i’ve recently started using reaper as my main audio software. one of the best things about this thing is that it comes with a built-in plugin programming language. it’s pretty basic but you can do some cool stuff with it, and it’s way easier than futzing about with compilers and vst frameworks and garbage like that.
i’ve just released my first effect for this environment, called tonegate. it’s based on a number of other effects supplied with reaper – it’s really just a basic tone generator triggered off a gate, mainly to add sin, square or noise tones to kick or snare hits. tone type/pitch is configurable (the pitch can optionally raise or drop during tone decay), there’s a simple low pass filter and wet/dry mix.
this is a quick audio demo of the effect in action – first part is dry kick and snare tracks, second part has some (not-so) subtle sin and noise added to kick and snare, last one is way over the top. with enough of these you can do all sorts of weird nintendo-y sounding stuff:
[audio:tonegate_demo.mp3]
pretty cool!