Perforator

What it does

A rhythmic gate. It snips, gaps and filters incoming audio into a stepped pattern, so a held pad or a sustained string line comes out as a rhythm instead. The pattern is drawn by pulling the step lines up and down, the step count can be changed, and a filter sits beside the gate. Tuning the slice envelopes moves it from hard staccato trance gating toward the pumping of a loose sidechain compressor. Parameters can be driven by MIDI from the host, and it accepts a sidechain input.

In the demo

Jade works in GarageBand first, with an instance on three tracks of a pop sketch, switching each one in and out so what the gate is doing to that part alone is audible, then changing presets on each track as the loop cycles. She then opens an ambient noise project in AUM and uses it for undercurrent rhythm instead.

Worth knowing

Jade sets up neither the MIDI mapping nor the sidechain here, and points at another channel’s tutorial for the mapping. The app needs something that sustains to work on, so material that is already rhythmic gives it far less to cut into.