Extreme Rhythmical Manipulation

As an audio effect, Gating has been around for quite some time. It is a straightforward process that, when used properly, produces excellent results. You can use it for many procedures, like reducing unwanted external sounds, natural channel noise, or simply as an effect. For this reason, in the following tutorial, we will guide you through extreme rhythmical manipulation with the noise gate effect.  

Infected Mushroom Gatekeeper

In the past two decades, many gating effects have been introduced. However, recently, I came across a software plugin that primarily functions as a gating effect, but besides that, it offers so much more. This effect is called "Gatekeeper," and it has been designed by PsyTrance veterans Infected Mushroom in collaboration with Polyverse Music. In the following tutorial, I will review its main functionalities and give examples of what this plugin can do.  

Let's Start Gating

Firstly, I have made a short pattern in the SoundBridge: DAW, which contains essential elements like a kick drum, bassline, rhythm, and a couple of layered synth sequences. Let's hear how it sounds.

~Full mix - Without Gatekeeper  

 

Gatekeeper is a volume modulation plugin capable of pseudo-sidechain, compression, MIDI gating, or LFO movement, to mention a few. Once we load it, we can see a complex interface containing various parameters.

Unlike other competitive plugin solutions, it contains eight different envelope engines. You can find them in the upper left section of the interface and can create some very complicated sequences. Also, if you click on the pencil tool at the bottom of the interface, you get a section with various envelope shapes, which are pretty helpful. Just like all Polyverse Music plugins, it offers a large number of presets. So, let's see how it sounds in the chord sequence that I have made. Firstly, here is how it sounds without it.

~Chord sequence - Unprocessed

~Chord sequence - Processed with the Gatekeeper  

Furthermore, it could also be interesting to apply the effect on the bassline. So let's hear how that sounds, followed by drums. Here is the bassline before and after using the impact.  

~Bassline- Unprocessed

~Bassline- Processed with the Gatekeeper

This plugin has countless options for rhythmical manipulation of the sound, so I strongly encourage you to try it yourself.