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Tracktion Software delivers Chop Suey, a new kick drum designer plugin with a difference

Tracktion Software is serving up Chop Suey, a new kick drum designer plugin from the creative minds of mathematician and AI specialist Peter V and German techno artist Björn Torwellen.

Is sequencing your kick elements a better option than layering them

While many kick instruments enable you to layer sounds, Chop Suey eschews this approach and enables you sequence them instead. The theory is that this will eliminate any potential phasing issues and ‘muddiness’.

In fact, you will be able to create combined kicks that “maintain the crisp transient, the punch of the body and the characteristic tail”.

You can shape your kick on the visual interface by creating and editing curves. This is done individually for the transient, punch and tail, so any edits made to one element won’t affect the others.

Additionally, Chop Suey filter has been designed specifically for kick editing and is said to react extremely fast to cutoff and resonance changes and not to introduce ‘zipper noise’ or artefacts.

Another intriguing feature includes Punch Protect; when activated, frequencies below ~150 Hz (the ones that deliver the punch, basically) are protected from the filter.

Chop Suey is available now for PC and Mac in VST/AU formats.

Chop Suey currently costs $58, the price will increase to $89 after 22 May. There’s also a demo version for you to try.

Find out more on the Tracktion Software website.

Soma Laboratory has introduced their new synth Terra, that they describe as a “highly conceptual device”.

Behind the extremely simple interface hides a complex polyphonic, microtonal synthesizer, with a broad and flexible sound palette that ranges from classical beautiful tones to complex atonal noise, and offers smooth and fast transitions between these extremes.

The keyboard design invites new playing techniques and covers the full range of a grand piano, with the possibility to tune each note with an accuracy of 125 steps per semitone.

The keyboard consists of 12-note sensors, with velocity and pressure sensitivity allowing for the manual creation of slow attack and vibrato, 4 dynamic sensors for timbre modification and control, 4 pitch-shifting sensors and 2 hold sensors for holding the state of the timbre and note sensors.

“Terra is our dream about a bright future where we will be both technologically advanced and more connected to nature,” they note, “where machines and technology are not a prison for our feelings and spirit but their extension.”

Inside Terra there is a three-axis motion sensor for creating a variety of different modulations by simple intuitive movements of your hands and body.

Terra is digital and contains 32 complex synthesis algorithms. Each algorithm has been carefully designed to be a complete and flexible musical instrument on its own, ready for learning and playing in its own unique way. The goal is to free the musician from long exhausting programming, setting hundreds of parameters for creating one timbre, and instead putting the focus directly on music and performance and following your imagination and inspiration.

Additionally, Terra has a simple interface that gives you instant access to all its functions in several touches, including saving and loading the 96 presets that are stored directly on the playing sensors. Terra has no display. Instead, it shows and lets you dial all necessary data on the 6 LED-sensor triangle in the center.

The housing of Terra comes from a solid piece of wood, making each instrument unique and slightly different. In the photo above and in the announcement demo video you can see the prototype of the synth.

Pricing and availability is to be announced.

Sensel has announced that it is discontinuing the Morph, it’s expressive multi-function music controller. Instead, focuses on Laptop Touchpad market.

The Morph is a highly sensitive multi-touch control surface that can sense overlays, letting it ‘morph’ to be used as a keyboard, drum pad, x/y controller and more.

The company says that challenges of manufacturing the Morph have forced them to pivot to focus on their enterprise business solutions.

Sensel’s announcement:

“Ever since we sold out of Morphs in 2021, many of you have been eagerly awaiting updates about the availability of the Sensel Morph. Today, we can provide some closure and announce that unfortunately, Sensel will no longer be producing the current Morph.

Like many of you, we feel like we were able to only scratch the surface of the potential of the Morph, and we’re disappointed that we can no longer produce it. Production challenges were myriad: the unavailability of what was once a widely available microprocessor, the lack of supply of the resistive ink that was used for the Morph’s pressure sensor, travel restrictions, and internal competition with the rapidly growing demand for Sensel’s enterprise solutions.

Over the past year, we explored many avenues to restart production: pitching investors, partnering with other music companies, creative arrangements with high-volume manufacturers, and redesigning the Morph. In the end, we had to make the difficult decision to shift our focus to our core enterprise business, especially in the laptop touchpad market. Sensel’s technology is currently being used in the haptic touchpads of Lenovo’s X1 Titanium Yoga and Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio, and will be featured in several other models in the near future. We’re thrilled to enable the next generation haptic touchpads for Windows laptops, and to get our tech into the hands of millions of users.

For those of you who backed the Morph on Kickstarter or purchased one after, we sincerely thank you for being a part of the Sensel journey and helping us get to where we are today. We still can’t wait to see what you create. And for those who signed up for our back-in-stock notifications while we’ve been sold out, we apologize for the long wait and for not being able to fulfill your requests.

Making the Morph and seeing what creative people could do with it was incredibly rewarding. From the same controller, we saw virtuosic finger drum jams, slick productions, tripped out visuals, and interactive installations. The creative minds that got behind the Morph were just awesome. As we move forward with our enterprise business, we hope to influence those markets with what we’ve learned, and work with innovative tool-makers to bring the creativity and richness-of-interaction of the Morph to everyday consumer devices like laptops and phones.

Down the road, we will also rethink the Morph product line and potentially bring another consumer product to market. While there are no plans to do so right now, we welcome all feedback and suggestions.”

Sensel has a FAQ page on their website for Morph owners.