Witchpig’s Alien Step Mutha is a free step-sequenced multi-effects plug-in. But in addition to controls like impact, destroy, and subsonic/hypersonic, you’ll tweak settings by dragging little aliens around and summoning sequences from their mum.
Here, let me excerpt a bit of the walkthrough video to give a sense of why this will be a little out of the ordinary:
“Click on the mummy alien again, and then you can see the little yellow eyes lighting up as it moves through the sequence. If I switch it here, subsonic…”
Happily, the sonic results feel every bit as much the abduction to another world as the UI. Listen:
Here’s the full walkthrough:
And here’s what it does to your guitars and keyboards. Get, uh, probed I guess.
VST3 for macOS and Windows plus AU for macOS. And yes, this is of course an entry to KVR’s legendary Developer Challenge.
You’ll find info on this plus a ton of other free plug-ins over at Witchpig’s site:
Thanks to Dr. Walker for this one; almost seems like is what would happen if a genie asked him for three plug-in wishes.
Speaking of granting wishes, to convince macOS that you really do trust the weird aliens, you will need to go through the usual issue of approving running an unvalidated piece of code. Short version: just keep clicking through error messages and go to System Settings > Security > “Run Anyway” until it shuts up and finally loads the plug-in. (Reinstantiating the plug-in or sometimes rebooting the DAW / re-running validation is also probably necessary.)
If that didn’t refresh your memory of how to do this, the developer points to this video:
I still want a “Disable all safety protocols” feature for macOS, like on the Holodeck. It can come out in macOS Tenderloin as “Run with Scissors.”