Drips

Drips by Padbangers is a granular texture synthesizer for Akai MPC standalone devices: Mutable Instruments Beads as a native MPC OS insert effect, with a modulation page on top.

• Records the track into a buffer of 4 to 32 seconds and replays it as up to 30 grains, each with its own position, length, envelope, pitch and pan; followed by Beads' reverb.
• Four recording qualities, as on the module: Bright Digital (48 kHz 16-bit), Cold Digital (32 kHz 12-bit, the Clouds sound), Sunny Tape (24 kHz 12-bit with tape saturation), Scorched Cassette (24 kHz µ-law with wow & flutter). Drips runs each at the module's own sample rate.
• Delay and beat slicer with SIZE fully clockwise, synced to the MPC tempo if you like.
• Seed: latched, gated, clocked by MIDI notes or by the MPC tempo (divider / probability).
• Wavetable mode: grains from built-in wavetables, no input needed.
• Modulation: two ADSR envelopes, two LFOs (free or tempo-synced) and an 8-slot matrix onto Time, Size, Shape, Pitch, Density, Feedback, Dry/Wet, Reverb, Freeze and Seed.
• Play it melodically from a MIDI track, In/Out Gain with an output limiter, Q-Links on every page, a built-in manual.

Requirements

• A first-generation MPC OS standalone device with a 32-bit ARM CPU: MPC Live / Live II, One, X, Key 61, Force. Developed on an MPC X.
• Root SSH access to the device. Stock MPC OS doesn't offer this; you need a modded unit.
• Installing plugins this way is unofficial. Back up your projects and use it at your own risk.

Using it

DRIPS tab. A 4×4 block (Time Size Shape Pitch / Random ×4 / Density Feedback Reverb Dry/Wet / In Gain Out Gain Freeze), Quality and a big SEED pad on the right. Q-Links:

Time	Size	Shape	Pitch
Random	Random	Random	Random
Density	Feedback	Reverb	Quality
In Gain	Out Gain	Freeze	Dry/Wet

The Random knobs are Beads' attenurandomizers. SETTINGS tab: Seed Mode, Seed Input, MIDI Pitch, MIDI Split, Source, Buffer, each with a short explanation.

MIDI: MPC OS sends no MIDI to insert effects, so every Drips instance opens its own MIDI input, Drips 1, Drips 2, … Set a MIDI track's output to it. Notes play the module's two jacks: PITCH (V/OCT, relative to C3) (with MIDI Pitch on) and, with SEED INPUT = MIDI, SEED (grains, bursts, delay taps). With MIDI Split on, channel 1 only transposes and channel 2 only seeds: one track for the melody, one for the rhythm.

MANUAL tab: basics, grains, seed, delay, qualities, wavetables, MIDI and modulation, on the device.

Build from source

Needs Docker (with QEMU for 32-bit ARM containers), Python 3 and bash ≥ 4. The plugin framework is a submodule:

git clone --recursive <this repo>
cd drips
./build.sh            # -> build/drips.so + skin
make -C test run      # native engine test
./deploy.sh <host>    # copy to a device over ssh (--yes also registers it; restarts MPC)

Developer notes and design decisions: CLAUDE.md.

Credits and licenses

• Drips: MIT, see LICENSE.
• Beads DSP and stmlib by Emilie Gillet — MIT, vendored in third_party/beads/.
• Plugin framework: sd88me/mpc-vst-plugins (submodule; build-time only).
• Not affiliated with Mutable Instruments or Akai Professional.