Night Tapes: “Other producers seemed like wizards. Then we found out they just had better plugins”Night Tapes are a seriously talented three-piece band creating electronic-tinged, psychedelic dream pop. Hailing from London, the outfit is made up of Max Doohan, Sam Richards and Iiris Vesik, three musicians who formed the band after a series of late night jam sessions.

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Kindness is the title of just Night Tapes’ third EP – which is early on in their journey when you consider how pristine each track sounds. It helped, we must add, with the maestro hand of mixing engineer Nathan Boddy, who’s worked with PinkPantheress, James Blake, Mura Masa and London Grammar. We speak to the band and find out about the plugins in particular that helped shape this stunning EP and why digital tools and synths help their music-making process.
Perfect Kindness by Night Tapes
Hey, Night Tapes! How are things?
Iiris: Hey, MusicTech! We’re deep into making a new EP (which will probably be the last EP before an album), preparing for a little tour in the UK and Europe in September/October and trying to enjoy the rainy summer we’re having in London.
What are your individual roles and how do you work together?
Ritchie: We don’t really have defined roles so much. We were all producing music individually before Night Tapes and this carries across to how we write now. Most of the songs start as a demo from one of us individually, which we then collectively work on it to carry over the line.
Tell us about your love of plugins.
Max: There’s a lot of innovation going on in plugins and plugins are generally a lot cheaper and easier to demo. While we love old hardware that’s tried and tested there’s something to be said for using new tools that create new outcomes in your music.
Iiris: I remember how everything I made used to sound shit and other producers seemed like wizards who could just magically make stuff sound better. Then I found out they just had better plugins and eventually I had to get a good microphone. Until those things happened, everything was just frustrating.
What’s your latest plugin purchase?
The God Particle. Image: Cradle
Max: We recently got a plugin called The God Particle by Cradle which is an enigma. It has a definite sound which either really works or really doesn’t. There’s a track on the latest EP Perfect Kindness on which we recorded the lead vocals with an iPhone and then cranked that plugin to 200 per cent to emphasise all of the artefacts.
What’s the best-value plugin you own?
Effect Rack. Image: Soundtoys
Max: SoundToys Effect Rack. This multi-plugin rack was a ray of light in the lockdown when it came out for $99. We use the presets all the time and it’s such a creative toolbox to have access to.
What’s the weirdest plugin you own?
Soundgrain. Image: Olivier Belanger
Ritchie: It’s not really a plugin exactly, but Soundgrain is an amazing tool for manipulating audio. It’s a little hard to explain exactly what it does, but it effectively time stretches and loops samples at different frequencies to create amazingly interesting textures. It’s an amazing way to create beds of sound and ambient pads.
What plugins go on your master bus without fail?
Max: Sonarworks SoundID Reference. our studio is not currently acoustically treated so it’s helpful for getting a more accurate sound in the room- especially for mixing.
What plugin would your latest EP, Perfect Kindness, be incomplete without?
ValhallaRoom. Image: Valhalla DSP
Max: ValhallaRoom by Valhalla DSP. It’s our go-to reverb across all of our music and has become an instrument in its own right. It doesn’t really imitate a real space like most VST reverbs – it’s got an ethereal quality.
You’ve created a really distorted atmosphere on Humans. How?
Richie: A big part of that distorted sound is running various instruments through cassette multitrack preamps – primarily our Tascam four track mixer. On certain parts, we’ll track to cassette tape and transfer that to our project. The cassette tape has quite a limited dynamic range, so it compresses the tape saturation in a musical way.
When it comes to vocals, we’ll often combine this saturated sound with software saturation so it’s easier to bed into the mix. Like many others, we’re big fans of using Soundtoys’ Decapitator to do this. Saying that, I’m a big fan of Logic Pro’s stock clip distortion. You have a lot of control over where clipping occurs, and it runs well in parallel with the mix turned right down. The big vocal sound on both Humans and Inigo is a result of this. It has a really bright, sparkly saturation that compliments the heavier, more midrange tape saturation of the Tascam.
Do you have any secret sauce plugins?
Virtual MixBuss. Image: Slate Digital
Max: Virtual MixBuss by Slate. It’s an analogue desk emulator which has become our default first plugin on our output chain. It adds a little more air and color to everything.
Richie: Virtual Tape Machines, also by Slate. It’s really subtle, but sounds warm and lifelike. I’m a massive fan of Waves’ (slightly less realistic) Kramer Tape too. Flux control is dangerously addictive.
What about a guilty pleasure plugin?
Richie: Fabfilter’s Pro L 2. Turning a mix up by 4db is apparently the real secret to impressing friends, family and A&Rs.
Listen to more of Night Tapes’ music on Bandcamp.
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Scalpers are selling Aphex Twin’s £5 Field Day vinyls for hundreds on eBayThose limited edition 12’’ vinyls that Aphex Twin released prior to his recent headlining performance at London’s Field Day festival are now going for more than 100x their original price online.

