Many of us have huge sample collections, but how many of these sounds do you actually use? Not many, reckons software developer MonkeyC, which is why it’s released Rando, a new lightweight sampler plugin that’s designed to bring you back to sounds that you’d forgotten you even had.
The idea is simple: you point Rando at any or all of your sample folders and then let it assign a random selection to notes on your MIDI keyboard and in your piano roll. You can narrow down your selections by text, type and category, but as a rule, unpredictability is something that this plugin revels in.
The good news is that tonal samples are automatically tuned and rhythmic ones timestretched to tempo, so it’s not a complete lottery. There are basic sampler editing functions, a chromatic mode that pitches a sound across the keyboard, and a Life control that adds analogue-style drift.
You also have six global effects to play with - filter, chorus, distortion, crush, delay and reverb - and there’s a sequencer section with (you guessed it) a randomisation function that will automatically generate patterns.
Available now for PC and Mac, Rando runs in VST/AU/AAX formats and has an introductory price of $49. This will apply until 2 April, after which it will rise to $69.
Find out more on the MonkeyC website.




