OFFBEAT · public · first seen
Oh, hello! How have you been? Can we interest you in some heavy beats and a rather noisy kitchen appliance?
OFFBEAT’s Synthwave Month update is live now! There are new sounds to experiment with, new clients to keep happy, and a few more ways to get those musical ideas out of your head and into your studio.
Let’s have a look, shall we?
Your collection of questionable musical objects continues to grow:
VHS Drum: For big, heavy beats. Subtlety can wait.
Arcade Synth: A surprisingly versatile FM-powered synth. Experiment, live a little.
Smoothie Maker: A somewhat raucous introduction to chorus and flanger techniques. We cannot promise a quiet breakfast.
Best get to work. Your career is riding high, and your clients’ requests remain perfectly reasonable....mostly.
Make a TV advert for an anti-sleep device, indulge in some vaporwave with DJ Sludgepump, and bring a good vibe to Lilith’s haunted family dinner.
Fancy a more hands on approach? Plug in a MIDI keyboard and use channels 1-4 to control the instruments connected to your sequencer. You can also play instruments using your computer keyboard, with note quantisation keeping everything in-key. For now, both controls work in real time and don’t record notes into the sequencer. They’re a key stepping stone towards real-time sequencing, though.
Manual grid placement: Put instruments exactly where you want them when taking them out of storage.
More notebook content: Including some elementary chord theory.
Phrygian mode: A new scale full of threatening overtones. Lovely.
Improved error handling: To help prevent pesky desync bugs and track down their causes.
Since OFFBEAT launched, we’ve been releasing substantial updates every month, each with a whole new chapter of gameplay. It’s been a lot of fun, but it’s also been quite demanding for our little team of three.
We also want to give some of your most-requested features the attention they deserve. There’s plenty we’d like to improve alongside adding more jobs and musical objects to your studio.
December’s update will focus on features rather than a new chapter. We’re aiming to bring you:
Real-time sequencer editing
Variable time signatures
Updates to the song editing interface
A few bonus Christmassy things
These are the features we’re working towards, and we’ll keep you posted as the update takes shape.
Monthly chapter releases will resume from mid-January.
We’re spreading out the remaining Early Access updates to keep a steady flow of new things coming as we work towards OFFBEAT’s full release, without leaving too long a quiet spell at the end. This also gives us time to test each update before it lands in your studio.
Here’s what’s coming up:
December - Festivities & QoL
January - Techno
February - Ambient
March - Chiptune
Plenty more jobs, sounds, and questionable musical experiments to look forward to, so don't you worry! Best keep that studio tidy. And that's everything!