MusicTech Issue 132 – Aira: The In-Depth Review

The new issue of MusicTech magazine is on sale now, and this month we’ve got a massive seven page review of Roland’s Aira. Plus reviews, interviews, tutorials and much more…

This months’ MusicTech magazine includes:

Aira: The In-Depth Review – It’s been the subject of rumours and gossip and most hyped technology product in years, but we reveal all in the world exclusive magazine review of two of Roland’s new Aira range.

Get Perfect Beats 2 – The second part of this massive guide covers recording acoustic drums

The Lorde’s Player – What’s it like playing for the biggest star in the world today? We find out and talk to Lorde’s keyboardist Jimmy Mac

AirLab Mastering –  An insight into pro-mastering from AirLab studios

Tutorials –  This month we bring you part seven of our massive power user series in Ableton Live, Reason, Cubase and Logic

Reviews –  Under the MT microscope this month include Roland’s FA-06, iZotope’s BreakTweaker, Behringer Xenyx, Steinberg’s VST Connect and much more…

How to Produce Techno 2 –  Liam O’Mullane continues his guide to techno by creating and developing song sections

Beck’s Odelay –  Lifting the lid on this 90’s classic, Andy Price explores Beck’s seminal Odelay

On the DVD

Techno and electronica fans rejoice – on this month’s DVD you’ll find thumping beats, chunky kicks and heavyweight synth patches to use in your tracks. Plus: a bumper crop of tutorials, the latest demos and all the files for this issue’s workshops.

Dark Techno Beats – To top off our series on writing techno, we’ve enlisted the skills of sound-designer and electronic musician Danny Quinn to craft an exclusive pack of techno-themed drum loops. There are 155 in total – comprising full beats plus their component parts – divided into three folders of warehouse, minimal and glitch techno ranging from 125–130BPM. The beats were programmed and constructed in Live using a combination of classic drum-machine sounds and chopped vintage breaks, then processed using a range of software and techniques including a custom Max/MSP patch for glitch duties.

Distorted Kicks – When it comes to electronic music, it never ceases to amaze us how much variation you can get from the humble kick drum. As a prime example, we’ve got 214 kick drum hits that have been harmonically enhanced with filters, distortion and FX. Most of the sounds were crafted in FM8 then processed through an array of Ableton’s built-in effects and are especially suited to dubstep, drum & bass and hard techno. Consider loading some of the more pitched hits chromatically into a sampler to create some heavyweight bass patches…

Synth Presets – We like to mix things up once in a while here at MT Towers, so this month’s selection courtesy of Prime Loops focuses on synth presets for a range of different soft-synths. You’ll find 26 D&B/dubstep presets for Native Instruments’ Massive, 12 ambient presets for FM8, ten progressive presets for Sylenth, 11 dubstep presets for Predator and, finally, ten a piece for Reason’s built-in Malström and Subtractor synths, all taken from larger presets libraries available from Prime Loops. There are accompanying text files in each folder with specific details on how to load the presets and banks in the various different synths.
And much much more!

On sale Thursday February 20th! Subscribe Here