Glitch effect for Mac

TESSERA

Glitches that land on the beat. Tessera repeats, reverses, halts, skips and gates your sound in time, and draws every cut as it happens.

$15 until December 31, then $39

Download free 35 MB

The free download is the whole plugin. Until you add a license, it dips in volume for a moment once a minute. Or play it here first.

Tessera's SCAN look in the plugin: stacked cyan and magenta scanlines displaced by a drum loop's waveform, receding into depth.
  • repeat
  • reverse
  • halt
  • skip
  • gate
A still of the plugin's SCAN look. Play it with sound.
Platform
macOS 11 or later · Apple silicon and Intel
Formats
AU · AU MIDI (Tessera MIDI, for Logic) · VST3 · Standalone
Played in
Ableton Live 12 (VST3)
Version
0.3.1
Latency
None

In your browser

Glitch a drum loop

Pick a drum loop, press Play and turn the knobs. It’s Tessera’s own glitch engine and screen, with all 85 of its presets.

For anyone sensitive to flashing light, Tessera dims any large bright change after three in a second, here and in the plugin, and CALM MOTION turns the movement down further.

Inside

What’s on the panel

  • Repeat, reverse, halt, skip, gate

    Every change lands on the next step, so nothing cuts off in the middle of a beat.

  • Amount, Size, Bend, Drift

    How many glitches, how long each one is, which way the pitch bends, and how much each bar differs from the last.

  • EDGE

    Turn it left and the cuts soften. Turn it right for SNAP, ACID, RING, CRUSH or TAPE. It works on the cuts Tessera makes and leaves your own hits as they were.

  • ? GUIDE

    Press it, then touch any control. A sidebar says what that control does, and it keeps working while you read.

  • 85 presets, 34 grooves

    Browse by genre and instrument. Every random pattern has a two-word seed you can always get back to.

  • SCAN or DOTS

    Draw it as scan lines or as dots, and send it out as INSERT, MIX or WET ONLY. Tessera never reads ahead, so it adds no latency.

Made at Smiley Face Studio · San Diego

A glitch for every sitch

TESSERA

$15 until December 31, then $39.

How it arrives
Pay with PayPal or a card. Your license and the download are on the next page, and in your inbox.
The license
One license covers every format, on the Macs you make music on. It works offline, with no account and no iLok. Updates are free.
Your Mac
macOS 11 or later, Apple silicon or Intel. There’s no Windows version, and no AAX for Pro Tools, yet.
Questions?
Write to david@smileyface.studio.

All sales are final (refund policy).

Tell us what you think

A verb you wish it had, or a groove it got wrong. Tell us.

Report a bug

Say what you did and what you expected. The fix comes back to you as a free update.