The Finds, Sept. 19: Formant Surgery, a Browser Time-Machine and a Box of 85 BPM Breaks
Ten new things for your sessions, from a cepstral formant shifter to a free time-stretcher that runs in a single HTML file. What each one is, what it needs, who made it.
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The week's finds lean strange in the best way. Formants went viral, granular synthesis got political about where its fragments sit in a mix, and somebody sampled a live drummer so you wouldn't have to warp anything. Prices are as of September 19.
The X waves
- CRUMPETS by CRQL (@BristowEwan) is a cepstral formant shifter that splits a sound's formants from its harmonics and moves them separately. It is VST3, CLAP and AU for Windows, Mac and Linux, at £13. Read the full story or get it from CRQL.
- klattsch by Crash United (@me_irl) is a retro vocal synth in the Klatt formant-synthesis lineage. Type English, kana or raw ARPABET and it sings. The app is $9.99 for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and free in the browser. Read the full story or get it on itch.io.
Plugins and instruments
- MIDISketch by Eliotonic is an MPE piano roll plugin with a party trick producers have wanted forever: click the roll to stamp a chord, drag right for its length. It is VST3, AU, CLAP and standalone, for Windows, macOS and Linux. It costs $45 once at an early-access price the maker says is rising soon, with a seven-day free trial, no card required. Eliotonic
- Shatter by Remo De Vico is the Ableton instrument version of a granular fragment machine. It slices at rising zero-crossings, stretches without changing pitch, and lets you drag fragments across a field. In Live, every fragment gets its own stereo output (3/4, 5/6, all the way up to 33/34) while 1/2 carries the full mix. That means each shard can have its own effects chain. It plays up to 16 voices and needs Ableton Live 10 or later. $20. Gumroad
- Loom, also by Remo De Vico, is free. It is a browser instrument that stretches a short sample to minutes without changing its pitch, built for textures, pads and drones. It runs as a single HTML file, works offline and needs no install. Weave sets how many grains overlap, from 1 to 16, and it exports WAV or AIFF. Gumroad
- Panacousticon Series by Emi liano is a Max for Live bundle. Its instruments come at one sound from five angles: synthesis, granular fragmentation, tape memory, generative drone and organic noise. The maker pitches it as a toolkit for "cold, ritualistic, slowly decaying sound." It is mapped for Ableton Push but not compatible with Push 3 Standalone, and it needs Ableton Live 12.4 plus Max for Live. $39. Gumroad
Sounds
- MPC-60 Vinyl Drum Breaks Vol. 3 by PastToFutureReverbs has 33 eight-bar breaks recorded by a live drummer. There are also 228 one-shots cut on their natural transients and sorted into 33 kit folders. Thirty-two of the breaks sit at 85 BPM, with one outlier at 90, so they loop and trade places without stretching. 24-bit / 48 kHz WAV. $10. Gumroad
- Alien Zone Vol. 3 by Dyatic (@Dyaticedm) is billed as the final chapter of the series. It holds 517 drums and 337 basses, plus 15 Serum 2 presets and bonus FLP and MIDI files, 1.79 GB in all. The drums run from dubstep and riddim weight to UK garage and trap snap. $60. Gumroad
- Analog Four & Keys Patches by Synth Patches: 128 kits for the Elektron box, each as its own .syx file plus one file with all of them. Every kit has a modwheel move built in. It fits the OG, MK2 and Keys, and loads via Elektron's C6 or MIDI-OX. $14. Gumroad
Learning
- Don't Look At Grandma: Behind the Score by Venus Theory (@venustheory) goes behind the scenes of scoring an indie horror game. It runs about four hours over 15 videos: five on sound design, seven OST breakdowns, two on project management, and one on mixing and mastering. $80. Gumroad