I’ve been digging a new Izotope plug-in I got for Pro Tools called Stutter Edit. In the simplest terms, it lets you assemble a group of effects into what they call a “gesture”, and then you can play these gestures via MIDI.

It’s almost something that you have to play around with to grok the crazy musicality of it all. I never even considered being able to play effects like an instrument.

For the stuff I’ve been working on lately, I’m enjoying just some small applications of Stutter Edit. I think it’s probably easy to overdo it with this plug-in, but reasonable application seems to be working for me – using it for breaks or specific sections of a song is how I’ve been using it.

It’s pretty straightforward:

• Create a MIDI track to record the notes that you’ll use to trigger gestures
• Insert an instance of Stutter Edit on an audio track (or bus, or the master fader)
• Set the output of the MIDI track to go to the Stutter Edit instance you want to control

The biggest challenge with this plug-in is the sheer amount of tweakery that you can get sucked into. There are many, many gestures, each composed of many, many effects, each of which has lots of parameters. It can get to be daunting.

As with all tech, though, the only way I get to know how to use it is exactly that: using it. For the time being I’m experimenting with the presets, but when I have something specific I want to hear I will figure out how to adjust it. Meanwhile, it’s a cool way to add some unique textures and sounds to the music I’m working on.