After Topiary Beatz and Topiary Presetz, I am happy to announce a first version of the next plugin in the Topiary suite: Topiary Riffz. Here’s a quick intro.

Itch to Scratch

The motivation behind creating the Topiary suite was the fact that I want to migrate my live setup from a Korg Kronos to a software solution. The Kronos has arranger-like functionality, which I need. And I could not find similar solutions as (VST) plugins, so I decided to write myself what I need. That is the suite: a modular approach to arranger-like functionality. Topiary Beatz takes care of my need for drums, Topiary Presetz takes care of a need for different mix settings for different parts of songs. Next up is my need for automatic playing of melodic patterns, that adapts to the different chords in a song. There are 2 options:

• One would be a Topiary module that looks at the chord played on the keyboard, and generate a musical phrase based on that. That’s fairly complex and not for todays post.
• A simpler solution is something like what Korg calls RPPR. It exists on Korg models like Krome, Kronos, M3, M50, Triton and perhaps others. Here’s a link to a video that explains RPPR.

Topiary Riffz is inspired by RPPR, but it’s more advanced in several ways.

Topiary Riffz

Topiary Riffz follows the same philosophy as the other Topiary plugins: it provides up to 8 “Variations” at the touch of a button.

You start by loading MIDI pattern into the plugin. In the above example I have 2 MIDI patterns for verses, and 2 for choruses. There is a major pattern and a minor pattern. Those could be bass lines, chords, whatever. They can contain MIDI CC, aftertouch, velocity, pitch bends, whatever.

A variation then is basically a set of assignments of notes to patterns. In the exampl below you see that Variation 1 is for verses. Both my patters are in C (trust me, they are in this example – but you can do them in any key really). The major pattern is assigned to the C key and the minor pattern is assigned to D. If my song is in C that makes sense, because in the scale of C the D chord is a minor. I offset the D key by 2 semitones, so my minor verse pattern in C becomes transposed to D. (to complete the example we might assign E and A to the minor verse pattern and F & G to the major verse pattern).

Now when we play, whenever I play a C4, my major pattern will play (in C) and when I play a D4 my minor pattern will play, transposed to D.

Variation 2 might be a similar setup for choruses.

And like other Topiary plugins, the pattern can be altered, notes can be randomized, note lenght and velocities can be randomized etc.

And the whole is in sync with your host transport and tempo. And transitions between patterns can be quantized in various ways.

In short, this allows me e.g. to have a comples bass line going on (triggered by single keys in my left hand) while my right hand does e.g. a guitar solo. And I might combine this with a Topiary Beatz plugin to do the drums!

Available in version 0.8 now – so probably not 100% bugfree. Open source and free to download and use. Plus if you are a computer programmer (or just curious) you can get the source code if you want, and compile it yourself. Or even adapt it to your own needs.

So by all means, download, check out the manual, try it out and let us know what you think!