MIGR8
Slice · Stutter · GestureMIGR8 is a rhythmic slice-and-stutter effect. It listens to whatever plays through it, cuts each bar into sixteen steps, and lets you re-hit, repeat, freeze and filter those steps from a grid, or throw stutters in live from eight pads. Everything runs in time with your DAW, and because MIGR8 records the bar as it plays, a slice always plays the most recent take of that step: change the music and the chops follow. Steps you leave alone pass straight through untouched, with no added latency. Two big knobs shape it all: REMIX re-hits slices for variation, and DEPTH pushes the effects harder.
- Zero latency, nothing added to untouched steps
- 16-step grid with 3 lanes
- 8 gesture pads + 8 AUTO patterns
- 6 effects that play only on the chops
The interface
MIGR8 on LOPSIDED ORBIT: four re-hit slices, two stutters and a highpass rise into the bar line.
Sixteen steps, three lanes
Each column is one step of the bar and each row is a lane. SLICE says what plays on the step, STUTTER how it repeats, and FILTER how it's shaped. The playing step lights up as the bar goes by, and an input strip shows the level of every step so you can see where the hits are.
Set a step's PROB below 100% and it only plays some of the time. With LOCK on, the dice land the same way every bar so the pattern still repeats; switch it off and every bar rolls fresh.
Re-hit, don't rearrange
MIGR8 records every step of the bar as it plays. Put a slice number on a step and it plays that step's most recent recording instead of what's playing now. NATURAL plays the live audio; RANDOM picks any of the sixteen fresh each time; REVERSE plays the slice backwards.
The musical trick is to re-hit something from the same beat: its downbeat, or the step an 8th earlier. That adds a rhythmic kick without dragging in a note from somewhere else in the bar, so melodic loops stay in tune. The factory presets, RANDOM and REMIX all follow that rule.
Stack a stutter on the same step and it repeats the slice that step is playing, so a re-hit plus a 1/16 repeat gives you a roll of that beat's downbeat.
Repeat, ramp, freeze, stop
Each stutter step has a rate from 1/4 to 1/64 (with triplets) and pitch up to ±12 semitones. Every repeat is matched to the loudness of your track, so a repeated kick doesn't jump out and a repeated tail doesn't vanish.
Repeat
Loops the start of the step at the rate you choose.
Ramp ↑
Repeats that speed up across a tied run, ending four times faster.
Ramp ↓
Repeats that slow down across a tied run, ending four times slower.
Freeze
Holds a tiny grain of the step as a sustained tone.
Tapestop
The step slows to a stop like a tape machine losing power.
Lane knobs
GATE for choppiness, TAIL for the fade, WOBBLE for tape wow and flutter, and PAN WIDTH to ping-pong the repeats.
Shape every step
The FILTER lane gives any step a low-pass, high-pass, band-pass or vowel filter. Tie a run of cells and the filter sweeps once across the whole run, from A to B, B back to A, or holding at one end. Run it PRE to filter before the chopping or POST to filter the chops.
Try a high-pass on the last four steps, tied, with cutoff sweeping low to high: an instant riser into every bar line.
Every lane and effect knob also has a mode:
Routed to the chops
MIGR8's six effects never sit on the whole track. Each one plays only while a chop it's routed to is playing (stutters, slices or both), and its tail rings out afterwards, so a stutter can throw into a dub echo while the groove stays dry. Any single step can pick its own effect, or stay dry.
Cloud
A granular shimmer around the chop.
Resonator
Rings the chop through tuned resonators in a key and chord.
Shift
Frequency shift above about 150 Hz. The bass stays put.
Fold
Wavefolding grit with multiband glue.
Dub
A tempo-synced dub delay.
Space
Reverb with shimmer.
Play over the beat
Each pad is a gesture that takes over the STUTTER and FILTER lanes while you hold it. The grid itself never changes. Presses snap to the nearest 1/16, so a slightly late hit still lands in time. Let go and the pad plays on to the next 1/16 and fades out. Play them with the mouse, automation, or MIDI notes 48 to 55.
1/16 Stutter
1/16 repeats of what just played, grabbing fresh audio every half bar.
1/8 Stutter
The same at 1/8.
Tape Drop
A tape stop on the playing step.
Beat Repeat
Repeats the last beat, grabbing fresh audio every half bar.
LP Dive
A low-pass dive over half a bar.
Vowel Fill
1/16-triplet repeats through the vowel filter.
Stutter Build
1/8 → 1/16 → 1/32 repeats over half a bar.
Gate Chop
A 1/16 on/off chop of the live groove.
Make every pad your own
Right-click any pad to open it on the PERF page and change what it does. The mix lives here too: Dry/Wet, Output, a DUCK knob that dips the effects under each new chop, a one-knob filter (low-pass left, high-pass right) and a safety limiter at −0.3 dBFS.
Eight patterns under your fingers
Press AUTO and the pads become eight pattern pads. Pad 1 holds the preset's pattern; pads 2 through 8 hold variations of it. Tap one and MIGR8 switches on the next step. RANDOM writes a brand-new pattern that follows MIGR8's rules. With AUTO on, it rolls fresh variations onto the other seven pads. Undo takes either back.
Skip
The off-beat 8ths re-hit their beat.
Pickup
A 1/8 repeat into the bar line.
Brake
A tape stop and closing low-pass over the last half beat.
Sparse
Keeps the beats, thins the rest, freezes the "and" of 2.
Echo
The last beat backwards, thrown into the Dub.
Stabs
Beats 3 and 4 re-hit on their "e" and "a".
Half-Speed
A 1/8 repeat into a last beat played an octave down.
Hands on
REMIX re-hits slices on plain steps, always from the same beat, and tightens the stutter gate a little. DEPTH pushes every routed effect harder, up to about 4 dB more wet at the top. Every knob, lane length and routing choice can be automated, 145 parameters in all.
The window resizes from 860 to 2688 points wide, and EXPAND makes the screen fill it with larger text while the pads and macros stay underneath, so you can hold a pad while you edit it.
In Logic Pro, load MIGR8 MIDI on an instrument track and side-chain your audio into it to play the pads straight from a keyboard.
Fifty starting points
Under the hood