Teletone Audio has produced some amazing virtual instruments since 2017, like Postcard Piano and Odine — a nostalgic piano and atmospheric synth. We tested out their latest gritty beatmaker Tympo.
Tympo lets users easily create sequences and perform beats through their modern sound design controls and tone-bending effects. Whether you’re looking for a quick start to get a session moving or have been wanting a more humanised feel to your beats.
Teletone Audio is a relatively new company from Nashville Tennessee, founded by classically-trained pianist, composer, and producer Jeremy Larson — they currently have just 7 plugins.
Working within the Native Instruments free Kontakt Player 7 (get that here), Tympo has two main workflow windows, HOME, and BEATMAKER. The GUI is reminiscent of the classic ProCO RAT pedal — hinting at dirty drum tones.
Diving into Tympo, the Sound Design section at the top of the HOME window allows users to bend the overall sound and rhythm in real time using the Pitch and Mod Wheel on their controller for vibey performative beats.
On the Pitch Wheel users can adjust any combination of Stretch (expands or contracts), Focus (breaks down the rhythm), Chaos (stuttering skipping effect) and Filter (sweepable high or low pass).
Over to the Mod Wheel, it manipulates the Velocity (how hard the sample is triggered), Feel (pushed or pulled swing feel), Spread (panning), and tuning of the beat.
Introducing the feel means users can have the hats dragging, the percussion the pushing and still have the kick and snare snapped on tempo for an authentic humanised groove that feels natural.
Underneath the Pitch and Mod Wheel dials, users can introduce vinyl, cassette and room tone noise as well as modulation effects like Flanger, Saturation, Phaser and a slap delay.
Once users have selected their kit, they can customise it by swapping out any individual drum for another within the DRUM DETAIL section and save it for easy loading.
BEAT SELECTION contains Teletone Audio’s ‘Factory Beats’ with suggested BPM however, Tympo syncs up with users’ project tempo and time signature without time stretching or compromising the fidelity of the samples.
In DRUM DETAIL users can edit the volume, pitch, pan and room sound of each drum in the kit. They also have the option to Compress, Tighten (open or close the sample), Fatten, Dip or bring more Clarity to the drum.
A great feature in this section is the option to route each drum to a particular output which means users can create individual sends giving them more flexibility and control over their mix.
This brings us to the second window, BEATMAKER. An inspiring name to bring out users’ inner Dr Dre. It looks like your typical drum sequencer organised vertically. Each drum has its horizontal lane in which users can adjust the number of steps or beats in the measure and a drop-down menu to draw in steps of Velocity, Feel, Spread, and Tune.
You can also switch between different articulations on the Snare, Hi-Hat and Toms. One cool feature is users can click and drag their mouse along the lane, to sweep across the step lane and draw a smooth step trigger sequence.
The MIDI capabilities of Tympo are easily laid out. Split over two octaves, users can either play the samples by hand on the lower octave or trigger up to 8 sequences on the high octave by holding the notes down creating an easy flow when arranging the track.
There’s a lot to love about this plugin so I highly recommend you give Tympo a try. It’ll make you inspired to create and might give you a foundation for future sessions.
Tympo comes in at $129 USD (approx. $195 AUD). To find out more about Tympo, head over to Teletoneaudio.com
