Eight-Bay Sampler · Every Bay a Song
Eight songs at once, and every hit its own.
Eight bays of twelve samples, and every bay a song of its own: up to 1,024 one-bar pages of sixty-fourth notes, each song going round on its own length, all on one clock. Every note can carry its own odds, its own ratchet, its own place left or right and its own stretch. The songs are written the way Dropforge's are, and the sounds can be anything you can sample.
VST3 · Windows 64-bit No activationmacOS VST3 and Audio Unit are in development.
Hear it
Made on the instrument. Their levels are matched to one another, and a limiter shaves the loudest peaks off all three; nothing else was done to them on the way here.
THE SONG
Each bay is twelve samples and a song of its own: 64 steps across and 28 lanes down a page, a sixty-fourth note a step, and up to 1,024 pages played in order.
THE NOTE
ALT and a click on any note opens THE NOTE: the odds it plays, the odds its effects do, a ratchet, a place left or right, a stretch at its own pitch, and FORCE CHOKE. They belong to that note on that step, and the note after it never hears them. The dice are rolled again on every pass, so a bar the host loops plays a little differently each time round.
TRY IT
The strikes stand where the engine puts them, as loud as RAMP makes them: FADE OUT falls to a quarter, SWELL IN rises from one. A drawing of the arithmetic, not a recording.
Two pitch engines
Each sample is pitched one of two ways. TIME plays a higher note faster and so shorter, as tape does. GRANULAR plays it in grains at the note's pitch, along the sound at the sound's own pace, so it keeps its length. SPRAY scatters the grains.
TIME0.67 of its length
GRANULARits whole length
The faint line is the sound at its root, and the mark is where it ends. A drawing of each engine's arithmetic, not a recording.
The arithmetic
8bays1,024pages a song64steps a page
A page is a bar, and every step of every page has its own 28 lanes: which of its twelve samples strike and how hard, which of the eight effects they carry, and what the eight lock lanes hold. Each of the eight songs goes round on its own length, and every note on them can carry settings of its own.
Six views
The keys beside the display open a bay's song, a sample's page, WAVE EDIT, PITCH, THE SLICER and AUTOMATION. Under them are the eight bays' keys, and on a sample's pages its bay's twelve samples' keys under those. A file dropped on a key goes into it.
SONG A bay's song: the plate, the clock, the effects' knobs, the bay's channel, and the page of twelve sample lanes, eight effect lanes and eight lock lanes.
And the rest of it
And for anything else that can be sampled: a bass, a pad, a voice, a loop.
THREE MODES
ONE-SHOT plays the whole sound every time, up to VOICES at once. MONO LEGATO slides a held note into the next over GLIDE, on a roll of its own. POLY holds every note for its length, a chord of up to 4 on a step. CHOKE groups cut each other off within a bay, and the machine sounds 64 voices at once.
EIGHT EFFECTS
Each effect lane switches its effect on for the notes struck on its step, and each note's effects are its own voice's, so they begin on its first sample and end with it. CRUSH from sixteen bits down to one; PITCH up to two octaves either way; the STRETCH lane up to eight times as long; REVERSE plays a note backward so its attack lands on the lane's next note; PAN throws it up to 50 degrees. The effects are digital algorithms, and the reverb is a Freeverb, eight combs and four allpasses a side.
STRETCH
WSOLA stretching, per sample and per note, from a quarter as long to four times. Each grain starts where it best continues what the last would have played next, so a tone stretched threefold keeps its level and its pitch, and the attack still comes out on its first sample.
WAVE EDIT
Put a marker on a moment and drag where it lands: the sound either side stretches or squeezes at its own pitch. DETECT puts a marker on every hit, and QUANTIZE moves them onto the song's grid, from quarters to sixty-fourths or triplets. GAIN draws the sound's level, from +12 to -60 dB. The sound itself is never changed.
ADVANCED PITCH
Cut a sound into 2 to 32 equal buckets, or one for each hit, and shift each on its own, up to 24 semitones either way, by the sample's pitch engine. With TIME a higher bucket is shorter and the sound after it comes sooner; with GRANULAR every bucket keeps its length.
THE SLICER
The slicer from Dropforge, the same cutting code: by TRANSIENTS, on a GRID or on the BEATS. Then SPREAD and LAY OUT put the slices into the bay's twelve samples and onto its song, in order.
PLAY AND THE MIX
PLAY stops a bay's song, and on again starts it from its first step, on that step. Drawn on an AUTOMATION lane it is read sixty-fourth by sixty-fourth, and THE MIX lists VOLUME, ACCENT and every bay's PLAY and LEVEL together, so an arrangement is drawn in one place.
LOCKS AND AUTOMATION
Eight lock lanes a bay reach every control on the bay's pages, its samples' 46 each among them. Up to 32 AUTOMATION lanes of 1 to 1,024 bars, each going round on its own length. A lock still wins where it holds.
MIDI AND OUTPUTS
Channels 1 to 8 play their bays' samples as pads, on notes 36 to 47, and channel 16 plays one sample across the keyboard. Nine stereo outputs: the mix, and one for each bay with OWN OUT.
YOURS
No license server, and no phone-home. Up to 128 sounds in a session, WAV or AIFF up to two minutes each, saved inside it, so a session opens anywhere with its sounds.
At a glance
| Format | VST3 instrument · Windows 64-bit |
|---|---|
| In development | macOS VST3 and Audio Unit |
| Bays | 8 · 12 samples each, 96 in all |
| The song | Up to 1,024 one-bar pages a bay · 64 steps a page, a sixty-fourth note a step |
| Lanes | 28 a page · 12 of samples at 5 velocities, 8 of effects, 8 of locks |
| The note | Chance, effect chance, a ratchet of 1 to 8 strikes, pan, stretch, force choke |
| Effects | Crush, reduce, a sixteenth-note delay, a Freeverb, pitch, stretch, reverse, pan · note by note |
| Samples | One-shot, mono legato or poly in chords of 4 · TIME or GRANULAR pitch · 46 controls each |
| Stretch | WSOLA, a quarter as long to four times, per sample and per note |
| Editing | WAVE EDIT · ADVANCED PITCH, 2 to 32 buckets, 24 semitones either way · THE SLICER |
| Automation | Up to 32 lanes of 1 to 1,024 bars · every bay's PLAY and LEVEL in THE MIX |
| Sounds | WAV or AIFF up to two minutes · up to 128 in a session, saved inside it |
| MIDI | Channels 1 to 8 play their bays on notes 36 to 47 · channel 16 the keys |
| Outputs | 9 stereo · the mix, and one for each bay |
| Voices | 64 at once across the machine |
| Parameters | 78 published, all automatable, and the pitch bend |
| The panel | 1680 by 960 · SONG, SAMPLE, WAVE EDIT, PITCH, SLICER and AUTOMATION |
| Validation | 47 of 47 validator tests · host-tested in Phonon |
| Activation | None. No license server, no phone-home |
