Tool Much Fun 26
Scarcely a day goes by without me finding something new to add to this blog. It’s taking longer to make each edition than I thought it would when I started. I have to visit each site for each item, write a sentence or two about it, choose an image, resize it and then do all the layout in Squarespace’s somewhat clunky editor. It’s a labor of love, and you get to benefit. Actually we both do, because I am also learning about all these tools. Enjoy!
This edition offers:
Music, Samples, Kontakt, Podcasts, Fonts, Mac, iOS, Graphics, Animation, Video, Development, AI, Work, Training, File sharing and Media Consumption.
Music
Perhaps the music software gods have smiled upon us because there is a glut of stuff to tell you about. That, and I fell behind due to the annual holiday time. So there are 3-4 issues worth of stuff in the queue. I even considered making a music-only special edition just to catch up. I decided not to but I won’t rule out the possibility of doing that in future.
These folks aim to be your premier choice for orchestra sounds, with categories for textures, underscoring, voices, traditional and cultural and more. They use the SINE player rather than Kontakt or Soundpaint. Compare with Spitfire.
A music management platform aimed at band mangers, marketers and promotions folks.
Organize, share, sell and discover music on this do-it-all style platform. Collaborate effectively using version control features and timestamped comments. No fees taken for music sales, plus it handles any splits with collaborators.
Another of those do-it-all sites which sells presets, samples, midi and courses
“Transform any mono or stereo source into wide and immersive soundscapes.” I have gotten so used to having more controls on plugins that when one comes along with very few of them I get suspicious.
I have made no error: it’s not a link to an album, but a music-making app. This uses a step-sequencer and synthesized instruments to help you make your song. Works on Mac, Windows and Linux.
More than a compressor (but it includes one) this is a collection of vocal chains, but modern and vintage, to make your vocals sound… well… lush.
Some freebies: ShallowGrave (a triple filter) and SpeculumLITE. Be warned, these seem like they have been abandoned and they use Intel code, not Apple Silicon native.
This new-to-me company offers this clipper, fuzz, bass overdrive, saturator and compressor-saturator combo. Plus they do a few others like SubTec and Mixtape, and two sample packs.
For writing orchestral pieces. This one lets you split up a played chord into several parts that can play sent to your various instruments. There are 3 tiers available: Micro lets you do four voices, then 16 for the Core and 32 for the proper version. They seem to have buttons to the two app stores, but they are not clickable for me.
A multi-effects plugin that includes 50 effects which can be blended, automated and reordered in various ways.
This site is down every time I’ve checked it, so maybe this was short-lived. It looked as interesting as any multi-fx plugin, so I hope it resurfaces one day.
Stop: it’s GRMTime
French effects wizards INA grm are back with a new effects plugin and standalone sound design app. Warning: it has a high price tag. Either processors and three modulators allow exploring never-before-heard sounds.
As you may have guessed from the name, it’s another granular synth! This one lets you add four layers and includes over 250 presets. It supports up to 7.1.4 surround sound and MPE, plus an arpeggiator and filters.
Not a phaser! Rather a stereo looper/delay that lets you make some cool sounds.
AuroraDSP has been making heavy-sounding amp sims for a while. Here are their free offerings, including Nosferatu and Goblyn.
Molecularbytes AtomicTransientMicro
These folks have a small range of products, but they do quite good work. Unfortunately they are not as popular as they could be. This one is a lite version of their full-featured transient plugin, which I own and the only gripe I can rememeber to mention is that the interface is slightly complicated.
Ascent of a woman
Basically a shimmer reverb that combines a hall reverb with a pitch-shifting particle reverb.
Hainbach does what he does best and made a “Microsound Rhythm Plugin” made from another one his obscure 'n' rare vintage gear collection, a signal tester. As usual it can make all kinds of previously-unconceived sounds.
Telos you like drum plugins without telling us
CR for Crush? This one is a saturator to give a mean sound to anything. Only four knobs and two switches are needed. Simple! They also make
“All-In-One Mix Tool For Drums” Telos has made a tool specifically for drum mixing, with 6 parts plus the room sound. There are other Telos series for Bass, Vocals and Guitar.
A basic synth if you find the standard ones overwhelming, so it might be good for learning synths, plus it’s free.
