FreeVST3 · AUBlack Friday · 50% off
Draw blocks on a 16-step grid and your track plays through them: beat repeats, half time, reverse, scratches, tape stops, spin-ups and trance gates, all locked to your DAW's tempo. Start from 54 free patterns, or all 192 with the unlock, and switch between them with MIDI notes.
Unlock all 12 slots, all 192 patterns, layers and saving your own for £29.99, once. Black Friday: 50% off (£14.99) until 30 November. 50% off for the email list until 24 November.
Unlock for £29.99Unlock for £14.99Free with 2 slots and 54 patterns, no time limit · £29.99 once (£14.99 for Black Friday, until 30 November) for all 12 slots and 192 patterns · VST3 & AU · macOS, Windows & Linux
Eight blocks
Press one to play it over a house loop with a gliding synth bassline. The sound comes from simpleStutter's own engine, running in your browser.This browser can't play the sound here, but the plugin plays every one of these in your DAW.
Screenshots
Everything is in one window: the pattern slots along the top, the blocks over the waveform with the volume and filter lanes under them, and the tools along the bottom.
The loader opens from the pattern's name: search the 192 factory patterns by name or browse them by category, and save your own into any category. Tape glitch, picked here, fits six kinds of block into one bar.
A trance gate over half time, with the volume lane opened up. Volume and filter blocks each have a lane under the others: pick a ready-made fade, pump, gate, filter sweep or wobble, or move the points to draw your own.
A two-bar stutter build. Each repeat block gets its own slice, from 1/2 down to 1/64, and the line under the grid shows how far the sound falls behind the beat. Any block can also play at random, or only on the times round you pick, such as 1 in 4 for a fill on every fourth bar.
An 8-bit crush under a 1/16 repeat. Filter blocks have a lane of their own under the volume lane, so they play over the others: sweeps, fixed tones, wobbles, crush and drive.
How it works
Add simpleStutter as an effect on any track, bus or your master. Press play in your DAW: where the pattern is empty, the track plays untouched.
Click the pattern's name to load a factory pattern, or pick a block at the bottom and drag it across the grid. Gates and filter sweeps go in the lanes underneath. Everything follows your DAW's tempo.
Keep up to 12 patterns in slots. Play C to B on the track and the switch lands right on the note, or automate the Pattern parameter.
New to it? The 2-page quick start covers the basics and the shortcuts, and the user guide (PDF, 29 pages) covers everything.
Get it free
The free version has every block, volume shape and filter, slots 1 and 2 and 54 of the factory patterns, with no time limit. It's VST3 on every platform and AU on macOS, and you don't need an account or a card.
Manual: quick start · user guide (PDF)
Version 0.1.1 · macOS 11 or later (Apple silicon and Intel) · Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit · Linux x86-64
Unlock all 12 slots, all 192 patterns, layers and saving your own for £29.99, once. Black Friday: 50% off (£14.99) until 30 November. 50% off for the email list until 24 November.
Unlock for £29.99Unlock for £14.99
£29.99
Black Friday: 50% off, £14.99 until 30 November
50% off for the email list: £14.99 until 24 November
One-time unlock, on up to 5 computers. It adds all 12 slots, all 192 factory patterns, up to four layers and saving your own patterns and blocks.
Unlock simpleStutterLicence key emailed instantly · 14-day refund, no questions asked · Paid securely through Lemon Squeezy
Help
The free version has every block, volume shape and filter, slots 1 and 2, and 54 of the factory patterns, with no time limit. The one-time unlock (£29.99) adds all 12 slots, all 192 patterns, up to four layers and saving your own patterns and blocks. Your projects keep every slot's pattern either way.
Any DAW that loads VST3 plugins, or AU on a Mac, such as Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, Cubase, Studio One, REAPER and Bitwig Studio. It's an effect, so it goes on an audio track, a bus or your master.
Send MIDI notes to the track simpleStutter is on: C picks slot 1, C# slot 2 and so on up to B for slot 12, in any octave, and the switch lands exactly on the note. In a DAW that doesn't send MIDI to effects, automate the Pattern parameter instead. Slots 3 to 12 come with the unlock.
No. Where the pattern is empty you hear your track bit for bit, 32 samples late, and simpleStutter tells your DAW about that delay so everything stays in time. While your DAW is stopped, it passes the sound through too.
With the unlock, yes. Save a pattern into My patterns, one of the factory categories or a category of your own, and it's there in every project. Selected blocks save the same way, into their tool's row or a category of your own with its own colour, ready to stamp into any pattern. Copying and pasting whole patterns between slots and projects works in the free version too.
In the way it works, yes: you draw time effects on a grid with volume and filter effects in lanes under them, locked to the beat, and switch patterns as the track plays. simpleStutter is my own plugin, and I'm not affiliated with Image-Line, who make Gross Beat. I've compared it with the free Gross Beat alternatives, and written up halftime plugins, trance gates and stutter effects on their own.
For anything else, email me at support@simplesoundbank.com. My other plugins, including the free simpleTapeStop, are on the plugins page.