Tool Much Fun 20
“What’s taking him so long?” is what you were thinking. Or what I hope you were thinking. Or at least that’s what I would be thinking if our roles were reversed. I’ve just gotten my first new Mac in several years and rather than using Migration Assistant, I am installing everything from scratch. This is arduous and has distracted me from other work like doing these posts. But because it’s such a snappy machine, hopefully it will make the process quicker in the long run. Or maybe not. A lot of blogging is fiddly work, choosing pictures, changing formats from that awful WebP or AVIF stuff and reformatting them. Plus as I’ve mentioned before, Squarespace’s editing features leave a little to be desired. So without further ado, here’s the goodies — a mix of the easily found and obscure, but both interesting.
Also, I’ve been told that some people really do want an email when a new post is out, so I am offering you the ability to sign up here:
This edition offers:
Samples, Kontakt instruments, Music, Fonts, Mac, iOS, Graphics, Publishing, Video, Development, AI, Social Media, Training, File sharing and Media Consumption.
Samples
Although this company makes Kick and Bass plugins and Serum presets I have chosen to highlight their sample pack called "Calcium Drum Loops”. I imagine more will come and be named after other elements.
A reasonable range including Sitar, Dholak, Santoor, Strings, Hand Claps and effects.
Midierror OP-A Loops: Sounds of the OP-A FM synthesizer
Basses, leads and pads made with an FM synthesiser originally for an Arduino. 114 loops are included.
Kontakt Instruments
Any relation to Father O’Blivion?
“Cinematic Rhythms From Another Realm”
125 instruments that can be blended and morphed between each other to make dark dystopian soundtrack and score pieces. A 32-step sequencers is included to make patterns from.
Another of those “how did they do that?” style of Kontakt instruments which is designed for making grandiose, evocative, cinematic soundtrack type pieces. This one includes prepared instruments, experimental sounds and aleatoric performances which can be blended and tweaked in the usual ways to get huge dramatic sounds.
Music
A specialized loft effect plugin with curated distortion and filters to make your audio sound like it’s coming from a phone’s speakers (clean or clogged with pocket lint) or from headphones. Includes handy features like auto gain and blend control.
An “Online voice recorder”. It’s possible that this is called a “voice recorder” for marketing purposes, aiming at people who want to quickly capture a vocal line and share it to friends. But I don’t think it checks to make sure it’s only voice. I found it when someone shared a whole song. I suggested using Clyp instead.
MIDI LFOs — you know when you’re using a synth and you find when turning one of the knobs it sounds cool when you do it rhythmically? Well not all synths have internal LFOs that let you twist those knobs when you want. This plugin lets you turn those knobs virtually by sending MIDI CC values in various patterns. This kind of app seems more common on iOS so it’s good to see another appear for using on the Mac.
“The Ultimate Kick Layering Engine”. To get that perfect kick sound, usually for EDM, Hip Hop, Rap or Trance genres. Compare with Steinberg and Cableguys.
They call it a “ceremonial reverb”, as it is not for getting sounds to sound like they are in normal spaces. Get an algorithmic or Impulse Response reverb for that kind of thing. This has only 5 controls for getting otherworldly sounds, and it’s free.
A fairly high-priced but possibly feature-rich synth with micro tuning capability — which they call “meta tuning” — because it can be adjusted per key. For Mac or Windows.
They also make MultiLFO, which lets you combine up to 16 wavetables to modulate things like pan, volume or filter cutoff, and MindEntrainer which is for creating binaural beats. It’s also available for Android.
A virtual instrument — i.e. rompler — that is claimed to be able to produce a range of sounds, but the style is not specified in the text description, so you'll need to watch the Youtube video. I did and heard only two patches in the demo: shoegaze/dreamy pads and sawtoothy synths. Delay, Reverb, Pan and ADSR controls are included.
