Blazar Core's own effects

Blazar Core comes with its own effects, made for scoring. Several of them know your session: they read the notes and hits in the arrangement, so they can act before a note sounds, with no sidechain to route.

Using the built-in effects#

You find them in the browser's FX tab and in the effect list, with the vendor Blazar Core. They work like any VST3 effect:

• Load them into any insert slot, or into a Morph slot.
• They are saved with the session and every change can be undone.
• Their controls can be automated (see Automate plugin controls).
• Their windows follow the app's look, Dark or Daylight.

Singularity#

The one-knob finisher. Singularity pulls everything a finishing chain does into one big knob. Turn it up and the track gets what it needs on the way to sounding finished, all together and in proportion:

• a gentle glue compressor holds the body together;
• the lows are lifted and steadied, given a little warm rumble of their own, and made mono below 100 Hz;
• the low mids are cleared a touch, and the mids' build-ups and harshness eased;
• the highs are smoothed and lifted into silk with air on top, and the upper bands spread wider;
• a touch of tape and a soft clipper push the body up while the peaks stay where they came in, so the track sounds louder and denser rather than simply turned up.

There is nothing to set for the material. Everything follows the sound's own level, so a quiet flute and a loud drum bus are treated alike. At 0% Singularity is neutral.

Its window is the knob and nothing else: a porthole into space where the black hole of the Blazar Core mark comes alive as you turn it. Dust gathers into a hot, spinning disk, the event horizon opens, light bends over the top, and near the top of the range the jet fires. It breathes with the track, and the amount shows only while you turn it.

Eclipse#

Unmasking that knows your notes. The lead passes in front, and the bed steps into its shadow.

1. Put Eclipse on a bed: a pad, a string bed, a choir.
2. Pick the lead (any instrument track) from its list.

Whenever the lead plays, the exact pitches it holds, and their harmonics, are cut out of the bed with narrow bells, only while those notes sound. A horn line stays clear over thick strings, and the strings keep everything else.

The lead's notes come straight from Blazar Core, played live or from the arrangement, so there is no sidechain to route and nothing is guessed from audio.

Control	What it does
Depth	How deep the cut is at the pitch
Width	How wide each cut is, in cents
Harmonics	How many of the note's harmonics are cut too
Tilt	Cuts the upper harmonics less
Follow	Gives a quieter lead less room
Release	How long the room stays after a note ends

Its window shows the lead's notes and the cut as it happens.

Pulsar#

Ducking that knows the hits before they land.

1. Put Pulsar on a bus: the orchestra, the strings, a choir.
2. Pick its trigger from its list: one track, a whole folder (the percussion folder, say: every track in it, folders inside it too), or the picture's hit points, to open a hole in the music for the sound design's hit.
3. With a folder as the trigger, N of M tracks lists its tracks with ticks. Untick one (the shaker, say) and its hits no longer count.

Every hit of the trigger ducks the bus: a note's velocity, or a recording's transient (found when the audio is read). Because Blazar Core reads the hits ahead from the arrangement, the duck begins a moment before the hit, so the taiko lands in a clean hole instead of the ducking reacting after the transient. Played live, hits duck as they come.

Control	What it does
Depth	How far the bus ducks
Lead-in	How long before the hit the duck begins
Hold	How long the duck stays down
Release	How long it takes to come back
Curve	The shape of the duck
Dynamics	How much deeper harder hits duck
Threshold	Hits below it pass without a duck

Nothing to route, no sidechain. Its window shows the hits from a second and a half ago to three seconds ahead, the duck they make, and now.

Magnetar#

Your sound design in the key of the score.

Put Magnetar on the sound design bus (booms, hits, whooshes, risers, noise, taikos). It listens to what every instrument track plays, now and a moment ahead in the arrangement, and rings the sound in those notes through a bank of tuned strings, like a piano's strings with the pedal down.

• A boom on D minor rings on D, F and A.
• A noise riser under a progression moves through each chord.
• A boom on the downbeat of a key change is already in the new key, because the coming chord is known before it sounds.

There is no key to set. Tracks whose names say percussion or sound design (drums, taikos, hits, FX...) are not listened to, and neither is Magnetar's own track.

Control	What it does
Pull	From a tonal glow to fully pitched
Voicing	Rings the root, the root and fifth, or the whole chord
Ring	How long the strings sound on
Tone	How bright the strings are
Width	How far apart the strings sound

Its window shows the chord it hears on a circle of fifths, with its name and notes, and the next chord with how long until it comes.

Quasar#

A delay whose echoes follow a rhythm you draw, instead of one note value.

Draw the rhythm right in its window:

• Click the grid and an echo (a stem) appears on the nearest step, as loud as your click is high.
• Drag a stem up or down for its level, or sideways to move it.
• Right-click it, double-click it, or drag it off the bottom to remove it.
• The dot under each stem sets its place in the stereo field.

The pattern runs over one or two bars at the song's tempo and time signature. When it has passed, the whole rhythm plays again, quieter by Feedback.

Control	What it does
Grid	The steps: 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/8T or 1/16T (a dotted eighth is three sixteenths)
Feedback	How much quieter each repeat of the rhythm is
Uncertainty	Turned up, echoes drift off their places and now and then skip a pass, so no two loops are quite alike
Low cut / High cut	Shape the echoes; each loop comes back a little darker
Width	Scales the echoes' panning
Mix	Blends the echoes with the dry sound

Patterns has starting points (dotted eighths, tresillo, Bo Diddley, a triplet stumble, two-bar patterns), and Random rolls a new rhythm.

Gap God#

A sixteen-step chopper in time with the song.

Sixteen steps cut the sound up. Pick the rate (1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32), Straight or Triplet, and Swing.

Each step that is on opens a gate, at the step's own level, shaped by:

• Attack,
• Gate (how long it stays open),
• Release,
• Curve (slow to rise and quick to fall, or the other way round).

Depth sets how far the closed gate ducks the sound, and Mix blends it with the dry signal.

The same shape can drive a filter (LP, HP or BP): as the gate closes, the filter closes by its Range from the Cutoff, with Resonance. So you can chop a part by volume, by the filter, or both. With Depth at 0, you hear the filter alone.

In its window, click a step to switch it on or off (drag across to paint several), or draw in the curve above the steps to set their levels.

When Gap God runs#

There is nothing to switch. Every note on the track, played live or from the arrangement, starts the pattern from its first step, and it runs while notes are held and through their tail. While the song plays, it otherwise runs in time with the song's bars, so it works on audio tracks too. With the song stopped and no note playing, the sound passes untouched.

Blazar Compressor#

A stereo-linked compressor with a soft knee. The same compressor is in every channel's built-in channel strip.

Its window shows the transfer curve with the level now, and a gain reduction meter. Double-click a knob for its default. Its six controls can all be automated:

• Threshold
• Ratio
• Attack
• Release
• Makeup
• Mix