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The "GAZR: Verb Drive" is a VST music production plugin designed to replicate the iconic tones of classic shoegaze guitarists like Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and more.
The main idea behind GAZR is to replicate the guitar effects pedal experience for musicians in the digital environment.
GAZR incorporates a combination of modulated reverb and overdrive effects, allowing users to craft fuzzy, ethereal guitar tones with ease.
The plugin aims to provide a balance between offering a comprehensive set of settings for tone sculpting while ensuring a streamlined user experience that prioritizes quick and easy decisions in the music-making process.
UI Design
Prototyping
Development
Figma
After Effects
C++
JUCE Framework
Design: 1 week
Code: Eternity
Efficient Tone Crafting: Users should be able to effortlessly create the desired shoegaze guitar tones without getting bogged down in complex settings.
Cohesive Integration: GAZR should seamlessly integrate modulated reverb and overdrive effects, allowing users to achieve a cohesive sound effortlessly.
Intuitive Interface: The interface should be intuitive and user-friendly, enabling both novice and experienced musicians to navigate the plugin efficiently.
For this project, I wanted to understand how other plugin developers were approaching similar VST plugins based on "irl" guitar pedals.
I may be the only designer to say this... but I really enjoy this skeuomorphic design style! I feel that in creative applications like music production, the more realistic design approach helps the user respond intuitively to the interface.
Through the use of clear labeling and an intuitive top to bottom/left to right signal flow, these guitar pedal plugins have created a seamless user experience that guitar players have come to know and expect.
I designed all of the components (knobs, buttons, selectors, LEDs) in Figma, modeling real analog hardware.
For this process, I relied heavily on the use of heavily layered gradients and shadows to replicate the lighting and texture of the different materials being mimicked, which was a fun exercise in visual design!
Major preface: I don’t consider myself a plugin developer, but I like tinkering with code and learning more about the process in order to make things.
I’m currently developing GAZR using the C++ programming language and the JUCE framework. JUCE provides a solid foundation for building audio applications, offering a suite of tools and libraries for developing cross-platform plugins.
Building audio plugins is a challenging process for someone like myself just starting out with DSP, but JUCE gives you the building blocks to point you in the write direction.
As a creative person, it’s a fun exercise to build your own tools to suit your own needs and desires. I had always wanted a solution for my own music making to create this type of sound “in the box” but other solutions felt a little too “clean” and “sterile” for my liking.
I wanted the UI of GAZR to reflect that sense of stepping away from the computer, and for things to feel very “textural” and “noisy” from an aesthetic perspective.
Stay tuned as I continue to refine and enhance the GAZR: Verb Drive plugin, bringing the dreamy sounds of shoegaze music to life!
Whether you have an exciting project in mind, want to collaborate, or simply have a question, I'm here to help. Let's connect and explore the possibilities together.
Send me an email
Kofo is an award UI/UX designs and branding
agency based in New York, USA.
