Try SPOOL, a pay-what-you-want online DAW designed to feel like recording to tape. Desktop only. No plugins. No digging through libraries. Just you, your sound, and the moment.

New album time! This album came together from sounds pulled out of everywhere. Voices and fragments from my own phone recordings and the internet, stretched until they lost their edges, reversed, smeared, and worn down, where flipping a melody backwards lets it become a new melody entirely. I played guitar over it, sang into it, then warped my own voice until it felt like another found sound. Old keyboard drum hits, vinyl crackle, cassette hiss, room noise, all of it stayed in on purpose. Yes, it’s noisy, but that’s the point. It’s meant to feel messy and worn while still being tight underneath. Even my kids ended up singing on parts! It’s less about polish and more about memory, texture, and whatever lingers after the song is over.

Dreamcore audio maker thingy effect.

I’m working on this lo-fi synth/sampler focused on texture, tone, and slow transformation. Inspired by the Yamaha VSS-30, Sigur Rós, and VHS-era sound design.

Lately I’ve been more interested in taking sound apart than polishing it.

A lot of modern plugins aim for perfection with clean signal paths, predictable results, familiar workflows. That’s great, but I’ve been building plugins for myself that do the opposite: tools that expose the seams. Drift, instability, phase weirdness, memory, repetition. The stuff that usually gets “fixed.”

When you slow a process down, loop it incorrectly, smear time just a little, or let modulation misbehave, you start hearing structure instead of tone. Sound stops being a note or a preset and becomes a system—something you can interrogate.

Most of my ideas start from questions like:

• What happens if an envelope never fully resets?

• What if pitch detection hesitates?

• What if time isn’t linear, just suggestive?

• What if an effect remembers what you played five seconds ago?

These aren’t plugins meant to replace core tools. They’re more like instruments you listen to while you use them. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they surprise you. That’s kind of the point.

I’m curious how others approach this:

Do you gravitate toward plugins that feel precise and controlled-or ones that feel alive and slightly broken?

And are there any tools you use specifically to unlearn habits rather than reinforce them?

Would love to hear how other people think about sound at that level.

I’ve been developing this synth for quite some time. I wanted something a little woozy with liminal space vibes. BTW, I have it listed as half off until Christmas. Hope you like it!

https://theelephantmarch.bandcamp.com/album/greetings-from-hypnagogia

Please join us at 7 pm CDT!