An acid voice and a 64-step sequencer in one window.

v0.4.0 · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS 11.0+ · Apple Silicon and Intel · 39 presets

after Donato Dozzy · Surgeon · Plastikman · Elektron parameter locks · Moog Grandmother

Why it exists.

akaBleep is a monophonic instrument for the bleep-bloop lineage of hypnotic techno, the school where one acid line mutating slowly over sixteen bars is the track.

Stock racks can get you there, but it means wiring a synth to a sequencer to a fistful of utilities and automation lanes. akaBleep folds the whole loop into one window: one plugin, on one MIDI track, that you can perform.

A short pitch blip into a resonant low-pass is the acid bloop. Push cutoff down and resonance up and the filter starts to talk.

The voice

Two multi-mode oscillators, each with tune, level, pulse width and a two-operator FM pair. A sub oscillator, a ring modulator and white noise feed the same mixer, then a tanh drive stage runs into a ladder filter.

Three envelopes shape it. An amp ADSR, a filter ADSR sweeping five octaves either way, and an exponential pitch decay, which is the one that makes the blip. Glide and an LFO round the voice out.

An akaElders mode opens a Grandmother-inspired expanded patch: oscillator sync, extra noise, and modulation routes the standard panel does not expose.

Parameter locks, across 64 steps

Four pages of sixteen steps, with variable pattern length and around forty parameters lockable per step. There are two ways in. REC captures locks live as you twist, and EDIT selects a step so that any knob you touch locks to it.

Each step carries a chord of up to four notes, plus velocity, gate and a probability. Generators cover four-on-the-floor, off-beats, eighths, Euclidean 3, 5 and 7, and sparse or dense random fills.

The sequencer phase-syncs to host PPQ, so patterns land where the transport says they should rather than where the plugin happened to start. Probability is what keeps a static loop alive over time.

Wiring, and then ruining it

The patch bay is a drag-jack-to-jack cable matrix. Sources are the LFO, the filter envelope, noise and velocity. Destinations are oscillator pitch and pulse width, cutoff, resonance and amplitude. Drag an input jack vertically to set depth, right-click a cable to cut it.

After the voice, the master chain runs chorus into phaser into bitcrush into ping-pong delay into reverb. Each stage auto-bypasses at zero mix, each is P-lockable per step, and the whole rack has its own preset bank and a randomiser.

That is the fast route from a clean bleep to a ruined, perfect dub-techno smear.

Signature features.

6 features

Monophonic acid voice

Two oscillators, sub and ring mod through a tanh drive into a ladder filter, with an exponential pitch decay for the blip.

64 steps, ~40 lockable parameters

Four pages of sixteen, REC and EDIT workflows, and per-step chords, velocity, gate and chance.

Drag-to-wire patch bay

A cable matrix from LFO, filter envelope, noise and velocity into pitch, width, cutoff, resonance and amplitude.

Master FX chain

Chorus, phaser, bitcrush, ping-pong delay and reverb, all P-lockable, with a preset bank and a randomiser.

Pattern generators

Four-on-the-floor, off-beats, eighths, Euclidean 3, 5 and 7, and sparse or dense random fills.

Locked to the host

Phase-syncs to host PPQ, with undo and redo across the sequencer and the voice.

Signal flow.

from the repo

        ┌─ osc 1 ─┐
        ├─ osc 2 ─┤
 MIDI ─▶┤  sub    ├─▶ mix ─▶ tanh drive ─▶ ladder filter ─▶ amp env ─▶┐
        └─ ring ──┘              ▲              ▲                       │
                                 │              │                       │
        LFO · filter env · noise · velocity  ──▶ patch bay              │
                                                                        ▼
        out ◀── reverb ◀── ping-pong delay ◀── bitcrush ◀── phaser ◀── chorus