Creative Tape Modulator · Manual

tape sway

Covers version 1.1.0. Read it once. The plugin is quicker than the manual.

← Back to Tape Sway

What it is

Tape never plays back at quite the right speed. Motors wobble, capstans wear, reels stick. You hear that as pitch. The slow, seasick sway is wow. The fast, nervous shake is flutter.

Tape Sway is a whole tape machine built around that sway. Pick a machine, set how it moves, then run the sound through five modules in the order it meets them: PITCH, AGE, REC, ECHO and SPRING. OUTPUT blends it back with your track, and the TRANSPORT strip stops, drags and drops the tape in time with the song.

It goes from a held breath to a machine falling apart. Most of the time you want the held breath.

Quick start

1. Open Tape Sway on a track. It starts on the Reel preset.
2. Turn DEPTH up to make it sway further. Turn the big MIX in OUTPUT up to hear more of it.
3. Slide WOW ↔ FLUTTER left for slow drift, right for fast shake.
4. Click WALKMAN or DICTAPHONE to hear the same settings on a rougher machine.
5. Switch a module on by clicking its name or its lamp. Try ECHO.

That's the plugin. Everything below is detail. Inside the plugin, hover any control and its help shows in the top right corner. Click the Marlow logo on the left spine for the tour; it walks you through the panel once.

The layout

Three bands, top to bottom.

• Movement across the top: the MACHINE switch, the WOW ↔ FLUTTER slider, the four motion knobs, and the chart recorder on the right.
• The chain in the middle: five modules side by side, left to right in signal order. PITCH, AGE, REC, ECHO, SPRING. Then OUTPUT.
• Transport along the bottom: STOP, DRAG and DROP, with the DROP PATTERN steps under them.

The cream spine on the left carries the presets and the Marlow logo, which opens your account. The tapesway spine on the right is the name.

Movement

MACHINE

Four machines, clean to rough. Each one changes the motion, the tone, the noise and the frequency band the other knobs work with. It never moves a knob.

• REEL: clean, bright, a slow steady glide. The neutral one.
• 8-TRACK: cartridge wobble and drift, full bandwidth.
• WALKMAN: portable lo-fi. Belt drag, a rolled-off top, hiss and dropouts.
• DICTAPHONE: a lurching motor and a telephone band. The voice memo.

The rougher machines wander even with AGE at zero. That's the machine, not the tape.

WOW ↔ FLUTTER

Blends the slow sway against the fast tremble. Left is a loved deck with a tired motor. Right is a damaged capstan. Both follow the RATE knobs, so RATE sets the speed and this slider sets the character.

RATE A, RATE B, LINK

How fast each reel sways. Reel A drives the left channel, Reel B the right. Set them slightly apart and the stereo image breathes as the two drift in and out of step. LINK between them locks the two knobs together.

DEPTH

How far the pitch moves. Under about 40 it sounds like a real tape. Above 70 it goes underwater. Rate and depth together set how wild it sounds: a slow rate takes a lot of depth, a fast one very little.

INDEP

Independence. At 0 both channels sway as one: mono-safe, good for bass. At 100 each reel moves its own side, like two machines running next to each other. That's your width.

The chart recorder

Two paper strips, REEL A in amber and REEL B in cyan. The pen draws the sway you hear, live. Under each strip is that reel's measured wow and flutter and its AGE. The paper slows and stops with the transport, and turns red where the tape runs slow. It refreshes about sixty times a second, so very fast flutter can look smoother than it sounds.

How the modules work

The five modules are built the same way, so once you know one you know them all.

• The name is the switch. Click a module's name, or the lamp on its top edge, to switch it on or off. Off means out of the sound, not just quiet.
• One big knob does the main job. Its value shows while you turn it.
• Small knobs underneath shape it. Their caption turns into the value while you turn them.
• A band runs along the foot. It sets which frequencies the module touches; the rest passes through untouched. Drag an edge to move one end, drag the middle to sweep the whole band, double-click to open it all the way.

PITCH

Shifts the pitch up to an octave either way, at the same tempo, before the sound hits the tape. So the shifted voice sways and wears like everything else.

• PITCH, the big knob: the shift in semitones, ±12.
• ENGINE: three ways to do it. GRANULAR is rough and gritty. VOCODER works on any material and has a rasp of its own. RESYNTH is made for voice and is the smoothest of the three.
• FORMANT (Vocoder and Resynth): moves the vocal character up or down, ±12, so a voice sounds bigger or smaller. At 0 the formants ride with the pitch. The chain icon beside it links it to PITCH.
• GRAIN (Granular): takes the formant knob's place. Low is smooth, high is choppy.
• MIX: clean against pitched, inside the pitch stage.
• The band: only this range is pitched. Leave the lows out and the bass and kick keep their pitch.

PITCH adds a little latency while it is on. Your DAW compensates.

