Loop Breaker vs Drum Rack

Loop Breaker is a gamified audio processing environment that periodically forces you to make choices about how your audio loops should change and how your compositions should unfold. This is primarily achieved through a modifier system; every few bars, a new modifier appears in a queue. You must decide which of your loops should be affected by the modifier. If you make no choice, Loop Breaker will decide for you. Change is the only constant. Modifiers include standard audio effects like reverb, delay, chorus, filters, granular delay, auto-pan, and tremolo. Each of these effects has multiple parameters that are set on the fly and include various onset times. Other modifiers effect loop playback: you can change the playback speed, reverse playback direction, time-stretch, re-pitch, move loop brackets via the parts system, and slice loops and then shuffle, arpeggiate, or repeat them. Modifiers stack. Within minutes, your loops will wander down their own paths and recombine to create something previously unimaginable. Loop Breaker also contains a robust probability system for controlling how likely it is that modifier types will appear in the queue and how likely it is that an individual loop will be targeted for modification, should you cede decision-making responsibilities to Loop Breaker. The probability system responds to MIDI CC messages, so you can dynamically change probability settings with MIDI controllers, automation lanes in your DAW, or via modulation sources. Loop Breaker also contains a preset system for saving and recalling modifier stacks. Take your explorations as far as you want, save a new preset, and then recall it later on, even between sessions. Like the pads and probability system, presets also can be controlled via MIDI. Still not enough exploratory madness for you? Record and resample the audio output and then re-apply it to a pad or process it further in your DAW. Loop Breaker works both as a standalone app and as a AUv3 plug-in. Loop Breaker knows that you have a hard drive full of 4-bar loops that you never turned into finished compositions. Loop Breaker wants to help. Loop Breaker wants to make sure you don't get stuck in a loop.

Drum Rack builds every drum sound from scratch. No samples anywhere — the kick, snare, hat and clap are synthesised as you play them, which is why a kick can drop from 200 Hz to 49 Hz along a curve you draw with your finger. WHAT IT DOES Four synthesised voices, each with its own controls. Draw the pitch envelope of the kick and the snare by hand: drag a point, add a point, bend the curve between two points. Watch the rendered waveform change as you go. A 32-step sequencer with per-step velocity, timing nudge and ratchets, so a single step can hold a roll of up to eight hits. Time signatures from 3/4 to 7/4, grids from 1/8 to 1/32 including triplets. Eighteen genre presets, from house and techno to jungle, boom bap and reggaeton. Each one loads a full kit and a pattern to start from. Export a loop as a WAV file, or the pattern as MIDI. The MIDI carries velocity, nudge, ratchets and time signature, and lands on the General MIDI drum map — drop it on a drum rack in your own DAW and it plays on your own kit. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No account. No sign-in. No advertising. No analytics. No tracking. Your patterns stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded. FROM THE LAB Drum Rack is part of Lumlux Art Lab, a set of free browser tools for people who make music. The same drum machine runs on the website, so you can try it before installing anything. Made in Antwerp by FDR-Sound.