A platform designed for scripted audio workflows, possibly podcasts or audiobooks. I can tell it integrates with your DAW, but the website is a little light on for details. They want you to book a demo with them.
This kind of thing seems more common on iOS. It’s a note generation plug for making “rhythmically patterned harmonic loops”. It makes riffs that you can modify, and thus can be used as a song starter.
“New Dimensions in Stereo Panning” A stereo panner that gives you a more binaural style so that panned instruments sound more like they are in a space. APL also make:
This is one of those mixing utilities that is highly specialized: it’s one of those environment simulators that models various spaces and rooms so you can hear a simulation of what your mix might sound like in said spaces. I’m conflicted about this type of thing because even if you are at that high a level of music making, when your song is played at one of these spaces, you’re subject to the taste of the venue’s engineer, which kind of defeats the work you’ve put in to your mix.
Make bank with Tonebank
Samples
A pack including 25 acoustic guitar samples and 25 banjo samples for making folky tunes with.
Guitar sample packs in at least 16 styles, including Dark Trap, Reggaeton, Latino, Ukulele and Spanish acoustic.
Free samples including whoosh hits, vocals, and ambient rain.
Who knew Vikings could sing
Nine packs of cinematic vocals in two genders for making epic-sounding pieces.
Stuff for techno producers, including kicks, melodies and vocals. They also do presets.
101 Drum samples separated by kit piece.
Noise Masters UK DNB Pack Full Bundle
Bass and synth loops and one-shots, no drums. Serum presets included.
Categories include Tech House, Latin Tech House, Afro House and plain old Techno.
SoundPacks Glitch With Friends Samples Vol. 3
A pack with a variety of sounds, not sure of they are all glitchy or not. More freebies on the site.
Keys, Synths, Drums and Effects (FX) plus Serum and Ableton Live presets for making modern-sounding music. There also seems to be a course available.
Kontakt Instruments
An assortment of samples pushed through two cassette recorder, a RadioShack CTR-121 and Sony BM-147. This is a freebie sampler and you can upgrade to the full version.
Analog synths and textures for cinematic and sound design work. At AU$534 it better be pretty epic.
“Rich textures, moody pianos and electronic rhythms” for making soundtracky and ethereal music.
Impact Soundworks Cinema Foley Library
I like Impact Soundworks and have bought a few of their libraries, but not this one as it is more aimed at filmmakers that need foley sounds.
This group makes a range of exotic instruments and percussion from around the world. Instruments include Oud, Saz, Santur and Tanpura and percussion is from Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East and more. A little pricey but the World Colors series is a good starter.
Another offering by top-of-their-game library makers Soniccouture which is a dual layer granular instrument for making dreamy or tension-building sounds.
Frostwave Audio Thunder Handle
Frostwave aimed to make the quintessential metallic klang sound using a sauna stove handle. Also available in DecentSampler format if you prefer that over Kontakt.
Podcasts
No that UpNext, a junkdrawer app that has folded recently. This is a local-only podcast player; no servers or accounts! Import your OPML file from your other podcast app and enjoy chapter control and transcripts from the podcast or generate them on-device if they don’t offer one.
Fonts
Yes, I know, much like the music software vendors, here in Tool Much Fun you get a mix of either a single typeface that I discovered or an entire foundry. So if you see a single typeface that you liked, check out the rest of their range.
Look at all those different zeros
A library of free fonts of varying quality and license, but there does not seem to be a way to only search for only commercial use.
Berkeley Graphics Berkeley Mono
A love child of Frutiger and Bell Gothic. Nice and clean, and somehow retro-modern looking.
A geometric-looking sans serif for getting a modern style. Maybe best for headlines or poster work rather than body copy.
Mac
If TeamViewer and the other offerings aren’t satisfactory, check this one out, as well as
An open source remote system which lets you install all the bits & pieces on your own server for total control and security.
It was a toss up for putting this in the AI category. It’s a Mac-only client for accessing an online service (ChatGPT), so this is the right category. The interesting part is that there is a version for 68020 CPUs running System 7, which is 35 years old at press time.
Just call Mole
A disk cleanup tool. Many people complain that their hard drives fill up with junk due to unruly and/or lazy developers, or even cruft left behind by things they no longer use but there is no uninstaller for. This one removes caches, logs, and browser leftovers to reclaim gigabytes of space.
