ($199 each) for the kick drum,
and a Shure SM57 ($100) for snare. A threepack of Sennheiser e604s ($349 for the
pack) covers our toms and the clip-on design
means we can leave three mic stands home. A
pair of Shure KSM137 mics ($299 each) serve
as overheads; these have three-position pads
and low-frequency rolloff switches. Another
Shure SM57 or Audix i5 ($100 each) covers
the guitar amp. Vocal mics for the band will
all be Shure Beta 58 ($159); keeping the mics
consistent across the front can help reduce
feedback issues in the wedge monitors.
Three DIs handle our keyboards and bass: a
24 emusician.com 01.2014

Countryman Type 85 active DI for the bass
($160), and a Radial ProD2 ($149) passive
stereo DI for keys.
An assortment of mic stands will be
needed for this system, starting with five
Ultimate Support Tour T-T stands ($129
each) to handle three vocals and the drum
overheads. Three Quik A-341 stands ($30
each) handle the snare, kick, and guitaramp microphones. Our lead singer prefers a
straight stand, so we’ll go with an On-Stage
MS9700B+ Platinum Series stand ($39.95),
which features a solid-steel upper shaft,
scratch-resistant finish and steel leg housing.
Wherever possible, we’ll use XLR cables
due to their robust construction and ability
to lock in place. Twenty 20-foot ProCo
Ameriquad cables ($30 each) will be used
to connect mics and DIs to the stage box,
and four BPBQXM-30 Excellines 30-foot
XLR male-to-TRS ($35 each) will connect
the stage box to our QSC mains and to the
Peavey monitors. We’ll use two ProCo EXM5
XLR cables (5-foot, $18 each) to patch the
QSC subs to the QSC K12 tops and two
BPBQXM-10 XLR-to-TRS cables ($19 each)
to link the Peavey monitors.
Approximate system cost: just under
$15,000, including dinner for the band and
crew. Hey, we gotta eat! n
Steve La Cerra is an independent audio
engineer based in New York. In addition to
being an Electronic Musician contributor,
he mixes front-of-house for Blue Öyster
Cult and teaches audio at Mercy College,
Dobbs Ferry campus.

HANS ZIMMER
P E R C U S S I O N

2

0

1

3

HZ
PERCUSSION
HANS ZIMMER
SPITFIRE

Morcheeba (left to right)—Ross Godfrey, Skye Edwards, and Paul Godfrey.

morcheeba
Alex lAke

space soul sounds redux

26 emusician.com 01.2014

22nd-century
trip-hoppers
record Head Up
High, thanks
to Rupert
Neve, Robert
Moog, and
Morcheeba
hit Platinum paydirt
on their 1995 debut,
Who Can You Trust?
and its follow-up,
Big Calm, the albums’ nascent trip-hop a sleek amalgam of
retro English soul, loping big beats, psychedelia-drenched
melodies, and Skye Edwards’ grittily beautiful vocals.
Morcheeba’s music became the quintessential sound of
late-night London. Almost 20 years later, Morcheeba
still meshes past and present tenses, whether layering
simmering blues guitar over programmed dub grooves or
quirky analog synthesizers against Native Instruments
Maschine-produced R&B beats. Befitting a group whose
music could easily adorn a classic 007 soundtrack by John
Barry, Morcheeba’s 22nd-century trip-hop treatise, Head
Up High, was recorded at their 17th-century converted
farmhouse/studio in the south of France.
“I did most of the man hours on the record here at our
French studio, Moog Island,” Morcheeba’s DJ/producer/
lyricist Paul Godfrey explains from Bordeaux. “The studio
is named after a song from our first record. Moog Island is
kind of a fantasy place, like the enemy’s hideout in a James
Bond movie. But instead of having controls for nuclear
weapons, it’s all Moogs.
“Since the early days,” he elaborates, “I’ve collected
equipment that helps me get closer to my natural musical
inclinations. We use vintage equipment including a Binson
Echorec, Leslie cabinets, Neve 1073 preamps, and Moog
Voyager, as well as plug-ins to saturate the sound, particularly
SoundToys’ Decapitator, and the old Digidesign Lo-Fi plug-in;
it gives clean sounds a really nice crunch. If you have a sound

Extra Sleepers

UK TRIO

Silent Way

BY KEN
MICALLEF

01.2014 emusician.com 27

Choice Moog Island gear: “I’ve collected equipment that helps get me closer to my natural musical inclinations,” says Godfrey.

in mind from your favorite records, it’s just there
with the older gear.”
When Morcheeba splashed down in the
mid-’90s, sampling rates were barely in the
seconds, and computers deemed worthy for
music-making were slow and prone to crash.
Perhaps the challenges bettered the music?
“We’ve made Platinum records on a
Mackie desk with ADATs,” Godfrey laughs,
“working like mad, just turning the knobs
inside out trying to find that sound in our
heads. So when Ross (Godrey, his brother
and multi-instrumentalist), Skye, and I could
afford the right gear and good microphones,
our jobs became so much easier. I have an
engineering background, but it’s ultimately
about having the experience to know what
not to do; when not to f *ck with it.”
Godfrey cut his engineering teeth at Astra
Audio Studios in Kent, recording such heroes
of the legendary Canterbury scene as Caravan,

“We ran the guitar
through a Leslie
cab, so you really
hear that rotating,
seasick, spacey
sound. And the
sampled vocal says,
‘I feel much better.’”
—P aul Godfrey

Soft Machine, Gong, Richard Sinclair, Pip Pyle,
Hugh Hopper, and the Albion Band.
“Those guys were old school,” Godfrey
exclaims. “They’d worked at The Manor
and all the great English studios. I learned a
lot from them about sound and arranging. I
worked with a lot of great musicians at a time
when I was very impressionable. I was lucky.”
Head Up High is trip-hop only in its essential
aural sheen, that hyper-extended sense of a
never-ending club crawl, a thousand sordid tales
all contained under the umbrella of the night.
The album’s adult-oriented soul toys with blues,
funk, ska, rap, and reggae, touching down in
dance music, but never quite landing full stop.
“We’ve always been on the fringes of dance
music,” Godrey offers. “I come from a hip-hop
background and we have reggae and blues
influences, a lot of black music, so there is
obviously a crossover. But I find most modern
music very brittle. When you play our music

At left, Godfrey’s mic shootout. At right, the control room, with Tonelux modular console, and Neve and Calrec pres.
28 emusician.com 01.2014

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against most modern music, it can sound quite
soft if you don’t hear the subtleties.”
While Morcheeba recorded primarily at
Moog Island, the band’s members live far and
wide, so home ties took priority over studio
familiarity. “Our own studios are more personal,”
Godfrey says, “but because Ross was having a
baby we recorded at Perry Vale in London, which
is close to him. It has an incredible 1976 Neve
5305 24-channel 4-bus desk. It had transformerbalanced direct outputs fitted to each channel
(with 24 mic pre/EQs: 33115x22, 33114x2).
Jesus and Mary Chain, Robyn Hitchcock,
Swervedriver, and Primal Scream have all
recorded there. We tracked vocals and guitars
there using the Neve console and all its mic pres.”
Moog Island, by contrast, is where Morcheeba
gets personal with go-to effects, instruments, and
old and new technology. Describing Moog Island
as a “hybrid studio,” Godfrey owns a Tonelux
modular console, which “has transformers on
every channel, 32 channels but with a footprint
of two by one foot” augmented by Neve pres
and “old BBC Calrec preamps. We tend to mix
in stereo stems now so we will end up with ten
stems that have all been processed through
analog gear. While we’re tracking, it tends to
30 emusician.com 01.2014

be analog compression and analog EQ, then I
might add saturation and distortion using the
Thermionic Culture Vulture.”
Moog Island is comprised of a live room with
piano, amps, and Hammond organ with a Leslie
cabinet, while the control room typically houses
the Tonelux console, computers, and outboard.
“The studio was a barn,” Godfrey says. “I live
in the attached farmhouse. I walk through the
courtyard to get to work.”
Godfrey’s go-tos for Head Up High included
Native Instruments Maschine with his
voluminous sample library. “Maschine is very
tactile and I can bash out some beats then edit
them in Pro Tools and arrange them later.” Moog
Voyager is his go-to bass synth. “It’s so easy
to use, and also the Cwejman S1 MKII, a semi
modular synth built in Scandinavia, and the EMS
Synthie. The Cwejman is more aggressive than
the Voyager, but the Moog has that depth and
warmth. And the ARP 2600 as well gets used
quite a lot.”
Head Up High’s opener, “Gimme Your
Love,” is a trip-hop stoner’s paradise, all woozy
doom’n’dread synths, behind-the-beat drums,
dreamy wah-wah guitar, and Skye’s luscious
vocal and staggered cadences, which when tied

to Godfrey’s lyrics recalls Donovan Leitch’s 1967
hit “Wear Your Love Like Heaven.” (Coincidence
or synchronicity? The first line of Donovan’s
song is “Color in Sky brush and blue.”) The song
closes with what sounds like a woman curtly
pronouncing, “Well, it could be better.”
“I came up with that drum loop on
Maschine,” Godfrey recalls, “and then added
spring reverb from the Binson Echorec (which
was famously used on David Gilmour’s guitar
on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and on John
Bonham’s drums in “When the Levee Breaks”).
The main loop is a dusty, old breakbeat-sounding
loop I had. And there’s a tom through a Roland
Space Echo that is quite ominous. Then I added
Moog bass. I practically wrote that alone ’cause
everyone was away. I started jamming the bass
line on the Moog, sent the riff to Ross and Skye,
and they loved it. The pads are from Studio
Electronics Code 8 synth, a kind of polyphonic
Moog. The ARP 2600 is doing the atmospheric
sounds. The guitar is a ’60s Fender Jaguar
through a Roland Phase II pedal and a 1960s
Selmer Truevoice 50-watt head. We ran the
guitar through a Leslie cab as well, so you really
hear that rotating, seasick, spacey sound. And the
sampled vocal says, ‘I feel much better.’”
The strangely evocative “Under the Ice”
begins with a plucked instrument, gurgling
percussion and log-drum rhythm underpinning
Skye’s enchanted vocal. The rhythm bucks and
sways; it could as easily be New Orleans as São
Paulo. The mood reflects sadness, layered vocals
matched to subtle synths and electronic effects.
“That’s Ross playing a charango,” Godfrey
says. “It’s a South American instrument with
an armadillo shell and ten strings. It’s supposed
to be strummed but Ross always picks it, for a
harpsichord sound. I based the rhythm on that
old U.K. two-step or jungle, but wanted to use
more spacious, world-music sounds to give it
an organic feel. One of my favorite records is Dr.
John The Night Tripper’s Gris Gris. I am always
trying to create those kinds of sounds mixed
with the Rick Rubin hip-hop sounds. And there’s
a Native Instruments Massive bass line. Also in
that track is M-Tron Pro by G-Force Software,
one of my favorite virtual instruments. It’s like
a Mellotron, you can put it at half-speed and
experiment like mad. We also filter it to become
quite atmospheric. That creates the background
drones. And you’re also hearing the vibraphone
from the M-Tron.”
The album’s most challenging track was “Do
You Good,” states Godfrey. A bed of pulsating
electronic sounds and stomping drums sets the
stage, a virtual 4/4 rocker. A long rest is aborted
with a wall of crescendo-ing synths bubbling like
a lava flow. If this is the end of our James Bond

soundtrack, then it’s Duran Duran riding the 4/4
groove to the heart of the sun.
“We’re mixing Talking Heads with a tribal
approach and house music,” Godfrey says. “That
was way beyond our comfort zone so we had to
work hard to find a balance. We did that with
a few tracks and it’s been a really educational
experience to get it right. I try to push things to
where we’ll feel uncomfortable and Ross will try
to pull me back to where he feels comfortable,
then somewhere in the middle we find that
sweet spot that is Morcheeba.
“Splitting credit is one key to longevity,”
Godfrey says, anticipating the publishing
royalties question for this 20-year old band.
“Most of the musical parts are Ross, and I did
more lyrics this time. I am more from a hiphop angle so I program the beats and sample
and generate ideas for moods. Ross is a multiinstrumentalist, and he’s into melody, as is Skye.
Ross played keyboards and guitar. I started out
of my bedroom with a 4-track and a sampler
that would only do two seconds, so I had to
get creative. Every hip-hop producer out there
thinks he is a producer before he’s even sat in
front of a mixing desk.”
Godfrey tracked Skye’s vocal with a
Neumann U47, which he considers a male
vocalist’s tool. She typically cuts five passes, then
they comp.
“I always associate the U47 with male voices
but it sounded really creamy with Skye’s voice,”
he informs. “The AKG C12 was too sharp. We
used the 33115 pres from Perry Vale’s Neve
board. And I also brought in a Mercury 66 valve
compressor; it’s a Fairchild clone. I ended up
using a Urei 1176LN to catch the peaks while the
Mercury gave it the tone and that creaminess.”
Godfrey’s analog synths went direct via a
Little Labs DI, into an 1173 and a Teletronix
LA2A compressor, or the Thermionic Culture
Phoenix for a touch of distortion. The Moog
Voyager ran direct for bass lines, recorded at
Ross’ home and also at Perry Vale studio, where
Skye’s husband, Steve Gordon (who was key
in getting her to rejoin Morcheeba after their
2003 split), also tracked bass using a Fender
Precision through a Warwick tube amp and
alternately a vintage Ampeg fliptop and a Big
Tree DI. The Mercury M66 was also used for
bass compression.
Ross Godfrey’s many guitars include a Gibson
SG, Fender Telecaster, Stratocaster, and vintage
Jaguar, Martin, and Hofner acoustics, and a
Silvertone Craftsman Jimmy Reed Model. His
work is Head Up High’s secret spice, creating
fizzy blues caterwaul, Eastern drones, and
Hendrix dream flanger quotes, always in the
most unexpected places.

