Gear Reviews

Brian “BT” Transeau has been consistently producing thoughtful and compelling electronic music since the ’90s. He’s also quite the audiophile and technologist, developing apps and regularly working on tech projects over the years. Currently touring in support of his ninth album, A Song Across Wires, the Grammy-nominated Transeau hits twice yearly music instrument trade show NAMM this week in Anaheim, CA, to unveil his latest endeavor, BreakTweaker, an application which allows producers to make “beats you’ve never heard before with the beat machine of the future.”

Following the joint release of the live re-mixing plug-in Stutter Edit created in partnership with Cambridge, MA-based audio technology firm iZotope, the two entities unite again to present BreakTweaker, a “drum sculpting and beat sequencing environment that blurs the line between rhythm and melody.”

Obligatory press release gush from BT: “I’ve always been intrigued by the way humans perceive rhythm, particularly the threshold point of where the ear perceives rhythm as pitch. The idea of exploring and exploiting this threshold inspired BreakTweaker, a tool where I could finally realize rhythmic possibilities that I once imagined but had never before been able to hear.”

Check out the specs below and watch an interesting video demo of the product in action.

Key Features

Manipulate audio at a molecular level: control pitch, rhythm, and texture at the finest resolution available
Escape traditional drum grids: create complex polyrhythmic beats with unique isorhythm and playback speed settings
Get over 2 GB of professional, royalty-free content: explore presets, drum samples, and wavetables designed by today’s top musicians and DJs, including BT
Craft your own drum sounds: blend drum samples with robust synthesis features to generate compelling hybrid sounds
Take control of your beats: Easily trigger and sequence complex patterns and samples using any MIDI controller