Tags: posts polarity-music OpenSource VST-Plugin Delay

Time-12 The Free & Open-Source Time Shaper

Tutorial | May 19, 2025

In this video, I demo the new Time 12 plugin, which is a free, open-source time shaper/delay buffer now available on all major platforms, and I showcase its new sequencer feature along with some creative uses for ambient sound design in Bitwig. I walk through generating random waveforms, manipulating playback speed and pitch with the sequencer, and layering additional effects like reverb and delay for more texture, plus I highlight similar updates in Gate 12. If you’re interested, the download link is in the description, please like, subscribe, and consider donating to support the developer!

You can watch the Video on Youtube

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Summary

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

Hey folks, welcome back! In this video, I’m showing you Time 12, the latest update to a plugin I’d previously covered (Time One). Time 12 is, at its core, a time shaper, something like a delay buffer shaper, depending on how you want to use it. The headline feature for this update is that Time 12 now works on all major platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s still completely free and open source, and in my testing, it works really well.

A major addition in this version is the Sequencer feature, which you can access with a dedicated button in the interface. There are a bunch of other improvements as well, so I recommend checking out the GitHub page, where you’ll find a full changelog, keyboard shortcuts, and instructions in case you want to build the plugin directly on Linux.

Also, Gate 12, another plugin I covered recently, has received its own update and now has the new Sequencer built-in as well. So if you want to try that, make sure you re-download Gate 12 if you haven’t recently.

Back to Time 12, I wanted to demonstrate it by starting with a basic sound. I picked Polymer as my synth and used randomly generated waveforms (people often comment that these are cool features in Zero, but wonder what to do musically with them). I showed how you can make nice pad sounds: set Polymer to 16 voices, max the unison and spread, set up the random modulator for wavetable index, and focus on smoothing things out by filtering out the fundamental and replacing it with a sine wave. Add a slow attack and release, throw in some reverb (I used Supermassive), and lay in either a MIDI drone or just play a few notes.

With the pad looping, I then slapped Time 12 on that track, starting with a blank page. You can see how Time 12 works, filling up its buffer in the background as the audio plays. The main parameters let you adjust playback speed or the length of the delay. I prefer using the new Sequencer to shape the playback in musically interesting ways. For example, there’s a mode in the Sequencer that lets you set pitch transpositions at each step: you can drop the buffer playback by one or two octaves, pitch up, or anything in between. You can draw in your sequence and use Apply to hear the changes as Time 12 processes the buffer.

The Sequencer grid lets you get creative, draw in patterns to silence the buffer, drop it down to slow, pitched-down echoes, and more. You can also flip the sequence, randomize it, and adjust things like minimum/maximum value, attack and release times, and tension. The Randomize All function can make things wild, and there are painting and brush modes for drawing curves, including custom brushes you can create and save for reuse.

Another cool addition is the audio trigger function: you can set up Time 12 to retrigger its buffer shapes based on an incoming audio signal, like from drums or another track via sidechain. Set a threshold, analyze, and extract triggers to create rhythmic, glitchy effects.

In my workflow, I prefer using the plugin inside a Bitwig chain device, rather than relying solely on the built-in mix knob for dry/wet: this gives me more flexibility, like adding additional delays after Time 12 and blending them.

Gate 12, with its own updated sequencer, is great as well, you can now adjust attack times for different parts of the sequence, randomize, flip, and blend its volume-shaping effects with Time 12 for even more creative processing. Stacking a chain with Gate 12(s) and Time 12 can produce rich, evolving textures from simple pad or drone sources, without needing other synthesizers.

Toward the end, I showed how you can pitch the buffer down an octave, blend with the dry, and process further with reverb and another Gate 12 instance for rhythmic, volume-shaping effects. The result is a lush, textural pad or drone that feels alive and interesting, and you can easily imagine using this kind of creative processing for ambient music, drums, rave leads, whatever you want.

I hope this gives you good ideas for how to use Time 12 (and Gate 12), whether for ambient music or other genres. These plugins are super useful, especially since they’re free and open source. If you find them valuable, definitely consider donating to the developer as well!

That’s it for today, thanks for watching! Hit like and subscribe if you enjoyed this, and check the link in the description below for the plugin downloads. See you next time!