“For Ross’ guitars I used an old Unidyne SM57,
an AKG C24, or Neumann SM69,” Godfrey says.
“We’d have a stereo mic a few feet back from the
grill of a vintage Fender Tweed for ambience
and then the Unidyne very close just off axis, up
against the grill. We added some ribbons for tone,
and balanced the mics on the board to get the
final sound. Ross plays loud in the studio in order
to get the kind of harmonics he wants. But we use
smaller amps and drive them hard. Sometimes
we ran the guitars through the Leslie cabinet and
used extra flangers on the mix.”

“It was so all beyond
our reach when we
were younger. Now
with $100 you can
start building a rack
and you have access
to incredible gear. It’s
a golden age of being
a consumer of audio
gear. As long as you
can control it and not
let it control you.”
—Paul Godfrey
Godfrey used various drum machines in
conjunction with his vintage 1970s Ludwig maple
kit and a custom kit with a 26-inch bass drum.
“I’ve always programmed drums to sound
organic,” Godfrey says. “I like the atmosphere of
old breakbeat loops. When programming drums
I use a lot of spring reverb or plate reverb like the
Binson Echorec just to fill in the gaps and give
that kind of atmosphere.
“I have a big library of drum sounds sampled
from vinyl,” he continues, “and different drum
machines including an SP-808, Roland CR68,
DMX, and the Maschine. I layer them up and
make sure they’re all phase-coherent on the grid,
not as far as timing but so they align. I use the 808
a lot; I love its sub-bass as a flavor.”
Godfrey is such a wiz, it’s nigh-on impossible
to know where the acoustic drums end and

the programming begins. He’s absolutely
painstaking and ready to sacrifice for the sound.
“I put a Neumann U47 FET condenser
microphone in front of the kick into a Neve
1073 into a vintage LA2A,” he details via
email. “I aim a Coles 4038 ribbon mic at the
snare between the hat and the hanging tom
then into another Neve into a Bluestripe 1176.
The main balance of the kit depends on one
mic: the vintage Neumann SM69 tube. I’d
advise everyone to get one while they’re still
relatively affordable—sell a kidney if you have
to! That goes overhead through another couple
of Neves and then the Thermionic Phoenix
in stereo. I love the sound of Al Jackson on
the old Stax stuff so this is my Stax-inspired
setup. If I feel we need any more attack on the
kick, I’ll use a dynamic microphone like the
Sennheiser 421 either in the kick or beater
side with the phase reversed. This would also
hit a Neve and some light 1176 compression.
I’ll also use compression, parallel distortion,
and transient design and then bounce them
into stereo to make loops. I try to get the kick
pitched to the home key of the song before we
start as it just punches through a mix better.”
At end of day (or end of the record), who
can really tell if a particular sound is vintage
or new, analog or digital? Apparently Godfrey
can, but of greater interest to him is using new
technology to control and benefit vintage gear.
“It’s incredible,” he exults. “A program like
Expert Sleeper Silent Way can control all your
old analog synths and they will be perfectly in
time. Without it, it would be a nightmare to
connect them all up. For years we’d be like safecracking, trying to dial in the right tempo on an
LFO. Or trying to get samples to run in time with
old computers and syncing them to two-inch
tape. It was maddening. Now there’s a plug-in
for everything. We live in an amazing time.”
The new economic realties are not lost on
Godfrey either. While pro studios continue
to close down, bedroom studios flourish.
The tools of the trade are available to almost
anyone, even if the experience to yield their
full benefits remains hard won.
“It was so all beyond our reach when we
were younger,” Godfrey reflects. “Now with
$100 you can start building a rack and you
have access to incredible gear. It’s a golden age
really of being a consumer of audio gear. As
long as you can control it and not let it control
you—then you’re onto a good thing.” n
Ken Micallef is freelance writer and photographer based in New York City. His work has
appeared in many publications, including
DownBeat, eMusic, and Modern Drummer.
01.2014 emusician.com 31

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Rjd2
34 emusician.com 01.2014

The veteran instrumental electronic/hip-hop artist/producer talks about creating the
sample-stuffed More Is Than Isn’t on his beloved Akai MPC and wall of DIY synths, perfecting
minimal miking techniques, and how one of his tracks ended up as the Mad Men theme
BY KEN MICALLEF | PHOTOS BY WENdY KAISEr
WHAT WOULD you do if a popular Emmy-winning

television program used one of your compositions
as its theme song but paid you not one red cent in
publishing royalties? Would you get mad or get even?
“Mad Men bought the publishing rights, so they
don’t even have to run my name in the credits, but it’s
certainly raised my visibility,” Rjd2 (a.k.a. Ramble John
“RJ” Krohn) responds when asked about his song “A
Beautiful Mine,” which was purchased lock, stock,
and two smoking barrels for the theme to Mad Men,
AMC’s acclaimed series about loutish Madison Avenue
admen, set in the 1960s. Rjd2’s music has since enjoyed
commercial use for products from Blackberry, Wells
Fargo, Adidas, T Mobile, and Anadin Extra.
An uneasy jumble of descending piano notes, arcing
strings, and herk-a-jerk beats, “A Beautiful Mine” perfectly
frames the quagmire of Mad Men protagonist Don Draper’s
existence, yet it’s also the kind of sample-stuffed cocktail
Rjd2 typically conjures. Maligning samples from an Akai
MPC into potent musical gems is kid’s stuff for Rjd2,
heard to glorious effect on his fifth LP, More Is Than Isn’t
[Electrical Connections]. Built from hip-hop, funk, and
electronic fare (both sampled and performed live by Rjd2
and a small cast), More Is Than Isn’t offers generously catchy
songs, a groove-heavy joint where Barry White’s Love
Unlimited Orchestra slams up against dirty funk, exotic
flutes, itchy guitars, and warm DIY and analog synths.
“I’ve always tried to transform instrumental music—
which can sometimes sound like elevator music—into
something that has the same cohesion as a Stevie
Wonder song,” Rjd2 explains from his Philly flat. “I am

01.2014 emusician.com 35

hopeful in that endeavor, but I don’t always
know if I am successful.”
Unlike most contemporary producers
immersed in Pro Tools in-the-box recording
and grid-heavy beat directives, Rjd2’s primary
tool remains the primitive Akai MPC.
“I’ve spent a long time trying to make an
MPC sound not like an MPC, but like a band,”
he laughs. “This is the first record where I’ve felt
comfortable not doing that. Instead of masking
something that is sequenced and digital in
nature, I’m playing it up. There’s no learning
curve for me on the MPC; I can free my mind of
technique and focus on exploring the song.”
Fifteen years in to a still-burgeoning career—
why disrupt a successful songwriting approach
now? “I never want to write the same song twice,”
Rjd2 says.” There are a number of different
ways to create a song or explore new musical
territory. You can work in an unusual tempo or in
a different texture, or in a medium that is familiar
but using different tools. My approach on ‘Behold,
Numbers!’ for example, was to let the technique
itself be obvious. You can tell the strings have been
sampled and cut up; I put that up front.”
More Is Than Isn’t runs the gamut of
sampled-meets-live-performance songcraft.
“Milk Tooth” recalls a British library track à la
KPM, all groovy beats, analog synth noise,
barking brass, and er, whistling. On the opposite
tip, “Got There, Sugar?” is a schmaltzy, ’70s-era
lounge number complete with swizzle-stick
brushes and smoky saxophone gurgles. First
single “Her Majesty’s Socialist Request” ups
the beat-driven jazz quotient further with a
Lalo Schifrin-esque groove and Middle Eastern
tinged flutes. “Behold, Numbers!” excels in cutup string samples and rapid-fire MPC solutions.
“’Behold, Numbers!’ is me playing up the
idea of an obvious MPC-based composition,”
Rjd2 says. “In the past, I would have taken all
those little samples of strings and sequenced
36 emusician.com 01.2014

“In a pro studio, the first
thing they’ll do is put up
two overhead mics then
close-mike every drum;
that is, like, ten mics. I
would mute eight of those
tracks and pick two.”
a couple different patterns to make them feel
like a loop, to present a plausible argument that
it wasn’t a sample. But now I’m comfortable
making it obvious that these are strings that
have been chopped up in the MPC to feel
syncopated, weird, and rhythmically unnatural.”
More Is Than Isn’t was recorded at Rjd2’s
Dustbowl Studios, which inhabit four rooms of his
two-story Philadelphia home. A “sampling room”
consists of two Technics SL 1200 Mk turntables,
Akai MPC 2000XL, and approximately 8,000
vinyl records. The “synth room” contains an eightcore Mac (running Pro Tools 10), DIY modular
and analog synths and percussion. Two drum kits,
amplifiers, vibraphone, Wurlitzer, Yamaha CP80
electric piano, Hohner Clavinet, and a Fender
Rhodes outfit the live room. A bank of tricked-out
synthesizers fills a fourth room.
“I have two rows of DIY modular
synths built with parts purchased from
Synthesizers.com,” Rjd2 reveals. “DIY synths
offer the stability of a new synth with custom
sounds. There’s a burgeoning world of DIY
synth makers who can design and build a PCB
with a bill of materials for around 20 bucks.

Then you buy the parts, drill the panel, solder,
and wire it up. Then calibrate and troubleshoot.
It’s time intensive, but because this is a
relatively popular pursuit there are forums to
help you, like Electro-music.com. It has the
lowest noise floor of any hangout on line. No
Internet dickfaces!”
As for hardware synths, Rjd2’s Clavia Nord
Lead Electro, Korg Polysix, Yamaha CS-80 and
SY-2, ARP Pro Soloist, and Moog Minimoog
provide color to his beat-pulsing tunes. The
“synth room” holds an ARP 2600, Moog
Polymoog, Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and
Prophet T8, Rhodes Chroma, Oberheim Matrix
12 and Oberheim OB-Xa, Roland Juno-60, Elka
Rhapsody 490 String Machine, and Elka Synthex.
“The Yamaha CP80 sends MIDI,” Rjd2
elaborates, “so it can trigger both the Nord Lead
Electro and the Korg Polysix. Sometimes I layer
those three synths together to get some cool
sounds, running it all through a Leslie cabinet.
How does Rjd2 ensure that samples and old
synths stay in key within a song? He also plays
the album’s drums (a classic ’60s Ludwig black
pearl set à la Ringo Starr), keyboards, guitar,
and bass (with additional musicians on cello,
violin, saxophones, and flute), so the possibility
of sound-clash is serious.
“I’ll chop up samples and pitch them to where
it sounds natural,” he replies. “I try to keep it at A
440. But sometimes I forget to do that. Some of
my older songs are between A and A-flat. Often
I will start at 440 as closely as possible and still
end up pitching stuff. With analog synths, you
have to consider their ability to stay in pitch. I
reference things against the Rhodes to know if
it’s bang-on in terms of 440. Other times, I’m in
the mixing phase and I’ll have to fix the pitch
using the pitch shift in Pro Tools.”
Rjd2’s songwriting process begins with a beat,
“trying to find a good meeting point between an
awesome rhythmic idea and a good harmonic

Having started with vinyl, Kaskade had
multiple considerations when he moved to
the digital world. “I’m very comfortable with
the Pioneer gear. I love the 900 Nexus—I’ve
been using this mixer since they introduced
it. And I’ve been using the CDJ—I had the first
model—the touch wheel was very different.
So I’ve been [using] these guys for a long
time,” he says. “I think the reason I chose this
equipment is because I learned on [Technics]
1200s. I grew up playing vinyl, so it was very
comfortable to have a tactile interface and a
tempo control on the side. When [Pioneer]
designed these, they were meant to replace
the 1200. So when they put the design
together, although it looks and feels different

than a 1200, it’s the closest thing to it.”
One of the major advantages of going digital
is how much it’s simplified life on the road.
“Now, this is my preference because it’s very
quick and easy—I put stuff on an SD card, I load
it up, and I know how to move. It’s similar to
digging through a crate of vinyl and throwing it
down,” Kaskade says, “[but] this is a lot quicker
and easier. I used to have to carry around two
80-pound crates of records. Now it’s just a little
SD card. I feel very comfortable on this setup.”