READ MORE: RØDE announces the “most powerful wireless microphone ever”

The producer, real name Richard D James, surprised fans with a similar limited edition vinyl when he headlined the festival back in 2017 — and it’s clear that getting your hands on one now is just as hard as it was years ago.
Limited to just 100 copies, the Field Day-exclusive 5-track vinyls were said to be snapped up by 2:30pm on the day of its release. Those records soon surfaced online, some even before Aphex Twin — whose set began at 9:25pm — had taken to the stage.
A quick scan through online marketplace eBay shows the vinyl, which cost just £5 originally, being listed for a whopping £699 on one listing; a bidding war is also taking place on another listing, with 6 bidders and a current bid of £520.
The record’s tracklist, according to Discogs, is as follows:
A1 Korg Funk5
A2 Korg 1B RU,EC,E
B1 Soog E
B2 Body Pads
B3 Dgitne Tst1e
Aphex Twin put on his first UK show since 2019 at Victoria Park last weekend, setting the festival ablaze with an hour and a half of groovy techno beats and intoxicating visuals. The performance saw the 52-year-old musician sampling tracks from his extensive discography, including hits from his new EP ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760’.
We were lucky enough to attend Aphex Twin’s show at Field Day 2023 – you can live vicariously through us by checking out our review of his set.
In other news, the producer has recently launched a new augmented reality app called ‘YXBoZXh0d2lu’, which translates to ‘aphextwin’ when decrypted using Base64 binary-to-text encoding.
Created by Tokyo-based spatial internet studio KALKUL, visual artist Weirdcore with Warp and Aphex Twin himself, the app is said to offer an “alternate world of interactive AR bringing the artwork, music and video to life in 3D”.
All you have to do is use your smartphone’s camera to scan the packaging of ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In a Room7 F760’. After which, you can choose between various immersive experiences that accompany the EP’s four tracks.
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How To Hack Spotify (and TikTok)This week, Ari is joined by Ryan Vaughn, Artist Manager at Backline Creative and CFO of Head Bitch Music.

YouTube Music launch AI Incubator YouTube Music AI Incubator is a new programme that has been developed to help to inform the platform’s approach to generative AI use in music. 

OpenSea manager accused of insider trading sentenced to 3 months in prison, $50K fineNathaniel Chastain will reportedly have until Nov. 2 to surrender himself following his conviction for wire fraud and money laundering related to insider trading on OpenSea.

Join Depeche Mode on Tour & Support MusiCares's Relief Efforts for MauiIn support of those affected by the Maui wildfires, MusiCares staff is directly assisting those in Lahaina – helping with basic living expenses, medical expenses, and more.Here's your chance to do your share and support MusiCares' efforts by Donating To Win this exclusive VIP trip to meet Depeche Mode at a U.S. show of your choice as they travel across the world for their Memento Mori Tour!With your donation you are entered to win:  Round trip travel + 2-night hotel stay for two (2) at a Depeche Mode “Memento Mori Tour” U.S. destination of your choice Two (2) amazing seats for a U.S. Show Meet & Greet with Depeche Mode An Arturia MicroFreak Hybrid Synthesizer signed by Depeche Mode One (1) Memento Mori vinyl record signed by Depeche Mode Depeche Mode merch bundle Donate To Win  fandiem.com/depechemode 

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Arturia release Acid V TB-303 emulation Acid V offers an authentic emulation of Roland’s legendary TB-303 bass synth, and also greatly enhances it with a range of new and interesting features.

