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Beat combines competent hardware and software tests with dedicated reviews as well as reports and interviews from musicians and the music business. We will report on music production with the latest synthesizers and computers, introduce new trends in recording, and always have our finger on the pulse with up-to-date reports. Many well-known specialist report on the widespread music production solutions and experienced editors take care of the most important entertainment and scene topics. This magazine is a platform for musicians and contains a regular demo and MP3 section for readers as well as a download with high-quality sample and music files for creative musicians.

SOFTWARE HIGHLIGHTS

Navigator: Best of Beat # 205

Magazine

MUSIC THEORY THE SHORT WAY TO THE HI LEARN HOW TO PLAY NOTES IN 2 HOURS • What if you could save yourself the frustration of pushing notes and bring tremendous emotion to the song in a much more purposeful way? Hello music theory! In our deep dive, you‘ll learn everything you need to know about pitches and scales, how to find chords for hit-making melodies, and get tools to make your musical life easier in just two hours. Free for BEAT readers, of course.

Hands-on: What is music theory? • First of all, music theory is a terribly dry word that sounds like a lot of learning, but actually stands for emotion, uninhibited dancing, singing along, shrieking, letting go, and above all, art and creativity. A universal language that not everyone speaks, but everyone understands. So let‘s find out what the building blocks of this language are and learn the vocabulary, shall we? To learn the most important building blocks, we‘ve put together a 4-point plan that you can easily work through in two hours. In the four lessons of this crash course, you‘ll learn what notes are, how they relate to frequencies, how to use a circle of fifths, and how you can practice every day to play the keyboard with confidence or purposefully create good melodies.

Composing without reading notes • Few will be able to imagine a „Modal MIDI Transposer“, but its practical use in composing will inspire everyone: Autotonic SE is, to put it simply, a kind of intelligent note filter that allows you to find musically meaningful scales and phrases in no time at all, even without any prior musical knowledge or note reading. Or in other words: the entire music theory in one plug-in.

The best songwriting helpers

The BEAT community: Show us your studio! Scot & Millfield • It is always refreshing to see how others set up their studio and work in it. After our call on Facebook, you have almost overrun us and that‘s good. So it was quickly clear: We make a series out of it, to inspire and participate for everyone. This month with the duo Scot & Millfield, who we accompany in their „room-within-a-room“ studio construction.

Portrait: Christian Hornbostel Techno and alchemie • In the 90s he was involved in the creation of dancefloor classics like Virtualmismo‘s „Mismoplastico“ and VFR‘s „Tranceillusion“, after that he developed into an institution in the German techno jungle with numerous albums, EPs and singles. Recently Christian Hornbostel released „Annus Alchemicus“, another album that not only lives from its convincing mix of electro, deep techno and world music, but also evokes curiosity in conceptual terms, because the Latin title in combination with the ancient-looking astrological image on the cover leads into a completely different direction than the modern dancefloor. We talked to the producer about the background of his work.

Discoved: Craig Armstrong Wave of change • Other albums would end up being more successful. And yet, Craig Armstrong‘s As if to Nothing possibly sums up the spirit of the late 1990s best: Brimming with ambition, fusing the worlds of acoustic and electronic music, and featuring dark,...