Audio Damage have released Tessera, available at the intro price of $39.00, increasing to $49.00 after the promotion. The iOS version is awaiting review and will be landing soon.
Tessera is a tuned resonator effect that utilizes an input signal to excite twelve parallel resonator voices, each pitched to a chosen note within a selected chord or scale, transforming single hits into full chords and sustained sounds into evolving pads.
The plugin features eleven distinct resonator models, including a plucked Karplus-Strong string, a bowed waveguide string, and nine banded-waveguide bodies like bars, glass, bells, bowls, membranes, plates, and tubes, allowing for a wide range of sonic textures.
Users can shape each voice with controls for Decay, Damping, Brightness, and Spread, ranging from tight and percussive to vast and ringing, while five motion engines (Contour, SEQ, Strum, Arp, Swarm) dictate the timing and behavior of the twelve voices, with tempo synchronization options.
Tessera offers three play modes: self-tuning to the set scale without MIDI, live keying via a MIDI keyboard, or gating with held notes, providing flexibility for different workflows.
Additional features include an allpass diffusion stage for reverb-like tails, a feedback control for self-sustaining drones, a global Vibrato LFO for pitch modulation, and support for microtonal tuning via MTS-ESP.
Tessera operates without DRM, subscriptions, or dongles, offering a perpetual license with a fully functional demo version that includes a 20-minute session timer and disabled saving.
Features include:
- Twelve tuned resonator voices – A parallel bank of pitched resonators. Whatever you feed Tessera excites all twelve at once, each tuned to a note of the chord or scale you have chosen, so a single transient blooms into a full voicing.
- Eleven resonator models – Two waveguide models (a plucked Karplus-Strong string and a bowed String) plus nine banded-waveguide bodies: Uniform Bar, Tuned Bar, Glass Harmonica, Tibetan Bowl, Membrane, Bell, Plate, Clamped Bar, and Closed Tube. Each has its own voice, from clean and pitched to inharmonic and metallic.
- Root and Scale – Choose a root note and a scale or chord, and the whole bank retunes at once. Ranges from simple triads and sevenths through extended and chromatic voicings.
- Decay, Damping, Brightness, Spread – Voice the resonators from tight and percussive to long and cathedral-sized, and set how far the twelve notes fan across the stereo field.
- Five motion engines – Contour, SEQ, Strum, Arp, and Swarm each decide how and when the voices enter, turning a static chord into shimmer, rhythm, or drift.
- Contour – Spreads the twelve voice entries into a shaped, arpeggiated wave, with adjustable amplitude, frequency, and phase.
- SEQ – A step sequencer that places each of the twelve voices on its own step of the pattern, for rhythmic, repeating figures.
- Strum – Rakes across the chord like a pick across strings, with control over spread, direction, curve, and rate.
- Arp – Cycles the voices one at a time, with rate, gate, and note order.
- Swarm – Lets the voices weave and drift around a moving center, for evolving, unsettled textures.
- Tempo sync – Any of the motion engines can lock to host-tempo beat divisions, so rhythmic patches stay in time.
- Three play modes – Leave MIDI off and the resonators self-tune to your scale, key them live from a MIDI keyboard, or gate them with held notes.
- Diffusion and Feedback – An allpass diffusion stage smears the tails toward reverb, and Feedback recirculates the resonators into longer, blooming, self-sustaining washes.
- Vibrato LFO – A global low-frequency oscillator adds gentle pitch movement across the whole bank.
- Microtonal tuning – MTS-ESP support: when a tuning master is connected, the voices follow its tuning instead of standard equal temperament.
- 100 factory presets – A full bank spanning plucks, drones, bells, rhythmic sequences, strummed chords, arpeggios, and dark cinematic textures.
- Mix and click-free Bypass – Dry / wet Mix defaulting to fully wet, plus a smoothed Bypass with a Tails option that either lets the resonators ring out or cuts them cleanly.
Tessera is available to PC, Mac and Linux users (VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP and LV2).
For more information on Tessera, click here:
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