SA_BOTAGE is a glitch, slicer, fsu plugin, that continually records audio into a buffer, and plays back bits and slices of this buffer, selected by randomization and probabilities. Even though it has been pretty stable here for some time now, it is still early in development, and should be considered pre-alpha.

Waveform

This shows the buffered audio, along with two sliders that control the buffer length. Beats controls the number of beats in the buffer, and Slices decides how each beat is split up into smaller slices.. Changing the Beats or Slices can sometimes make the plugin go out of sync, but restarting playback re-synchronizes everything again.. The lighter green part shows the currently selected Range, while the lighter green shows how this range is further split up, and creates a smaller Loop part. The moving red line is the write/record position marker, and the green line is the playback cursor. If there is no active looping segment, the current slice is shown in a slightly darker grey..

Repeat

Every time the recording cursor enters a new slice, and there’s no active looping segment, something might happen. The big knob to the left is the probability that a range/loop will be selected, from 0% to 100%. The larger this is, the higher chance that something will happen. The length is decided by the Slices buttons, where each button turns on/off the possibility of a range with that specific number of slices may happen. So, in the screenshot above, where 1, 2, and 4 is active, the range is randomly wither one, two or four slices.

This range decides how long the current loop/repeat will last, and the second row of buttons, Split, decides how this range is split again into a smaller section. In the screenshot above, the range will be split in either 2, 3 or 4, and that final smaller section, is the part that will be looped for the duration of the range.

Range / Loop

When a range is selected, and a loop is repeating, there’s probabilities for something happening both at the start of the range, and each time the play cursor wraps around. There’s two columns here, the left one (Range) controls what happens when a range is selected and looping is about to start, and the right column (Loop) what happens every time the play cursor wraps around and restarts the loop.

Size decides the size of the small looping section (50% – 200% of current loop size)
Speed is the playback speed (50% – 200%)
Offset is slice offset (-16 to +16 slices, forward or backward)
Reverse is, well, reverse/backwards playback (reverses current direction, so you can make it go back and forth)
FX is not implemented yet.

Each part has a knob for setting the probability, and two sliders for setting minimum and maximum values.

Envelopes

Cutting and slicing audio can easily create sharp clicks and pops, because of abrupt waveform changes. To avoid this, there’e a simple envelope (Loop Env) to fade things quickly in and out.. You can select the duration of these fade in milliseconds..

Additionally, there’s a slice-envelope too (Slice Env), to create rhythmic patterns on top of everything else happening, specified in percentage of the slice length..


old video:

download (Linux, 64-bit, VST3)