Intellectualist

Overview

Intellectualist is a complete performance instrument: five synthesised drum voices, a sixth breakbeat slicer, a polymetric step sequencer across five different views, two XY pads with fifteen effects each, a kick-sidechained master crusher, a bar-synced looper, and a bar-level pattern-transform system called FILL. It's built to be played live.

The shape of the plugin

• Five drum channels: Kick, Snare, Flex, Sub, Hat — each with a dedicated synth voice and an optional granular sampler mode.
• Five sequencer views, each with independent loop lengths per channel: SEEK (steps), FLAM (ratchets), HELLA CHOPPER (breakbeat slicer), SLOPPY JO (shuffle / humanise), FINGER BANG (hex-keyboard pitch) — plus a sixth SCALE view for key management.
• Two XY pads, each chained in series (Pad 1 → Pad 2), each hosting one of 15 effects with LATCH/MOM modes and optional per-step XY automation.
• Master-bus colour: CRUSHER (kick-sidechained duck + saturate + compress + bass lift) and a beat-synced LOOPER (1–8 bars with pitch shift, glider, filters).
• FILL: a lime-green button that rolls deterministic, per-bar pattern transforms — rotates, reverses, ghosts, octave-ups — for live fills and drops.
• Touch-first UI with multitouch, drag-paint step editing, per-fader knob automation, and live visual feedback driven by actual DSP state.

Quick Start

1. Load the plugin and pick a factory preset — Four on the Floor is a solid start.
2. Press Play (standalone) or start the host transport.
3. Drag across the SEEK grid in an empty row — Y-position sets velocity, dragging paints a run of steps.
4. Tap a fader in the channel strip and push it — the voice changes in real time. Every fader is live-editable while the pattern runs.
5. Touch an XY pad at the top of the UI to engage the effect. Click the effect-name pill to swap it for any of the other 14.
6. Tap FILL on the transport bar to roll a one-bar variation. Hold it for continuous mayhem; release and it cuts cleanly on the bar.

The Interface

The window is organised top-down: transport · XY pads · tab bar · channel headers · main view + channel strip · mixer on the right.

Transport Bar

PLAY / STOP

Standalone transport. Plugin instances follow the host.

BPM

20–300. Numeric display with +/−, vertical drag for fine control.

SLOW · NORM · FAST

Tempo multiplier: 0.5× · 1× · 2×.

CRUSHER

Toggle + Amount slider. Master-bus destructor. See § Crusher & Looper.

FILL

Lime-green button. Tap for a one-bar fill, hold for continuous. See § FILL Mode.

Preset

Prev/next arrows and a popup browser.

RESET ALL

Two-tap confirm. Clears every sequencer layer and resets channels to 16 steps.

XY Pads

Two pads side-by-side, always visible above the tab bar. Each hosts one effect. The left pad (PAD 1, cyan) processes before the right pad (PAD 2, violet). Either can be set to LATCH or MOM, and either can record its XY path with AUTO. Full detail in § XY Pad Effects.

Tab Bar

Six views, described in § Sequencer Views, § HELLA CHOPPER, and the SCALE section inside Sequencer Views.

Mixer

Top-right corner, 240px wide, six channels (5 drums + CHOPPER). From top to bottom:

• Scope — overlapping semi-transparent waveforms per channel colour.
• ARM / LP — looper arm button, compact in the scope area.
• BARS and MIX — looper length (1–8 bars) and live/loop crossfade.
• Channel labels — KCK · SNR · FLX · SUB · HAT · CHP.
• Vertical faders — volume per channel, with gate-flash on triggers.
• Mute buttons — per channel.

The Five Channels

Each channel has a bespoke synth voice. All five can switch to a granular sampler at any time via the MODE button on the channel strip.

Voice parameters

Kick — CLICK · TONE · DECAY · PITCH · SWEEP · BODY

• CLICK — transient snap. 0 = pure 808 sine, 1 = sharp 909 attack click with a filtered noise burst.
• TONE — waveshaper drive on the main sine body; adds upper harmonics.
• DECAY — log-mapped 20 ms → 3.3 s. Each 10% of travel is an equal ratio.
• PITCH — MIDI 30–70 base note.
• SWEEP — pitch-envelope speed, log-mapped 500 ms → 2 ms. Always drops four octaves at trigger.
• BODY — sub fundamental (octave-down pure sine) level.

