Riffer

€49 (£7 iPad)

Web audiomodern.com Format PC/Mac/iPad, VST/AU

A monophonic MIDI note generating plugin and iPad app (we’re only looking at the plugin here), Riffer loads as a ‘silent’ instrument plugin, the MIDI output of which is routed to another instrument in the host DAW. Choose a key and a scale, set the length and speed of the pattern, and the number of notes you want it to contain, then n hit the dice button to randomly generate a sequence, or activate ‘Infinity mode’ to have a new sequence generated with every cycle. Notes can be edited after the fact, and when you’re happy with your riff, you can drag it into your DAW as a MIDI clip directly from the plugin.

It’s a usable and intuitive enough setup, but there are a few weird interface anomalies. ‘Removed’ notes simply have their volumes set to 0 rather than being deleted from the interface, which leads to clutter; moving the loop brace handles doesn’t update the Loop length parameter; and the Tempo slider only works in the iPad version, so why hasn’t it been removed from the plugin?

Still, as rough around the edges as it may be, Riffer is productive, easy to use and affordable.

n7/ 10n