This week’s free plugin is Deja Vu from Cymatics, an audio effect plugin which transforms your sound by time-stretching and pitch-shifting incoming audio in a musical way.

What Is Deja Vu?

Deja Vu works by time-stretching audio by 1.5x, 2x, or 4x speed (set by the Mode buttons). The effect is exactly the same as what you would hear if you slowed down the speed of a playing tape machine. Cutting the speed of a tape machine in half would stretch the length of the music to twice its length (corresponding to the 2x button in Deja Vu). At the same time, the pitch of the music would go down by one octave. Cut the speed of the tape in half again, and the music is stretched to 4x its original length (corresponding to the 4x button in Deja Vu), and its pitch goes down another octave, or 2 octaves lower than the original pitch.

But what if you turned down the speed of just one instrument in a song with many tracks? That instrument would be pitched down by an octave, but would be out-of-sync with the rest of the arrangement since its length has been doubled. In a 3 minute song, your pitch-shifted piano would take 6 minutes to finish playing! Fortunately, Deja Vu performs this effect one time “chunk” at a time, set by the Loop buttons at the top of the plugin.

If you set the Loop length to 1 bar, the Deja Vu will reset its pitch-shifting effect every bar, so the affected track will stay aligned with the rest of your song. Likewise, if Loop length is set to 1⁄4 bars, the pitch-shifted audio will reset every quarter note. Setting the Mode to 1.5x will play your audio back at 2⁄3 of its speed, resulting in a pitch shift of -5 semitones and converting straight grooves into triplets.

How Do I Get Deja Vu?

• Click the button below to go the the Cymatics website.

• provide your name and email address

• Agree to receive emails from Cymatics

• Download and Install

Deja Vu is availble as a 64 bit VST, AU and AAX pligin for Windows and Mac, no iLok required.