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idea.” But contrary to what you’d expect from a
producer with a heavy sample finger, Rjd2 keeps
his music minimal when necessary.
“Not everything I do is vocally exploratory
or ambitious instrumentally. One of the beauties
of a really great rap song is its repetition. It’s just
a loop, the same groove for four minutes. But
when the groove is so awesome you can’t stop
listening, there is a beauty and power in that.
So I’m not always trying to go totally apeshit,
embellishing the hell out of an instrumental.”
And while Rjd2 typically tracks drums on the
grid, he will sometimes record tracks off the grid,
singing the song to himself as he maneuvers a
beat, then layering additional sounds.
“Recording on the grid makes editing
easier,” he says. “But ‘It All Came To Me In
A Dream,’ for instance, is off the grid and
has no BPM. Sometimes I’ll cut drums with
no grid and map out the song in my head as
I’m playing it. That’s fairly atypical for me,
but I need to be on the cusp of something
being difficult to stay focused. Recording off
the grid is one way I challenge myself. It’s
easier to record one performance and loop it
throughout the song than play it perfectly for
four minutes straight.“
Rjd2 is a schooled guitarist, but his
drumming cracks with special determination
and tonal resonance. There’s an immediacy
to his drum sounds that recalls the warmest,
wettest ’70s production (think such rarefied
studio drummers as Al Green’s Al Jackson, Jr.
or Muscle Shoals’ Roger Hawkins) yet with the
clarity of digital recording. Rjd2’s beats, some
tracked live start to finish, stomp hard with
tumescent intent.
“I came to recording live drums from sampled
drums. The bar for that is set in classic hip-hop
drum breaks sampled from Skull Snaps’ ‘It’s A
New Day’ (sampled by Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Eric B.
& Rakim, Digable Planets), The Honey Drippers’
‘Impeach the President’ (NWA, De La Soul,
38 emusician.com 01.2014

“DIY synths offer the
stability of a new synth
with custom sounds.
There’s a burgeoning
world of DIY synth
makers who can design
and build a PCB with
a bill of materials for
around 20 bucks.”
EPMD), and Melvin Bliss’s ‘Synthetic Substitution’
(Moby, Kanye West, 50 Cent). Those tracks were
recorded in the 1970s. Nothing recorded today
sounds like that; how do you even get close? But
when you’re the same person playing the drums
as engineering the drums, you have an advantage.
Then the dynamic between where you place the
mic on the drum and how hard you hit the drum is
something you have an innate understanding of.”
Rjd2 keeps his literal mic setup close to his
vest; but less is more is his message, typically
employing a Heil PR40 for kick drum, with Beyer
M160 and AKG C12 mics for the remaining set.
“Minimal miking is my approach,” he
confides “In a pro studio, the first thing they’ll
do is put up two overhead mics then close-mike
every drum; that is like ten mics. I would mute
eight of those tracks and pick two. You have to
trust your ears and not your eyes. It’s really hard
to make six mics sound good together. That’s
phase wizardry. Even if you do it well, it’s still
not my first choice, aesthetically speaking.

A rebadged Chinese TNT APM1200 largediaphragm tube condenser is his go-to mic
for vocals. “It was part of a group buy and
everything was $75 to $150 a pop. Some were
duds; some were cool. I had a guy mod the
transformers and upgrade the circuit paths.”
Rjd2’s minimalist concept follows a similar
esthetic on MPC for tracking and composing
sounds, but he’s not afraid to use plug-ins,
preferably from Universal Audio.
“The Universal Audio plug-ins are my
bread and butter,” he says. “I use the UAD
EMT 140 [Classic Plate Reverb], the Lexicon
[224] Digital Reverb, and the Roland [RE-201]
Space Echo. If drums or bass sound boring,
UAD’s Fairchild 670 Compressor beefs stuff up
and gives them character. Or the [Teletronix]
LA2A plug-in on bass. Synths go straight to Pro
Tools. Guitars and piano go to outboard effects
like the hardware Space Echo, which I love for
its unpredictability. I used a Manley Massive
Passive EQ a lot too. The TubeTech CL-1B was
the main vocal compressor. And I have a set of
Lucas Limiting Amplifiers into a pair of Amtek
Pultec PEQ-1A clones. That is a dummy-proof
signal path. It’s hard to botch that.”
He may not botch his signal chains, but
you could make the argument that Rjd2 did
botch his publishing deal with Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner and the AMC
network. While he’s followed his hero’s
sampling scenarios, Dr Dre and Snoop could
definitely teach him a thing or two about
business—and show business.
“I am not in the business of selling publishing,”
Rjd2 insists. “I wanted to sell the rights just once,
because I had never done it. They wanted the full
publishing; they were persistent. Finally I said,
‘Okay I will do it once.’ I am not bitter about it,
even though, financially speaking, people think I
am driving a Ferrari now and believe me, I’m not.
But the marquee value is worth it. I’m happy with
that. I’m at peace with it.” n

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back to New York, and a bunch of my friends
were in a studio, writing, and I was sitting in
the back giving my two cents and saying what I
thought was good or not. I got bit by the bug just
hanging around the studio and quickly fell in
love with it and made it my passion really fast.

Award-winning pop master writes the
songs that the whole world sings, because
no one sings along to production

Is there a feeling you get when a song has
hit potential?
Honestly, I am the suckiest at knowing what’s
a hit, but I definitely get a feeling when I
know a song is special. It’s something I really
can’t explain, but it’s the knowledge that
the right voice hits on the right lyric and the
right melody. When you know it can’t be any
more perfect, I know I have a good song. I
try not to leave the studio with an artist
before I have a feeling that
we have something

BY MARKKUS ROVITO
FROM HIS KMA studio space in Times Square,

songwriter/producer Claude Kelly lives his
dream and builds his legacy. After getting his
big break with Akon in 2007, he soon signed
with Warner/Chappell Publishing. Scarcely
two years later, the New York native sat at #14
on Billboard’s Hot 100 Songwriters, having
penned smash hits for Kelly Clarkson (“My
Life Would Suck Without You”), Britney
Spears (“Circus”), Miley Cyrus (“Party in the
U.S.A.”), and many others.
Now, having barely cracked his third
decade, this musical natural who was playing
piano before he could climb onto the stool
by himself could brag about his songs selling
more than 25 million copies worldwide—that
is if he wasn’t so busy writing and producing
more singles. Kelly hosts a never-ending
string of top pop artists in his studio—names
you may have heard of, like Flo Rida, Bruno
Mars, Pitbull, Ke$ha, and Christina Aguilera.
He’s graduated now from “it boy” multiGrammy-nominated songwriter to multiGrammy-nominated executive producer of
albums from Tamia, Jessie J, and there’s plenty
more on the way, on Kelly’s breakneck journey

40 emusician.com 01.2014

A very high percentage of your writing
credits on albums end up becoming singles.
Is that something you know will happen going into it, or do you just have a knack for it? 
It’s definitely something that is never promised.
And that doesn’t change throughout your
career. Getting singles is never a guarantee.
You really have to earn it by being the best
of the bunch. I try to get in with artists on
a personal level and find out what’s going on
with them. That helps create something the
artists can attach themselves to, so they want to
perform it and fight for it as a single. I’ve been
very fortunate, but it’s not something that’s
promised. I just really worked my ass off and
do my homework to make sure the songs are
capturing who the artist is. 

to becoming
one of the new
musical auteurs—a
behind-the-scenes
mensch guiding the path for
some of popular music’s biggest
stars of today and tomorrow.
When did you start writing songs? 
I actually didn’t start writing until I graduated
from Berklee College of Music. I went to
college thinking I’d get into A&R, and wasn’t
even looking at songwriting as a career path. I
discovered it kind of by happenstance. I came

special, and that’s important to me. Whether
it’s a hit or not is determined by so many other
things—the label, the marketing, the timing.
But I like to leave the studio with something
that could potentially be a hit. 
You often have artists watch movies before or
during a session. What’s the concept behind
that, and what kind of results do you get?
First of all, it’s a good conversation starter.
Sometimes you’ll work with an artist you’ve never
met before; it’s kind of impersonal. Movies and
TV break the ice. I love Game of Thrones, Scandal,
and a few others. You can get a lot of a person’s
personality from what they’re watching, and
sometimes a movie in the studio on mute can set
the mood. If you want it to be epic and grand,
you’d put on Avatar or The Lord of the Rings—
something big and over the top. If you want
romance, you might put on a love story. It allows
the artist to feel comfortable because it’s a movie
they love. It’s kind of a cool little trick I use to set
the emotional tone for the writing and recording. 
What’s your greatest strength at songwriting?
I’m really big on melodies that are unique
and that people can sing along to. And I don’t
want lyrics that are for nothing; I like to tell a
story all the way through that
people can relate to.
People don’t

01.2014 emusician.com 41

sing along to production. They don’t sing along
to the beat or the drums. They sing along to
the lyrics and melody that will stand the test of
time. I fell in love with music that had stories,
and I want the same for my songs.
You branched out into more genres around
2011. Was that a deliberate choice or was
that due to opportunities that came from
your growing reputation?
I think it’s more about people searching out my
style. I was always interested in everything from
pop to rock, R&B, gospel, and jazz. The industry
has a bad habit of putting you in boxes. I don’t
believe in genres. I believe genres are to attract
sales. That’s not my responsibility. So in 2011 I
think the industry caught up with what I could
do with my diversity, but I’ve always been there.  
Now that the industry caught up with you, are
you able to pick a lot of your own projects?
If it’s a big, top artist, it could mean a lot of
money, and you don’t turn it down. I like to
balance that with passion projects with artists
who may not be that big or have the budget.
A lot of R&B artists don’t have the money that
Britney Spears has, but are incredibly talented.
I get a lot and learn a lot from working with
Miley and Britney as much as I do working
with Ledisi and Tamia and artists like that.
How much do the Grammy and Billboard
nods affect you business-wise? Are you able
to raise your rate, get bigger projects, etc.? 
I think it’s awesome that people respect your
work and want to reward you for it, but this
industry works different, I think. If you’re
nominated for an Oscar as an actor, your pay
scale is better and you get more elite roles, but
that’s not really the case here. You earn your
work day by day. I’ve seen plenty of Grammy
winners who never had another hit record,
and plenty who’ve had many, many hits. It’s
really about re-proving myself day by day, and
in terms of price point, I don’t price myself out
of any opportunity, because you never know
where your next success will be. It’s almost
more enjoyable to watch a rise to the top, like
[singer/songwriter] Olly Murs, than an artist
who already had several Number Ones.
You have production chops, too. When did
you get into that?
Songwriting and production came together at
the same time. I’m a bit of an imaginative weirdo;
I hear all of this in my mind. I know what I want
to hear sonically, so it’s more about me saying, “I
think this should be piano, rather than guitar,”
or “you should change the drum sound here
42 emusician.com 01.2014

because it’ll make the chorus better.” It’s all for
the sake of making the song as good as possible. I
don’t profess to be a Timbaland or a Dr. Dre, but I
put my two cents in. 
Do you consider yourself to be a vocal
specialist?
Yeah, I’m a singer first. I demo all the songs
almost to a T how it should be on the radio.
I’m really good at bringing out a singer’s best,
vocally. A lot of songwriters have someone else
track their vocals; I’m very hands-on. I tell
artists at the beginning I’m going to be hard on
you; I’m going to get the best vocal out of you
as possible, and because of that, they trust me.
They see my track record and allow me to really
push them to get—not so much a perfect vocal—
what’s believable. I’m looking for emotion.

“The most important thing
about having a studio is
creating an environment
where artists feel
comfortable to create. I’m
essentially a therapist.”
—claude Kelly
Besides capturing emotion, do you have any
vocal production tips? 
Everyone uses [Antares] Auto-Tune, because
it’s very popular and gives your vocals perfect
pitch. It’s a great tool. I’ve used it, but I don’t
believe in over-using it to the point that it sounds
robotic. I’ve found that a better program is
[Synchro Arts] VocALign. That’s one of my
favorites. A lot of times it’s not the artist out of
pitch, it’s when you’re asking them to double
their own voice. It’s really difficult for anyone
to match themselves identically on vocal comps.
VocALign kind of ties your vocals together, and
a lot of times it sounds perfect without using
Auto-tune at all. I spend a lot of time making a
sound that’s true to a live performance. 
How important is it for a songwriter to
know at least some production?
Bad engineers can make or break your session.
If they’re slow, if they don’t know what they’re
doing, if they’re messing it up with plug-ins, it kills
the vibe. Really early on, I worked with a producer
who made me record myself, and I hated it. I was

so bitter. But that was the best, because I know
if something’s wrong, I can fix it. I know how
to go in there myself and make things right. It’s
really like helping yourself. I don’t profess to be an
engineer. I don’t know all the details, but I know
the basics of how to mix and how to record.
What’s the balance between concentrating
on songwriting and studio production?
First thing is always creating an amazing song
that you’re proud of all the way through. Once
you have the song, the production is secondary.
The production could go a million ways. You
could make it a country song, a rock song,
or even hip-hop using the production and
arrangement. The third thing is the vocal.
That’s the order for me: an amazing song, an
amazing production that supports it, and an
amazing vocal performance. 
What’s the most important equipment in
your studio?
I’m always partial to singers, so I love to use
[Neumann] U47 and U87 mics for top vocals.
Of course, Pro Tools or something like Logic,
but I’m more of a Pro Tools guy. You need some
preamps and all those things, but really for
me, it’s funny. You spend so much money on
equipment and all these crazy tech things, but
we are the business of selling vibe and emotion.
The most important thing about having a
studio is creating an environment where artists
feel comfortable to create. I’m essentially a
therapist. You’re asking someone to come
into your therapy room and feel comfortable
enough to share. You want to make sure that the
colors are right, the lights. Sometimes you want
flowers or candles that set the tone. 
Do you have any ambitions to do solo projects? 
I’ve always put it on the back burner because
I know what it takes to be an artist, and I
respect it so much that in order to do it, you
have to dedicate 100 percent of your time.
Songwriting takes up so much of my life, but
I definitely have aspirations. I have a great
respect for people like Quincy Jones and
Babyface for being the maestro and bringing
people together. Doing soundtracks or
specialized projects where I call in some of my
very talented friends to sing with me or sing
on songs I’ve written: I would never rule that
out. But it has to be a creative project rather
than just being an artist and going through the
bouts of emotion that I see every day. n
Markkus Rovito drums, DJs, and contributes
frequently to DJ Tech Tools and Charged
Electric Vehicles.

