CHOP SUEY Review
Chop Suey is a joint collaboration between Sinee and Dawesome focussed around creating layered sample drum hits, particularly kicks. Chop Suey takes a very specific approach to designing kicks, and produces a UI around it. This method is to layer drum sounds consecutively rather than simultaneously so that each section of the drum hit plays one after the other. You can think of any drum sound as a combination of 3 layers, the transient, body, and tail, the transient is the initial “click” or “tick” at the very beginning, the body is the tonal thump or impact directly after the transient, and the tail is the sustained decay/ resonance that rings out after. When layering these three parts simultaneously, different frequencies in each layer interfere with one another, more importantly, you are likely using sounds that contain each element, which ends up summing together for mushy or loud transients, and muddy bodies. By dissecting these layers and layering them consecutively, one after another, you can swap out different elements and take better control over each part. “Layers” might not be the best word here, as it implies everything plays at once, when technically these are one after another, but it all happens so fast, and is part of the same sound, I think it’s a fair way to phrase it.
Chop Suey takes this method of drum design and gives you a nice big waveform display with each section presented with a visual interface. you can adjust the length of each zone and the crossover fading, with the ability to zoom way in for precise editing. You can even skew the display to give you more accuracy in the transient region where you need it most, while still seeing the whole envelope curve. Below this are controls for pitch, filter, drive, and gain, each one with a drawable MSEG that corresponds directly to the waveform on display for a direct relation between the envelope and audio. By dragging the Chop Suey logo you can actually render the resulting kick or drum directly into your daw, this can be a fast way to produce several variations of the same idea.
Finally, what makes Chop Suey great in my opinion, is the layer editing at the bottom. Each layer has controls for offset, phase, pitch, and gain. Offset shifts the coarse timing of the sample, while phase adjusts the fine timing. What’s important to recognize is that this doesn’t change the timing of the envelope or fading, think of the envelope as a window, with the samples showing through, you are changing only which part of the sample you are looking at through that window. This allows you to keep the timing of everything stable, while only focussing on the actual tone underneath. What I particularly enjoy is being able to click through samples. Normally when replicating this method in a DAW, you’d have to pull in a new sample each time you wanted to try one, you’d have to chop it down and place it too. Chop Suey allows you to simply browse bodies, tails, and most importantly transients allowing your mind and ear to focus on the sound rather than the repetitious task of lining things up between samples.
I actually normally use chop suey for sound design, you can load it up with any samples, and use this same method to create new sounds. I enjoy taking my glitch and found sound samples and layering them via this method. Being able to click through different sections and quickly find sequences that are interesting is quite enjoyable. I could see making basses with this method as well. Chop Suey comes with a variety of transients tails and bodies to combine and pick from and quite a few presets to get you started. As well it’s worth loading in your own kick collections and perhaps clicks and other elements you can mix in. Crafting your kicks in this way takes a bit of getting used to, but is surprisingly powerful and useful. If I had any complaint, it’d be the UI responsiveness, it’s not bad, but I feel like a few more frames per second and maybe a smoother motion could improve things. Also the MSEG nodes don’t collide when they meet, meaning it’s difficult to make vertical slopes. Otherwise, Chop Suey is a visually engaging plugin, being able to see the waveform change right alongside the envelopes and MSEGs goes a long way in developing a visual understanding to pair with what you are hearing.
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CHOP SUEY: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/69-Generator/9236-Chop-Suey?a_aid=61c378ab215d5