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Chris

Hi! I've got a new plugin you can have! These plugins come in Mac AU, and Mac, Windows and Linux VST. They are state of the art sound, have no DRM, and have totally minimal generic interface so you focus on your sounds.

Melt

TL:DW; Wobbly and weird!

Melt

As useful as utility plugins are, sometimes you just have to do something wobbly and weird. Here’s Melt!

To explain what it’s doing will be a little tricky. You can just download it and play with it, but if you want to know what’s under the hood, here goes.

Suppose you have a delay buffer. You can read ‘echoes’ out of the delay buffer. If you like, you can move them around, which changes their pitch.

What if you started reading at one point, and stopped at another? You’d get a delayed ‘moving average’, a series of samples combined. It would be duller, rolled-off.

If you took that section and moved IT, then you’d have a rolled-off, darker delay tap that changed pitch.

Now, what if you took all the start points and all the end points, and made them all wobble and sway around independently, so that the shifting delay taps also changed in tone color and volume even while they pitch-shifted around?

Well, that’s Melt. It’s pretty freaky, when cranked way up. You can run a long extended delay, causing it to resemble a strange retro ambience effect, or you can tighten it right up so that you have more of a chorusy thing. It probably should always have a bunch of pitch shift depth, otherwise it’s a mite boring. You can include dry, or just crank up the wobbly weirdness: should be nice on pads and things, or anything that has to be more dark and diffuse and unpredictable.

Speaking of unpredictable, I’d be working faster but my house got run over by a car, and my Mom recently went into the hospital with a medical emergency (back out and no worse for wear, which is more than can be said for my porch). I am going to try to keep up the pace, but it’s not been a great month for Chris from Airwindows, and I am hoping things get a little more manageable. The driver’s insurance company is going to pay for the porch but I may have to sic my house-insurance company on them, and I do have to handle all the hiring of contractors and all that, personally.

Airwindows is supported by my Patreon, which is not nearly enough to deal with any of these things going on. But I am still plugging away, and hope to soon put out the video game (now with Airwindows sound!) that I was working on much of last year, along with its code, including audio code and many other useful resources. I’m hoping that, just as I make tools for mixers, I can also be of service making tools (and experiments) for game-makers, and this might help support the Patreon.

Guitar Full Wave Rectification

I was just rebuilding an SG copy I own (Samick guitar, real bridge/tailpiece/pickups except the pickup baseplates were so worn out I had to put the Gibson pickups on Ibanez baseplates) when I discovered something. The Dan Armstrong ‘Green Ringer’ (or even a reissue, like the one I have) is far more significant to Frank Zappa’s solo tone than I’d imagined, with instances built into his famous SG and also a Strat (I think I hear this effect on ‘Watermelon In Easter Hay’), and here’s the deal…

It’s way more adaptable to any single-note-lead playing guitarist than you’d think. Or even some double-stops and chords. And it will not automatically make you sound like Frank… but it will mutate YOUR sound into a sort of hypercharged, octave-boosted version of your sound, with many similar effects. And, at least with my Samick SG and reissue Green Ringer, I can build it into the SG without routing or removing controls, and I have done. (see full post for the pictures) Read More

BuildATPDF

TL:DW; Design your own tone-shaped TPDF.

BuildATPDF

I explained how DoublePaul was made: taking a TPDF highpass dither, and including additional nearby samples to cause the tone of the noise to be more high-pitched.

Wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t give you a chance to play with it yourself :)

To use BuildATPDF the way I used it, set the middle sliders to -1 and +1. Then adjust the other sliders until you’ve tailored the sound of the noise in a way you like. With the other sliders at 0, you have PaulDither. If the surrounding sliders ‘oscillate’ (going minus, plus, minus, plus) you have more of what DoublePaul is. Tailor the highpass in ways gentle or obvious, or even darken the highpass while leaving its dither functionality intact! It’s the combination of a -1 and +1 tap that gives you highpassed TPDF. (This won’t work with +1 and +1, because it’s the same random noise passing through the plugin: it needs to play a positive node against a negative node)

Or, you can set up the -1 and +1 taps, and then just play with the sliders to see what it sounds like!

Airwindows is supported by my Patreon, and I’ve produced 44 plugins as free VST including this one. Amazingly, not all of them are dithers :)

Magneto-Dynamic Infundibulator

I HAVE CONSTRUCTED A MAGNETO-DYNAMIC INFUNDIBULATOR

*ahem!*

No, seriously, I have! Watch the video and you can construct one too! You’ll need an XLR cable, a transformer (like a 600 ohm telephone transformer with three windings), some little diodes like stompboxes use for clipping, and a teeny capacitor. Two of everything, for stereo. You’ll want a soldering iron (if needed, I can make a How To Solder video) and either a multimeter, or in a pinch, guitar cables and some kind of amp (as shown in the video). With these, you too can build what I’ve built.

This is a real thing. It’s inspired by the $3500 Gyraf Audio G21 “Magneto-Dynamic Infundibulum”. That is much better than this, much like a vintage Klon Centaur is much better than a modern MXR Distortion+ bought off Amazon.

But, you probably can’t have a Gyraf Audio Magneto-Dynamic Infundibulum (or a vintage Klon Centaur). And if you could, you’re probably not watching my videos. But you can have a magneto-dynamic infundibulator! And what’s more, you can use it: the homebrew version performs very respectably considering its humble origins. It leaves a lot out, but since you’re homebuilding it, you can experiment and see how many features of the Infundibulum you can incorporate. This device follows consistent principles, which I explain. It’s all in the video!

This sort of thing is supported by my Patreon. Support that, and I will construct again! I’m not sure if I’ll end up with anything quite this impressive, but let it be known that I’ve never been only about the software and plugins. I’ve developed everything from stompboxes to speaker designs (the SubKick video shows glimpses of some speakers I’ve made, you might not have noticed what they are since they’re so huge and strange) and I would love to bring my patrons along for the ride :)

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If you’re pledging the equivalent of three or more plugins per year, I’ll happily link you on the sidebar, including a link to your music or project! Message me to ask.