RatTubes

Overview

RatTubes is one tube, modelled for real: a waveguide loop with a fractional delay, a bore-loss filter set by Girth and Material, end caps that choose open-open, open-closed (odd harmonics, an octave down) or closed-closed, up to four Bends whose Angle makes the tube talk, dispersion, and a Wormhole that sends the tube's own sound back into itself through a pitch shifter. You excite it four ways: Blow (a jet with breath and pressure that overblows above 70 %), Hit (a mallet with hardness), Whirl (spin it and it picks harmonics like a whirly tube, with hysteresis) or the Rat, whose footsteps run along the tube at a rate you set or sync to the tempo, with weight, squeak and a drunk control. Under the model sit six licence-clean sampled pipe families with baked loops, so every preset crossfades between a real recording and the model. The Network stacks up to four tubes per note with spread, scatter, width, coupling (the lead tube leaks into the others) and humanize; three Warp LFOs modulate Length, Girth and Bend Angle, free or tempo-synced, including a wave that follows the rat. The FX chain is the RatBells one: EQ, five saturation modes, compressor, OTT, chorus, a dub delay with a throw pad, a shimmer reverb and a tempo-synced ducker. Tube Town, the animated view, draws your tube from the parameters (drag it to change Length and Girth), shows the pressure wave travelling along it, the Wormhole spiral, the other tubes in the network as a skyline, and the rat. Twenty-four presets run from Blue Man Pipe, Didge Drone and Cathedral Pipe to Rat Race, Wormhole Bass, Nebula Drone and Tipper Tube. Samples: VCSL (CC0) and the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios collection.

Features

• ▸Waveguide tube model: Length, Girth, Bends, Angle, five Materials, three End Cap types, Damping, Dispersion
• ▸Four exciters: Blow (overblows), Hit, Whirl (harmonic hopping) and the Rat (tempo-synced footsteps, weight, squeak, drunk)
• ▸Wormhole: the tube fed back through a pitch shifter, five intervals
• ▸Six sampled pipe families (recorder, ocarina, didgeridoo, organ pipe, flute, whistle), looped, under every preset
• ▸Network: 1-4 tubes per note, spread, scatter, width, coupling, humanize
• ▸Three Warp LFOs (Length, Girth, Bend) with sync, phase and a Rat-follow wave
• ▸Tube Town: an animated tube you can drag, pressure wave, wormhole spiral, skyline, the rat
• ▸24 factory presets, user presets, every parameter automatable, Reduce Motion

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