BUILD YOUR OWN PLUGINS

Creating your own instruments and effects is surely the best way to get a completely custom sound. In this feature we detail three of the best ways to build DIY synths and effects

Back in the olden days, many people would fiddle around with the innards of their studio kit to change how it operated and sounded. Things aren’t quite so simple in today’s digital studio. The complexity and exacting nature of digital audio hardware does not lend itself to a bit of casual circuit-bending, and the source program code that underlies commercial audio software is locked down tighter than a hipster’s jeans. One solution for those wishing to tinker in the digital audio world is to take a computer science degree, and then use that knowledge to start developing their own processors and instruments. This is an extraordinarily longwinded way of getting into a bit of DIY plugin making, though, so thankfully there are other options – at least three as it goes – that require a lot less mucking about!

At the simplest end of the spectrum are “plugin chainers” such as Blue Cat’s PatchWork. In essence, a chainer is a plugin that hosts other plugins, thereby allowing you to create your own custom chains of processors and instruments. But chainers are a limited solution, incapable of detailed patching and modification, and restricted to the plugins you have available in the first place. They can also be fiddly due to the need to configure each plugin’s parameters individually.