Cormac Daly has released Thaw, a VST plug-in for the creation and manipulation of static and drone sounds using the phase vocoder.

Thaw was created as part of a Masters in Music Technology academic project whose aim was to explore the use of the phase vocoder for the creation and manipulation of static and drone sounds.

Thaw can be used for creating a perceptual ‘snapshot’ of a sound and then creating drones using a number of effects including a low frequency oscillator and a pitch shifter.

The scientific and musical background of this project, as well as an explanation of the inner workings of the software, can be found in the accompanying thesis.

Check out “What Goes Around”, a musical piece which showcases Thaw.

 Cormac Daly - What Goes Around (Download size: 6.09 MB)

On page 68 of Cormac’s thesis you will find a screenshot of the Cubase production environment in which What Goes Around was composed.

Download the Thaw effect plugin for Windows (VST) below.

 Thaw v0.1 (Download size: 1.32 MB)