It looks like BreakTweaker – an audio effect plugin, designed by composer/producer BT, that focuses on microediting of audio – lives on.
BreakTweaker was originally introduced in 2014. Designed by BT (the producer behind Stutter Edit) and developed by iZotope, BreakTweaker was described as ‘futuristic drum sculpting and beat sequencing machine’. It was retired by iZotope in 2022.
Now Soundlabs.ai, a new company headed by BT, is teasing BreakTweaker 2. Details are still to come, but they say that it’s coming in 2025, and there will be a discount for owners of the original version.
BreakTweaker builds on BT’s approach to microediting audio, based on musically-useful subdivisions of the beat. BT’s music often explores subdividing beats way beyond standard 8th and 16th notes – to things like 128th notes or 512th notes – into areas where individual notes blur into pitched sounds.
For example, BreakTweaker lets you sequence 16th notes that are subdivided into modulated microedits, so you can get a step that morphs from discrete ‘notes’ into a pitched sound.
Here’s an example of the original BreakTweaker in action:
See the Soundlabs.ai site for more info.
via reader Jon Stubbs
I’ve been commenting on this forum for many years, almost constantly whining about how dumb drum-machine software is.
BreakTweaker is THE exception. It is fascinating and groundbreaking. The UI wasn’t great, but the features, functionality and factory presets were all stellar.
I hope soundlabs.ai is able to take BreakTweaker to the next level!
Not a fan of BT I’ll be honest
But both this and StutterEdit were great plugins. Fun to use on the surface but really quite deep and useful if you look a bit more closely
BabyAudio and Andrew Huang basically just rehashed the StutterEdit for Transit and passed it off as a new idea. The only thing of note they added was a “crossfader” knob
Oh, so this is why all electronic music sounds like that now. I thought it was an aesthetic, but it turns out it was just a plugin.
Electronic music was doing glitch and stutter stuff LONG before BreakTweaker came along. I think BreakTweaker just provided some tools that made it easier.
There’s a huge world of unexplored off-grid rhythm that lies outside the boundaries of EDM– where the fruits of those ‘microedit’ (off grid) tools could be used for modern composition, scoring, and remixing.
BreakTweaker does seem like it is all about electronic music, but a huge aspect of its power is that you could use it in many off-label ways.
I like the idea of being able to dive one level deeper in the micro-editor to control the pitches/notes of individual taps.
You’re saying this brand new plugin is to blame for all the already released music youve been hearing? Nah. But get readyyyyy
Well, it’s not exactly brand new. BreakTweaker was released maybe 10 or 11 years ago (?)
It is quite possible it has heard on some tracks made over the past few years.
Apple’s Logic Pro has a built-in plug that is conceptually similar – very fun to use ..
https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/beat-breaker-overview-lgcpd8d5d067/mac
It seems like you may be thinking of another BT plugin called Stutter.
You can do neat stuff with this. I sampled my bass and made the samples do cool bass line stuff.
this should be interesting ,the founders of unfilterd audio are working on this with bt ,
on the surface breaktweaker seems quite a vanilla glitch plugin but its been a secret weapon for many producers for a long time, it depends on what sounds u put into it ,its not your standard glitch plugin by a long shot , looking forward to it!!
One of the few VI’s for which the descriptor “ground-breaking” has actual meaning.
It is truly unique.