Amsterdam Dance Event 2013
A global EDM gathering on an epic scale |

AUSTIN MAY have SXSW, Miami has

the Winter Music Conference, but
Amsterdam has ADE. The behemoth
dance music festival, which launched
in 1996 with 30 DJs in three venues,
has grown into what is aguably the
largest EDM event in the world. From
October 16–20, 300,000 festivalgoers
and industry pros gathered for five
marathon days of performances and
events featuring 2,156 artists in more
than 100 spots across the city.
Activity runs 24/7 at ADE: Allnighter showcases were held in venues
ranging from small clubs to major
venues such as the Heineken Music hall

Tom DomS

Microsoft’s Kyle Hopkins on
securing videogame syncs: “There
are fewer substantial game titles
and fewer in-game syncs, but more
marketing spots, a lot more sync
opportunities.”

Tiësto kept 17,000 people on their feet until
8a.m. at the Ziggo Dome.

44 emusician.com 01.2014

BY SARAH JONES

and the 17,000-seat Ziggo Dome. All
EDM genres were represented, from
deep house to techno to progressive;
headliners included Tiësto, Afrojack,
Calvin Harris, Armin Van Buuren, Fedde
Le Grand, Pete Tong, David Guetta, and
Paul Oakenfold, to name a handful.
During the day, while festivalgoers
recharged their batteries and checked
out the various pop-up film, art, and
retail events around town, more than
5,000 producers, musicians, label
execs, and tech leaders took part in 300
conference sessions, featuring talks by
Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Bob
Lefsetz, and Dave Smith, and Q&As

with DJs including Armin van Buuren,
Tiësto, Richie Hawtin, and Hardwell.
Six panel tracks offered a range
of content, from the evolution of DJ
technology to PR and management to
staging design, with a dedicated track
for students and a new Green track,
focusing on sustainability. Across town,
Native Instruments, Waves, Ableton,
Pioneer, Novation, Sonos, and other
technology companies hosted all-day
“playgrounds” featuring production
seminars and hands-on demos geared
toward both pros and beginners.
Here are a few of our favorite
moments from ADE.

Richie Hawtin on going green on
tour: “The first thing to do is be
aware, make small changes. I used
to leave the house and leave all
my machines on. Now, I don’t do
that. Go from everyday life, and see
where it makes sense to make a
difference.”

Dave Smith (left), on the birth of
MIDI: “We wanted something simple,
easy to implement, and free.”

More Online
See an expanded slideshow.

Emusician.com/January2014

Henri Blommers

Waves held a
four-day Art of
the Mix series at
Amsterdam hotspot
Jimmy Woo.

Festivalgoers check out gear at
the Pioneer DJ Playground at the
Amsterdam View.

The Native Instruments
Playground included Traktor
and Maschine workshops.

Nile Rodgers shared the number one lesson he learned about
music from one of his early teachers, after he expressed his
disdain for pop: “What the f*ck makes you think you are the
ultimate consumer? Any record that sells one million copies is
great. What makes you think those one million people are wrong
and you are right?”
01.2014 emusician.com 45

PLAYLIST
Juan Blanco

Nuestro Tiempo/Our Time

INNOVA
The history of electro-acoustic music has become richer with the release of this unusual retrospective of
works by Cuban composer Juan Blanco (1919-2008). Like other pioneering musicians of his era, Blanco
pushed the boundaries of sound and multimedia performance by inventing instruments, establishing
an electronic music studio, and challenging societal and political norms. This disc provides a concise
introduction to his exceptionally beautiful electronic music and includes tracks combining synthetic
textures with voice, Latin percussion, and sax. Essential.
GINO ROBAIR

The Flaming Lips
Peace Sword

Billie Joe + Norah
Foreverly

WARNER

WARNER

Fragile melodies in
anthemic arrangements; anxious transmissions sputtering
across the stereo
field like time-lapse
daybreaks: These
are Flaming Lips
calling cards, and
all are evident on
this 36-minute EP
inspired by the film
adaptation of Orson
Scott Card’s Ender’s
Game. Following The
Terror (labeled bleak
and somber by many),
these six songs capture blankets of hazy
synths, console inputoverloading motorik
drums, and zero-gravity harmonies in symphonic jams that are
equal parts dystopian
and celebratory.

So mad are Billie Joe
Armstrong and Norah
Jones about the
Everly’s classic Songs
Our Daddy Taught Us
that the punker and
the sweet country
sister recorded a
note-perfect cover
album, right down
to matching close
harmonies, twangy
guitars, and hop-along drums. Recorded
at the Magic Shop in
Manhattan, the album
has all the sweet
appeal of a reverential
museum piece.
Though immaculately
performed and sung,
this odd couple
makes you interested
in hearing the
original item.

TONY WARE

KEN MICALLEF

Various Artists
Inside Llewyn Davis:
Original Soundtrack
NONESUCH

Music for the Coen
brothers’ latest film,
set in the 1960s
Greenwich Village
folk scene, has Justin
Timberlake singing
“500 Miles.” That’s
intriguing enough,
right? There’s also a
previously unreleased
Dylan song, and
an embarrassment
of rich harmonies
and strumming by
Mumford & Sons,
avant-bluegrass group
Punch Brothers, and
more. As he did for O
Brother, co-producer
T Bone Burnett
strikes a balance of
true folk art and that
slight, deliberate
overearnestness that
comes with critical
distance.
BARBARA SCHULTZ

46 emusician.com 01.2014

Four Tet
Beautiful Rewind

Various Artists
Divided and United

Total Slacker
Slip Away

TEXT

ATO

BLACK BELL

Kieren Hebden
spins yesteryear
to flow forward,
reminiscing with
jungle drum loops
and short sample
passages while
imbuing everything
with his trademark
psychedelic melodies.
Such rolling tracks as
“Gong” and “Parallel
Jalebi” are downhill
loop extravaganzas,
while the stuttering
cadences of “Kool
FM” borrows sub
bass notes from what
sounds like a ’90s-era
jungle sample CD.
“Body Feels” has
the agitated pulse
of a broken sonar
transmission, until
spider melodies wrap
its frigid rhythm
in honey-coated
goodness.

Soundtrack producer
Randall Poster
developed this
32-track tribute to
music of America’s
Civil War era.
Beautifully arranged
for authentic
instrumentation,
these songs evoke
the pain of families
separated by war,
the shame of racial
prejudice, and
patriotic pride.
It’s both a joyful,
enjoyable listen
and a music history
lesson taught by
today’s greats,
including Loretta
Lynn, Steve Earle,
and the Carolina
Chocolate Drops.
Disc two closes with
the late Cowboy Jack
Clement’s version of
“Beautiful Dreamer.”

RIYL: Nirvana; My
Bloody Valentine;
Smashing Pumpkins;
Pixies; Sonic Youth;
Hum; quiet-loud-quiet;
Fender Jazzmasters,
Jaguars and Mustangs; BOSS, DigiTech
and DOD distortion;
thrashin’ guitarists;
stoic bassists; resolute
thwack; strangled
chords; scuzzy “solos”; woolen riffs;
third-generation VHS
tapes of “120 Minutes”; watching infomercials while baked;
despising yuppies;
mangy thrift-store
sweaters and flannel
shirts; the smell of
teen spirit and suburbia burnout; everything that defined
the early ’90s, overdriven but miraculously not overblown.

KEN MICALLEF

BARBARA SCHULTZ

TONY WARE

GEAR

review

Antelope
Audio Orion32
AD/DA
Converter
A whole lot of interface
in a 1u box
BY LARRY THE O

SUMMARY
STRENGTHS: Superb audio quality.
Excellent master clock. High channel
count. Easy-to-use control-panel app.
High build quality.
LIMITATIONS: Some anomalies,
presumably from pushing USB to the
boundaries of performance. Only five
presets.

$2,995 MSRP

antelopeaudio.com

48 emusician.com 01.2014

Fig. 1. Orion32 packs an impressive 32 channels of
I/O, as well as a master clock, into a 1U box.

Founded in 2004 by Igor Levin, whose
Aardvark Audio Aardsync left a large footprint
in the area of high-quality master clocks for
the studio, Antelope Audio has released several
modern master clocks, as well as audiophilequality digital converters. The Orion32 starts
from this legacy and adds a high channel
count, I/O in several formats, sample rates
up to 192 kHz, onboard mixing and matrix
routing, word clock inputs and outputs, and a
front-end client application that runs under
Mac OS or Windows.
As the name indicates, the Orion32 is
capable of running 32 channels of input
and output, although the actual number is
determined by the sample rate and the output
format you choose. The Orion32 transfers all
of these channels to and from your computer
via USB 2.0 Hi-Speed. Although USB is
not designed for carrying lots of real-time
data, Antelope uses a custom USB chip to
accomplish Orion32’s channel count.

Panel Discussion Analog audio is carried
over eight DB-25 connectors on the rear
panel—four D-subs for input and four for
output—wired to the old Tascam TDIF pinout,
which is now adopted as the AES59 standard.

Be prepared to drop a few hundred dollars
extra for breakout cables.
Digital audio connections are similarly
abundant: S/PDIF, ADAT Lightpipe (16
channels each of input and output), a MADI
connector providing 64 channels of I/O, and
a USB port. To keep everything in the system
locked together, the Orion32 includes four
word clock outputs, one word clock input, and
a 10MHz clock input intended to be driven
from the company’s Isochrone 10M atomic
master clock.
The front panel is somewhat simpler, with
LEDs to indicate clock locking, buttons for
selecting the sample rate, preset buttons, a
multifunction Antelope button, the power
button, and a multifunction display that
shows the current sample rate and input and
output levels for each channel (see Figure 1).
Astonishingly, even with all of these features,
the unit consumes only 20W of power, so it
does not get hot or require a fan.
The software control panel (Mac/Win)
provides routing matrices, a 32-channel mixer,
and two 32-channel level meters that display
levels from any of the I/O connectors. The
meters on the hardware unit are necessarily
small, making them mostly useful for verifying

Fig. 2. A view of the routing matrices, mixer, and meters of the Orion32's
control panel software.

signal presence and identifying extremely high
or low levels. The meters in the control panel
app are narrow, but they are longer and have
good resolution, making them much more
useful for actual level monitoring. The control
panel also includes preset buttons duplicating
those on the front panel (see Figure 2).
The routing matrices work simply by
dragging inputs from the top matrix to the
desired outputs in the bottom matrix. The
presets allow you to store up to five different
configurations and recall them from the front
panel or software control panel. But while the
matrices are very powerful, it quickly became
evident that the ability to save presets is more
than a matter of convenience. Overdubbing
called for DAW playback plus live inputs
to generate a low-latency cue mix. After
the overdub, I needed only DAW playback
channels. In order to reroute channels in the
matrices each time, I saved the overdub-record
and playback configurations as presets. But
with only five presets, it’s necessary to make
new ones each time you work with a different
set of channels.
In Situ With a Quad-core, 3GHz Mac Pro
(and 8GB of RAM), I used the Orion32 to

record a number of sources—vocals, drums,
vibraphone, electric guitar, acoustic guitar,
and percussion. The sound quality is excellent.
In fact, the transient response is so good that
I had to modify my usual vibraphone miking
technique to deemphasize the mallet attacks.
Additionally, the tracks maintained crystalline
clarity when a substantial number were
mixed; this is not always the case with downmarket converters, which can sound fine on
two or three tracks but mushy when mixing
larger numbers of tracks.
Anytime the capabilities of technology are
pushed the way Antelope does by trying to
send so many channels of real time data over
USB, it increases the possibility of anomalies.
When I began working with the Orion32,
playback from it was distorted. The recordings
were fine and played back beautifully through
my MOTU interfaces. Antelope’s tech support
worked with me to find the “favored” USB
port (shouldn’t they all be equal?), and I
eventually found a configuration that worked.
(Antelope Audio reports that “all USB ports
work fine” on “all new Macs” when using its
latest driver.)
While there were no significant issues
using the Orion32 with any of the three DAWs

I have—Presonus Studio One 2.6, Avid Pro
Tools 10, and MOTU Digital Performer 7—
the unit confused the heck out of the Audio
MIDI Setup application several times, causing
“spinning beach ball” delays and, sometimes,
crashing the app. Audio MIDI Setup also
would not show 192 kHz as an available
sample rate until I changed a setting in the
control panel app to make Orion32 use only 24
USB channels. (Mac computers have internal
USB hubs that limit bandwidth, because of
all of the devices demanding it, so this is a
computer-based limitation.)
Stellar Overall, the Orion32 is a versatile
interface and master clock with fine build
quality and a price point that is astonishingly
low for the quantity of features, channel
count, and performance it delivers. Although
I encountered a few small bumps using it,
nothing stops me from giving the Orion32 an
enthusiastic thumbs-up. n
Larry the O has been a musician, composer,
sound designer, engineer, producer, and
writer for more than 30 years. He operates
out of his Studio Faire La Nouba facility in
Vallejo, California.
01.2014 emusician.com 49

GEAR

review

SMALL MONITORS aren’t just for people who

can’t afford large ones. Savvy engineers know
that tiny near-fields provide an invaluable
alternative reference to full-range monitors
when mixing. Problem is, most near-fields
sound mediocre when placed where they
ergonomically belong—on workstation or
console shelves. Yamaha’s new HS5 active
monitor, on the other hand, sounds sensational
in that setting. And it lists for only $250 each.

