Altwire

For years, Justin “Schoeny” Schoenenberger didn’t have to think very hard about who he was. He was DJ Schoeny. It was the name people called across nightclubs. It was attached to his music, his bookings and his travels. It followed him from San Diego bars to bigger stages, into production, and eventually into All Gold alongside friends and collaborators who would go on to make their own marks on electronic music. DJing wasn’t simply something Schoeny did for money.

AltWire occasionally receives plugins or products at no cost for review consideration. Well, full disclosure, and I’m embarrassed to admit this: D16 Group gave me the Classic Boxes Collection quite a while ago after I pitched them the idea of covering it. And in a move that makes me look like a complete and utter schmuck, I’m realizing I somehow never followed through. So, forgetfulness aside, these plugins are fantastic and deserve an article. Today I’m finally fixing that.

Max for Live is one reason I have such a hard time imagining myself leaving Ableton. I’m always finding a new developer who’s built a device that attacks an old problem from a new viewpoint, or gives me a new way to destroy or distort a sound. Rawton Forge does both. Across Rawton’s product line, you’ll find kick synthesizers, stereo processors, waveshaping, modulation, filtering, and reverb.

When I’m not chasing Eurodance or 90s dance music drenched in complete cheese, I usually end up at the other end of the spectrum, designing hard techno tracks and industrial tracks that sit at 150 BPM and above. With those genres comes the challenge of finding brutal kicks and driving bass that, even with the right sample, don’t always deliver the feel I’m looking for. One afternoon recently, an Instagram ad for Terminal popped up in my feed. I didn’t need much convincing.

The GND-1T is a strange beast, and trying to summarize its sound feels a little like opening a dictionary and deciding to use every word in one very long sentence.

Waldorf used the oscillator research behind its Microwave 1 Plugin as the foundation for a $399 four-layer hardware synth. Is Waldorf’s ’90s-influenced box, the Waldorf Protein worth your time? Lately, I’ve been obsessed with chasing old digital gear that sounds cheesy and dated, but has a feel most modern hardware synths can’t replicate.

My first experience with the Nord Electro 7 was likely a bit different from most. Rather than spending those first ten minutes on glissandos, random noodling, or menu diving, I took another path: I loaded an “Eleanor Rigby” MIDI arrangement and ran it through the String Quartet patch. After one impressive playback, it was easy to see why this red beauty has become a mainstay in the studios of some of my favorite musicians.

I am the king of the randomize button. Serum 2’s Hybridize function is dangerous for me; I’ll keep pressing it until several unrelated presets collide into something I would never have built on purpose, and Ableton’s Generators get the same treatment. Roll, listen, roll again. Every so often one catches my ear and sends the track somewhere new: little happy accidents.

Green Hill Zone has been in my head for most of my life, so hearing that familiar tone coming out of the DAFM Genesis was always going to hit the nostalgia button pretty hard. That was also what caught my attention when I first found Kasser Synths on Tindie. This creator builds small hardware synths around classic game-era sound chips, and after I reached out about a feature, Kasser provided the Genesis review unit used here.

Within seconds of its first power-on, Melbourne Instruments’ NINA already looks unlike anything else on the desk. After a brief boot, every knob starts moving on its own, snapping into position to match the loaded preset, and even though I knew that was going to happen, I still think it is one of the trippiest things I have seen on a synth.