Sick Beat Betty is a free drum machine plugin built using the JUCE platform, available for Windows and Linux.
The plugin comes from Jason Howard and is available to download (along with source code) for free via Github.
Sick Beats Betty provides a series of eight generators that you can direct to a specified MIDI note. Interaction between a collection of square waves generated based on the number of beats and bars assigned to the generator triggers the MIDI note.
The same settings also generate a sawtooth wave, which, when mixed with the square waves, can define the velocity of each note trigger. In other words, you can be creative with dynamics rather than triggering everything at the same velocity, which can be pretty lifeless.
Each generator has controls for (MIDI) Note, Level, Steps, Bars, Phase, and Swing. Each can also be disabled or switched to Solo, allowing you to focus on particular parts of your beat.
The developer put together a short demo video to showcase Sick Beats Betty. In the demo, Jason uses the Standalone application to drive Windows Wavetable Drums.
He also states that his typical use is in Bitwig Studio, driving XO drums, so it would be great to hear how and where any of you put it to use.
I need to take a minute to comment on the name of this plugin; it may be the coolest name since OI, Grandad!. The name Sick Beats Betty makes me think it would have been the perfect tool to score a film like Napoleon Dynamite with its abundance of terrible/amazing MIDI sounds.
With time pressing on, here’s another quick reminder that IK Multimedia’s T-RackS EQ 81 is free until February 14th.
The latest version of Sick Beats Betty is 1.0.3, but a pre-release v1.0.4-beta1 is available, and I’m sure the developer would love any feedback or suggestions.
Sick Beats Betty is available in VST3 format for Windows and Linux, and a macOS version is in the pipeline.
Download: Sick Beat Betty
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5 Comments
Vik
onDeveloper, cool guy! Now version 1.0.4b contains 16 generators. This plugin works absolutely amazing with Emergent Drums.
alex
onActually, I stumbled across this plug a couple of days back, but I was like: “Nice, but maybe later”. But now, I’ll install it. It’s obviously meant to be :)
Andrew
onFL Studio. I have included the path but the VST3 file is not found. Any ideas please? Thanks
Andrew
onTo elaborate, I have tried installing v1.364 and 32, as well as the 1.4 beta. I have added the different paths to be scanned, but the plugin is not recognized, although various files are present, including the VST3 files. Thanks for anything you can suggest…!
John
onGreat stuff here, thanks much for the notice. Euclidean is the way-