Deepwake

Hold to throw

Three pads: two reverbs and a delay. Hold one and the effect takes over. Duck sets how far the dry dips underneath: not at all, all the way out, or anywhere between, where it breathes with the effect like a sidechain.

Or let the pads play themselves: each one has its own step lane, with its own rate, length and gate. A reverb can land on the last beat of every four bars while Tide runs in 16ths.

Two reverbs built from scratch, each with three spaces: Plate, Hall and Room. Set the decay in seconds, the predelay, the diffusion and the motion inside the tail, add Shimmer for a tail that climbs an octave, or Freeze to hold it for as long as the pad is held. Plus a tempo-synced ping-pong delay from 1/16 to 3/8, and a full filter on each return. The effects are fed in the background all the time, so the tail is already full the moment a pad opens.

Tide, the sequencer

Sixteen steps, each with its own pitch across six octaves, from −36 to +36 semitones. Pick a scale and every step snaps into key, so even the wildest jumps stay musical.

Run it from 1/64 to 1/2, triplets included. Split any step into 2, 3 or 4 hits for rolls, shorten the loop to any length from 1 to 16 steps, add swing.

The Groove page gives every step a chance to play, a condition (every other loop, the first loop only, only while Fill is held) and a timing offset, early or late. Feel writes a UK shuffle, a 2-step swing or a broken beat into those offsets, ready to edit step by step.

With sync on, Tide starts when you press play in Live. Switch it off and Deepwake becomes a mono synth you play from your keyboard, with glide on legato notes.

Pump, no kick needed

A ghost kick ducks the whole synth, effects included, then lets it breathe back up: the sidechain sound without routing a kick track. On every beat, in 2-step, or on your own steps in the Pump lane under Tide.

Depth, Release in beats and Shape set the kick stage. A second, slower stage dips at the start of each bar and breathes over the whole bar. The curve shows exactly what you will hear.

Wide, and still mono

Club systems and phones play in mono. Everything Deepwake does to widen the sound cancels out cleanly in the mono sum, so the bass never thins out on the floor.

Width adds a mirrored copy on the sides. Mono bass keeps everything under the frequency you choose dead centre. Mono check lets you hear the mono sum, and the meter shows how safe the mix is.

Nine presets double as short lessons: each one shows a tip that explains the trick behind it, from a club-safe mono bass to a reese that feels wide even in mono.

Built for the low end

Two oscillators, each with its own wave, octave, pitch, level and a unison stack of up to five voices. Phase lines every note up so each hit punches the same way, and every knob move glides smoothly, with no steps.

A sub that always stays centred, and two filters, A and B: low-pass, high-pass, band-pass or notch, each with its own envelope. Every source picks its route: filter A, filter B, both side by side, one after the other, or no filter at all. The voice runs at twice the sample rate, Drive starts perfectly clean, and Age adds the slow drift of a worn analog synth.