Snare — TONE · DECAY · PITCH · SNAP · COLOR · BODY

• TONE — tone-vs-noise balance. 0 = pure sine, 1 = pure filtered noise.
• DECAY — log-mapped 20 ms → 1 s.
• PITCH — MIDI 30–100.
• SNAP — transient pitch sweep on the tone oscillator, up to +48 semitones.
• COLOR — noise filter sweep, LP → BP → HP across roughly 200 Hz → 12.8 kHz.
• BODY — resonant bandpass on the tone path (low = wide, high = tight).

Flex — SHAPE · DECAY · PITCH · PUNCH · METAL · FILTER

• SHAPE — waveform morph sine → triangle → square (band-limited).
• DECAY — log-mapped 12.5 ms → 2 s.
• PITCH — MIDI 36–96.
• PUNCH — noise-burst transient + fast pitch-sweep (up to +36 semi).
• METAL — FM ratio 1:1 (warm) → 7:1 (metallic/bell).
• FILTER — SVF cutoff 80 Hz → 20 kHz, with rising resonance as you close it.

Sub — WARB · FILTER · DECAY · PITCH · LFO SPD · RESO

• WARB — waveform morph sine → triangle → saw → square/PWM, with LFO modulation of pulse width at the top of the range.
• FILTER — SVF cutoff 20 Hz → 16 kHz, with envelope-follow and LFO modulation.
• DECAY — log-mapped 33 ms → 5 s.
• PITCH — MIDI 24–60.
• LFO SPD — 0.1 Hz → 15 Hz, routed simultaneously to pitch (vibrato) and filter (wah).
• RESO — Q from 1.0 (audible) to 8.5 (self-oscillation).

Hat — FM · DECAY · FREQ · PITCH · COLOR · BODY

• FM — modulation depth on the tone oscillator.
• DECAY — same log mapping as snare.
• FREQ — base noise pitch MIDI 40–120.
• PITCH — supplementary pitch MIDI 40–100.
• COLOR — noise filter sweep LP → BP → HP.
• BODY — resonant bandpass on the tone path.

Granular Sampler (any channel)

• SPD — playback speed (0–1, default 1×).
• GRN — grain size (0–1).
• DCY — decay envelope length.
• PITCH — ±12 semitones around the base rate.
• Remaining two fader positions are unused in sampler mode.
• Loading a new sample resets knobs to neutral (Speed 1×, Grain medium, Decay full, Pitch centre, Pan centre, Drive off).

Channel Strip

The right-hand panel for the selected channel. Six tall vertical faders in a 2×3 grid hold the synth parameters. Three horizontal controls (PAN / DRIVE / PROB) sit below. Automation, mute and mode toggles live at the bottom.

The 2×3 fader grid

Position-to-parameter layout shown with the Kick labels; the mapping is identical on every voice — only the labels change.

Horizontal controls

PAN

Stereo placement. Drag snaps to centre near 0.5.

DRIVE

Waveshaper saturation on the channel output.

PROB

Probability the step fires. Tap to open a stepper popup to enter an exact percentage.

Bottom strip

AUTOM8

Toggle per-knob automation recording. While on, touching a fader records its motion per step; releasing loops it.

SYNC / POLY

Automation loop mode. SYNC = automation length matches channel step count. POLY = automation has its own loop length, set by how long you held the fader.

MUTE

Silences this channel.

MODE

Toggles between the dedicated synth voice and the granular sampler.

Voice DNA visualiser

The silhouette at the top of the channel strip is unique to each voice (Kick teardrop · Snare body+noise · Flex pluck-bell-chirp · Sub plateau+wobble · Hat noise burst). It reshapes live from the current knob values. A playhead sweeps it driven by the voice's envelope, and an attack bloom fires at the peak on each trigger. When automation is playing, the whole silhouette breathes in sync.

Sequencer Views

Five playable views plus a SCALE view. Each channel has an independent loop length per view — your kick can run 16 in SEEK, 13 in FLAM, 8 in HELLA CHOPPER, and 64 in FINGER BANG, all layered together.

SEEK — Step Sequencer

The main grid. Each row is a channel; each column a step.