Tied to the listening post
You know Shazam, for discovering music you hear around you? This one does that and lets you automate using Shortcuts, export to files. Scrobble to Last.fm or ListenBrainz (or LB-compatible). Post to Mastodon, or open the track in Apple Music and Deezer.
QuickLook has been around for many years — I forget which version of macOS (neé OS X) it appeared in — but it doesn’t do work on folders. This utility rectifies that.
I came close to buying the screen recording app Screen Studio but they recently dropped the lifetime license and went subscription only. This app is open source and has many of the same features, so I’m going to give it a try.
Consul of Elrond
“The easy way to convert files” Over on Threads I saw someone say that renaming files extensions (i.e. jpg to png) would convert the file automatically. It doesn’t! However with this always-running utility now it can. Check it out if you find yourself converting files all the time.
I may have mentioned that Mac users can’t figure out why Apple doesn’t let you change the volumes of each app from one place, making you visit each app and hope it has a volume control. You may have seen SoundSource, a paid app for doing this. This one is an open source project that gives you that much-desired control.
As Apple has never decided to include a multiple clipboard, there are dozen of them available to offer the feature. Most of them support images but don’t show you a reasonable thumbnail of what you copied. But this one does, so if you copy images a lot, give it a look.
A search tool that uses AI to help find anything on your Mac. Your files stay on your Mac.
Dictation app which is AI based but it’s all local so you stay private.
iOS
A nice-looking app for tracking the dates of when events happened. Unfortunatly it’s AU$40 for a lifetime purchase. We’ve seen worse…
Another nice-looking app for keeping a database of all you earthly possessions, however you will not be blessed to afford many more possessions if you go for the top tier IAP as it’s AU$400. For a database⁈
iOS 3D
For the iPad. A few years ago 3D on a tablet device was unthinkable. This is another in the growing category. Exports as OBJ files so you can use your models back on your computer. Although the example image shows it can render textures, this might chew up your battery and will not give as good results as your computer.
iOS Graphics
There seems to be no end to photo editing apps. This one offers textures, filters, colored frames, and background replacement. It is subscription based, gets a high rating and appears to have a straightforward interface.
An app for stacking multiple shots to achieve the best focus by merging the shots.
The iPhone can take some reasonable macro shots, they aren’t pro level but do let you see the world of the small more than you expect. Go beyond Apple’s built in macro settings with apps like these.
Since iTunes was young people have enjoyed music visualization that until then required fancier equipment and deeper tech skills. There are a number of visualisation apps and this one joins the other offerings with a nice set of features, including 4K video output and transparent backgrounds.
iOS Music
This iPad app is intended for making ambient and meditative type tracks.
This app is for creating and then playing a synth. AUv3 is supported.
Want to sing your synth part? This is an audio-to-midi music utility, in the form of an AUv3 plugin, which lets you take live audio and converts it to MIDI. Then hook up a synth or other instrument on the other end and you don’t need to play on a keyboard.
If you like unusual ways of generating notes, here is another app that uses cellular automata. John Conway’s Game of Life was used as an inspiration for many of this type of app, in case you aren’t familiar with that style of generative music.
Cem has been making useful, modern-looking iOS music apps for a few years now, and this bundle lets you grab a bunch of them in one hit.
An analog-style subtractive synth with straightforward controls for rapid idea development.
Envelope Flanger, hence the name. This one has a few more features than your basic flanger, including a stereo width function. And yes it’s an AUv3 plugin for use as an effect in your favorite hosts.
With possibly the best and longest developer name in the music software space, this one is their MIDI sequencer. They make good stuff, check it out if you want to send notes to instruments in lots of patterns.
Although this one is in the education category, it claims to allow live mic input so you might be able to use it in your songs. I haven’t installed it so I don’t know what it sounds like. Free.
A few years ago a bunch of beat-making and/or multi-instrument loop-making apps started appearing in the App Store. The developers more in touch with the music scene ensured theirs was an Auv3 plugin so the beats could be incorporated with other instruments. This one does that, I’m glad to report.
Graphics
Daniel Petho’s CMYK Halftone Emulator
This tool emulates CMYK halftone printing using WebGL shaders. So that means it can make your images (up to 100MB) look like they were printed in a printer with stochastic screening, like an old newspaper or comic.
Not sure why it took so long for me to see this one mentioned, as apparently it isn’t new. It is for viewing, sorting, culling and applying metadata to your photos.