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back. Time 12 is out, which is basically the update to time one, which
[00:00:05] I showed you in an earlier video. It's kind of a time shaper or delay buffer shaper. I
[00:00:11] don't know how you want to call it. The big feature with time 12 is now that it's available
[00:00:17] on all systems or all platforms, Windows, Mac OS and Linux. It's still free. It's still
[00:00:22] open source and it still works nicely. There's also a new feature in there called Sequencer,
[00:00:31] which you can open up here with this button. And there's also some additional features.
[00:00:39] Maybe you have to read here the GitHub page to get all the new stuff, all new features
[00:00:45] here, also some shortcuts there and some built instructions if you want to build it on your
[00:00:51] Linux system. Also, Gate 12, which I also showed you in a recent video, has also a new
[00:00:58] update. We have also now here this Sequencer in there. So make sure you re-download Gate
[00:01:06] 12 if you haven't so in the last few days. So let's focus here on time 12 and maybe I
[00:01:12] want to create here, let's say a sound first, a polymer, and I want to use here my randomly
[00:01:21] created waveforms because some people in the comments said, oh, well, it's actually nice
[00:01:25] that you can randomly generate waveforms inside of zero. But what do we actually do with this?
[00:01:32] And you can create nice pet sounds with this. We have 16 voices unison here, fat, spread
[00:01:38] face, brings the zero, use a random modulator. We want to randomize the table index, of course.
[00:01:47] And let's see. And we want to remove maybe here the fundamental frequency. We want to
[00:01:58] replace this with a sign. Open up the filter here, slowly, slow attack, slow release. And
[00:02:10] then we put the reverb there. Supermassive, yes. And maybe we just paint in here, I don't
[00:02:23] know. Some kind of a drone, maybe longer like this. Or maybe we record something with the
[00:02:44] keyboard, probably better. Nothing special, just some few notes. And then we just let
[00:03:04] this loop here. Okay, so with this, we can then add here maybe time 12 on that. And I
[00:03:15] want to use your completely empty page. So page four, you can see here, it fills up the
[00:03:21] buffer in the background. And then we can change the playback speed with this or the
[00:03:28] delay time here. And I prefer actually to use the sequencer. And I want to use this mode
[00:03:34] here, which changes the end note of this, we can say we want to pitch it down to halftime
[00:03:40] here. I think if you stick to the grid, if you stick to the grid, you're always painting
[00:03:48] in minus one octave minus two octaves or two octaves up one octave up and so on. So maybe
[00:03:58] let's go here. I think this is should be no playback speed at all. Yeah, it's basically
[00:04:13] silence. And this should be even slower. So let's go there, maybe go a bit further down
[00:04:30] and then up. Then we can apply hit apply here. We can also create something else here with
[00:04:54] the new sequencer, maybe. Oh, this is four, five. Now we can use the sequencer from before.
[00:05:12] We can also change the attack time of the delayed changes. And we can randomize this.
[00:05:19] So let's actually go for flip first. So we can flip around here all these shapes. We
[00:05:29] can also hit randomize. We can also change the minimum value here, which is the lowest
[00:05:41] point or the maximum value, which is the maximum value, basically. We can change the attack
[00:05:48] time here with the sequencer. We can change the release time, the tension. You can also
[00:05:55] randomize this. You can also hit randomize all, which gets pretty crazy. Maybe grid 16.
[00:06:11] You can change also the range in which you want to randomize. You can also use the paint
[00:06:17] mode, where we have a lot of brushes here to choose from. You can also define our own
[00:06:34] brushes here. Maybe that's reset this here. So we can go to the brushes and we can define
[00:06:44] our own brushes by hitting edit here. Then we paint something in. Maybe halftime here.
[00:06:52] And then we have a new brush here. And this brush is saved in a config file, which means
[00:06:56] you can access this in all instances. And every time you load up this time 12, you have
[00:07:02] this brush in there. It's kind of like a preset. And then you have to hit apply to actually
[00:07:21] make this the real curve. Then you can switch between different pitch settings here. We
[00:07:30] can also use now here the audio trigger. So you can receive here something from from the
[00:07:35] drums or yeah, from a different audio channel. Then you hit analyze this here with a threshold.
[00:07:43] And you can extract basically here triggers from the signal. And you don't you can't use
[00:07:51] the same audio signal, but you can also use a side chain signal by using the side chain
[00:07:56] input right from bitwig. Then you get the signal in here and then you extract triggers
[00:08:00] and then you can retrigger this whole curve. And it gives you some glitchy results. Kind
[00:08:22] of nice. Yeah, and then you maybe use a chain and I use a chain here for reason. You have
[00:08:33] inside of this time 12, you have a mix knob here to mix in the dry signal. But here I
[00:08:40] want to add delay of bitwig after this time 12. And then I want to use a mix.
[00:08:57] Yeah, I have to find the right pitch.
[00:09:26] It's better.
[00:09:45] So this is time 12. We also can use gates 12 here again. So the same thing. We have to
[00:09:53] hear the sequencer and change it attack time. You can also now change the attack time for
[00:10:02] different parts of the sequence.
[00:10:22] You can also flip it a bit slower. Then apply. Then we put this also into the chain here in
[00:10:49] front of the time 12.
[00:11:14] So with this you can create even for ambient, you can create nice interesting textures on
[00:11:19] top of the pad sound or out of the pad sound or out of the drone sound without using additional
[00:11:26] synthesizers.
[00:11:27] Yeah, the end you can maybe use a time 12 to pitch it down one octave something like
[00:11:36] this. It's half time basically four bars long. So this is the buffer size, basically four
[00:11:43] bars and then mix it in with the dry signal. So we have the dry signal and the dry signal
[00:11:52] pitched one octave lower.
[00:12:08] It's a bit maybe too quiet.
[00:12:24] So we have the dry signal and the dry signal. So we have the dry signal and the dry signal.
[00:12:48] Another reverb.
[00:13:11] At the end, use another gate 12.
[00:13:36] So we have the reverb. So we have the reverb. So we have the reverb. So we have the reverb.
[00:13:59] Yeah, you can bring in a sense of rhythm here with this.
[00:14:29] Volume shaping thing then.
[00:14:32] I'm sure you have a lot of ideas for this. It's not only useful for ambient. Of course,
[00:14:37] I can put it on drums on anything basically rave leads, whatever. I don't care.
[00:14:45] I want to show you this. I think it's a dope plug in. Link is in the description below.
[00:14:52] If you want to use it, thanks for watching. Leave a like, leave a subscription, also make
[00:14:57] a donation to the creator. It's always helpful. Thanks for watching. See you next time. Bye.
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