Riffer takes the boring old piano roll and stuffs it full of probability and possibility in the best MIDI sequencer your DAW doesn’t have.

Riffer 3.0

I’m a big fan of Riffer. If you’ve ever stared at a piano roll and see only emptiness then Riffer is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to throw some notes up so you can play with sounds and ideas then Riffer is for you. If you just want to revitalise your ideas, find an alternative riff or try something out then Riffer is for you. It takes all the chore out of coming up with melodies and musical riffs and lets you play with ideas quicker and easier than any other software sequencer.

Riffer has a hardware feel about it. It works like a step-sequencer with a grid system onto which you can paint notes into short (or not so short) patterns. Or, if you prefer, you can hit the big dice button and let Riffer generate some ideas for you. You can quantize, swing and apply scales with a quick flex of your mouse. You can set the number of notes being generated and circle them around a root note. You can tie, sustain and lock individual notes while the others get randomised around them.

Set it running and Riffer will keep on generating a new riff on every new cycle, forever, if you want.

I usually use it to throw something at a synth I want to play with. It’s funny how I often find myself back in Riffer playing with the melody more than playing with the sound I was trying to design.

Poly mode and Multi-Riffs

The new version 3.0 update brings in a Polyphonic Mode and a Multi-Riff engine. This is essentially 4 Riffers patterns running simultaneously generating complex polyphonic and polyrhythmic ideas by all running to the same MIDI destination. You can turn the 4 patterns on and off for a bit of on-the-fly arranging or edit them together for some shared notes which you can then affect differently in their own pattern.

Density

Density appears onscreen a bit like the velocity lane but dictates note repeats, stuttering or ratcheting. You can have up to 8 repeats per note.

MIDI In

A new MIDI Input mode releases Riffer from the timeline and will now playback when it receives MIDI rather than just when you press play. So it plays when you play a note and you can also use it for transposition.

Another new feature is the ability to map MIDI controls to parameters within Riffer which frees you from the mouse.

Smart Sequencing

Riffer is available as VST, AU and AAX plugin for macOS and Windows for €39. You can also pick it up for iOS for $7.99. Drop it on a track in your DAW and if becomes a MIDI input device for your other MIDI tracks. Or send it out to hardware synths as a great way to involve the power and versatility of software without it feeling like you’re using a DAW.

More information

• AudioModern Riffer
• More from Audio Modern.

Video

 

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Caio M. Jiacomini (@caiojmini) is a sound designer, developer and composer who builds his own audio tools as he needs them for projects. The latest is Vendaval a synthesizer that models the sound of wind.

Vendaval

It works by filtering the sound of pink noise and sounds incredibly convincing. There are four different algorithms at play modelling different aspects of air in motion. There’s Wooing, Background, Gusts and Rumble. All of them have a number of parameters to set the perfect amount of gusting woos or background rumbles. There are also some global controls over the filtering and envelope of the sound as well as a good dose of reverb at the end.

Vendaval is open source and developed with Csound that has to be installed for the plugin to work. Although it’s free of charge do consider throwing Caio a tip for his great work.

He’s got a couple of other plugins available too.

Granulera

Possibly more impressive is this three oscillator granular synthesizer that’s full of randomisation and modulation. It’s pretty straight forward and the layout is nice and clear. Pick your waveforms, apply density and variation and then go to town on the LFO.

Convulera

A straight-forward audio convolution plugin that can take reverb impulses or any other audio you want to pull the essence out of.

All of them work with Csound as VST plugins for macOS and Windows.

More information

• caiojmini website.
• caiojmini Twitter.
• Plugs available via itch.io

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