What LEADR is, and why I made it

I make beats. And for years the slowest part of my process was leads. Not drums, not chords. Leads. The melody on top that makes a beat actually feel like something. Every tool I had was either a giant synth I had to build from scratch, or a sample pack I had to dig through for twenty minutes to find one usable sound.

So I built LEADR. It's a lead instrument. One plugin that's a sampler and a synth at the same time, with the stuff I actually use to write melodies fast built right in.

What's inside

• A dual-slot sampler. Load two sounds, layer them, blend them. There are 500+ one-shots in the box to start from.
• Oscillators. Build a patch from scratch, or use them to thicken up a sample.
• Chord lock. Press one key, hear a whole chord or progression. It's the part people get hooked on, so I gave it its own post.
• The WATERFALL arpeggiator. Turns a held chord into a cascading, moving texture instead of a stiff up-down arp.
• A full FX rack. Delay, reverb, chorus, the usual, plus the things that give a lead some character.
• 200 presets. So you can land on a sound in a couple seconds and get back to writing.

The whole point is speed

I wanted to press a key and have an idea, not stare at a hundred knobs first. The depth is still there if you want it. You can shape every part of a patch as far as you like. You just don't have to start there to get something that sounds good.

That's the difference I was after. Most lead tools make you choose between fast and deep. LEADR lets you start fast and go deep only when the idea is worth it.

Where it runs

LEADR is a VST3 on Mac and Windows, and an Audio Unit on Mac too, so it loads in basically any DAW: Logic, FL Studio, Ableton, Cubase, Reaper, whatever you're on. The Mac build is universal (Apple Silicon and Intel) and signed, so there's no Gatekeeper headache. If you want the exact setup steps, the install guide walks through it.

That's really all it is. The lead plugin I wanted and couldn't find, so I made it.