Yamaha
HS5 Powered
Studio Monitor
Sky-high performance
for a rock-bottom price
BY Michael cooper

SUMMARY
StReNgthS: Unsurpassed clarity,
detail, imaging, and transient response
in its price range. Performance doesn’t
degrade when placed on shelves. Built-in
filters and level control. Small footprint.
Exceptional value.
LimitatioNS: Very slightly understated
sibilance. XLR connector doesn’t latch.

$250 MSRP each
Yamahaproaudio.com

50 emusician.com 01.2014

Small Room? No problem! Measuring only
6.7" x 11.25" x 8.75" (WxHxD) and weighing
only 11.7 pounds, the HS5 accommodates even
the most cramped control room. And its Room
Control filters, which provide 2 or 4dB of lowshelving cut below 500Hz when activated,
compensate for speaker-boundary effects that
would otherwise muddy low-frequency response
when the monitor is placed near a wall. A
companion High Trim filter boosts or cuts the
HS5’s response 2dB above 2kHz to make up for
an overly damped (boost) or live (cut) room.
The HS5’s 5" woofer and 1" dome tweeter
are bi-amplified with enough juice to make
a stereo pair of these little guys plenty loud
unless you’re as deaf as a post. (A 45W
amplifier powers the woofer, while a 25W
amp drives the tweeter.) A continuously
variable level control is provided. Balanced
XLR and TRS connectors provide alternate
input; the latter can accept unbalanced signals.
It would’ve been nice if the XLR connector
latched, but that’s asking for the moon in a
monitor with such a low price.
The monitor’s frequency response is stated
to be 74Hz to 24kHz, –3dB (with 10dB-down
points at 54Hz and 30kHz). If the HS5 is to be
your only wide-range monitor, you’ll need to
add a subwoofer (such as the Yamaha HS8S)
in order to properly mix bass instruments with
everything that voices higher up. The response
begins to significantly drop off below around
200Hz, almost recovering at 80Hz before
tailing off again below. There’s also a minor
dip (around 2dB) between 7kHz and 10kHz,
which makes vocal sibilance sound slightly
understated. There is a significant peak
(around 3dB) in the response between roughly
650 and 1,300Hz, which tends to bring lead
vocals slightly forward in the mix. A slightly
less prominent peak between 10kHz and
16kHz lends the HS5 enhanced detail and air.

The Yamaha hS5’s performance excels
even with shelf-top placement.

Shelf Life Yamaha recommends that you
place the HS5 at least five feet from the
nearest wall for the flattest response with
its built-in filters bypassed. My studio’s
ergonomics necessitated placing a stereo pair
three feet from the nearest wall, mounted
on Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizers that
are placed on the shelves of an Omnirax
workstation (furniture) for my console. With
that placement, setting each monitor’s Room
Control switch to its –2dB setting sounded
best—make that phenomenal. The imaging,
transient response, high-frequency detail, and
depth all sounded superb. But the hallmarks
of this monitor—and where it bests the
competition—are its tight upper-bass and
open low-midrange reproduction. Whereas
most monitors sound muddy when placed
on workstation shelves, the HS5 sounds
extraordinarily clear.
I won’t mince words: The HS5 is the bestsounding monitor I’ve heard in its price range
by a mile. n
Michael Cooper is a recording, mix,
mastering and post-production engineer,
contributing editor for Mix magazine,
and owner of Michael Cooper Recording
in Sisters, Oregon (myspace.com/
michaelcooperrecording).

OWN THE
FUTURE

#OwnTheFuture

Photography by Candace diCarlo

“MY WORLD IS MUSIC. MY NOTATION IS FINALE.”

Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning composer Jennifer Higdon chooses Finale
®

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Own the future today

finalemusic.com

GEAR

review
Fig. 1. The Bass Station II is an analog monosynth capable of creating
vintage and modern timbres.

Novation
Bass Station II
a new generation of
analog monosynth
BY MARKKUS ROVITO

SUMMARY
StrEngthS: Thick, beefy, sound. Two
filter types. Arpeggiator/sequencer.
Velocity sensitivity. Aftertouch. Easily
editable.
LImItatIonS: Plastic chassis doesn't
instill confidence.

$624.99 MSRP,
$499.99 street
novationmusic.com

two decades after Novation released the
original Bass Station, the company has reimagined its classic synth in nearly every
way (except price). In addition to an allanalog signal path, the Bass Station II adds
a new filter topology, USB for data dumps
and optional bus power, and effortless
programmability. The result is an instrument
capable of providing everything from gutquaking basses to ear-splitting leads that
will make it the go-to analog monosynth for
modern music makers.

Start Your Engine The monophonic
synth-engine kicks off with a generous
Oscillators section, switchable between the
two main oscillators. Provided are top-panel
controls for pitch range, Coarse and Fine
52 emusician.com 01.2014

tuning, waveform selection, pulse width,
and pitch modulation via LFO 1 and Mod
Env. A crucial sub-oscillator has a threewaveform switch, and the Mixer blends the
three oscillators with the other sources: a
noise generator, ring mod, and the external
1/4-inch TRS audio input. External audio
is sent through the filter and analog effects
section, comprised of distortion and Osc
Filter Mod, where Osc 2 modulates the
filter frequency.
The Bass Station II has two filter types—the
Classic Bass Station filter and the new Acid
filter, an extra-squelchy diode-ladder— that
can be set to lowpass, bandpass, or highpass
with a 12 or 24dB slope. Besides the standard
frequency and resonance controls, the filter
also has a dedicated overdrive effect and the
ability to be modulated by LFO 2 and the
Mod Env.
The two LFOs have selectable
waveforms and controls for Speed and
Delay, while the ADSR sliders can control
amplitude, modulation, or both. The Glide
Time control lets you create a smooth and
creamy portamento.
The Bass Station II's versatile arpeggiator
gives you six pattern types, each of which
can play back in 32 different rhythmic
patterns. Turn on the Latch, hit some notes,
and let the arpeggiator rip while you develop
a new sound. This section also houses a

32-step sequencer, where you can store and
playback up to four sequences.
Edit & Save The instrument's 70 preset
patches mostly fall into the Bass, Lead, Organ,
and Keys categories and amply demonstrate
the Bass Station II's range—from light and
airy ear candy to wobbly, distorted, wet, and
crunchy bass and lead sounds. As nice as they
are, you’ll quickly tweak them into a twisted
new creation. Saving a patch—either to the
same memory location or one of the 58 Init
Patch locations—is just two presses of the
Save button away.
Most of the synth parameters have
1-to-1 hardware controls, so it’s easy and
gratifying to quickly beef up sounds. For
extra programmability, the Function button
lets you select parameters assigned to (and
labeled above) each of the full-size synthaction keys, and then edit their values on the
three-digit display. For example, you can edit
the pitchbend range, Aftertouch response,
mod wheel settings, MIDI channel, and other
global settings.
Station to Station II With its excellent
control set, easy programmability, USB
connectivity, attractive price, and soulshattering sound, the Bass Station II will make
you forget about the good ol’ days and love
living in the now. n

ST51

ST55

Sterling Audio has earned a permanent place in the microphone lockers of studios around the
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ST55 FET Condenser
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A true-condenser, large-diaphragm recording mic that’s within ever yone’s
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79

©2013 Sterling Audio

GEAR

review

DSI’s Prophet 12
combines digital
oscillators with
analog filters
and amplifiers
in a roadworthy
package. Red
backlighting will
help gearheads
identify it from
way offstage.

Dave Smith
Instruments
Prophet 12
A legendary synth
designer delivers a
new classic
BY GEARY YELTON

SUMMARY
STRENGTHS: Brilliant user interface.
Impressive modulation capabilities.
Excellent analog filters. Full-featured
arpeggiator. Multitap delay. Tuned
feedback. MIDI over USB.
LIMITATIONS: Monophonic signal path.
Two-part multitimbral. Receives on only
one MIDI channel at a time. Stereo voices
reduce polyphony to six notes. Can’t
allocate voices per layer.

$3,299 MSRP
$2,999 street

davesmithinstruments.com

54 emusician.com 01.2014

WHENEVER ANYONE mentions the Prophet 12, all
of the musicians in the room adopt an almost
reverential tone. From the moment synth
pioneer Dave Smith appeared in an online
video showing off its capabilities and sound
last January, practically everyone agreed it was
destined to become the most desirable new
synth on the planet. Now that it’s shipping,
does it live up to expectations?

First Impressions Count The P12 features
12-voice polyphony, as its name suggests, and
two independent timbres per Program (Layer
A and Layer B). Each voice is an analog/
digital hybrid. All the oscillators are digital,
but the voltage-controlled filters, the voltagecontrolled amplifier (VCA), and some of the
effects are entirely analog. Other notable
features include a versatile arpeggiator and an
unusual effect borrowed from the DSI Evolver
called “tuned feedback.”
The P12’s build quality is solid enough
that it should easily withstand the rigors of
the road if treated with respect. The velocitysensitive keyboard offers channel Aftertouch
and a snappy unweighted action.
Although you can read the OLED graphical
display from any reasonable angle, I wish it was
twice as big. Fortunately, it’s extremely clear,

bright, and easy to read, though much of the
type is small. Four buttons below the display
select parameters that appear there, and four
rotary encoders above it affect their values.
Dedicated knobs and buttons on the front
panel access most functions. When you turn or
press almost any control, the display reveals its
associated parameters and values. If you press
the Show button, you don’t have to change a
parameter to see its value. That kind of visual
feedback makes it easy to grasp exactly what’s
going on at any time.
The Modulation section has just two
buttons—one to assign sources and another
to assign destinations—and a bipolar knob
to adjust the amount. Because everything
you need to know appears in the display,
modulation routing is as clear and
straightforward as I’ve seen on any synth.
The touch sliders are sensitive to finger
position (indicated by an LED ladder) and
pressure, providing a total of four latchable
modulation sources you can route to any
destination.
The two footpedal jacks on the back double
as CV inputs: Use them to control volume,
filter sweep, and other pedal-type parameters,
or configure the modulation matrix to control
any mod destination using a CV source.

Tracing the Signal Path Some of the
effects and all of the oscillators, filters,
and VCAs are monophonic, and they stay
monophonic until they reach the stereo output
stage. Nonetheless, the P12 sounds gorgeous,
thanks to plenty of oscillators, well-designed
filters, extensive modulation capabilities, and
stereo delay combined with other effects.
Each voice has four audio oscillators and a
sine-wave suboscillator. You get four analogstyle waveforms, a dozen more-complex digital
waveforms (with names like Nasal, Gothic,
and Buzzzz), and three flavors of noise (white,
red, and violet). The four oscillator buttons
are arranged in a circle representing how they
connect when they’re synced or modulating one
another using FM or AM. A Slop parameter
makes the oscillators sound more analog by
randomly detuning them as much or as little
as you want.
The Shape Mod/Pulse Width knob changes
the symmetry of pulse, sawtooth, and triangle
waves and adds harmonics to sine waves. It
brings digital waveforms to life by scanning
between any three you select to make up a
wavetable. The knob’s center position chooses
the first waveform; turning it clockwise or
counterclockwise results in different spectra,
and you can view the waveshape in the display

as you change it. Applying any modulation
source multiplies your chances of adding
motion to your sounds.
The 4-pole button lets you toggle the
Curtis-based lowpass filter between 12dBand 24dB-per-octave slopes. The lowpass
self-oscillates only in 4-pole mode and has a
dedicated envelope generator. Because you
can modulate the resonant highpass filter, you
can create highpass sweeps independent of the
lowpass. For bandpass filtering, the two filters
are arranged in series.
Four DADSR envelope generators and
four LFOs provide plenty of opportunities
for automated modulation. The LFOs
are especially versatile, with settings for
waveform, phase, and slew rate, which
reshapes waves by smoothing their edges.
Although two of the envelopes are devoted
to the lowpass filter and VCA, you can route
control signals from any envelope to any
modulation destination. The filter and VCA
envelopes can loop their delay, attack, and
decay segments for as long as a note is held.
Eight fixed modulation routings let you
assign all the LFOs and envelopes to control
any of 97 destinations. Sixteen additional
routings let you freely assign any of the 26
mod sources to any destination, which may

include individual envelope segments, lowpass
or highpass resonance, delay time, character
depth, or feedback tuning.
One with Effects Each voice has a 4-tap
stereo delay that can sync to the arpeggiator,
mod sources, or MIDI Clock. Use the Delay
section’s Time, Amount, and Feedback
knobs to create echoes as long as a second,
to simulate reverb, or to program chorus
and flanging effects using shorter delays.
Surprisingly, you can’t save or recall delay
settings as separate presets; you can only save
them as part of a program.
Thanks to the P12’s tuned feedback,
guitarists aren’t the only players who can make
their axes howl. Each voice’s VCA output is
routed back to an internal input and mixed
with the oscillators to create a feedback
loop. You select the amount of either positive
or negative gain and set the loop’s initial
frequency, which is quantized by semitones
over a 4-octave range. And because tuned
feedback always tracks the keyboard, you can
play the feedback melodically.
Each of the Character section’s effects has
a single knob for controlling depth. Girth is
a low-shelf filter (for bass boost), and Air is
a high-shelf filter (for treble boost). Drive is
01.2014 emusician.com 55

