ExpressionGate | Jesper GB Henriksen

ExpressionGate

An effects plugin you control by how loud you play. Quiet playing gives you one set of effects, playing harder gives you another, and digging in gives you a third. You set the three volume levels yourself and pick what each one does, so the sound changes without you touching a pedal.

Download 1.3.1 macOS 11+ · free · signed and notarised · 14 MB

Thresholds on the left, one effect rack per zone on the right.

Same guitar, played louder and louder.

Nothing is switched by hand in this clip. The playing just gets gradually louder, and the sound changes on its own each time it passes one of the three levels. By the end it has arrived at heavy distortion with a big reverb behind it. Sound on.

Playing through the standalone app. The meter on the left shows which level the playing has reached.

Three zones on the meter.

You drag three markers onto the input meter to set the volume levels. Each level has its own set of six effects. How hard you play decides which set you hear.

LOW

Quiet playing. For the effect that should always be there, or nothing at all if you want it clean until you dig in.

MID

Normal playing. Crossed constantly, so this is the sound under your hands most of the time.

HIGH

Accents. Only crossed when you hit hard, so the big effects stay occasional.

Stack

Effects add up as more zones are crossed. Play harder and the sound accumulates rather than switching.

Switch

Only the highest active zone is heard. Cleaner jumps between distinct voices.

Attack / Releaseglobal

How fast the envelope follower rises and falls. Short attack catches picking transients, longer release keeps a zone open through a phrase.

Zone fadeglobal

The crossfade time between zones, with hysteresis underneath, so a note sitting on a threshold does not chatter.

Dryglobal

Parallel dry-through under everything. Set it to 0% for a wet-only return.

Levelper zone

Each zone's complete return has its own level, so a harder zone does not have to be louder.

Output + limiter

Global output trim with a limiter and its own meter. Stacking three racks of fuzz and reverb runs out of headroom quickly.

Six effects per zone, fixed order.

Every zone runs the same six effects in the same serial order. Each has its own power switch and Wet blend, so an effect can be dialled back inside a zone without touching the global Dry. Slots stay compact until you hover them.

Amp→ Fuzz→ Pitch→ Chorus→ Echo→ Verb

Ampneural capture

Drive into a Neural Amp Modeler capture, with Output for makeup after it. Three captures are built in and each zone picks its own, so LOW can stay on a clean tweed while HIGH runs a cranked head. With no model loaded it is a plain gain stage.

Fuzzcascaded clipping

Cascaded clipping on a starving supply. Bias offsets the first stage and sags the rail, which gives the spluttering decay of a dying battery. An OCTAVE switch rectifies ahead of the clipping for octave-up. Past three-quarter travel it stops clipping and starts wavefolding.

Pitchzero latency shifter

Shift from -24 to 0 semitones with a Mix control, using a windowed shifter so playing through it stays immediate.

Chorusmodulation

Sits between the dirt and the time-based effects. Thickens a zone without smearing the attack.

Echodelay line

Feedback delay with Time and Feedback, a SYNC toggle locking Time to host tempo from 1/1 down to 1/32T, and an Age control that morphs it from clean digital into tape: wow and flutter modulate the read head while each pass through the loop saturates and darkens.

Verbfeedback delay network

Five modes, Plate, Room, Hall, Spring and Bloom, each setting delay scaling, decay, diffusion, damping and modulation together. Size, Damping, Predelay and Mod on top.

What it runs in.

Formats

Audio Unit, VST3, and a Standalone app for macOS. All three install from the same package.

System

macOS 11 or newer. Universal build for Apple silicon and Intel.

Hosts

Logic Pro and GarageBand via AU, Reaper, Bitwig, Cubase and Live via VST3. The Standalone app runs it without a DAW at all.

Sources

Built and tuned around guitar and vocals, where the dynamic range is wide enough for three zones.

Version 1.3.1, free.

Installing

Open the .pkg and follow the installer. It puts the Audio Unit in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, the VST3 in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3, and the standalone app in /Applications. Restart your host afterwards so it rescans plugins. Logic Pro caches its plugin list, so it needs a full restart.

The installer is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarised by Apple, so macOS opens it without a Gatekeeper warning. If you already have an older version, this one replaces it. Nothing to remove first.

The zone design is still being tuned by playing it. If you try it, what is most useful back is whether the three levels land where your playing actually sits, and whether the effect ranges are usable at the extremes. Tell me.