Bleass Performance Arpeggiator Ok, I’ve been demoing arps for a few hours now and there are a few different types. Some are kind of clinical, you set up what you want and it does the thing. Some are more performance oriented. I’m kind of digging the second type and here is a good example. Refer to my previous articles when…

More VST arpeggiators I’m trying out the venerable BlueArp that everyone is talking about in the forums. I apparently have tried it before but I don’t remember. The main stumbling block on these arpeggiator plugins is the setup in Ableton. You can’t put the synth and the arp on the same track, frustratingly. Here is a refresher on that setup:…

Arpeggiator VSTs – H-arp I’m digging back into my DAW existence on Windows right now. I have this little small form factor PC running Windows that I was using for my DAW. I’m going through my VST plugins and sorting things out. BTW the SFF PC is a cute little HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini. Anyway, back to arpeggiators. I…

Finger drumming from first principles I used to have a site called PadScience. It was dedicated to pad controllers like the venerable M-Audio Trigger Finger. I still have the Trigger Finger Pro which I consider still one of the best pad controllers ever made. It has polyphonic aftertouch and great sensitivity curves. So as you know I am a drummer.…

Speedrum VST I’m narrowing down my drum plugin selections finally. I’m interested in working with breakbeats and slicing up drums, but not necessarily in re-arranging or sequencing the loops. Mostly I pull all of the snares from a loop into a pad and layer them or something like that. More like creating a drum kit out of a break instead…

LiveSlice VST I’m looking into beat slicers again. LiveSlice is an indie plugin that I thought had a lot of promise back when I first looked at it. I was interested in slicing audio as it came in and retriggering certain elements of it using midi. Not many slicers were designed to do this. As a basic slicer LiveSlice is…

Hy Slicer VST I’m digging around again to find a slicer plugin for doing drum breaks. In the past I’d use Recycle or something similar to chop my breaks up (and extend the tails) and then use FL Studio or another sampler to sequence them. Later on I discovered Geist and similar apps. FL has a slicer too. I tried…

Choosing a DAW Why are there so many options? Back when I was getting started with electronic music I used Hammerhead. And Rubberduck h3o. These were not VSTs. Steinberg had not invented that yet. In order to create a track you had to export wav files and stitch them together in something like Soundforge. Cakewalk came out with integrated audio…

Grooveboxes I have a soft spot in my heart for groove machines. I have been on a sort of journey over the years trying to find one that is perfect, but I should have known that nothing of the sort exists. I started out with a Yamaha SU-200 with the floppy drive. I got one loop going with that and…

Hardware synths I’m starting to thin the herd of hardware that I have accumulated over the last few years. I started out basically by buying an Elektron Machinedrum back when they first discontinued it. I got one of the last MKII Userwave editions new in I think 2016 or so. After that I got the bug to get some of…