Oh Derek
Drums that breathe. Oh Derek builds every hit from scratch — no samples needed — and moves each lane through four sounds while it plays: a kick that turns into a tom, a snare that becomes a gated room, metal that bends from a pipe into scrap. Industrial at heart, ready for anything with a beat.
See it
Hear it
Straight out of Oh Derek, no external effects.
What it does
Five lanes, all synthesis
BODY (FM drums with a growling filter), SNARE, MACHINE (waves and noise), METAL (a modal engine of ringing bars, plates, pipes, bells and scrap) and HIHAT. Every sound is made as it plays.
A dot between four sounds
Each lane puts four sounds at the corners of a pad. Drag the dot and the drum morphs between them: a kick, a low tom, a rim and a clap in one lane.
Motion
Let the dots move by themselves, in time with the song: circle, figure 8, spiral, Lissajous, square, random — or draw your own path and Oh Derek plays it back.
A sequencer for each lane
Up to 32 steps per lane, each with its own length and rate (1/16, triplets, 1/32), so lanes drift against each other into polyrhythms. Euclid fills, swing and gate.
Steps with character
Every step chooses a corner, a pitch, a velocity, a chance and a ratchet of up to four hits. One pattern, endless variation.
Metal from any sound
Load a WAV into METAL and it becomes a material: its ringing partials turn into a resonator you can bend into scrap, a plate or a bar — or excite with the sound itself.
Synth, wave or sample
BODY, SNARE and HIHAT play their own synthesis, a built-in wave or your sample; MACHINE scans through 16 built-in waves or a wavetable from your file.
Generator
Pick a style — techno, industrial, house, electro, drum & bass, trap, dub, ambient, broken, chip, tribal, hard — set tempo, how busy, how much the dots fly and how wild. Generate. Undo.
Mutate every lane
One click shakes a lane's sound into a new variation; another takes it back. Shift-click for just a little.
Effects and GRIND
Every lane sends to chorus, tape echo, delay and a shimmer reverb. GRIND drives the whole kit, and each lane has its own envelope, mute and solo.
16 factory kits, 80 lane sounds
Kits with 32-step patterns and moving dots, from industrial techno to dub, trap and chiptune. Every lane of every kit is a preset too, so you can mix the kick of one with the snare of another.
Plays with your DAW
Follows the host's tempo and transport, or runs on its own with PLAY. Play every lane from MIDI; channels 2–5 hit the corners directly.
A closer look
Specifications
| Formats | VST3 and Audio Unit (macOS), VST3 (Windows) |
|---|---|
| Systems | macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel (universal) · Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit |
| Demo | Free 14-day trial of the full instrument (macOS: VST3 and AU, Windows: VST3), with all factory kits and lane sounds, then silent until you get the full version |
| Sound | 5 synthesized lanes: BODY (FM drums, Growl filter), SNARE, MACHINE (wavetable and noise, bit crusher, space), METAL (modal resonators, your sound as a material), HIHAT |
| Movement | 4-corner pad on every lane, 10 motion shapes plus a recorded path, synced from 4 bars to 1/8 |
| Sequencer | 5 lanes, up to 32 steps each with its own length and rate, corner, pitch, velocity, chance and ratchet per step, Euclid, swing, gate |
| Effects | Chorus, tape echo, delay, reverb with shimmer, GRIND over the whole kit, per-lane envelope, mute and solo |
| Presets | 16 factory kits, 80 factory lane sounds, your own kits and lane presets in banks |
| Ideas | Generator with 12 styles, Mutate with undo on every lane, 4 colour themes |
| MIDI | Host tempo and transport sync, every lane playable from MIDI, corners on channels 2–5 |
Download
The demo is the full instrument for 14 days, then it goes silent. VST3 and Audio Unit for macOS, VST3 for Windows; the README in the zip says where the files go. Not signed yet: on macOS, if your host does not see it, the README has the one Terminal line that fixes it.