Making Music
  Computer Music Software and Hardware

On the beat

The Beat Machine is undoubtedly the most interesting part of the program. If you're familiar with Propellerheads' ReCycle, many of the features here will be familiar.

Essentially, you adjust a Sensitivity control to cut the sample into slices, the idea being to slice the sample into beats. Each slice can be mapped to individual keys on the keyboard so the slices can be played with different timings and in different orders creating different rhythmic patterns.

A randomise function randomises the playback order of the slices so you can keep selecting it until you get a pattern you like. You can also apply different effects and modulations to different slices so there is lots of scope for producing a wide range of patterns from a single loop. Inevitably, the Sensitivity control will not catch all the beat points you want so you can add and remove them manually although this isn't as obvious as it could be.

The Beat Machine has two sub modes. As its name suggests, Global Edit mode allows effects and modulations to be applied to the entire sample. Changing the tempo stretches the beat without transposing the sound which is obviously very useful. Changes made in this mode are retained when you switch to Sliced Edit mode. Here you can choose the base key for the slices to be mapped to, and save the timing template as a MIDI file which can be used to trigger the slices from a sequencer.

If you go back to Global mode from Spliced mode, you lose all the splices and settings you made which seems unnecessary. At least you could be given the option of keeping them or saving the changes as a new loop.

Tardis

The manual describes Time Machine mode as a granular synthesiser in that it can change the speed of a sample while preserving the original pitch and vice versa. You use the Instrument Amp controls for this plus a few more that pop up when Time Machine mode is selected. These include Legato which preserves the sample playback position when switching between samples rather than starting from the beginning of each newly-triggered sample. There are also some Transient controls to help maintain sound quality through the processing.

The Modulation section includes a Pitch Envelope, an AHDSR (Attack, Hold, Decay, Sustain, Release) Envelope, an Envelope Follower, and two LFOs (Low Frequency Oscillators). The Hold phase of the second envelope can help create punchy bass and percussion sounds. This envelope can be routed to several destinations including volume, pan, tuning, cutoff frequency, resonance and the LFOs. LFO 1 can be routed to volume, pan or tune, while LFO 2 can be routed to the cutoff frequency or resonance. The Envelope Follower channels the amplitude envelope of the sample to one of four sources (cutoff frequency, resonance, volume, pan and tuning), which can generate both interesting musical results and interesting effects.

The Effects section features a Filter, Lo Fi, Distortion, Delay and a Master Filter. The Filter is quite comprehensive with six filter types and a little graph to show the shape of the filter as you adjust the controls. Lo Fi can change the sample's bit rate and resolution while Distortion creates an overload effect that adds harmonics. You can change the position of the Lo Fi and Distortion in the signal chain. Delay is simple with time and feedback controls. The Master Filter has four filter types and uses nodes which you can drag around the filter curve to make changes.

The modulations and effects can be applied to individual samples and slices, and are excellent ways to further tweak your samples and loops.

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