WHAT’S ON YOUR HARD DRIVE?
Alex Tepper The Birmingham-born, genre-defying producer loves Ableton Live and UAD plugins, but still enjoys the odd freeware tool or two…
ABLETON LIVE 10
“One of the most creative DAWs on the market, and the centrepoint of my studio. All the audio from my outboard/analogue equipment gets recorded in to Live, where I can then manipulate and morph it in ways that only digital will allow. It gives me the best of both worlds: mixing analogue with digital. It’s been on my computer since it was first on the market and, after using Logic for many years, I found the Ableton workflow was much more instant and vibey. And when they introduced Max For Live… that just took it to a whole new creative level.”
NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR
“I’ve been using Reaktor for many years, and collecting ensembles from the user library and various third-party developers. It’s kind of like Native Instruments’ equivalent to MaxMSP or Max For Live in that it opens itself up to all sorts of developers who have created weird and wonderful synths, sequencers, sample players, etc. One of my favourite developers is Twisted Tools. They make some great sequencers and sample players that can give you some seriously messed-up patterns using any samples you put in there. I’ve had some great, unique results and I always really look forward to those ‘happy accidents’ when I’m working on a song.”
UNIVERSAL AUDIO UAD-2 PLUGINS
“These are without doubt the best software emulations of the old classics I’ve ever heard. My staples are the Empirical Labs Fatso Sr, Studer A800, EMT 140 Plate and the EMT 250, SSL E-Channel Strip and Buss Compressor, Eventide H910 Harmonizer, AMS RMX16 and my absolute favourite, the MXR Flanger emulation. With the MXR, you need to be careful how and what you use it on – same as any flanger – but you can get those nice, wobbly melodies going on, or hats and percussion like Derrick May’s remix of Sueño Latino. I remember using the real one back in the day, but when I got the plugin, I was blown away by how close it is. They are magicians over there!”
SONIC CHARGE MICROTONIC
“Whether it’s analogue or software, the
simpler it is to use, the more it gets used. Microtonic is one of those simple and funto-use plugins. Try it for shakers/hi-hats and synthy-style percussion. You can easily automate the parameters and bring your tracks to life… lifting the decay of hats, for example. It also allows you to preview the presets in real time, which gives you some inspiration for jumping-off points if you get stuck for ideas. You can hear it on the hats for the remix of Ramiro Lopez and Coyu that Nicole Moudaber and I worked on.”
WAVOSAUR SPEEK 3
“This is a great little plugin that emulates the old Commodore 64 program, SAM. I believe that old program was where LFO got the vocal for their self-titled track, LFO. It’s filthy and lo-fi, and if you get it saying something cool it might just work! At the very minimum, it’s a good laugh to play around with. You just type in what you want it to say and it says it back to you in a retro computer voice. And it’s free, too!”
ALEXKID SOFTWARE
“A great producer himself in the house world, he’s also made a bunch of plugins for Max For Live. The Instant Haus plugin was the first that came bundled with Max For Live, and he’s now made some others like Hats4Dayz, Clap Machine and Press4Acid. I think the fact that he comes from the house music scene means he makes plugins from that perspective… and they work so well in that style! For example, I used Instant Haus to trigger my own samples in an Ableton Live Drum Rack taken directly from the TR-909 with Nic Fanciulli and Mark Fanciulli on their record, Star, released on Seth Troxler’s label, Play It Say It.”
SOUNDTOYS PLUGINS
“Another company that do great recreations of classic studio gear. At least one or two of them are used on everything I do. I love the simplicity, feedback and modulation effects you can get with PrimalTap. I use Decapitator a lot on 909 drums… and just about anything else! When used on synths and vocals, Crystallizer can make some beautiful, melodic craziness happen. FilterFreak also gets used a lot! They’re a very cool company as well as being very passionate about what they do.”
AUDIOTHING PLUGINS
“I’ve used their Latin Percussion plugin for a while now, and just recently discovered their Reels and Hand Clapper plugins. Reels can give you a nice tape-warble effect, and harmonics that you’d get from an old cassette player; it makes things sound very lo-fi and wonky. I think Hand Clapper is inspired by the old Simmons Clap Trap drum synth – again, wonderfully simple, and does what it does well.”
MICHAEL NORRIS SOUNDMAGIC SPECTRAL
“These are totally free – but you can donate if you like – and are really great to play around with. The Spectral Filterbank is a good place to start… or Drone Maker. No-frills plugins that can give you crazy sound-shaping results.”
OUTPUT PLUGINS AND NI KONTAKT
“I’ve just started getting into what the guys at Output are doing, but, so far so good. I’m a big fan of using the computer to manipulate samples or live/organic audio in digital ways. If I want a specifically ‘analogue’ sound for something, then I’ll use one of my hardware synths, but mixing those real-world sounds with digital mangling plugins or the warp engine in Live is where it’s at for me. I use everything for its own particular strength! These guys seem to be doing that with some very interesting libraries that run in NI’s Kontakt – another instrument that gets used a lot on the productions I work on. I used my Emax and Ensoniq libraries for Kontakt on the high keys and low strings on Someone Like
You with Nicole Moudaber and Skin from Skunk Anansie.”