GEAR

review

a variable distortion for each voice. To really
dirty up your sound, Decimation reduces the
digital sampling rate, and Hack reduces the
bit depth. A separate Distortion knob near the
volume control affects the entire mix.
Timbral Powerhouse The P12 stores 792
programs in eight banks of 99 programs each.
Four factory banks are etched in stone, and
four user banks are rewriteable. The numeric
keypad lets you instantly access any program.
Programs containing two timbres can be
split or layered, or you can select one at a time.
When programs are split, you get six voices
from the right side and six from the left. When

56 emusician.com 01.2014

The back panel includes four unbalanced 1/4-inch outputs, one footswitch and two
pedal inputs, MIDI I/O, and USB. The main outputs carry both layers, but when you
plug into the second pair of outputs, each pair carries a separate layer.

they’re layered, you get voices in stereo and
6-note polyphony. You can’t specify how voices
are allocated.
Although the P12 delivers screaming leads,
thundering basses, ethereal atmospheres,
and in-the-pocket arpeggios, a number of the
factory programs don’t take full advantage of
the realtime controllers. Very few respond to
Aftertouch, for example. Fortunately, it’s easy
to customize modulation routings to suit
your preferences.

into the future, making it an instant classic.
For my money, it’s the one hardware synth
introduced in 2013 that’s most worth having.
DSI deserves praise for incorporating
touches such as tuned feedback, an extensive
modulation matrix, and a user interface that
makes complex patches easy to grasp. If
fabricating timbres that steer clear of acoustic
sounds appeals to you (it certainly does to
me), try the Prophet 12 and decide for yourself
whether it lives up to its reputation. n

I’ll Take 12 Combining some of the best
ideas from the Prophet ’08 and Evolver series,
the P12 transports the Prophet concept firmly

Geary Yelton was an editor at Electronic
Musician for ten years. His first book, The Rock
Synthesizer Manual, was published in 1983.

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GEAR

review

Sony
SpectraLayers
Pro 2
standalone spectral
processor gets an
adrenaline shot and
new features
BY MICHAEL COOPER

SUMMARY
STRENGTHS: Dramatically improved
engine. Streamlined noise extraction. New
spectral processors. New loop-playback
function. Can set and name markers.
Allows offline processing with third-party
VST plug-ins.
LIMITATIONS: Buggy. Vague and
incomplete documentation. No
interpolation function. Can’t snap playback
to markers. Can’t make time-range
selections starting at 0:00:00:00.

SpectraLayers Pro 2:
$399 MSRP
(upgrade from SLP1:
$199.95)
sonycreativesoftware.com

58 emusician.com 01.2014

Fig. 1. SpectraLayers Pro 2’s new Extract Shape tool removes clicks (shown here as
orange lines) embedded in a voiceover track. The clicks were copied to a new layer
(depicted as a red horizontal bar on the right side of the GUI), and the layer’s phase
was reversed to null the click’s amplitude when combined with the layer containing
the original, unprocessed program (green horizontal bar on the right).
From its initial release, Sony SpectraLayers Pro
could extract various elements embedded in a
stereo track and process each independently
before recombining them to create an entirely
new blend. You could also paint frequencies
with your mouse on, for example, selective
drum hits in a dense mix to reinforce their
bottom end. Powerful noise-reduction tools
jettisoned hiss and AC hum and buzz.
That said, the original release was hamstrung
by an extremely cumbersome GUI and incomplete
and sometimes baffling documentation. The
new SpectraLayers Pro 2 (SLP2) promises a
refined GUI, souped-up engine, and new tools.

See Me, Hear Me Audio is displayed in SLP2
in an auto-scrolling spectrogram: The timeline
occupies the horizontal axis, and progressively
higher frequencies are illustrated farther
up the vertical axis (see Figure 1). Louder
elements appear brighter. Stereo material is
split into top (left-channel) and bottom (rightchannel) display panes.

Imported audio appears in SLP2 as a layer.
You can copy bits of material from this layer—
limiting your selection to a specific frequency
range (or one fundamental frequency and
its harmonic series) over a select period of
time—and paste them to a new, empty layer.
For example, you can extract from an audio file
only the midrange frequencies in a dog’s bark,
keeping or eliminating the extracted material
in the original file as you wish. You can also
add a frequency or noise to an audio file by
painting it with your mouse.
Offline processing—using either SLP2’s
built-in spectral processors or your thirdparty 32- and 64-bit VST plug-ins—can be
auditioned before rendering. You can drag and
drop edited and processed files into your DAW
or mix them in SLP2 to create a new file. Files
and sections of files can be directly imported
from and exported to Sony Sound Forge Pro 11.
Exploring the New Features Spectral
displays require a ton of horsepower, especially

Fig. 2. SpectraLayers Pro 2 allows you to create and name markers. These are
for visual reference only and can't be used as navigation aids.

when zooming way in to see microscopic details.
Unlike with the original software, SLP2 never got
sluggish even when zooming in to view a slice
of audio spanning only a tenth of a second and
300Hz bandwidth with maximum frequency
resolution (an analysis-window size of 32,768
samples); I used an 8-core Mac Pro with SLP2.
I could zoom the frequency axis while keeping
the bottom of the display anchored to 0Hz and
switch among five different frequency scales
(including linear and logarithmic) to optimize
my view of various spectra. After making a
selection over time and frequency ranges in
the spectral display, I could loop playback of my
selection. Although I could set and name markers,
these were only useful as visual cues and couldn’t
be used as navigation shortcuts (see Figure 2).
The new Extract Noise command makes the
process of removing broadband noise and AC hum
throughout the total length of program material
exponentially faster and more intuitive than in the
original software. I also used the new Extract Shape
tool—which selects objects in the spectrogram

based on your specified power range—to virtually
eliminate clicks embedded in a voiceover track
(shown in Figure 1). This entailed copying the
clicks to a new layer and reversing the layer’s
phase with respect to the original, unprocessed
program to null the click’s amplitude.
I used SLP2’s new Spectral Casting function
to subtract the spectra of a music bed from a
voiceover (VO) track (working with bed and VO
contained in discrete layers). This essentially
eliminated frequency masking and made the
VO clearer when the two layers were played
together. When soloed, the processed music bed
exhibited mildly phasey artifacts and occasional
dropouts (inaudible when the two layers were
played at once, unless I made subsequent EQ
or level changes to either layer). I liked the new
Spectral Molding function for sound design;
I used it to make a synth pad voice using only
the spectra of a discrete VO, creating a vocoder
effect for the pad.
As with the original release, SLP2 wouldn’t
let me make time-range selections starting at

0:00:00:00; make sure you import audio with a
handle (blank pre-roll). Because SLP2 cannot
extrapolate content that borders extracted
spectra to fill in a resulting gap, there is the
potential to create “holes” in your program.
SLP2 is also very buggy, and the learning curve
remains steep (in part due to documentation
that’s vague or incomplete in places). (The
developer notes that the SpectraLayers Pro
Seminar Series has been posted in the Training
section at sonycreativesoftware.com.)
Compared to What? People working in
sound design will want to compare SLP2 to
iZotope Iris, a competing spectral processor
that’s far easier to use and more featurepacked than SLP2 for that application. But
if you also need powerful noise reduction
tools for restoration, post-production
audio sweetening or audio-forensics work,
SpectraLayers Pro 2 is the only spectral
processor I know of that gives you tools for
executing all these tasks under one roof. n
01.2014 emusician.com 59

60 emusician.com 01.2014

±10VDC

how to
master class

Better Sound
Through
Modular Living
A guide to processing audio through your
voltage-controlled synth
BY GINO ROBAIR
A MODULAR synthesizer is more than just an instrument for playing basses and
leads. It can also act as an audio processor that is both highly responsive (via CV or
hands-on control) and fully expandable ( just add more modules).
Fully integrating a modular synth into the modern studio workflow has
never been easier, and utilizing a DAW expands your options exponentially. In
addition to traditional MIDI-to-CV converters, there are software applications
that generate CVs, allowing you to control module parameters with greater
precision from your digital audio workstation, whether for processing or playing
an instrument.
Regardless of whether your synth modules are fully analog or a digital hybrid,
they are designed to generate and accept voltages. So no matter which module
format you have—Frac Rack, Eurorack, Moog-style, etc.—they all play well
together, though there might be some cable adapters and level tweaking involved.
01.2014 emusician.com 61

How to

master
class

In this article, we will look at various ways
you can control your modular system when
using it to process audio. We will also examine
specific products that improve workflow (and
some tips on how to get the most out of them).
Brute-Force Audio Processing So you
want to run some drum tracks through your
favorite filter module? No problem: Just go
direct. Simply route a DAW Send to an analog
output on your interface to run an audio
track to your synth, and then “perform” the
processing using the module’s knobs. With
another cable, you can return the processed
sound to an input on your interface and record
it to a audio track. Once you’re finished,
simply nudge the processed audio track on the
timeline until it’s in sync with the other tracks.
Of course, this type of processing is done by
ear and is otherwise unsynchronized with the
DAW. And it does not allow you to record the
controller movements, tweak them, and play
them again with the changes, unless you use a
synth module that is designed for that specific
purpose. However, in the right situation, this
kind of hands-on control of hardware-based
processing can inject the excitement of a
performance into a track while imparting extra
character provided by the synth module.
The main technical issue you will encounter
is level matching between the output of your
mixer or interface and the inputs on your
modular. Because you’re working with linelevel signals, balancing audio levels between
products is fairly easy. Some modules even
respond well if the input signal is a little on the
hot side. Obviously, if your mixer or interface
has 1/4-inch I/O and your modular has 3.5mm
jacks, you will need adapter cables with the
proper connectors on each end.
If you plan to run mic- or instrumentlevel audio through your modular system in
addition to line-level signals, you will want an
interface module, such as the Doepfer A-119
External Input/Envelope Follower ($99) for
Eurorack systems or the Blacet Research I/O
2225 ($179 assembled) for Frac Rack users. Not
only do these types of modules help you attain
usable audio levels for processing, they can
also provide envelope and gate/trigger signals
by following the contour of the input signal.
For example, the Doepfer A-119 has two
inputs: Asym for line-level audio and Sym
for instrument and mic-level input. The
62 emusician.com 01.2014

Envelope output tracks the input level and
gives you a proportional voltage, which you
can use to control a VCA or VCF. The module’s
comparator provides a Gate signal (when
the input crosses the user defined Threshold
level), which you can use with an ADSR
envelope generator or other modules that
accept gates.
If you’re looking for studio-grade audio
interfacing, Cwejman offers the AI-2 ($325),
a Eurorack module that has two balanced I/O
channels on XLR jacks with gain trims and
3.5mm send and return jacks.
MIDI-to-CV While it’s fun to have hands-on
control over your processing, things get really
interesting when you control your modular
via MIDI. In addition to helping you play
your modular as an instrument, a MIDI-toCV converter provides control information
based on MIDI data that is stored in and
synchronized with your DAW. The control
information can include gates, triggers, and
CVs generated by MIDI sequencers, for
example, which can then be used to change
parameters such as filter cutoff or modulation
depth in time with the MIDI Clock.
MIDI-to-CV conversion can be done with
a dedicated module or a standalone device.
Kenton Electronics makes a line of MIDIto-CV converters, including several types of
standalone units as well as a Eurorack module
(see Figure 1). Doepfer, which helped launch
the Eurorack modular craze, offers a variety of
MIDI-to-CV modules, as well as the Dark Link
($170), a USB/MIDI-to-CV converter based
on the circuit used in its Dark Energy module.
(Doepfer also sells the A-192-2 ($190), a CV/
Gate-to-MIDI/USB interface designed for
controlling MIDI synths, including soft synths,
from your modular.) Other manufacturers
of MIDI-to-CV modules include Analogue
Systems, Analogue Solutions, Kilpatrick Audio,
and Pittsburgh Modular.
Another option is to use a MIDI control
surface through a MIDI-to-CV converter to
tweak your analog gear when processing audio.
This may sound crazy, because the analog gear
already has knobs, and CVs generally have a
finer resolution than MIDI. But there are times
where I have found it made more sense to have
several knobs and sliders in one place (within
a MIDI controller) when “performing” a patch
rather than having to reach in several places
to get to knobs that are partially obscured by
patch cords. In this situation, you would also
have to record your MIDI performance to
your DAW if you plan to recall or edit your
performance later.

Fig. 1. The Kenton Pro-2000 MkII is a standalone, multichannel MIDI-to-CV converter.

