Guest Contributor Ted James sends in his overview of the Inear Display’s Tkapik sampler.
“Tkapik is an amplitude controlled generative sampler plugin. Add it to a track, then load a sound file and Tkapik will trigger the sample with random settings every time an amplitude peak is detected in the input signal. The sample can either be mixed with the input according to its amplitude envelope or completely replace the signal using the “solo” mode.
Don’t get fooled by the minimalist interface: being sample-based, Tkapik opens a wide array of sonic possibilities. You can use it to simply layer a kick drum with some field recordings or in a more extreme way to replace a whole part by a chaos of random drills and glitches. When the sample is triggered, its start offset, loop points and optionally pitch are randomized, giving you surprising results every time.”
I’m a big fan of Inear Display plug-ins and this one was an instant favorite of mine. Its the kind of software that immediately inspires experimentation and encourages use in the same sort of way that a modular synthesizer can. There are no patch cables involved with Tkapik, but you can toss any source audio into it and you’ll end up with unique and interesting results every time. It’s unpredictable and a lot of fun.
I made a couple demo videos last week to show it in use. The first of these features source audio from the latest Waveform City podcast with guest Matthew Goike. The second video shows 5 instances of Tkapik in Solo mode each using full songs as source audio.