• Drag-paint — drag across the grid to fill multiple steps. Y-position sets velocity.
• Drag on active — erases.
• Row-locked — once you start dragging in a row, edits stay in that row until you release.
• Per-step data — active flag, velocity, pitch offset, flam amount.
• Step count — 1–128 per channel, shown in the channel header's 7-segment display.

FLAM — Ratchet / Retrigger Editor

Vertical green bars per step set a flam amount between 0 and 1. That maps to 1–4 retriggers within the step (1 + amount × 3), with each successive hit at half the previous velocity. Independent step count from SEEK. Row-locked drawing. Live flam gate-arrival pulse: the current flam step flashes in channel colour for ~1.5 s when the main sequencer's gate lines up — a visual aid for polymetric patterns.

SLOPPY JO — Shuffle + Humanise

A 4-position shuffle template tiled across the pattern:

• Position 1 → steps 1, 5, 9, 13…
• Position 2 → steps 2, 6, 10, 14…
• Position 3 → steps 3, 7, 11, 15…
• Position 4 → steps 4, 8, 12, 16…

Per-position controls:

• Offset (vertical drag, 0–50%) — delays every trigger in that position. Actually scheduled in the sequencer, not cosmetic.
• Drift (horizontal bar, 0–100%) — adds random ± variation around the offset each trigger, so every loop iteration sounds slightly different.

Visualisation: live timing-dot scatter, column pulse-flash at the actual trigger position, animated drift particles.

FINGER BANG — Hex Keyboard

A tessellated Wicki-Hayden hex grid for live melodic gesture recording. Columns right go up a whole tone (+2 semi); rows up go up a perfect fifth (+7 semi). Root is C2, range ~5 octaves.

1. Touch a hex — that note controls the selected channel's pitch.
2. As the sequencer plays, whatever note you're holding is recorded into the current step.
3. Release — the recorded pitch sequence loops.
4. Touch again — overwrites steps under the playhead.

Per-channel advance mode: FREE (advances every clock tick) or GATE (advances only when that channel triggers). GATE mode syncs the hex pattern to actual hits, not time.

Right panel shows a real-time waveform scope of the selected channel and a 5-channel vertical level meter.

SCALE — Key Selection & Automation

Global scale system. Everything with a pitch (steps, hex gestures, the FILL OCT+ transform, HELLA CHOPPER pitch scatter) is quantised to the active scale.

• Root grid (4×3) and Scale grid (4×4) — pick the tonic and scale type.
• Piano keyboard — 2 octaves, in-scale keys lit, root marked.
• Circle of Fifths — visual scale browser. In-scale notes glow and connect geometrically.
• Scale sequencer timeline — chain up to 16 ordered segments (root, scale, bar length). Click a segment to edit; toggle SEQ to enable.
• Scale changes trigger a scale-segment flash on the whole UI in the segment's colour.

Sixteen scales: Chromatic · Major · Minor · Dorian · Phrygian · Lydian · Mixolydian · Locrian · Pentatonic · Blues · Harmonic Minor · Melodic Minor · Whole Tone · Diminished H-W · Diminished W-H · Arpeggio.

HELLA CHOPPER

A breakbeat slicer on a sixth independent track. Two sample slots (Loop A and Loop B), energy-based transient detection, a per-step chaos system, and a perform mode for live finger-triggering.

Loops and slicing

• Two loops — load WAV/AIFF into slot A or B via the bank popup.
• Automatic slicing — energy-based transient detection with zero-crossing snap. Slices auto-map to steps on load.
• MAP A / MAP B — reassign slices sequentially.
• SHUFFLE — randomise which slice each step plays.
• FIT — zoom the waveform to show only the playable slices for the current loop length.

Per-step controls (5 rows)

Chaos and scatter

CHAOS

Global slider × per-step chaos = probability of random slice substitution. Locked steps are immune. Dial from faithful loop playback → total mangling.

SCATTER

Random pitch deviation on each trigger, snapped to a musical interval set (breakbeat default: unison / 4th / 5th / octave; scale-aware when the SCALE view is active).

Perform mode

Toggle PERF to enable live finger-triggering. Touch a slice on the waveform to fire it immediately at full volume. Hold to retrigger at the configured rate (1/16, 1/8, or 1/4). Dragging across slices updates the target on the next retrigger grid boundary — no off-beat triggers during drag. Meanwhile STEP/LIVE recording still writes touches into the step grid.

