~/MACHINES/BENEDICTION · PLAYED WITH YOUR HANDS

BENEDICTION

An effect you play with your hands through a camera. Pinch to play, and a fist holds it. Six effects and four punch-ins locked to your song's tempo.

Filter, echo, flanger, crush, isolator and lo-fi; repeat, tape stop, reverse and gate. Echo swells past the edge and can ring out after you let go.

Choose what each hand moves. Every pinch records as automation, so a performance stays in the song. Four looks: standard, inverted, red blobs over your hands and face, or the plain camera picture with red brackets, for filming.

A small companion app watches the camera and the plugin reads your hands without waiting. Tested: both hands tracked on every reading at 28 frames a second.

THE WINDOW

Benediction's window: a drawn figure in changing letters, red brackets on its hands and face, the controls below — THE PLUGIN'S WINDOW · STANDARD LOOK · A DRAWN FIGURE, NOT A PERSON

The picture is you, from your camera, in changing letters, greys and red. Red brackets follow your hands and your face. The arrows at the top step through the effects; under the picture, the controls.

Pinch to play: pointer and thumb together, on either hand. Only a pinch moves the controls, so a resting hand changes nothing, and the red fills a hand while it pinches. Your right hand plays the effect, by its height and by how far out it reaches; for the filter, height is the cutoff and across is the resonance. Your left hand's height is the mix.

TEN EFFECTS

Benediction repeating, held with a fist — REPEAT, HELD WITH A FIST

Six to play: filter, echo, flanger, crush, isolator and lo-fi. Four to punch in, locked to your song's tempo: repeat, tape stop, reverse and gate. Close the hand into a fist during a pinch and the effect holds, its controls frozen; open the fist to let go.

FOUR LOOKS

Benediction in its inverted look: dark letters on white — INVERTED · THE ECHO

Benediction in its blobs look: red over the hands and face — RED BLOBS · THE FLANGER

Standard; inverted, dark letters on white with the red kept; red blobs over your hands and face; or the plain camera picture with the red brackets, for filming. Brightness, contrast, detail, edges and background bring you out in any room.

ASSIGN

ASSIGN turns the controls over to the hands: right hand up and across, left hand up and across, each set to the effect's two controls, the mix, or nothing. And it swaps hands, for whoever leads with the left.

captures: a blessing given by hand
you need: a camera, and the Benediction Camera app (included)
platforms: Mac now; the Windows camera app is still to come
formats: VST3 · AU · CLAP · standalone · Mac
status: coming soon
price: pay what you want, when it's out

COMING SOON