basement_crossfade 0.2

Here's a new version of basement_crossfade (a pluggo plugin for mac users) that uses a graphic interface.

basement_crossfade_0_2

If you prefer your plugin GUI-less, stick with the previous version. Here's a video showing how it can be used in Ableton Live.

Trivia: The interface graphics are based on the stylings of Stanton's scratch mixers.

Smooth crossfade plugin for Ableton Live

Smooth crossfade plugin for Ableton Live from basementhum on Vimeo.

basement_crossfade is a very simple mac plugin designed for use in Ableton Live.

It accepts two audio inputs, and a single crossfade control determines the mix sent to its output.

Download the plugin

To run this plugin you'll need to install the free max/msp runtime environment.

If you want to use this plugin in your own creations you can download the max/msp source document.

The plugin is a wrapper for the crossfade~ object from the RTC-lib.

Plugin: Auto Audio Humanize

I've just finished up another small utility plugin in sonic birth (mac only). It's a device designed to randomly delay or advance audio clips in Live by a small amount, though it should work in other hosts too.

There are only two parameters:

Early/late base: sets a kind of base delay for the audio.

Random delay: represents the amount of random delay that is added to the Early/late base value.

The random delay value is re-generated each time the incoming audio drops to digital silence, so it works well for 'monosyllabic' audio clips separated by empty space (if the device is preceded by a plugin that adds a tail to the sound, such as a reverb, the random delay value might not be recalculated before the following sound begins).

Here's a video to give a quick idea of how it works. Here I've duplicated a track containing a pattern of drum hits and applied the Auto Audio Humanizer to the duplicate track. You can hear a phasing effect when the displacement is very small, and a more distinct repeat when it is large.

If you'd like to use the plugin, do the following:

1. If you don't already have it, install Sonic Birth (provides the framework necessary for the plug to work).
2. Install the Auto Audio Humanize component
3. If you want to tinker with the circuit, download the source file

Ingenious plugin: Muxer Instant Sampler

Often, when musicians make plugins, they do without the gloss and bristling feature sets that characterise commercially developed devices and instead deliver something that solves a very particular problem in an ingenious way, like Muxer's Instant Sampler. It has no frills and a bargain basement GUI, but the potential to alter significantly the way you approach certain sequencing and performance tasks.

It's a midi triggered insert effect. It quietly sits on a track (perhaps on a bus) passing through audio untouched until it receives a midi note. While the note plays it records the incoming audio. On subsequent detection of that same note, the recorded audio is played back and the dry signal is muted until the note is released. Each note can hold its own recording.

The device has the capability of playing back from its buffer in reverse (reverse mode is activated by notes below a given velocity) and at altered speeds (via pitch bend).

With some thought and experimentation Instant Sampler can be effectively employed as part of a sequencing workflow as well as in a performance context.

Record stop: Turntable pitch drop audiounit plugin for OS X

So I've cobbled together a very simple AU plugin using Sonic Birth.

For a while I had looked around for a 'record stop' insert plugin for OSX, something that I could add to a signal path, which would recreate the effect of a record slowing to a stop when the turntable platter loses power. Bizarrely, Ableton Live (version 7 and lower) offers no way to recreate this effect. Although you can automate transpose of an audio clip, it doesn't allow you to do so if the clip's warp mode is set to Re-pitch, which it would need to be to emulate the slowing platter.

If you'd like to use the plugin, do the following:

1. If you don't already have it, install sonic birth (provides the framework necessary for the plug to work).
2. Install the Record Stop SB component
3. If you want to tinker with the circuit, download the source file