Direct and Indirect Keyboard Control
An interesting trend in recent years is the
inclusion of CV and gate output jacks on
mass-produced keyboard instruments, such as
the Akai Professional Max-series USB MIDI
controllers and the Arturia MiniBrute and
MicroBrute analog synthesizers. Similarly, an
instrument such as the Doepfer Dark Energy
($625) desktop synth has USB MIDI input that
allows you to translate messages from your
DAW to CV’s using the synth’s many 3.5mm
top-panel jacks.
These solutions provide a more standardized
way to get MIDI-to-CV conversion, which can
control audio processing parameters in addition
to simply playing a synth voice. But while MIDIto-CV conversion is very, very handy onstage
and in the studio, there is still a higher level of
control to be achieved.
Interactive Plug-ins and Specialized
Hardware The current state of the art
of DAW-to-modular integration involves
using software applications and plug-ins
to generate CVs, gates, and triggers, which
are then sent to your modular system from
your audio interface. The result is a level
of resolution that surpasses MIDI while
providing a higher degree of synchronization
to your DAW session. Think of these
products as an automation track that can
be dynamically created and altered in real
time. Software such as Native Instruments
Reaktor, Cycling 74 Max/MSP, and Max For
Live within Ableton Live are widely used in
this regard.
An important issue that needs to be
addressed is how to get DC control voltages
to your modular from your computer’s
interface. If you’re using a standard audio
interface, you will need to determine whether
it has AC- or DC-coupled outputs, and then
assemble the appropriate cabling. Another
option is to use a “break-out box” solution.
In order to determine which is best for you,
let’s look at two software products that are
specifically designed for use with hardware
synths and provide self-tuning functionality

How to

master
class

for calibrating the CV response to match that
of your oscillators.
The first mainstream plug-in to offer
self-calibration was MOTU Volta ($199), an
AU/MAS instrument plug-in that sends DC
voltages from any interface with DC-coupled
audio outputs (which many of the MOTU
interfaces have). Volta can create CV output
from MIDI CC messages, ramp automation, or
from its own trigger sequencer, step sequencer,
LFO, and envelopes (see Figure 2). This gives
you enough CVs for a complete synth voice
from each instantiation of the plug-in, all of
which is synchronized with your host DAW
(see Figure 3).
To prevent damage to your DC-coupled
audio interface, you will need to use a special
cable to connect the audio output to your
modular when transmitting CVs. The cable
must have a balanced plug on the end that goes
to your interface and a 2-conductor TS plug on
the other for your modular—TRS (with the ring
floating) to TS, or XLR to TS, with the XLR’s
pin 2 going to the tip and the other two pins to
the sleeve. These cables are easy to make, but
are also available for purchase. In a pinch, you
can also use one end of an insert cable.
Because the voltage level from the output
of a DC-coupled interface can be anywhere
from ±2 to ±9VDC, depending on its make and

Fig. 2. MOTU Volta is an AU/MAS plug-in that
generates a host of control signals that are
synchronized with your host DAW. An interface
with DC-coupled audio outputs is required.

64 emusician.com 01.2014

Fig. 3. In order for Volta to calibrate itself to your hardware synth’s oscillators, audio from
your modular system is returned to the plug-in through your interface.

model, there is some unpredictability when it
comes to the tuning range you can achieve. You
can use Volta (or any other software that sends
CVs) with a standard voltmeter to test and
confirm the output voltage of your particular
interface. But if you have an AC-coupled
interface, Volta is out of the picture.
Expert Sleepers Silent Way ($59) is a suite
of 19 plug-ins (AU, VST, AAX) that sends
CV/gate/trigger signals and features selfcalibration capabilities, but it offers a greater
number of interfacing options. A trial version
of the plug-in suite is available online.
While some of Silent Way’s plug-ins are used
only for specific interfacing situations, others
provide the basic functionality that modular
users need, with the ability to synchronize
the output with the host software’s tempo. In
addition to the normal synth-like features of
an LFO, a stepped LFO, a pitch and envelope
follower, and a multistage trigger/envelope,
Silent Way offers CV-to-MIDI conversion, CVto-OSC, a clock plug-in that can generate DIN
sync, and a DC module for creating steady-state
signals. Silent Way can also accept CVs using
the CV Input plug-in, and then process the
signals using the Function plug-in, which offers
several mathematical functions with offset and
scaling options.
Of special note is the Silent Way Voice
Controller, a virtual instrument that provides
the requisite voltages to control a complete
synthesizer voice—pitch CV, trigger, gate,
and envelopes, along with LFO modulation,
detuning, glide, and transposition (see
Figure 4). It calibrates to your hardware
oscillator (using either the V/octave or Hz/V

standard, the latter of which is for products
by Metasonix, Korg, and Yamaha), and the
calibration data can be saved as a text file
for later use (or loaded into the Silent Way
Quantizer plug-in). A version of the Voice
Controller is available as a Rack Extension for
Propellerhead Reason.
Although you will get the best results if you
interface Silent Way with an Expert Sleepers
ES-series Eurorack module, the plug-in can
send its DC voltages through the audio outputs
of AC- and DC-coupled interfaces, as long as
you use the proper cabling. If you decide to
use the audio jacks of an AC-coupled interface,
Expert Sleepers recommends that you use
the Silent Way AC Encoder plug-in with a
rectifier cable, which is simply a floating ring
cable (as above), but with the addition of a
diode and a capacitor (see Figure 5). You can
increase the voltage range by adding more
diodes/capacitors in a voltage multiplier
configuration. Information about making these
cables and circuits can be found at expertsleepers.co.uk/siwaacencoder.html.

Fig. 4. The Expert Sleepers Silent Way Voice
Controller provides everything you need to
control an entire synth voice with each plugin instantiation. However, it’s also perfect for
manipulating synth-module parameters in
sync with your DAW when processing tracks.

Fig. 5. This diagram shows the basic circuit
used to create the kind of rectifier cable
required to operate Silent Way from the
audio jacks of an AC-coupled audio interface.

If you want to use your interface’s audio
outputs, but you don’t want to hassle with the
custom cables, the Expert Sleepers ES-1 accepts
standard AC-coupled audio output on 1/4-inch
jacks ($215) or a DB-25 connector ($195). As
above, you will need to use the Silent Way AC
Encoder plug-in with this setup, but you will
get a greater voltage range than your interface’s
outputs offer because the ES-1’s amplifier design
is specifically calibrated for use with modular
systems.
The most efficient way to get ±10V, DCcoupled analog signals from your software—
whether it’s Silent Way, Volta, Reaktor, or Max/
MSP—is to connect one of the digital outputs on
your audio interface to one of Expert Sleepers’
D/A-converter modules, all of which are in the
Eurorack format and have 3.5mm output jacks.
The ES-3 Mk3 ($325) accepts a TOSLINK
connection (from your interface’s ADAT
Lightpipe port) and provides 8 channels of CV
or audio, while the ES-4 ($295) accepts S/PDIF
input using a coaxial jack to provide 5 signals
(two of which can be calibrated CVs). (The
ES-4 module also requires the ES-4 Controller
plug-in that is part of the Silent Way suite, or the
ES-4 Mac/MSP External, in order to operate.)
Expander modules, with an
additional 8 gate outputs, are
available for the ES-3 and
ES-4 and connect to the host
module’s circuit board via
ribbon cables.
Not only do the ES-3 and
ES-4 provide output levels that
are best suited for modular
synthesizers, they free up your
interface’s audio outputs, which
you would have otherwise
used for sending DC signals
(see Figure 6). Additionally, the
ES-5 ($150) expander module
is required if you want to use
Fig. 6. The Expert Sleepers ES-3 Mk3 connects
to your interface’s ADAT Lightpipe port and
provides 8 channels of ±10VDC control signals
from Silent Way or similar software running
on your computer. You can also send audio
through any of the module jacks.

Silent Way to deliver MIDI. The required 3.5mmto-DIN cable is available from Expert Sleepers.
When you are ready to send audio or
CVs from your modular to your DAW, the
Expert Sleepers ES-6 ($175) will do the trick.
It accepts input through six 3.5mm jacks
and interfaces with your computer using an
ADAT Lightpipe connection. You can add two
more input channels with the ES-7 ($120)
expander module, which connects to the ES6’s circuit board behind the panel. The ES-6,
itself, requires an ES-3 module to provide the
required clock signals.

Innerclock Systems provides several breakout box solutions for synchronizing your DAW
with your modular and other hardware synths
and drum machines. For example, the Sync-Gen
IIPro ($750) is a standalone unit that connects
to your interface’s audio outputs and provides
phase-synchronized MIDI Clock, DIN sync and
analog triggers using the company’s VST/AU/
RTAS/AAX-compatible software. The SyncGen IILS ($650) offers similar functionality in a
Eurorack module. Other products designed for
high-resolution synchronization are in the works
from this company. n

FAIR USE IS FAIR PLAY

Whether he is recording Mark Knopfler or learning a new plug-in,
award-winning recording engineer Chuck Ainlay always acquires
the music software he uses from legitimate sources. Chuck
believes in fair play and works exclusively with legal software.
Respect yourself, your craft, and the work of others.
Buy the software you use, and buy the music you love.

www.imsta.org
International Music Software Trade Association New York • Toronto • Hamburg • Tokyo
Tel: 416 789-6849 • Fax: 416 789-1667

01.2014 emusician.com 65

How to

make
money

Create
Your Own
Mechanical
License
Get paid royalties when
other artists record and
release your songs
BY MICHAEL COOPER

While royalties on record sales continue to be

an ever-shrinking contributor to a songwriter’s
income, there are still opportunities to make
money from other artists cutting your songs.
Subscription-based tip sheets such as Row Fax
(rowfax.com) list recording projects for which
songs are currently being sought by both major
and independent labels. And websites such as
musicxray.com let anyone pitch songs—for a
substantial fee per submission—to labels and
producers for their upcoming projects. It’s
also not uncommon for musicians to record
a song written by another songwriter in their
network.
You are legally entitled to get paid a royalty
for each unit released on a physical medium
(such as CD, cassette, or vinyl) or sold in
a digital format (for example, a download
or ringtone) by the artist covering your
copyrighted song. Such a dividend is known
as a mechanical royalty, and the license that
permits a cover song to be released and
sets the rate of royalty payment is called a
mechanical license.
The Harry Fox Agency (HFA) issues
mechanical licenses and collects and
distributes the royalties from there to its
affiliated music publishers, in exchange for
8.5% of the take. But if you’re not a publisher, or
if you simply want to keep all royalty proceeds
for yourself, you can do your own mechanical
licensing. This article will detail some of the
key elements you should include in your in66 emusician.com 01.2014

Musicxray.com lets you pitch songs to labels and
producers—for a fee.

Subscription-based tipsheets
such as Row Fax list projects
seeking songs.

house mechanical-license document. For
simplicity’s sake, I’ll limit the scope to licensing
physical releases and digital downloads.
Don’t Forget the Basics Your mechanical
license should include the name of the
artist cutting your song as well as the record
company’s street and email addresses and
phone and fax numbers, along with the
name of a contact person at the company.
The catalog number of the single and, if
appropriate, the album the song will be
included on should also be noted, along with
the album’s title. If the license is for a physical

release, each authorized release format
(CD, LP, and so on) should be noted. When
licensing digital downloads, the document
should note the URLs for all Web pages from
which downloads will be executed. The license
should also state the recording’s UPC and
ISRC numbers, the title of the song, its playing
time, and the release date.
Stipulate How Much and When You’ll
Get Paid When licensing a song to a small
independent label, I have the company
specify the number of units they want to
reproduce for sale or offer for download,

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How to

make
money

and require payment of all royalties up front.
This payment is likely to be the only money
you’ll ever see from an indie label, so make
sure the mechanical license stipulates that
recordings not be distributed until the license
has been signed and returned to you along
with payment in full. The current royalty rate
is 9.1 cents for a recording lasting five minutes
or less, or 1.75 cents per minute, or fraction
thereof, for a recording over five minutes long.
When licensing a song to a major label,
spell out when you will be paid for royalties
due you each quarter: A reasonable schedule
is “within 45 days after March 31, June 30,
September 30 and December 31 of each year.”
Protect Yourself Your mechanical license
should require the licensee to keep complete
books of all transactions related to their
record sales of your song. It should prescribe
your right, on 30 days’ written notice and at
your expense, to audit, examine, and make
copies and extracts of those books—so you can
determine whether or not you’re being paid

If you’re not a publisher,
or if you simply want
to keep all royalty
proceeds for yourself,
you can do your own
mechanical licensing.
your due. The license should further stipulate
that if the audit shows an understatement
greater than 5 percent, the licensee will pay
for the cost of the audit plus interest at the
maximum rate permitted by law for all sums
due. The license should dictate that failure
to account for and pay the required royalties
will result in the license being automatically

revoked and terminated 30 days from the date
you give the licensee written notice of their
violation by certified mail; without that clause,
a delinquent licensee can continue selling
limitless copies of your song while owing you
royalties until you’re six feet under.
Get Credit For a release on a physical format,
the mechanical license should stipulate that
the release’s label copy or permanent container
must have inscribed on it your name, the
copyright date, and the name of your publishing
company and its affiliated performing rights
organization (for example, BMI). After all, every
unit that’s distributed is a promotion of your
song. Make sure the next artist who wants to
cover it knows how to find you. n
Michael Cooper is the owner of Michael
Cooper Music (BMI) and a contributing
editor for Mix magazine.

