Chiptune Sequencer vs Roostbox

T.W.Y. MUSIC DEPT. Presents: C.H.I.P. is a Chiptune Handheld Instrument Player: sequence and build four channel chiptune, the sound of a 1989 handheld console. Arrange is your song. Sections stack top to bottom and play in order. Drag one to move it, or drag its right edge to loop it. Pattern is where notes go. Four lanes down, time across. Tap a cell, then play a key or a drum pad to fill it. Effects come from a menu you can read, so you pick Arpeggio, major instead of memorising a code. Sound is the synth. Every control has a plain name, a sentence saying what it does, and a button to hear the result. There is a preset library if you would rather start from something that already works. Song is everything else. Tempo, tuning, the mixer, saving, and export. The whole interface is drawn a pixel at a time, in the style of an early nineties desktop. Have it in grey, or behind a green LCD. Every sound is made as you play. Nothing streams, and there is no sample pack hiding in the background. Two pulse channels, a wave channel you can shape, and a noise channel, emulated at the register level so the controls mean what they meant on the original chip. Plug in a MIDI keyboard to play the instrument you are editing, and write notes straight into the grid. Export a mix as a WAV, or the song as a MIDI file to carry into whatever studio you use. There is a compare screen for the curious. Load a recording of real hardware and it lines the two up to the sample, matches their levels, and tells you how far apart they are and where. You can listen to just the difference. Songs and save files read and write in their original layouts, byte for byte, so something you write here can go back to the device it came from. Whether you want a quick lofi beat or a finished song, it is a music maker for sitting down and actually writing. Made for people who like retro sound and do not want a manual to get going.

Roostbox is a groovebox that looks like a retro arcade cabinet and plays like one. It makes techno and other electronic music live, by hand: fly a ship through a beat, ride the faders, flick the stick, and every gesture you make is recorded and loops with the beat. It is a different way to play electronic music live. There is no step grid to program and no timeline to edit. Everything on screen is a control, you play it with two thumbs, and the loop keeps what you played. Two kits are in the box, and everything is free: both kits, the whole performance surface and the AUv3 plugin. No purchase, no account, no ads. Play it standalone on iPhone or iPad, or load it as an instrument inside AUM, Loopy Pro, Cubasis, Drambo or Logic Pro for iPad. TWO KITS IN THE BOX SPACE: fly a ship through a beat. Where the ship goes picks the groove: four-on-the-floor, backbeat, offbeat, broken, sixteenths. The cockpit page holds the mixer, a stick for filter and grit, overdrive, pump, tape, delay, reverb, crush and a DJ filter. A 303-style acid bass and a drum synth make the sound. PLIVKA: a four-track techno box. Kick, bass, snare and hat, each with a pattern control and a hit control, laid out over five pages: Rhythm, Sound, Perform, FX and Mix. The bass line is a Turing machine that mutates as much or as little as you let it. UNDER THE HOOD - Euclidean rhythm generators, a Turing machine sequencer and a trigger sequencer drive the patterns. - A drum synth and a 303-style acid bass synth make the sound. No samples. - Every fader move is recorded as motion and loops with the beat. Undo and redo if you change your mind. - Scenes: snapshot the whole kit and switch on the next sixteenth, beat, bar or pattern. - Master effects: delay and reverb sends, filter, crush, tape, compressor, sidechain pump and a limiter. - MIDI learn: map any control to a hardware controller. - Landscape only. Made for two thumbs. AUv3 The plugin is the same instrument as the app, with the same two kits, and it is free. It follows the host tempo and transport. Jam in the standalone app; record into your DAW with the plugin. WHAT 1.0 IS Two kits, built to be played. Building your own kits is not part of this version. Roostbox is made by one person. If something is broken, tell me: reach.freefall.studio@gmail.com