OpenAI brings fine-tuning to GPT-3.5 TurboOpenAI customers can now bring custom data to the lightweight version of GPT-3.5, GPT-3.5 Turbo — making it easier to improve the text-generating AI model’s reliability while building in specific behaviors.
OpenAI claims that fine-tuned versions of GPT-3.5 can match or even outperform the base capabilities of GPT-4, the company’s flagship model, on “certain narrow tasks.”
“Since the release of GPT-3.5 Turbo, developers and businesses have asked for the ability to customize the model to create unique and differentiated experiences for their users,” the company wrote in a blog post published this afternoon. “This update gives developers the ability to customize models that perform better for their use cases and run these custom models at scale.”
With fine-tuning, companies using GPT-3.5 Turbo through OpenAI’s API can make the model better follow instructions, such as having it always respond in a given language. Or they can improve the model’s ability to consistently format responses (e.g. for completing snippets of code), as well as hone the “feel” of the model’s output, like its tone, so that it better fits a brand or voice.
In addition, fine-tuning enables OpenAI customers to shorten their text prompts to speed up API calls and cut costs. “Early testers have reduced prompt size by up to 90% by fine-tuning instructions into the model itself,” OpenAI claims in the blog post.
Fine-tuning currently requires prepping data, uploading the necessary files and creating a fine-tuning job through OpenAI’s API. All fine-tuning data must pass through a “moderation” API and a GPT-4-powered moderation system to see if it’s in conflict with OpenAI’s safety standards, says the company. But OpenAI plans to launch a fine-tuning UI in the future with a dashboard for checking the status of ongoing fine-tuning workloads.
Fine-tuning costs are as follows:

Training: $0.008 / 1K tokens
Usage input: $0.012 / 1K tokens
Usage output: $0.016 / 1K tokens

“Tokens” represent raw text — e.g. “fan,” “tas” and “tic” for the word “fantastic.” A GPT-3.5-turbo fine-tuning job with a training file of 100,000 tokens, or about 75,000 words, would cost around $2.40, OpenAI says.
In other news, OpenAI today made available two updated GPT-3 base models (babbage-002 and davinci-002), which can be fine-tuned as well, with support for pagination and “more extensibility.” As previously announced, OpenAI plans to retire the original GPT-3 base models on January 4, 2024.
OpenAI said that fine-tuning support for GPT-4 — which, unlike GPT-3.5, can understand images in addition to text — will arrive sometime later this fall, but didn’t provide specifics beyond that.

Strymon Deco Tape: The First Effect While modern recording engineers and producers are used to the huge variety of effects options available these days, tape machines were the first devices... Read More

Strymon BigSky Add BigSky to your track and instantly lift your sound into the stratosphere. From vast, immersive, nearly infinite decays to responsive plates perfectly tuned to organically accentuate... Read More

After partnering with AI music startup Lemonaide, BeatStars unveils AI music creation tool, ‘Seeds’According to BeatStars, the new tool is aimed at helping creators generate initial ideas for music
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Phasereplicant Is A Free Spectral Granular Synthesis Plugin By Slowslicing
Slowslicing has just released a FREE granular and spectral synthesis plugin called Phasereplicant, and it’s available only for Windows as a VST3 plugin format. Personally, granular synthesis is one of my absolute favorite types of synthesis since it drives you on such a fantastic journey of sound design possibilities. It’s your gateway to a new [...]
View post: Phasereplicant Is A Free Spectral Granular Synthesis Plugin By Slowslicing

RØDE announces the “most powerful wireless microphone ever”RØDE has announced what it calls the “most powerful wireless microphone ever”.
Aimed at filmmakers and content creators, the Wireless PRO has a feature set not yet found in any other microphone, let alone a wireless system, for optimum audio quality and versatility.