“Store and share your photos with absolute privacy” There is no shortage of options for how to store your photos, but do they have these features? 10GB of storage is free to get you tempted, then move to 50GB for US$2.59 a month. End-to-end encryption is claimed, making it harder for anyone to see your pictures. Plus the usual batch sharing and comments that we would expect in a system like this.
Do you long for that 90s computer graphics look like you saw on classic Macs and Amigas? Maybe like me you even have a couple of dithering apps for iOS. This one blows most of them out of the water with a huge range of options, including CLUT choice and halftoning.
Do you need stuff to look dirty, punk, retro, handmade? Check this out. Should you need more, there is a bundle for more roughness here.
A web based tool for making ASCII art, much beloved back in the day you could only access computers via terminals.
A large library of both 2D and 3D assets, for creating textures and materials for creating games or movies.
In the 90s this was what digital images looked like
The Color of Art Pigment Database
Not a app, this is an artists’ paint and pigments reference.
An app that uses AI to add keywords, tags color categorising and restrictions to your photo library.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Super Color Palette
A free web app for generating color palettes. Experiment with hue, saturation, lightness, and then export as JPEG, PNG, SVG, CSS, ASE and more.
Self-host your photos and videos on your own local server. Welcome to Digital Asset Management (DAM).
Video
In beta at press time, this is a utility for providing more control for Final Cut’s keyframes, which I agree is in need of enhancement.
Ever used Final Cut for transcription? It does a good job but then the text is buried in all those clips, so it’s hard to do anything else with them. This app fixes that and offers other languages too.
Really mess up that. VHS tape with these.
A pack for four assets: Interference textures and transitions and transitions for luminescent and “fractured glitch”. Good for messing up your video in an interesting way.
Create native mobile apps, as easy as creating a web site.
“Blazing fast” terminal file manager written in Rust, based on async I/O.
This is a nice-looking diff viewer that shows coloured ribbons to help you see what the changes between two text files are.
AI
A travel planner app that is somehow “powered” by AI. On another day I would have just put it in the ordinary iOS section. AU $80/year in order to pay for those tokens.
This is a personal project/task manager/todo list app but is heading towards the Agentic AI space. It can communicate with other Meli users. Intgrtions with Google Calendar and Todoist are mentioned. As with all agents stuff, use with caution.
An AI-Powered A/B testing platform.
“The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings” Meetings are designed to exchange information, and at least one person tends to record the conversation in notes. But then what happens to your messy notes? This app transcribes the meeting and turns the notes into clearly readable actions. You can then apply templates to turn them into various documents and share the content to Slack, Notion and other services.
AI models to transcribe and understand speech.
These folks chuckle as we type out notes into Notion, Asana, Linear (which I hadn’t heard of) and ClickUp. Why? Because they offer a pile of other data-organizing features that allow integrating all these loose notes and communicating with your team better.
Get a mentor for your mix
A coach, mentor, project planner, and assistant available by text message.
Dictation service that can attain 360 wpm and they claim 99.7% accuracy. Over 35 languages supported.
AI Music
This system analyses your song to tell you what needs to be done to improve it. It doesn’t train further on your material.
A suite of music tools; stem extraction, song remixing, and creation of synths and drums via prompts, plus create DJ sets in realtime.
The ones of interest here are Melody Generator and Beat Maker. Two velocities are supported, plus ratcheting up to 5 repeats. Download in WAV, stem separations in ZIP, MIDI or some tracker formats.
AI Graphics /Video
A site to make videos by uploading still images and writing your prompt to tell it what you want to happen. There must be something wrong in the backend or tokens credit because they are telling you to visit Videovector instead. Huh?
A platform to both watch and create AI videos.
Work
Scan documents to PDF, use AI to make queries about them, digitally sign or add the usual PDF editing like circles, then share the resulting edited document. Also includes a measurement tool.
Although it’s marketed at folks with ADHD, you don’t have to be neurodivergent to use it to organize your life. Brain dump all the stuff you need to do then sort and categorize it including color coding for the visually oriented types. It saves reminders to the Apple Reminders database and includes a focus timer to keep you mindful of the clock.
Atlas… they should save these names for map apps
The next two are in the category of “AI powered note taker”
The AI runs on-device on your encrypted notes, so it’s all as private as they can get. This offers Siri Shortcuts and data detection so it can create reminders and appointments and knows with whom as it reads your Contacts.