A developer that is obscure in my travels — possibly because they are from Switzerland — they make a range of instruments and effects plugins such as E Funk Synth, Smooth Jazz Guitar, Keyaffair (a 90s electric piano), AL D1 and AL 9000 (Linndrum drum machine clones), and the Sliderman Compressor. The quality seems quite good — have a listen to the demos.
Bring your own grapes
It’s your time to Skein
Weird noisemakers Glitchmachines return with their own FM synth. This boasts “4 LFOs with 15 wave shapes, 4 modulation sequencers with various utilities and up to 32 steps”. Also includes distortion, bit crusher, chorus, phaser, delay, reverb and buffer effects.
Does Dax know about that key?
Composers use sample libraries to create scores or songs, and each one uses different keys for articulations, which can get messy, annoying or confusing. This software is a collection of articulation-switching presets designed to support 1,000 commercial sample libraries such as Spitfire, Vienna Symphonic Library, Eastwest, Orchestral Tools, 8dio and Cinematic Instruments.
An interface for the brave at heart
Touted as a “semi modular beat-machine” this one has pleasantly coloured but maddeningly copious controls. Includes a sample slicer, 2 FM synths, 3 loopers, 3 send effects, 32 step sequencer, many onboard effects, internal bus routing… I can’t do this one justice in a summary. Check out the web page to get the full list of features. Here’s the direct link to the App Store version.
Four modulation effects — Chorus, Vibrato, Tremolo, and Rotary — but with a UI that looks like a vintage desk fan just for fun and to be whimsical.
“A dynamic processor (does that mean compressor?) that enables you to design your own gain reduction curve.” A free lite version is offered.
Tools and Utilities
Tracktion made their own keyboard live-performance tool. Compare with Camelot, KeyStage, the Nembrini one, Kushview, NewSonicArts one, and Omnibus who is also makes:
A “virtual aux cord for your session”. Not sure why the title is in all caps. Anyway this lets you transmit lossless stereo or multichannel DAW audio across Macs and PCs on the same network at low latency without any hardware. Compare with Blue Cat Connector.
A plugin that allows you to stream lossless audio directly from your DAW to any web browser-capable device. They do warn that the feature has been created with a feature that has been deprecated, so this may not work at some point in the future when browser vendors remove support for this. Caveat emptor.
It’s a breeze using this plugin
Rubik would like this
A DAW that has been designed with 3D/spatial audio as part of the interface rather than as a bolt-on feature as we find in traditional DAWs. A free version gives you access to some basic features and a >2GB sample library.
An AI-algorithm based site for a number of splitting tasks including separating vocals from the tracks they are in, splitting tracks into stems, pitch changing, BPM discovery, basic trimming and joining, a karaoke function and even record a new track directly using the browser including auto gain control, noise suppression and echo cancellation. They point out that the recorded files don’t leave your device. At least some of this is free but there is a way to support them via their Patreon. Compare the splitting function with Lalal.
After some other music and audio plugins not listed here? Check out this new online store Melodex I have discovered recently. Many of the big brands are available.
mac
Mac
Screen recording and sharing. Includes view tracking analytics, automatic chapter creation, calls-to-action and timeline synced comments, plus 4K resolution.
A text-based notes app for quickly capturing ideas but it also includes inline calculations like we first saw in Solulver many years ago.
An app for creating your own mix of ambient sounds. It’s open source and I asked the developer about the use of the resulting audio in your compositions, and he said “Absolutely! Some of the sounds Blankie uses do have licenses that may require a form of attribution for their use, but all of them can still be used commercially.” You can find more specific details for each sound on the credits page of the Blankie website.
The Control Strip is back! Almost. Many old-school Mac users will remember this utility last seen in MacOS 9. This utility brings the aesthetic back more as a launcher, perhaps more like the also abandoned 3rd-party utility DragThing.
It has more customisation options than the original Control Strip which Apple abandoned in favor of the Dock. These include vertical orientation and drag and drop of your favorite items. You can also take quick notes.
ios
iOS
In an increasingly crowded space, this one is a combination of multiple clipboard and text replacer. <uch like Typinator for macOS, this one supports text variables so you can quickly compose personalized email replies or other mail-merge type text. A free version gives you 4 slots, then upgrade to Pro for AU$60 annually.