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RØDE CEO Damien Wilson says in a press release, “In 2019, the Wireless GO was the first truly wireless microphone to enter the market. RØDE was the first company to create a compact and easy to use workflow that forever changed the way creators capture audio for their content.
“The Wireless GO II took this even further, adding incredible new features and setting a new standard for compact wireless audio. Today, we take this iconic microphone a step further once again with the Wireless PRO.
“We’ve left no stone unturned when it comes to features in this new system, packing incredibly powerful and useful features like 32-bit float on-board recording and advanced timecode capability into the same compact, easy-to-use form factor that thousands of creators around the world use every day.”
Designed and made in RØDE’s precision facilities in Sydney, the microphone boasts state-of-the-art Series IV 2.4 GHz digital transmission for clear audio up to 850 ft, and Intelligent GainAssist technology. This makes use of intelligent algorithms to automatically control audio levels. It also has universal compatibility with cameras, smartphones, and computers for ease of use.
And while it’s so powerful, it’s no larger than the other compact wireless microphones in RØDE’s range, and its black-on-black aesthetic is even more discreet.
The Wireless PRO will be available in late August for $399 USD.
For more info, head to RØDE.
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Universal Audio’s latest UAFX pedals Universal Audio's newest UAFX pedals each offer authentic emulations of sought-after vintage processors and boast a more compact form factor than the line-up’s previous offerings.

TSHA’s live band brings the sunshine to Field Day 20232023’s edition of Victoria Park’s Field Day festival, is full to the brim with cutting-edge names in electronic music, including Aphex Twin, Elkka, Chloé Robinson, Mount Kimbie, and Bonobo. There’s one ultra-talented act that perhaps has more pressure on her shoulders than most: TSHA playing live.

READ MORE: The Aphex Twin machine causes chaos at Field Day 2023

With her four-piece band hitting the stage for just the fifth time ever at 4.30 pm, crowds wander past SBTRKT at the North Arena, gathering at The West Stage. It’s all in anticipation of the intriguing creator of Capricorn Sun, the debut album that awarded the London-based producer MusicTech’s Producer Of The Year award in 2022.
The band – Joe Clegg on drums, Simon Francis on synth and keys, and the incredible Clementine Douglas on vocals – stand ready around the Diplo collaborator. She spritely greets the crowd in a jet-blue sleeveless cardigan and swings her massive bass guitar around her neck.
Against a backdrop of a darker, more experimental lineup featuring acts such as Aphex Twin, Arca, and Fever Ray, TSHA’s set is a ray of sunshine that breaks through at Field Day 2023. The sun’s appearance perfectly complements her uplifting performance, which includes warm electronic sounds laced with breaks, delightful vocals and sharp synth riffs. Her dramatic track, Giving Up, for example, cuts through the noise of the crowd even in this outdoor setting. The blend of high-end synth sounds and a serious, bulging bassline catches everyone’s attention.

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A post shared by TSHA (@tshamusic)

Behind TSHA, visuals spark to life – visuals that embody her compelling character fans have come to adore. They show Felicity Marshall’s animated flowers and figures from the artwork for TSHA’s 2021 singles, OnlyL and the astonishing Power.
These visuals change into a series of floating star constellations. Then, the massive LED screen suddenly turns green. “The visuals aren’t working!” TSHA tells the crowd in a slight panic. No one is too fussed, however, as the soothing blend of synths and organic instruments is received well by the colourful crowd. “So many cool shirts in the audience right now!” shouts Clementine Douglas. We see one t-shirt that simply reads ‘every girl should be a DJ’.
Amidst the festival’s great visuals and sunny vibes, TSHA’s live band arrangement stands out as a significant moment for her. The dynamics of the setup add an intriguing layer to her music. She plays the 303 acid bassline-infused Sister, which she tells the crowd is dedicated to her new half-sister whom she met for the first time recently. Another huge moment of TSHA’s debut album, the breaks-y Kissing In The Shadows, is, as Douglas says, “her favourite TSHA song to sing”.
At the end of the set, the energetic, synth-flecked leftfield house track, OnlyL, gets people bouncing. A wave of pink confetti streamers erupt into the audience and seem to hang in the air, before slowly floating down and coating the audience. It’s a lovely moment, as everyone, mummified, attempts to de-tangle themselves from the long strips of pink paper. TSHA and her band thank the buzzed crowd and head off stage.
Confetti at Field Day
Later, we see TSHA chatting to Bonobo, eating a bag of crisps – job done. Although this was a successful festival live show, you wouldn’t blame TSHA for being nervous. She was, however, incredibly relaxed throughout, probably thanks to the receptive crowd.
Quietly taking in the moment, she watches Jon Hopkins’ fantastic performance from the crowd. We’re sure, however, that her mind is elsewhere – thinking of the next time she can get on stage and do it all over again. Well, we’ll be there, front and centre for this future star.
Want to see TSHA play live? Check out her tour dates at tshamusic.com.
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