Image Credit: Yum Audio

Plugin developer Yum Audio and Glitch Hop legend Mr Bill have teamed up to create a powerful drum processing plugin, adequately named Slap.

Slap is a new all-in-one drum processing plugin that recreates Mr. Bill’s long-winded drum processing techniques in a straightforward plugin.

I am a big fan of the producer behind the technique, but I’m not biased here. Slap seems to actually meet the needs of electronic music producers today.

Slap by Mr Bill & Yum Audio

After working himself to exhaustion, Mr Bill states that Slap emulates his signature process for creating powerful drum sounds.

Mr Bill has been in the game for a long time. He’s refined his technique over years, and it involves layering synthesized FM sounds and samples together. Then, he runs them through custom effect racks to give them the signature pop, crunch, and slap that he’s renowned for.

Now, the drum processing plugin Slap gives you all of this in one neat, awesome-looking plugin.

Transient replacement tool

The truth is, this plugin offers you a lot of functionality. But I think the hallmark feature of Slap has to be its transient replacement tool.

The transient replacement tool enables you to simply swap out the attack phase of one drum for an alternative attack shape.

More specifically, you can select from an included transient library or import your own! A simple yet somewhat surgical waveform graph allows you specify the portion of the transient you want to replace too.

Moreover, adjustable pitch, timbre, and gain controls allow you to blend each of these elements together into a smooth musical tone.

Six effects processors

Once you’re happy with your drums’ attack & transient character, you can move on to the six drum effect processors!

First comes dynamic shaping with Shape and Fat that help you tighten and fatten the sound of your drum with a couple of parameter changes. 

Secondly, Clap adds synthesized noise for extra texture and definition, something that goes a long way with snare and clap sounds.

Sub is a sub-bass generator for adding low frequencies to your kicks.

Fourth comes Spray which adds reverb and sustain for some depth and atmosphere on your percussion sounds.

Finally, Clip – a clipping module – boosts loudness without swallowing excessive headroom!

And you can easily edit the order of the processing chain by dragging and dropping modules too!

Master effects

Additional master effects include Squash, Low Cut, Tame, an FX Amount (Wet/Dry) control, and a global tune control.

Rather than just tuning the drum itself, the global tune control actually applies frequency shifting to all processes occurring inside the plugin. Therefore, it keeps your sound whole!

Drum processing takes a lot of time. But what takes longer is learning the intricate details of how FX chains work. Now, Slap removes the extremely tedious work of dynamic processing and so much more.

Price and compatibility

You can get Slap by Yum Audio and Mr. Bill now for an introductory price of $89/£72. After this introductory phase is over, the price will be $129/£105.

SLAP is compatible with macOS 10.11 + with M1 support and Windows 10 + in VST3, AU, and AAX plugin formats.

Are your drums ready or an upgrade?