XY Pad Effects

Two XY pads in the top-left of the UI. Pad 1 processes before Pad 2 in the signal chain. Each hosts one of 15 effects, with X and Y as the two axes. Click the effect-name pill at the top of the pad to swap.

LATCH vs MOM

LATCH

Effect is always active. XY position sticks where you last touched. Touch-gated effects (Stutter, TapeStop) toggle on each touch.

MOM

Momentary. Effect only processes while your finger is on the pad. Release = instant bypass.

AUTO

Each pad has an AUTO toggle. Enable it, touch the pad — XY position is recorded per step across a 32-step loop. Release and the crosshair animates along the recorded path, driving effect parameters in sync with the sequencer.

The 15 effects

Touch-gated effects

Stutter and TapeStop behave differently under LATCH vs MOM:

• Stutter · LATCH — first touch freezes audio, second touch releases.
• Stutter · MOM — hold to freeze, release to unfreeze.
• TapeStop · LATCH — touch to brake. Once stopped, X becomes a scratch controller. Release to spin up.
• TapeStop · MOM — hold to brake, release to spin up.

FILL Mode

A single lime-green button, right of the Crusher on the transport bar. Rule-based, bar-synced pattern variation — the quickest way to introduce fills, drops, and rolls without editing steps.

Activation

Tap and release

One-bar latched fill. Auto-releases cleanly at the next bar boundary.

Click and hold

Continuous. Release to end, and the fill still cuts cleanly at the next bar boundary — never mid-bar.

The transforms

On each new bar while FILL is active, one transform is picked deterministically from the bar index. Same bar → same fill (reproducible); new bar while held → new roll. The current transform name displays next to the button in bright lime.

Invariants

• Step 0 always plays the original — the downbeat never moves. FILL won't eat your beat-1.
• HELLA CHOPPER is never transformed — only the 5 drum channels.
• Release is bar-aligned — you cannot accidentally cut off mid-bar.
• Kick is mostly protected from SKIP and GHOST so the pulse stays locked during breakdowns.

Crusher & Looper

The two master-bus tools. Both are deliberately excluded from preset state so they stay consistent across preset changes during a performance.

CRUSHER

Toggle + Amount in the transport bar. Gate-triggered sidechain from the kick. One knob scales four things simultaneously:

• Sidechain duck — 0–70% ducking, 0.3 ms attack, 120 ms exponential release.
• Saturation — Chebyshev polynomial waveshaper, drive 1× → 9×, adds 2nd + 3rd harmonics.
• Bass boost — shelf at 120 Hz, up to +4.5 dB. Fattens the low end through the nonlinearity.
• Glue compression — soft-knee feedforward, ratio 1:1 → 6:1.

At low amounts it's subtle glue; at high amounts it's heavy sidechain pump with aggressive saturation. Both XY pads render a red-orange pumping halo in sync with the duck envelope.

LOOPER

Compact controls in the top-right mixer area: ARM (or LP/REC/PLY), BARS (1–8), MIX (live ↔ loop crossfade). State machine:

Idle  ─▶  Armed  ─▶  Recording  ─▶  Playing  ─▶  Idle
        (click LP)   (next bar)    (buffer full)   (click PLY)

• Bar-synced record — once armed, recording starts at the next bar boundary (sample-accurate within the block).
• Gapless playback — starts immediately when the buffer fills.
• Pitch shift ±24 semi, glider (smooth sinusoidal pitch modulation), HP/LP filters, distortion on loop playback.
• MIX is global — not saved in presets — so you can blend the loop into any patch you swap in.
• Looper perimeter arc — the LP/ARM/REC/PLY button's border animates: breathing while armed, red fill while recording, green sweep while playing.

MIDI & Host Sync

Intellectualist plays its own voices, but it can also emit MIDI note events so each channel can drive an external synth in parallel.