AGE

How worn the tape is. The big AGE knob moves both reels at once and keeps whatever difference there is between them. It roughens the motion, wears the echo when WORN is on, and scales the four DAMAGE knobs under it:

• DRIVE: tape saturation. Warmth, then crunch.
• DULL: a worn head's treble loss.
• HISS: the tape's noise, voiced by the machine. Click the caption to change the kind: HISS is the bed, GRAIN is noise riding on the signal, then CRACKLE, HUM, and GHOST, the faint print-through of the next turn of tape.
• DROPOUT: random dips in level, like flaking oxide. They follow REC's BIAS.

The TAPE band runs under both AGE and REC. Only that range goes onto the tape, wobble and all. The word at its left end says what happens to the rest. Click it to switch.

• FILTER: the rest is cut. The band works as a low-cut and a high-cut on everything that comes off the tape, and you hear it.
• SPLIT: the rest passes clean and steady around the tape. Sway the top of a mix and leave the low end alone.

A new Tape Sway starts on FILTER. Sessions and presets saved before the switch existed open on SPLIT, so they sound as they did.

REC

The record section. How hard the sound hits the tape.

• LEVEL, the big knob: ±12 dB into the recorder. Hot saturates the tape, then breaks it up. Low brings the hiss up. Your volume stays the same either way.
• BIAS: centre is correct. Under saturates sooner and brightens the quiet treble; push it far under and the tape breaks up. Over is darker and squashes loud treble.
• NR: cassette-style noise reduction, TYPE B or TYPE C, set slightly wrong on purpose, so the top end breathes and pumps. C reaches lower and deeper.
• ALC: the cheap recorder's automatic level control. Quiet passages come up, hiss and all.
• PUMP: each hit slams the record level down and it swells back. Deeper and slower as you turn it.
• FOLLOW: puts the tape colour and noise on the hits only, louder on louder hits, gone in the gaps.

ALC and PUMP are voiced per machine. The same setting acts differently on a Walkman and a Reel.

ECHO

A stereo tape echo whose repeats sway with the same wow and flutter.

• MIX, the big knob: 0 is no echo. 50 is your signal plus the echo at full, marked with a tick. 100 is the echo only.
• TIME L and TIME R: each side's delay. Click the caption to switch between note values and milliseconds (20 to 1500 ms). Set R a little off L for width.
• FDBK: how many repeats. Each pass degrades a little.
• TONE: darkens each repeat a bit more than the last.
• PATTERN: STEREO, PING-PONG, RANDOM or MULTI. Multi puts several play heads on one tape, the longest at TIME. Pick 2, 3 or 4 heads; 3 is the classic three-head spacing.
• WORN: the repeats wear out with AGE. Duller, thinner, dropping out.
• FREEZE: holds what is in the echo and keeps it going. Nothing new gets in. The sway keeps moving it, and TIME re-pitches it.
• The display shows what the echo will do, left above the line and right below.
• The band sets what gets sent into the echo.

SPRING

A spring reverb after the echo. It hears the repeats, and the tape too unless ROUTE is on PRE.

• MIX, the big knob: same as ECHO. 0 none, 50 the signal plus the tank at full, 100 the tank only.
• The tank display: drag it up or down for SHORT, MEDIUM or LONG springs. Short is tight and boxy, long is slow and splashy.
• DECAY: how long it rings, 0.2 to 20 seconds.
• DRIP: the boing. How much each hit chirps.
• DRIVE: hits the springs harder. Denser, splashier, and the quiet tail comes up.
• The band sets what goes into the tank.

OUTPUT

Where the machine meets your track.

• MIX, the big knob: the clean original against the machine. 0 is dry, 100 is the machine alone.
• DESTROY: for when clean is the problem. A failing amp, scrape, creases, a clogged head, a tilted head that smears the top end wide. It sits before the wobble, so everything after gets it.
• DUCK: while you play, things give way and swell back in the gaps. FX ducks the echo, the spring and the tape noise. ALL ducks the whole machine back to the clean original.
• TRIM: the level the machine leaves at, ±18 dB, after everything. Double-click for 0.
• AUTO GAIN, under TRIM: the tape comes off as loud as it went on. LEVEL, DRIVE and the machines change the sound, not the volume.
• TIGHT: keeps the sway from ever running ahead, so the wet lands on the grid. Adds a little latency.
• HQ: high-quality interpolation for the tape's read head. Off saves CPU.
• ROUTE: where ECHO and SPRING sit. Click the word to cycle. POST puts them after the tape. PRE puts them before it, so the repeats and the tail go onto the tape and wear with it. DELTA plays only what the machine adds, and MIX blends the original against that. Good for hearing exactly what it's doing.
• BYPASS: the plugin out, the input clean and still in time with the session. Same as your host's bypass.

Transport

Tape moves you play, in time with the song. Everything here can be automated.

STOP, TIME

Press STOP and the tape winds down to a halt: pitch dives, the top rolls off, as if the power were cut. Let go and it catches and spins back up. TIME sets how long the wind-down takes, 0.1 to 4 seconds. It acts on the whole output at once, dry and wet together.

DRAG, LOOKAHEAD

A thumb on the reel. Pull DRAG below 100 and the tape slows while you hold, then springs back to speed when you let go. Hold Shift to latch it where it is. Above 100 it runs fast, up to 125%, but only with LOOKAHEAD on: that gives the tape 250 ms of lead to speed into, and adds 250 ms of latency. Your host re-syncs when you switch it (in Logic, on the next play).

