MetreFiddler is a MIDI event processing plugin that applies an advanced adaptation of Clarence Barlow’s ideas of metric indispensability. It assigns new velocity values to rhythmic events and filters them based on their metric weight. It can also send MIDI notes. Metric structures are defined using RQQ notation.
This Plugin is built using the nih_plug framework with a GUI powered by vizia.
MetreFiddler has MIDI input and output, which you need to route depending on your DAW. For example, in Reaper you can simply place the plugin on a channel that contains a MIDI item or a synthesizer receiving the notes. In FL Studio, you can load the plugin anywhere but must set the MIDI input and output ports in the Plugin Wrapper settings. The MIDI events that pass through the plugin are then modified by MetreFiddler. Depending on the mode you can also send new MIDI notes for each beat of the metric structure.
Based on the metric weight of an event within a measure, the event will either receive a new velocity value or be filtered out entirely. Which events are passed through or filtered is controlled by the threshold sliders, while the range for new velocity values is set by the velocity sliders.
The current position within a measure is determined either by the duration slider and playback time (the Reset Phase button can be automated to restart the measure) or by the position slider.
In the textbox, you can define a metric structure using RQQ notation. The onset of each beat defined this way is then shown on the position slider.
This is an example usage of MetreFiddler together with VelocityMapper that maps an incoming stream of MIDI notes to drum samples according to a metric structure and warps the beat by automating some ofe the parameters:
MetrefiddlerDemo.mp4
Precompiled binaries can be found in the Releases tab
On macOS you may need to disable Gatekeeper to be able to use this plugin.
After installing Rust, you can compile MetreFiddler yourself with this command:
cargo xtask bundle metrefiddler --release