Stutter Edit 2 Presets
Griselda Humbarger
Iconic American producer, DJ and musician BT is one of the pioneers of buffer glitch effects and, over the past 20 years, intricate stutters have cemented his signature sound. Back in 2010, he teamed up with Massachusetts-based iZotope to release Stutter Edit, which distilled the complex and time-consuming glitch-production processes down to a single keystroke.
There are plenty of presets that show off the range of the plug-in, including many designed by BT himself. These include vocal transitions, cinematic sound effects, master-bus fills and build-ups, sidechains and trance gates, beat grooves, synth-bass modulations and many more. If you want to build your own bank, you can drag and drop to assign individual gestures to each key on the keyboard. Settings such as bar length (from 16th notes to two bars), palindrome looping and how the effect reacts when the key is pressed and released are saved along with each gesture.
You could feed in a single slice or use different parts of the audio buffer in combination with reverse and left and right offsets to produce madcap stereo loops. You can select different grid sizes for the repeats and even chose random movement, ideal for jungle-style beat reshuffling. There are also jitter controls that can add pitch and rhythmic offsets to the left and right sides of the buffer, as well as pan and width controls.
Clicking on a parameter will see the curve editor display the envelope, and double-clicking will do so in full screen for easier editing. You can place multiple nodes and then curve each line, and you can draw freehand or snap to the grid. You can select specific time divisions and keyboard pitches, which are presented on the grid and make it easy to program fills and melodies. You can also reverse shapes, and save curves to recall them later. It would be useful if there was some kind of brush tool that let you quickly draw blocks but, even without such conveniences, this is intuitive enough, and the keyboard modifiers speed things up further.
A new Reverb, Comb, and Chorus module join a suite of 11 insane effects that can move in time with your mix. Combine your stutter edits with aggressive distortion, auto-pan effects, pitch-bent reverb, and much more.
Click any slider in Stutter Edit 2 to edit its unique curve. Control the timing of your pans, stutters, gates, distortions, and more to create truly mind-bending effects. Every parameter is your playground!
The course begins with some simple techniques for using the software presets to add fills to a track, before starting to explore one of the key areas of the plugin, the Stutter section. Simple beat repeats are created to start with, which eventually evolve into more complex stutters with shifting rates and gate lengths. The Buffer is then incorporated, showing how it changes the nature of a stutter and allows different stereo effects and sample reversing to be introduced.
To demonstrate the versatility of the stutter section, Rob makes a pair of contrasting gestures, one that uses the Dry/Wet gains to create stutters on certain beats and another that turns a beat into a melodic line. He then moves onto the filters, making an assortment of gestures, from simple sweeps, to custom LFO modulation, stepped filtering, comb filtering and also phaser application. In the first half of the course, effects are mostly used in isolation, but as the tutorials progress, they are increasingly combined to create additional shaping, movement and colour.
Signing up to the course gets you immediate access to over 4 hours of tutorials, all the presets made along the way, plus an additional bonus bank of presets to help add subtle touches or gnarly, twisted FX to your production. Check out the sample module for an example of the course content, which will give you a detailed insight into the plugin and how to use it to take your tracks to the next level!
Introduction
Rob introduces the course, explaining the learning goals, as well as the materials that come with the tutorials. There is also a guide to installing the accompanying Stutter Edit banks.
Module 1 - Overview & Setup in Ableton Live A guide to setting up the plugin in Ableton Live, along with some simple techniques for using presets to add interesting variation to an arrangement. (Logic Setup in Module 7)
11.55
Module 4 - Buffer Explained
A detailed explanation of the stutter buffer, showing how it defines the nature of beat repeats. Sticking purely to grid mode, Rob shows how changing the timing, range and direction affect the sound.
21.17
Module 5 - Using Stutter Rate to Create a Melody
A quick gesture is created that uses Stutter Edit to make a melody out of some beats, showing how relevant MIDI notes can be selected on the stutter rate curve and then alternated to tune the effect to a song.
7.09
Module 6 - Curve Presets and Dry/Wet Gain Controls
Rob makes another gesture, showing how curve presets can be incorporated to create more complex shapes or LFO-like behaviour. He then shows how Dry and Wet levels can be manipulated to bring effects in and out throughout a gesture.
20.24
Rob is a classically trained musician, with piano as his primary instrument, and obtained a degree in music and sound recording (the prestigious Tonmeister course) from the University of Surrey. Having honed his skills both at University and in the studios in London where he worked in a technical role, he began releasing music on labels like Lot49, Dead Famous and Erase, under the artist name Anarchy Rice. Rob has been at the forefront of music software training since the very beginning, having kicked things off at Focusrite back in 2006. With both classical music and technical sound qualifications, as well as a wealth of presenting experience, he is ideally suited to the role of an online music trainer, and is 100% dedicated to sharing his knowledge and assisting others with what he believes to be one of the most rewarding things in life - making music!
Create exciting movement with the new Curve Editor and control any effect in tempo. Dive deeper with new banks full of pre-made presets soaring gestures, glitched-out breakdowns, and beyond.
Make stutters, breaks, and cuts..
Put Stutter Edit 2 on your tracks to fire off rhythmic gestures, sweeping filters, glitchy effects, or everything at once. Access dozens of unique gestures through custom banks, each with their own rhythmic flavour ready-made to deliver inspiration fast. Chop up your samples to the beat, or just shred them into pitched, synth-y oblivion with the Stutter and Buffer controls. Get simple. Go deep. Try different gestures, and create your own!
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I can't comment on the GUI because I haven't played with it yet. However I only needed to authorize it once in the iZotope Product Portal. And it loaded in Cubase fine with no additional authorizations required. I used the iZotope authorization not iLok. Do you have a nonstandard installatiion?
After entering the S/N I obtained from Plugin Boutique, the izotope Product Portal registered my license in my iLok. I then installed the software and, when that completed, was asked to register again (which I tried doing but failed b/c I had just done that). Then I loaded the plugin in Cubase and a pop-up appeared saying I had to register (third time). So I tried doing it to my iLok, but that failed (second failure), so I unticked the iLok box and tried again and it finally worked. After all that I was greated by a poorly-designed GUI with a really crappy preset browser (compared to version 1). So at this point I'm done with izotope; I have everything I want from them and am not willing to go through all this hassle when there are so many talented developers out there.
And while I'm complaining, WTH happend to the Plugin Boutique site? It used to be so easy to make a purchase there; they were my primary choice for plugins. But now you have to click, click, click your way through numerous superflous screens just to buy something. Why?!?
@locrian IIRC, izotope stuff gives us at least three methods for authorizing: ilok, disk or registry. Each of them has own quirks, for example I didn't want registry entries so I went for disk but it failed. Turned out it tries to write a file in the top C:\ directory but didn't have enough permission to do that. So I started Cakewalk as administrator for that and it worked. They don't give much hint about it, I admit.
I realize I may be the oddball here, but, I actually prefer putting all my licences on an iLok since I can just uplug it from my desktop and then plug it into my laptop when I'm away from my studio. It works great!
I do understand your point about portability though, as my Waves plugins and their silly 1-seat rule (without WUP) prompted me to go with their USB flash drive license plan. Just need to remember to take it with when I'm away!
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