James Paredes’ products of 2020 can’t really be neatly divided into hardware and software. he explains why.
James P here. I have been asked to say something about some of the things I bought myself this year, why and what I think about them.
Elektron Analog Heat
First up is the Analogue heat. After watching many youtube videos and reviews, I decided to take the plunge into the world of Elektron. What can I say? This thing is amazing. It can add an unbelievable amount of weight to any sound. One trick I love doing with it is to set the high pass up with a high res and sweep it down till the speakers start shaking like a shitting dog. It’s an incredibly powerful filter. And I haven’t even talked about the actual thing it does; distort and overdrive things. I genuinely love it and will most certainly be looking at other outboard gear that takes a nice signal and makes it horrible. One key thing it does have is the ability to use it as a plugin with their overdrive software. However, with Studio One’s latest update, routing anything to anything is no longer an issue in the box or with any form of outboard. But more about that later.
DS Audio Thorn
I bought a few VSTi’s this year and one that stood out amongst all of them was Thorn by Plugin Alliance. Being a producer of electronic music (primarily drum and bass), this plugin is used in equal measure with the Xfer Serum. The harmonic filter on Thorn takes the oscillator and absolutely ruins them to a gritty horrible sound that is absolutely perfect for making growly basslines with high levels of perceived modulations when all you are doing is moving the shape knob back and forth a bit. You can sound like a sound designer from a Hollywood studio with this thing and not actually really do anything. Highly recommend and I would advise to grab it in one of their many sales.
Presonus Studio One V5.1
The biggy for me was the latest update from Presonus. Their Studio one v5.1 has absolutely amazed me. There are a host of reasons to consider this DAW, but one of the most useful features for me was being able to use outboard equipment as virtual instruments or virtual effects with internal or external processing in any form of routing. This single feature would seriously have to be looked at by anyone looking for that perfect link between internal and external ‘things’. My external analogue synths are routed live with MIDI into an instrument track that can then have internal effects on, whilst inserting an external audio processor being controlled by a macro internally.
It’s genuinely insane what you can do with it now and I’m afraid to say, one of the reasons why I wouldn’t go down the “eurocrack” route was because of the live linking internally and externally. That is now a thing of the past and I’m and now going to be poor for the rest of my days as any spare bit of cash I do have will be blown on little eurorack modules.
Merry Christmas people and hope you all make some great music over the holidays.