TETSUO vs MicroLag

TETSUO is a chaotic percussion machine. No samples, no library. One voice built out of a pitched body with noise dragged through it, a resonant filter that saturates the harder you lean on it, a bitcrusher, and a waveshaper that runs from a bit of weight to total structural failure. The sequencer is sixteen unseen slots and STEPS knob decides how many of them fire, adding and taking away hits one at a time in a fixed order, so you can strip a pattern to the bone and build it back and the same beats come home. The SKIP control works against you on purpose, stealing hits at random while it plays, so it never quite settles. MUTATE modulates the pitch at random, setting fire to voices on every turn. You do not program TETSUO so much as negotiate with it. The strip along the top is how you attempt to hold onto anything. Sixty four steps, four turns of pattern, carved into as many as eight sections. Select a section. Find a sound. Hit RECORD, and that section keeps every knob position. Change it, record the next, then hit PLAY and it walks left to right dropping each snapshot in as it reaches it, looping. Drag the dividers to give a section longer or cut it short. It keeps settings, not audio, so the engine is playing live the entire way through. Sections save with your presets and your session. Fifteen factory presets to start from, and your own saved alongside them. A preset stores the knobs and the whole arrangement together. Tap the round gauge in the middle for presets, settings and the manual. AUv3 plugin and standalone app. Follows host tempo and transport, twelve automatable parameters, full MIDI control, factory and user presets, and a manual built into the app.

MicroLag is a delay audio processor that allows you to set the delay time in an exact number of samples. While there are already quite a few sample delay plugins available, I couldn’t find one that quite fit my needs, so I made one. MicroLag allows you to set relatively long delay times, e.g. up to around 1 second at 48KHz sampling rate. You can also smoothly toggle between the delayed and bypassed / dry signal. Finally, the actual delay time in milliseconds (depending on the host sample rate) is displayed. That’s basically it! MicroLag is an AUv3 effects plugin that can run standalone, or in any AUv3 compatible host such as Logic Pro, GarageBand or AUM. MicroLag currently runs on iPadOS / iOS (iPad & iPhone) and macOS (Intel & Silicon) and is available as a Universal Purchase from the Apple App Store. If you’re planning on using MicroLag on Mac / desktop, please ensure that your favourite DAW / host supports AUv3 (not just AU).