I used to use both Hammerhead and Audacity extensively, and one day decided that if I built a kind of free ‘enhanced Hammerhead’ with more channels, being able to sequence down to 32nd notes, ability to chop up the individual hits in drum loops, ability to sequence to hundreds of measures (thereby being able to produce complete songs) and having a full range of effects, EQ and synthesis options, then I would only need to leave that environment back into Audacity for just final touch-ups (like fade in, fade out, normalize the file and apply compression). I’ve now finished that application, called ‘FlexibeatzII’ (many of its effects were inspired by Audacity, others are unique to it):
http://www.flexibeatz.weebly.com
It has changed my workflow. Features:
* TR909/TB303/X0X style sequencing interface
*Plays any wav files in its 10 channels
*Note resolution to 32nds
*Chain patterns up to 999 measures
*Dynamically vary pan, pitch and level of each sound in each channel, as well as each sample’s play start and end point while the sequence is playing
*Set swing and accent
*Mute and solo per channel
*Lock BPMs of sounds in channels to master tempo
*Auto stretch samples to fit a specified fraction of a measure, or to multiple measures
*Dynamically specify which sounds can cutoff (mute) which other sounds, if they are still playing
*Randomize sample selection per channel and notes per pattern per channel
*Auto-generate arpeggiator patterns
*Ability to process and add effects to the samples in each channel: reverse, 3 types of distortion, master LP filter, freely draw and apply pitch envelope to a sound, freely draw and apply LP, HP or BP filter envelope to a sound, freely draw and apply a volume envelope to a sound, chorus, delay, compression, change amplitude of positive and negative halves of the waveform independently, reverb, lo-fi (bit and sample rate reduction), 3-band parametric EQ (featuring LP, HP, BP, Lo Shelf, Hi Shelf, Notch, Peak), stutter effect, auto chop up waveform and randomly re-assemble, apply waveshaping by manipulating individual harmonics, change pitch without affecting duration, change duration without affecting pitch, vocoder, ring modulator, auto-wah
*Ability to synthesize sounds from scratch, and use these in the channels as instruments, or combine them with samples in various ways (such as FMing one with the other)
*Record sequence to a .wav file while its playing
*Record level slider movements
*Export patterns to .wav files without playing them
*Automatically isolate the ‘hits’ in a drum loop and export each slice as a separate .wav file, and import each slice into a separate channel
*Graphical time and frequency spectrum display of each sound in each channel
*Slave playback via midi sync to another sequencer (eg a DAW, hardware sequencer etc)