If you find yourself with some time on your hands this festive season, we can think of no better way to while away the hours than throwing some gnarly breaks into your DAW and banging out some hardcore jungle while Grandma roasts the turkey.
There are plenty of software tools available designed specifically to help you do just that – Ewan Bristow's Blasphemy and PotenzaDSP's Amigo Sampler, to name a few – but developer Zack Scholl, AKA Infinite Digits, has just released an addition to that catalogue that looks worthy of a place on any software-based break-juggler's Christmas list: AmenBreak VST.
AmenBreak VST is a plugin that's purpose-built for live break manipulation. Load up a sample and AmenBreak will automatically chop it into the desired number of slices, either on a grid or by the transients, and you're ready to reimagine it with probabilistic sequencing, multi-playhead retriggering, multiple playback modes and a smorgasbord of specialized effects.
The plugin's equipped with two main modes that offer both both simplified and intuitive operation and deeper fine-grained control. The LETS GO! mode achieves the former via two central dials: an Amen knob that controls the slice rearrangement pattern, and a Break knob that controls the probability of random break effects. Simply chucking in a break and playing around with these two controls is enough to get you started.
When you want to go deeper, the CAREFUL! mode provides granular control over five of AmenBreak's effects. Reverse does what you'd expect, Stretch time-stretches the audio using granular synthesis, Stutter introduces rapid repeating stutter effects, Tapestop emulates a tape machine stopping and starting and Tunnel creates a momentary delayed loop or transition using filtering and volume changes.
Alongside these effects, AmenBreak's Break control probabilistically applies several more break manipulations: Jump skips the playhead to a different part of the sample, Reroll re-randomizes the slice order and Decimation is a lo-fi bitcrushing effect. Finally, the Braindance control goes full Aphex Twin by introducing a chaotic multi-effect at random.
AmenBreak is a performance-oriented plugin, so you're able to link up with your DAW transport, trigger slices in real-time via MIDI and map MIDI CC to any of the plugin's controls. You can also drag and drop sequences to your DAW timeline to create arrangements and drive AmenBreak from the piano roll.
The plugin supports WAV, MP3, AIFF, FLAC and OGG file formats, and slice markers are conveniently saved via content hash, so you can reload an audio file and recover the slices and settings you dialled in earlier. What's more, AmenBreak can import slice marker positions from specialized formats compatible with Renoise and the Teenage Engineering OP-1.
AmenBreak VST is currently on offer for a discounted price of $19.00. There's also a generous free version that includes the full sound engine in mono, but you won't get a few of the effects, and you won't be able to preserve the pitch of a sample when it's time-stretched. (It's definitely still worth a download if you can't afford the full version.)
AmenBreak VST is available now for macOS and Windows in AU/VST3 formats and a standalone app. Find out more and download AmenBreak VST.
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