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phrz plugin guide

the phrz guide.

how phrz works, how to install it, and how to use it. for the plugin on Mac and Windows.

Chopping samples and rearranging them by hand means deciding where to cut, where each slice goes and whether it all stays in key. phrz leaves the cutting and the placing to chance and keeps the key in check. All you do is press, listen and keep what you like.

cutting

phrz slices your samples in several ways.

phrz can cut at the attacks so every slice starts on a hit or a note, split the sound into equal slices, or take slices of any length from anywhere in it. It can also pick the way to cut for each sound.

placing on a grid

Each sound becomes a layer, up to 24 of them, all playing on one grid in your DAW's tempo. Drums, chords and voices end up in the same phrase.

phrz decides how busy each layer is, whether its slices scatter, spread evenly or bunch together, and where the phrase breaks. A placed slice does not have to play on every pass either, so the same phrase shifts a little each time it loops.

phrz decides where slices go, whether they play on each pass, and where the phrase breaks.

keeping it in key

Mix samples in different keys and they still don't clash. phrz finds the key of each sound and moves its pitch to the song's key. phrz can pick the song's key from your sounds, or you can set it. Sounds without a pitch, like drums, can stay out of the tuning.

Pitch moves the way a record's speed does: slices pitched up get shorter, slices pitched down get longer.

effects

Effects in phrz are a sequence, not an insert left on all the time. Each one is placed at a step in the phrase and acts only there, only on the sounds it targets, for as long as it is set to. So one hit plays backwards, a few steps later another stutters, and the rest stays dry.

Effects sit on the same grid as the slices and act only on the steps where they are placed.
reverse
plays it backwards.
stutter
repeats it in quick bursts.
glitch
breaks it into tiny grains.
delay
lets it echo.

phrz writes the sequence, and writes a new one with every new phrase. You can also rewrite it yourself.

the picture, cut too

Add images or a video and phrz cuts the picture the way it cuts sound. Each time a slice plays, the picture switches, crops in, shifts or mirrors.

What moves the picture is not an analysis of the audio but the slices that actually play. So the picture always moves with the phrase, gets cut a little differently on every loop, and stays that way in the MP4 you export.

living with chance

A phrase you hear may never come back. Turning the knobs back to where they were gives you a different phrase, so hold on to the ones you like right away.

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