Stuck in Vim and can never leave? This is a Safari extension which lets you use the ancient Vim keyboard shortcuts to navigate web pages. The keys are customizable, which may or may not be possible in Vim but if they are it isn’t something most people know how to do.
Local upscaling of video to up to 8K resolution using the power of your GPU. Supports batch conversion, drag and drop and keyboard shortcuts if you do it often. Works on macOS as well.
An all-in-one social media feed reader. “Tapestry combines posts from your favorite social media services like Bluesky, Mastodon, Tumblr and others with RSS feeds, podcasts, YouTube channels and more.” Plus it can be configured to detect and hide spoilers about shows or items you haven’t watched yet, maybe because you’re too busy reading social media posts.
This app lets you impress your friends by making widgets from the same image you use as your wallpaper so you can have minimal icons on one of the Springboard screens and see more of your chosen picture.
iOS Graphics
Where’s the nearest crop?
This is a “node editor for creating live graphics, animations, automations and interfaces […] you can connect nodes that flow in all directions. You can create graphics or camera filters with Pixel Nodes, animate with Float nodes, build a UI with View Nodes and use JavaScript with Data Nodes.” Surprisingly it’s free.
After what to me seemed like a lengthy period stuck in beta testing purgatory, it’s finally out. Oringally mentioned back in TMF 8. With it you can create symmetrical geometric graphics by tweaking an impressive over 40 parameters plus colors. Export as still images or animations. The export resolution is not listed in the app notes. Try it for 2 weeks then subscribe monthly or annually.
Graphics
Make things look technical
A range of assets such as graphs & diagrams, schemes, surfaces, layouts, gradient textures and warped gradients plus the usual random vector graphics that look cool as elements in your designs. Find more at their linktree.
A hundred years worth of clip art
Over 14000 vintage design assets including human and animal anatomy, maps and astronomy, patterns, textures and ephemera (e.g. tickets or postcards).
It looks more rectangular to me
Adobe brand templates for designers. Offerings include Brand Guidelines and Strategy, Instagram posts and carousels, animated videos, magazine and website stuff.
This is a mandala style graphics webapp. Several brush shapes, reflection counts and color palettes are offered, and if you mix them together you can get some interesting pieces.
Vintage Voyage Supply Comicolor Procreate Brush Kit
Procreate brushes for achieving an old-school stochastic print comics style.
In the late 90s and early 2000s there seemed to be an endless stream of fractal graphics generators based on the Mandelbrot and Julia mathematics. There are still several around on the iOS App Store, but with this site you can dive right in and start creating them again. This lets you change the color lookup table in several ways with "Move", variation and brightness controls. You can share your position in fractal space to collaborate and although clicking the mouse zooms you in, I couldn't find a way to zoom out except to click the Home icon to bring you out to the main view. Also, there is no export option so you’ll have to make a screenshot to save the image.
A universal file converter that performs conversions locally on your device. Conversions include HEIC to JPG, MP4 to MP3, and Word to PDF, and 2,111 others are supported. Drag-and-drop your files into the target box and choose the output from a menu.
Nuke it from orbit.
A pro-level app which is “the industry-standard compositing tool”. So if you’re already in the industry you’d have heard of it, but this blog is for many disciplines. Nuke is a suite including NukeX, Nuke Studio, Hiero, HieroPlayer and Nuke Indie, each of which has different features. For non-video folks, compositing is something you’ve already seen the results of if you’ve watched movies or TV shows with effects, especially those which include 3D rendered objects or characters mixed into scenes shot on camera. This type of software is how they add all the elements together and do things like make the lighting of the 3D elements better match the camera footage.
Fonts
A little categorization change this time. Some of these entries are software for creating fonts, not fonts themselves, but I figured if you’re here in the fonts section then you’re interested in fonts so I’ve added these here rather than having it all the way in the graphics section.