How TO

produce

Fig. 1. The 2CAudio
B2 plug-in can
produce superb
infinite-reverb
effects. The patch
shown here is
an edited preset
from the optional
Imagination
Expansion, a
collection of
supplementary
factory patches.

Ethereal Effects
Express your inner Enya
with these atmospheric
tools and techniques
BY MICHAEL COOPER

WhEthEr thE impetus was Steven Halpern’s
seminal New Age album Spectrum Suite
or 10cc’s mainstream mega-hit “I’m Not
In Love,” 1975 was the year music escaped
earthly bounds to explore new sonic
landscapes dripping in expansive reverbs and
droning tones. Modern tools and techniques
have since made interstellar musical
explorations even more fun and compelling.
Here are a few rocket boosters to defibrillate
your heart of space.

Sing Forever The 2CAudio B2 plug-in can
produce outrageous infinite reverb, in which
the reverb’s tail (decay time) extends forever
(see Figure 1). Run background-vocal tracks—
singing oohs and ahs, for example—through
an infinite-reverb effects patch to spawn a
spacious and mystical effect like no other.
The only problem with infinite reverb is
vocals sung in harmony with one chord in
the song’s arrangement will sustain through
70 emusician.com 01.2014

successive chords that might clash. For
example, infinite reverb added to background
vocalists singing a C major chord will sound
harmonious against C major or A minor played
by instruments, but it will clash if and when
the instrumental arrangement moves to an F
major. Remember, the singers’ C major chord
will sustain through the infinite reverb forever,
or at least until you press stop on your DAW’s
transport. Having the singers switch to singing
an F major would not stop their C major chord
from ringing; it would only add the notes of
the F major chord to those of the C major in
the reverb wash, creating an F major 9 chord.
That’s likely to be dissonant in some sections
of the song.
The solution is to record the background
vocals (BVs) singing a discrete chord on each
of multiple tracks (for example, C major
on track 1, F major on track 2, and so on).
Instantiate B2 on an insert for each of the
tracks, using the same or similar infinitereverb patch (100% wet in all instances).
During mixdown, fade up a single BV track
where it will sound harmonious with the
backing arrangement; fade it completely down
where it would otherwise create dissonance,
while fading up another BV track voicing a
chord that’s harmonious with the backing
arrangement at that point. By crossfading your
different BV tracks in this way, you create a
smooth ebb and flow of otherworldly voices.

Since BVs used in this way sustain
potentially forever, it’s important that they are
either recorded in tune or the pitch of each
of their individual voices is corrected before
combining the voices onto one track. Doing that
on a lot of tracks—one for each chord in the
song where you want to use infinite reverb—
takes a lot of time. The Sampletekk INIL Choir
provides an excellent shortcut. INIL Choir is a
Kontakt Instrument containing multi-samples
(also available in other formats) of the actual
background vocals used in 10cc’s hit song “I’m
Not In Love” (see Figure 2). Simply play the
chords you want (recording each chord to a
separate track in your DAW), slap B2 on each
track and you’re ready to bliss out.

Fig. 2. Sampletekk INIL, a Kontakt Instrument,
contains multi-samples of the airy background
vocals that were sung by 10cc in their hit song
“I’m Not In Love” (circa 1975).

Excite a Piano For a ghostly effect unlike
any other, check out Lexicon Stringbox,
a plug-in included in the company’s PCM
Native Effects Bundle. Stringbox imitates
the sympathetic resonance that piano
strings produce when excited by an
external sound (see Figure 3). Simply
click on any of the 88 keys in the GUI’s
virtual keyboard to choose which strings
will resonate; selecting roots and fifths
in your song’s key typically yields the
most harmonious sounds. Set the plugin’s pan mode to High Spread for a wider
stereo image, and detune the virtual piano
strings using the chorus control for a lusher
sound. Similar to using infinite reverb,
you’ll most likely want to fade Stringbox
in for only select sections of your mix.
To avoid dissonance, fade the effect out
where accidentals are played in your song’s
arrangement. Stringbox’s effect sounds so
mysterious, few if any listeners will be able
to identify your production’s phantasmal
secret sauce. n

Fig. 3. Lexicon Stringbox emulates the sympathetic resonance of piano strings.

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How to

market
music

First One’s Free
Convince fans to buy
music that you give away

ReverbNation and SoundCloud let you stream songs, and
let fans share them with friends.

BY RANDY CHERTKOW AND JASON FEEHAN
For most musicians today, the enemy is

obscurity, not piracy. So, making your music
downloadable and releasing it for free is one
of the best ways to increase the likelihood of
someone discovering and liking your music.
But letting fans download your music
causes a dilemma: If one of the best ways to
get noticed and build a fanbase is to share your
music, why would anyone buy your music?
Fortunately, there are ways to convince fans
to buy your music even if you give it away.
Here are five easy methods you can use:
Streaming Services Rather than make
your music downloadable, you can use a
streaming service—an option that allows
people to hear the song without being able
to directly download it. While determined
fans can still figure out ways to rip the song
from a streaming service, most won’t. Sites
like ReverbNation (reverbnation.com) or
SoundCloud (soundcloud.com) allow you
to stream songs, and even let people share
them with their friends. But the best part is
that these services let you put a “buy” button
linking to services like iTunes or Amazon so
that fans can make an impulse purchase after
they hear it.

72 emusician.com 01.2014

YouTube YouTube is the world’s most
popular music search engine. So, if your best
songs are not already on YouTube, you’re
missing out. YouTube is the easiest way to turn
a song viral, and can make you income through
advertising. You can also put a “buy” link

right inside the video description or inside the
video itself to encourage song sales. See our
previous article “Five Ways to Make Money on
YouTube” (October 2013) for the best methods
to promote and monetize your songs with
YouTube.

“I'm a Full-Time Film & TV
Music Composer Because of TAXI”
Dave Walton – TAXI Member

M

y name is Dave Walton and I
live in Cape Girardeau, Missouri 2,042 very long miles from
Hollywood.
I became a computer programmer
in 1986 and thought my career in
music was finished, over, kaput! 18
years later I decided to return to my
first love and take my shot at
becoming a Film and TV music
composer.

team also give me helpful, detailed
feedback. Finally, a way to make
sure my music gets competitive and
stays that way.

You've Got to Have Friends…

Music Industry Contacts… Not!
If your town is anything like
mine, there aren't a lot of movies or
TV shows getting produced there.
Actually…. none! I had no idea how
to make music industry contacts or
place my music in films or TV
shows until I searched the Internet
and found TAXI.

They Show You
What Hollywood Needs

Rather than trying to cold call
music supervisors and producers in
Hollywood, TAXI reverses the
process and tells me what they
currently need. I get tons of Film
and TV opportunities for my music
and the experts on TAXI's A&R

TAXI's Forum and online
community is second to none. I've
made life-long friends who've
helped me make my music
contemporary and helped me with
the business side of the music
business as well. By building an
incredible network of fellow
members, I've collaborated, met
publishers, signed more deals and
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I recently finished scoring my
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TAXI was the first tool I found to
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If you've been reading these ads
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How to

market
music

Provide Song Samples Rather than
give away the entire song, you can always
follow iTunes’ method of introducing
people to the music by offering a song
sample for listeners to download. The
upside to providing song samples is that
they don’t directly cannibalize the sales of
the tracks. The downside is they are not as
viral, and fans are less likely to keep them
in their collections since it’s just a snippet of
a song.
Add an Audio Bumper Rather than give
away the same song that you put up for sale,
add an audio tag at the beginning or end of
the song so fans know that it’s a free version
that they downloaded. Just like a radio
announcer, you can speak over the intro of
the song, announce the title and your band
name, or conclude with a statement of where
they can purchase the track. The main
thing is that the audio on the free track
doesn’t have to be the same as the track
that’s for sale.

74 emusician.com 01.2014

Acoustic versions, live
versions, and remixes are
all excellent giveaways
that can introduce people
to your music without
impacting the sales of the
original versions.

Release Alternate Versions Even if you
give away your best songs, you don’t have to
give away the same version of the song that
you have for sale. While you’re in the studio,
think about making multiple versions of your
best tracks: Acoustic versions, live versions,
and remixes are all excellent giveaways that
can introduce people to your music without

impacting the sales of the original versions.
Keep in mind that many of the techniques
above require you to think about marketing
and selling your music in the recording
studio—before you’ve even released it. Take
your best tracks and make your alternate
versions, remixes, sample tracks, and tracks
with promotional audio-bumpers before you
even master the music, so that you’re not
giving away the thing you want to sell.
None of this matters if you don’t make a
“buy” link easily available for fans to click
and purchase your music. Get your music on
services like iTunes and Amazon before giving
your music to fans, so you can capture those
impulse sales. Make sure that the links are
clearly marked, and easy to use. If you give
fans a taste of the music, and then make it as
simple as possible to support you, your music
will help sell itself. n
Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan are
authors of The Indie Band Survival Guide (St.
Martin’s Griffin), now in its second edition.

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how to

power
app
Step 1 Set your MIDI guitar Output
to Mono mode. For example,
Fishman’s TriplePlay requires a
reboot procedure for the pickup
before selecting Mono mode
output to external instruments.
Consult your MIDI guitar manual to
set this up.

MOTU
Digital
Performer 8
Step 2 In DP8, enable
Multi-Record and create
six tracks (one for each
string).

Alternate tunings and
more for MIDI guitar
BY MARTY CUTLER
objective

Set up your MIDI guitar with Digital
Performer’s Multi-Record feature to create
alternate tunings, splits, and more.
background

One of the advantages of MIDI guitar is the
ability to output MIDI on a separate MIDI
channel for each string. That means (for
instance) that—even if your MIDI guitar
doesn’t support alternate tunings, such as
DADGAD or Drop-D—your DAW can help.
In this example, we’ll use MOTU Digital
Performer 8 (DP8) to create an alternate
tuning patch.

tips

n With this setup, your options
multiply exponentially. In addition
to creating tunings, you can assign
splits with (for instance) bass on
the lower two strings, a pad on
the 3rd and 4th strings, and a DP
Device (a layer of multiple patches
from different instruments) on
the 2nd and 1st. If you select all six
tracks and choose MIDI Editor from
the Project menu, you can edit
recorded notes from all strings in a
single window.

76 emusician.com 01.2014

Step 3 Load any instrument (a
multitimbral instrument isn’t necessary, but makes assigning different
patches-per-string more efficient),
and assign each track to that instrument. (For a multitimbral synth, select
a different MIDI output channel.)

Step 4 For each track’s MIDI input,
assign a consecutive MIDI channel
from your MIDI guitar.

Step 5 From DP8’s new
Channel Strip, insert a
Transpose plug-in and
set the transposition to
the interval you want for
each track. The plug-in will
transpose notes from that
string on the fly. You can
save different tunings as
Chunks in a DP8 file and
access all of your tunings
from one DP8 file. Save this
for later recall.

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01.2014 emusician.com 81

CRAIG’S
LIST

The Five Top Musician
Competitions at the
Sochi Winter Olympics
And you thought the Winter Olympics
were only about skiing, bobsledding,
curling, and all that other frozen stuff?
Just because the musician events
don’t get coverage on NBC doesn’t
mean they don’t exist—and we’ll
certainly be watching to see which
records fall this year!
BY CRAIG ANDERTON

1

The Yngwie
Malmsteen Notes Per
Second competition.
While tainted by the
previous arpeggiation
scandal that led to the
banning of all electronic
instruments, the appeal
remains of musicians
playing as many notes as
they can, as fast as they
can, regardless of any
musical relevance.

82 emusician.com 1.2014

2

The Golden Ears
Acting competition.
This new event involves
acting abilities for the
very first time, and is
open to audiophiles as
well as musicians. The
competitors listen to
music with a 192kHz
sample rate, and whoever
does the most convincing
job of making the judges
think they actually
hear a difference wins
the competition—as
well as gets to sign an
endorsement deal with
the famed fashion line,
“Emperor’s New.”

3

The Website MoneyMaking marathon. In
this marathon, musicians
are given two weeks to
try to make over $22.50
from selling their music
on the web. Although
there haven’t been any
winners yet, the Olympic
committee keeps hoping
that 2014 will be the year.
Or maybe 2018.

4

The P.A. Speaker
Toss event. Calling all
muscle-bound roadies!
In this replacement for
the groupie-juggling
event of previous
Olympics, contestants
are given “portable” P.A.
speakers, and whoever
can toss them the furthest
wins. In the event of a
tie, the speaker tosser
who causes the most
damage wins—and as an
additional reward, will
be recruited immediately
by UPS.

5

The DAW Bootup
Race Against Time.
Competitors are all given
identical $399 Windows
laptops from Office
Depot—complete with
unfathomable amounts
of bloatware—along with
installation discs for a
DAW (as chosen by OSC,
the Olympic Software
Committee). Contestants
then try to beat the
world’s record time of 22
hours, 36 minutes, and 12
seconds from first turning
on the computer to
recording an actual audio
track. Sorry, but insiders
expect the current record
to stand.

A New Universe of Sounds
From a Decade of Motifs

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