Dillon Bastan, prolific Max for Live patch stylist to the stars, is at it again. BEAST Repeat takes the fun glitchiness of Ableton’s stock Beat Repeat and adds extensive new ways to re-pitch, fade, stretch, twist, gate, pan, filter, and generally mangle per-pattern and per-beat. And it’s free?!
Whatever genre of music you make now, you’re now an IDM artist. That’s just how it’s going to be. Or experimental or something. Glitched-out EDM. You can make up a new genre, like “beastiful.” “Beastiary.” “Faunacore.”
Take in the promo video (90s TV ad style!):
Let’s just copy-paste all the stuff it does, because it’s a lot. BEAST Repeat starts with doing everything Beat Repeat does, and adds all this:
- Variation options for repeat Interval and repeat Gate
- More variation modes and interval options
- Stepped decay and spray for repeat length (Grid)
- A width for each repeat that silence/gates in the middle of each repeat based on the width, with stepped decay option
- Fade in/out for each repeat
- Pitch up options with pitch decay either up or down. And a per repeat pitch envelope option
- FFT and Overlap Add real time pitch shift pitch mode to maintain the same speed (lofi) as well as classic repitch speed mode
- Speed stretching options, with granular or phase vocoder (FFT) strecth option. Including stepped decay or per repeat envelope options
- Sample redux (crush) with stepped decay or spray options
- Panning with stepped decay or spray options
- Filter with 3 modes, Q, stepped decay, and per repeat envelope options
- Overdrive with tone knob
- Boomerang option for all stepped decay parameters to boomerang back at a set triangle distribution. Timing can match gate or be custom
- Parameter snapshot system for dynamic repeat setting changes. Includes a variation setting for dynamic settings changes
- Reverse playback options with random direction setting
- Formant shifting with stepped decay and spary
- Mono repeat mode
How much would you pay for this kind of Max-powered functionality? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred dollars? Well, this one’s pay what you like, starting at absolutely nothing at all. (Though if you do have some of those mystical dollars, toss them into the donation pot to support development just like this!)
I mean, sure, Ableton could have refreshed Beat Repeat the way they’ve done with classics like Erosion. But then they’d have some tasteful UI and carefully considered features and said no to a lot of things and — in this context that would have been totally the wrong thing. You want your Beat Repeat to get in there and add some mayhem. Dillon kept the UI navigable, but added all the extras into a delicious sambal of effects processing is just what the doctor ordered.
Watch the walkthrough, go forth, and let no repeat go unmodified. Pour that sauce on. Enjoy.
Full credit to Yeuda / sidebrain, who caught this way before I did. Then I woke up, found this tab, remembered I meant to share this, and promptly got distracted warping repeats.
If you enjoy this sort of thing, and maybe want something that’ll run in other hosts, here are two favorites:
Those even run on Linux as well as Mac and Windows. Oh, and, Replicant and Replicant 2 are available free/legacy from Audio Damage, too; about 20 years ago I (over)used that first version of Replicant.)
Now enjoy The Beast.
Previously: