Okay, I love arps, I’ll admit that right away. I often start a track with an arp on either a drum rack or an instrument, simply to have some quickly adjustable parameters to help move things around, since most of my better music is discovered rather than preplanned, I’ve come to realize.
So when I found out about Tinge, I was immediately curious about its possible use in my musical tinkerings. I actually found out about this recently released VST plugin while preparing for my recent interview with Daedelus, making this review feel almost too perfectly timed, since Tinge came to life in yet another cooperation between maestro Daedelus and developer friend Rainbow Circuit.
So, Tinge blurs the boundary between performance tool and compositional engine. It’s an arpeggiator unlike any other, let me just say that. It stays in tune, on the played note, per note, but gains the power to move and stop, in lack of better terms – i.e. there’s no shifting of notes up or down in pitch, rather it works in time with the note or chord played.
Briefly explained, Tinge revolves around the motion of three interacting colored wheels. Overlap alters dynamics, Opacity drives touch and pressure, and movement transforms chords into constantly shifting textures. You can push played notes ahead, slow them down, snap them back to the start, or let them spiral unpredictably. Tinge wasn’t made for predictable patterns, but you can tame it and use it for approximating something. And right there is the fun, live feeling of “locking in” a good rhythmic pattern.
Tinge wasn’t made for predictable patterns, but you can tame it and use it for approximating something.
So what can it be used for?
I see uses for Tinge for anyone wanting to break up stale chords and notes, at the same time staying in key. For instance, Ableton’s stock arp can note repeat in sync and in free sync, and do so either staying on the played note or going up or down in a set note interval. But Tinge differs here by delivering three arps that do stay on the played note, mind you. The Overlap function dictates how each wheel adds to or subtracts from each other, the sum becoming something unobtainable without elaborate chaining of devices and modulation sources/targets.
A few other scenarios that I think worked well in testing the plugin were adding movement to melodic parts, pumping rhythm into the note progression of a bass or drum part. Lots of fun – but prepare for lots of fiddling too, it takes time to tame those random bits right!
The only minor headache for me as an Ableton user is the way Tinge must be set up as a midi instrument on one channel, while a second midi channel is set to listen to midi from Tinge. This means hopping between these two channels for adjustments and automation. But it’s an Ableton thing more than it’s a Rainbow Circuit thing. It’s just the way things work in this scenario.
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A tool to unveil your sound
I’m not going to call Tinge an easy or even fully self explanatory plugin to use. Really, it’s not. And even now, days in, I try to grasp what I’m really doing other than trial and error auditioning. But I like that – and for this, I think my musical sparring buddy will once again ask” why do I like to make it so difficult for it to be rewarding?”, and we’ll probably laugh at the fact again. But it’s like cracking a code or inventing something you believe is your find when you end up using a tool in a way that makes the music yours even more. And Tinge can be exactly that when you install it: A tool to unveil your sound. How it sounds is up to the source you work it on, and what you do with it in time.
This duo has managed to imbue a VST instrument with Daedelus’ trademark infernal bag of tricks, giving us all powers like chance, luck and wonder. It’s no magic one button, rather it’s got a lot of them across its beautifully tailored user interface, the darned prettiest by Rainbow Circuit so far. And that’s some of the most positive energy coming out of the often copycat-like pro audio world recently.
Make sure to read the interview with Daedelus as well.
