PUBLIC BETA
Tack is a digital drum synth with seven voices: three drums, a snare, a cymbal, and closed and open hats, with an FX bus. Its oscillators alias and its distortion is gritty, and a small turn of a dial makes expressive changes. It currently comes as plugins for your DAW and as firmware for the M-VAVE FM-1 hardware synth. Both are free software.
Tack is Swedish for Thank you.
Its sound engine is the LXR-02 firmware by Sonic Potions and Erica Synths, which Tack extends. The reverb the LXR leaves switched off is on, in stereo with low and high cuts. An LFO can play once from a voice's hit, and the delay can follow the tempo. A kit or a single voice can mutate, one small random change at a time, and step back the way it came. On the FM-1 the sequencer adds up to eight parameter locks a step, lanes that run backwards, ping-pong, bounce or at random and at half or quarter speed, velocity shapes that write a rhythm's accents into a lane, and steps that play only on chosen passes of their lane.
Tack is not affiliated with or endorsed by Erica Synths, Sonic Potions or M-VAVE.
HARDWARE / M-VAVE FM-1
New firmware that turns an M-VAVE FM-1 into a drum machine. Its step sequencer is based on the LXR-02 firmware's, with parameter locks, Euclidean lanes, chance, recurrence, velocity shapes, 16 patterns and a song. Install, update and back up from Chrome or Edge.
PLUGINS / CLAP · VST3 · AUDIO UNIT
The same voices in your DAW, for automation and modulation: 227 parameters, seven stereo outputs, and separate plugins for a single drum, snare, cymbal or hi-hat. The DAW does the sequencing.
KITS
Both forms read .SND kit files, the format an LXR-02 writes to its SD card. The plugin's Save button writes that format too, so you can shape a kit at the computer and send it to the FM-1. No kits come with Tack, because kits belong to the people who made them.