Glyph it a chance
I don’t know how many font creation apps are around at the moment but this one looks very fully featured. I would buy it if I had time to make my own fonts. Plus, the website looks amazing. Nice work.
A font designer tool that uses the power of multitouch to alter characteristics and attributes of each glyph in a font in realtine. My still image screenshot doesn’t do it justice: those circles represent where your fingers are and you drag them around to make the changes. Don’t bother trying to access it on your desktop — it needs Safari or Chrome on your tablet.
Presumably Microsoft got tired of people using Comic Sans everywhere and also getting teased for its existence at all so they made a new font with the specific job of readability in mind.
A foundry from the Netherlands with a range of headline workhorse fonts and a few more playful display faces for some pizazz.
You can touch this
Underware is fun to wear
Publishing
This platform is “is an ad-free publishing network. Anyone can publish a stream for free, set a price for subscriptions, and keep 90% of the revenue (if they charge at least 10 cents per month).”
Video
This one is “AI powered” but isn’t for generating new videos — the AI is used to help you edit your footage, including transcription, summarization and B-roll matching, plus collaboration features. Regretfully it offers voiceover generation as one of the features, and although I appreciate that the technology exists — I’ve used text-to-speech since around 1986 — for on-the-fly readouts of things that don’t have a recording, I think that unless there are specific use cases such as a Stephen Hawking loss of speech function, video makers should just record their own voices as it sounds better.
Video DJ (VJ) software aimed at live performances. Compare with Synthesia. Intergeation with Scratch Live and Serato DJ is implied. MIDI support is in there too. Send video to other devices using the NDI protocol.
Development
“over 400 high-quality, responsive UI components and blocks that are easy to use, customize, and integrate with Tailwind CSS projects.”
AI
Listen to narrated versions of your books, PDFs, websites and “other apps” using text-to-speech. Available for iOS and Android. Free tier of 20 minutes per day. I can’t quickly find what format of ebooks it supports.
A site to add a visual effect to a short clip, such as someone turning into a statue, burning, exploding, turning into tinted chrome, that sort of thing.
“In the future, everything is chrome” — Spongebob
This music video generation site taps into Pika, Runway, Google Veo, Luma and Kling to let you create videos that are closer to your imagination than gathering and editing stock photos or making an amateur-looking one with your own camera. So it depends on if things like poorly rendered hands bother you more or less than not owning an 8K camera as the current batch of tools still has the usual trouble rendering moving hands.
The mind’s eye
“#1 AI video clipping and editing tool” — not sure where that ranking comes from.
Here’s one that isn’t for making new videos, but for quickly editing existing ones in order to make clips for social media with the intention of them going viral and leading viewers back to your main site or content. This helps you choose hero shots, keyframes and highlight sections and turn that into a portrait video ready for posting.
Stop them from scrolling past with the perfect clip
“Personalized AI for every moment of your day”
This platform including mobile apps offers over 10 million “characters” that users can chat with, with various specialties.
“Visualize Your Story”
The first thing you see when visiting the site is Sign Up! Two popups appear. I don’t like it when sites do this. Anyway this one offers video from still images, lip sync and the usual set of effects, and also includes on-demand training using LoRA, so you upload a number of videos with a motion or event you need and then apply that to your video.
“YuE is a groundbreaking series of open-source foundation models designed for music generation, specifically for transforming lyrics into full songs (lyrics2song). It can generate a complete song, lasting several minutes…”
Image Upscaler, which means it increases the resolution of an existing image.
Descendants of Eliza
Leave it to (work)beaver
“Autopilot For Your Work”
Ambitious service that is for automation. Examples include client follow-ups, sales reports, lead management, data entry or other form filling, managing schedules and organising ,miscellaneous data.
It seems to be one of the existing systems but tweaked for what lawyers need to accomplish. Also includes pre-made workflows to expedite tasks, which I suppose the generic sites don’t include by default. Was the name inspired by Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law?
