TranceTools Build is out: the whole trance build-up from one note
A free build-up instrument for Mac: hold one note and get the risers, the filter sweep, the snare roll, the silent beat and the crash on the drop, in key and in time.
A trance build-up is a lot of work for sixteen bars. The snare roll has to speed up on the right beats, the risers have to climb to the drop's key, the filter has to open, there's a gap before the drop, and the crash has to land on the one. Doing it by hand takes twenty minutes of drawing notes and automation, and sample packs are never quite the right length or key.
So we made an instrument that plays the whole thing. TranceTools Build is free, for Mac, as a VST3 and AU plugin.
Hold one note
Put TranceTools Build on its own MIDI track and hold a note for 4, 8 or 16 bars before your drop. It plays the whole build in the note's key, locked to your track:
- a noise riser and a tonal riser climbing to the key, with a filter sweep;
- a snare roll that speeds up, from quarters to 32nds in the last bar;
- the silent beat before the drop;
- then a crash and an impact on the drop, and a downlifter falling away after it.
Press ▶ to hear a build without playing a note, even with your DAW stopped.
Your sounds, your synths
Drop your own snare, crash or impact onto a slot, and TranceTools Build rolls it, shapes it and tunes the impact to the key. Your sounds are saved inside the project. Or switch to MIDI out, and it writes the build as MIDI for your own synths and drums, or drags it out as a clip.
There are 19 presets across Uplifting, Progressive, Psy, Tech, Vocal and 90s, and we've tested it in Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio. It's free for personal and commercial use, so you can use it, and its starter-kit sounds, on tracks you release.
Write the track, then build the drop
TranceTools Build is made by the people behind TranceTools, the app that writes trance ideas you can drag into your DAW: chords, leads, basslines, arps and more, made to fit together. TranceTools is in free beta until Tuesday 1 December, when version 1.0 launches at £29 one-off, or £19 until 31 December.