Sugoi Audio releases CURVA, a FREE football-inspired modulation plugin

From Sugoi Audio comes CURVA, a free football-inspired modulation plugin for macOS and Windows.

There have been times over the years when I’ve felt like the best thing for the track I’m working on was to pick up my laptop and punt it from a great height to ensure the sound that I momentarily convinced myself was epic would never be heard again.

I’ve never actually thought to myself, what if I could kick sound around like a football?

Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing.

But before I even thought of the question, CURVA is here with the answer.

CURVA is a free plugin from Sugoi Audio that turns sound into a football and the pitch into a modulation field. Where your sound goes is a battle between striker and goalkeeper.

It sounds like a quirky idea, and it is; it’s a novel and fun way to represent movement and coloration, but it’s also easy to use/understand and produces real impact.

The cartoonish interface has more going on than you might expect from a plugin based on such a playful concept.

If you look at the pitch on the interface, left-to-right represents Pan, while up and down represent Brightness.

You also have the Doppler effect at play; pitch rises and falls with the ball’s trajectory.

The Striker triggers the ball’s movement, and the Goalkeeper interacts with it along the way, causing various diversions in its path.

There are two trigger modes: Move and Kick.

Move offers a continuous flight in which the ball travels from the striker to the goal once per LFO cycle (adjustable modulation wave).

Kick listens to the audio, and every transient above the adjustable sensitivity threshold triggers a new flight.

In addition to various parameters, including Spin, Loft, and Power, that vary the balls movement, you have a roster of four strikers and five goalkeepers, each with different qualities.

For example, the striker Rocket triggers flat and heavy kicks, and the goalkeeper Bounce pulls off a save that sets a ping-pong effect in motion.

You can change the goalkeeper’s position to dictate how early or late the save/interception comes.

You can even change the kick-off time between Dawn, Noon, Dusk, and Night. Changing the time of day offers tone and color variations.

Instead of presets, we have 57 set pieces.

If you want to go beyond your strikers’ abilities, you can draw a custom flight path and even have it loop back on itself if you’re looking for crazier movement.

CURVA is available in AU, VST3, and AAX formats for macOS and Windows.

Recent modulation-based freebies include Orra Pump by Orra Audio and Filtre from Cloudy Samples, both of which are free.