Voice, text, images and links are all supported in this organisational tool. So, capture voice notes in over 40 languages into either the iPhone or Apple Watch and then have the AI do sorting and you can query and revise and format it with voice prompts. Compare with
If you just want the transcription part, this one can do 58 languages and can translate into over 40 of them. Plus it can import existing audio and video files to transcribe them.
More than a CRM, this is a platform for managing your business. Features include website creation (portfolio style) from a large template library, invoicing & payment tracking, booking and scheduling, contract tracking, chat messages and project management. Two screenshots can’t do this justice — spend 5 minutes watching their demo video.
A suite of tools aimed at freelancers, including but not limited to accounting/invoicing, CRM, meeting scheduler and project management.
Avoid todo list overload by narrowing down what you need to think about to 5 things. Either tasks or habits. This might appeal to productivity guru Merlin Mann who used to write the 5ives blog last posted to a decade ago.
These days people have calendars all over the place. This one lets you sync your calendars to avoid scheduling conflicts.
A full-featured platform for photographers. Not only is it a gallery, it offers a Studio Manager component for running your photography business.
Somewhat overlapping Pixieset’s feature list, this one can also be used for other visual artists, graphic designers or even photo models.
These days getting work done is a lot of work. Lots of apps and sites to login to, and lots of shuffling of data between them. Google Docs, Notion, Asana, Todoist, ClickUp, plus the Office apps like Microsoft Project if you work somewhere that has chosen them. Then you have to figure out which team member is working on what part. Coda aims to help you work more efficiently by combining many of these tools into one platform. Its focused on collaboration, and it also offers integrated AI functions to move things along.
Training
Like me these folks think that black & white music notation is lacking. They have developed a scheme that adds color to music notation to enrich it and perhaps make songs easier to learn.
Once again, people who think looking at dots & lines isn’t quite enough. I agree with their statement “there's so much that notation can't communicate.” This system can sync sheet music with video and includes tools for selecting bars or other portions and repeating them slowed down to assist learning a song.
This is a large library of documents for learning cyber security, including pentesting, vulnerability scanning, and using tools like nmap and Wireshark.
Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing
A tome for learning Final Cut. This one is more recent than Apple’s book as it covers from version 11.1 and is still valid for v12. Available in paperback or digital downloads.
Liina Turtonen, an Ableton-certified trainer, offers these Ableton Live and Push courses that she wished existed when she was still learning the ropes.
“Finish Songs Fast & Get That Pro Sound” Well we all want that, don’t we. These folks offer 8 courses that include not just technical, click-here-to-do-this-function stuff but also guidance on how to write, produce and market your stuff.
File Sharing
Skalio TeamBeam Transfer & Drive
A suite, one of which is for sending large files to recipients, the other is a traditional cloud storage service. Servers are in Germany and they are very keen on privacy.
Media Consumption
Transfer playlists from other streaming services into Apple Music. This requires an Apple Music subscription to work.
Sick of paying Audible? This app lets you buy audiobooks from a local seller.
An unknown-to-me percentage of people don’t like the interface for Apple Music, so if you’re in that category, check this one out. It’s an alternate player for your Apple Music library. It supports drag-and-drop for sorting plus last.fm which I have never used. You can’t delete music using this app however.
A music discovery and listening platform aimed at finding local artists. Eschewing the standard streaming model somewhat, this one supports musicians without tallying streaming play counts.
This is a suite of image and video editing tools including style mapping, for example oil painting and watercolor that became popular around 2021-22, plus cartoonification — including two contentious large studios — plus the usual photo editing, both practical and amusing like face swapping or de-aging.
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. It is a shame that these services have to exist, that is, that we have both unemployment and people who want or need text read to them, but instead of paying for people to make recordings we get software to do it instead.
That concludes this issue of Tool Much Fun. I hope you found something cool that makes your creative life easier. Remember to share this on your feeds so others may discover the wealth of stuff that is around. Saw something you liked? Here’s the table of contents so you can jump back up to one of the categories. Below that is a tag cloud to see all other issues that include that category.
Music, Samples, Kontakt, Podcasts, Fonts, Mac, iOS, Graphics, Animation, Video, Development, AI, Work, Training, File sharing and Media Consumption.