DROP

A tape move on the beat that snaps back on the grid. Hold DROP for as long as you want it, or tap it for one division.

• The division (1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1/1) sets the grid it returns on, and how long a tap lasts.
• The shape: HALF drops to half speed. SPIN stalls as it comes back. REW yanks the reel backwards. JOLT is a kick to the deck. LIFT takes the tape off the head.

DROP PATTERN

A step grid that plays drops for you whenever the host plays, locked to its bars. Switch it ON, pick 1/16 or 1/8 steps, then click a step to cycle its shape. Right-click clears a step. Hold and drag up or down to change it, sideways to paint it across. Neighbouring steps with the same shape play as one drop; each JOLT is its own hit.

Presets

The presets live on the left spine. The arrows step through them one at a time. Click the name to open the browser: folders on the left, presets on the right, each with a line on what it's for.

The factory library holds ninety-one presets in twelve folders: MACHINES, SUBTLE, VOCAL, GUITAR, KEYS, DRUMS, LO-FI, BROKEN, ECHO, SPRING, PITCH and DROPS. FAVORITES collects the ones you heart, and MY PRESETS holds your own.

• SAVE stores the current settings as your own preset. Your own presets can be deleted from their row in the browser.
• The heart marks a favorite.
• The lock keeps your MIX while you browse, so every preset plays at your balance.

A preset is the whole machine: loading one resets everything and lands that sound, so presets audition cleanly against each other.

Help, the tour, the size

• Hover help. Rest on any control and its help appears in a box in the top right corner. Switch it off in the account drawer once you know your way around.
• The tour. The account drawer has a guided tour: it lights up each module in turn and says what it does. Arrow keys step, Esc ends it.
• Size. Right-click anywhere on the panel for the zoom menu, from 75% to 200%. 90% fits a laptop screen. You can also drag the window edge in most hosts.

Coming from 1.0

1.1 is a free update, and your old sessions open sounding the same. The drawer is gone; everything sits on one panel now. What moved:

• WEAR, ECHO and PITCH came out of the drawer into the chain. WEAR is now AGE.
• The two AGE knobs on the reels became one big AGE knob. Each reel's own age still shows on its chart strip.
• DEPTH and INDEPENDENCE moved up beside the RATE knobs. MIX moved into OUTPUT.
• Echo's ONLY switch is gone. Turn the echo's MIX to 100 for echo only.
• Echo's SYNC switch is gone. Click a TIME caption to switch it between notes and milliseconds.
• STOP and TIME moved from the masthead into the transport strip. TIGHT and HQ moved into OUTPUT.
• The presets moved to the left spine, and the account opens from the Marlow logo.

New in 1.1: REC, SPRING, DESTROY, DUCK, TRIM, AUTO GAIN, ROUTE, the TAPE band's FILTER and SPLIT, DRAG, DROP and the DROP PATTERN, the bands on every module, Multi-head echo, WORN and FREEZE, five noise textures, and eleven more presets.

Recipes

• Tape warmth, no wobble you can name. REEL, WOW around 20, DEPTH 20, AGE 15, OUTPUT MIX 30, TIGHT on. A touch of DRIVE.
• A well-used cassette. WALKMAN, DEPTH 45, AGE 40, REC LEVEL up a few dB, NR on TYPE B.
• Voice memo. DICTAPHONE, ALC up, HISS on HUM. Leave MIX at 100.
• Keep the low end still. Set the TAPE band to SPLIT and pull its low edge up to around 150 Hz. The bass stays put while everything above it sways.
• Octave ghost. PITCH on, RESYNTH, +12, PITCH MIX around 40, and ECHO with WORN on.
• Dub throw. ECHO on, PING-PONG, FDBK up, TONE down, then SPRING on a short tank. Set DUCK to FX so the repeats bloom in the gaps.
• Stuttering loop. On a drum loop, DROP PATTERN on, 1/16 steps, a JOLT on the offbeats and a SPIN at the end of the bar.
• Tape the echo. ECHO on, ROUTE on PRE, REC LEVEL up. The repeats hit the tape and saturate along with everything else.
• Hear the machine alone. ROUTE on DELTA, MIX at 100. You hear exactly what the tape is adding.

Installing it

macOS

1. Open Tape Sway-1.1.0.dmg and double-click Install Tape Sway.pkg.
2. The installer offers AU, VST3 and CLAP, all selected. Uncheck any you don't need.
3. Install. The plugins land in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/ under Components, VST3 and CLAP.
4. Restart your DAW and rescan if needed. It's under Marlow → Tape Sway.

Windows

1. Unzip the download.
2. Copy Tape Sway.vst3 to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\, and Tape Sway.clap to C:\Program Files\Common Files\CLAP\. Only the formats your DAW uses.
3. Open your DAW and rescan. Look for Tape Sway by Marlow.

There's no separate app to run on Windows. The plugins load inside your DAW.

Tape Sway is a marlow. product, made in Sweden by Swedish Sound Group AB. This manual covers version 1.1.0.