Another video production site. Models include Veo 2 and Wan, which I hadn’t heard of before. Features include image to video, lip sync, upscaling, restyling, adding sound and editing the clips.
“The first AI voice changer plugin.” I’m not sure anyone but software historians are interested in who was first to market, they just want the best results. As you could have guessed, this one allows you to change your voice into those of others such as differing genders that have a different pitch and timbre to yours, or even to other instruments for writing accompaniment or solo parts.
What Would Harvey Do?
Social Media
A social media platform specifically for chatting to fans of the same books and TV shows as you like.
Work
CRM platform which includes lead nurturing, analytics, AI backed email writing and some automation plus APIs for connection to Slack, Zoom, Gmail, Zapier, Asana, Trello, Teams and hundreds of other services.
“A studio for your mind” — this is billed as a “creative space for all your knowledge and ideas”. What they mean is it’s a structured note capturing app, or to be more specific it helps you structure your random notes and organize and arrange them. Free to start, them A$15.49 a month to get calendar integration, task actions and “AI assistance.“
Audio recording and note taking app. You know when you are in a meeting or lecture and you want to write down things while someone is talking? This matches up what you typed with the audio. You can record with an Apple Watch and the iPad and Mac are supported.
Sometimes the security systems humans have developed to protect a malicious group from getting information they shouldn’t gets in our way. You try to open a secure site at a workplace or hotel and something about their network setup won’t allow you to reach the desired site. This site allows you to force your browser to turn off technologies like HSTS and HTTPS so you can see what you need to see.
PowerPoint templates for charts and business presentations.
An expense tracking and finance oriented platform to capture claimable expenses from your company or small business staff and reduce the admin workload at tax time.
A “save anything and everything” style of app in the style that rose to popularity with Evernote. Their summary is that it “allows users to post and organize information, including text, graphics, images, music, software, audio, web links, files, video and other information and content”. A free tier gets you 200 “blocks” and US$70 annually removes that limitation. Apps for iOS and Android are available.
Devolutions Remote Desktop Manager
In the seemingly increasingly crowed remote desktop space, here is one more for you to check out. This one is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, with the reminder that you can’t remotely connect and view the screen of an iOS device. Come to think of it I'm not sure if you can make an app that lets a remote user view the screen of just that app. But I did do a support call to Dyson not long ago and they did send me a link to a support site that asked for camera permission which then allowed the agent to see live video from my device, so that’s cool.
Training
Posh Hour’s Learn How to Create Animations
A course in 16 parts for learning illustration and animation in Figma and After Effects.
Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing
“The ultimate guide to editing video with FCP.”
File Sharing
“Next Generation File Sharing”
Features include “Data rooms” - are these private collections?, high res previews, long videos, analytics of your recipients downloading and forwarding, watermarks, embargo dates, and end-to-end encryption. This one looks very slick, folks.
Say it with flowers
Media Consumption
Sometimes you are watching a TV show and hear a cool song. But before you can get Shazam working, it's over. Or maybe the dialog interferes with the scan so you can't find out what it was. This site lets you look up an episode and see the soundtrack used for it to help you track down the piece for later enjoyment.
“I'll be watching you” is a line from a song that’s apt for what Google is doing when you watch YouTube. Plus they also throw ads at you if you don’t subscribe. This thing is a Youtube front end that prevents tracking and removes ads, and also lets you subscribe to channels without a Youtube account.
A nonprofit organization that is building an ethics focused streaming platform that claims it will pay artists fairly. Currently in beta and no launch date published on the home page.
That’s it for this instalment of Tool Much Fun. Hopefully you found something you hadn’t heard of, and even more hopefully it is something that you can use to make something with or that will help organize or expedite your thing-making in some way. To paraphrase Frank Zappa: “Goodnight Internet, wherever you are”.
Saw something that you liked? Here’s the table of contents you saw at the top to easily jump back to one of the sections.
Samples, Kontakt instruments, Music, Fonts, Mac, iOS, Graphics, Publishing, Video, Development, AI, Social Media, Training, File sharing and Media Consumption.