Signal flow (summary)

Clock  ─▶  ScaleManager  ─▶  Sequencer  ─▶  Trigger callback
                                              │
                            ┌─────────────────┼─────────────────┐
                            ▼                 ▼                 ▼
                      snapPitch           VoiceRouter       MIDI Out
                      (scale)             → synth / sampler  (per ch)
                                          → per-channel audio
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                     HELLA CHOPPER (to master)
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                     XY Pad 1 → XY Pad 2
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                     LOOPER (record / playback)
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                     CRUSHER (duck + sat + comp)
                                              │
                                              ▼
                                        tanh soft clip  ─▶  Out L/R

MIDI output config (Settings dialog)

Click the logo top-left to open Settings → MIDI. Per channel:

Enable

Emit MIDI notes for this channel.

MIDI channel

1–16. Defaults to the track index.

Octave offset

−4 to +4 octaves, independent of the plugin's internal pitch.

Route All

Force all enabled channels onto a single shared MIDI channel.

MIDI note = 60 + composedPitch + octaveOffset × 12. Velocity maps from step velocity (0–1 → 1–127). Note-off is tied to the voice's own envelope decay — the external synth's note-off lines up with the internal voice's release.

Host sync

• As a plugin, tempo and transport come from the host.
• In standalone, use the transport-bar PLAY and BPM.
• The scale sequencer timeline is driven by totalBeats / 4 — it will always line up with a DAW bar grid.

Themes, Presets & Settings

Themes

• Dark (Cyberpunk) — default, neon-pink accent.
• Midnight — deeper, cooler blues.
• High Contrast — near-black background, pure-white text for stage lighting or accessibility.

Each channel's colour is individually cyclable through 12 options in Settings.

Factory presets

User presets save to %APPDATA%/Intellectualist/Presets/ and persist across sessions.

What's saved — and what isn't

Full plugin state is saved with the DAW project or with a preset: all sequencer layers (steps, velocities, pitches, flam, volume, mute, probability), every fader, knob automation curves, shuffle config, effects + XY automation, looper bars / glider / pitch, hex loops, HELLA CHOPPER (slices, chaos, scatter), scale system.

Intentionally global (not in presets): CRUSHER enable + amount, and the looper MIX crossfade. This keeps the master-bus character and any live loop consistent when you swap presets during a performance.

Theme, channel colours, UI scale, and MIDI output config live in %APPDATA%/Intellectualist/settings.xml — completely isolated from presets.

Workflows & Recipes

Tips & Troubleshooting

Tips

• Let log-time do the work. DECAY knobs feel musical across their whole range. Don't be afraid to scrub them live.
• Use POLY automation as a second sequencer. A 4-bar automation loop against a 16-step pattern is four bars of evolution.
• Per-channel PROB is cheaper than writing variations. Drop a hat channel to 60% probability and every loop feels different without any extra editing.
• LATCH for shape, MOM for stab. LATCH XY pads to sit the effect under the mix; MOM to punch it in as a one-shot.
• CRUSHER sits in the mix. It's not a send — it's the character of the whole bus. Ride the Amount knob through a song.
• Independent loop lengths per view are the fastest route to "why does this groove feel alive?" — try 16 steps in SEEK, 13 in FLAM.
• RESET ALL is two-tap on purpose. Don't be afraid of it.

Troubleshooting

No sound from a channel

Check: channel MUTE, mixer fader, VOLUME not at zero, and that the channel's own step grid has active steps. The gate-flash on the channel strip tells you if it's triggering.

Notes sound out of key

Go to SCALE and check the root and scale type. If SEQ is on, the timeline is driving the key — disable SEQ or edit segments.

HELLA CHOPPER is silent

No sample loaded, or FIT is on but the loop has no detected slices at the current step count. Load a sample, then press MAP A.

FILL does nothing

Transport must be running — FILL is bar-synced and only evaluates on bar crossings.

CRUSHER is too loud when swapping presets

That's by design: it's a global state. Turn the amount down manually, or disable the toggle.

Looper out of sync

ARM triggers recording at the next bar boundary. Click ARM a little before the downbeat, not right on it.

Knob automation not recording

Enable AUTOM8 on that channel first. The fader needs to be touched while the sequencer is running.

CPU is high

Common culprits: several resonant effects in series (MetalRes + CombBank), granular cloud at max density, or many channels in sampler mode with very small grain sizes. Simplify one pad's effect first.

Control Reference

Alphabetical index. Every top-level control, where to find it, and what it accepts.