TECHNE
TRICK OR TREAT
Free · Halloween 2026
One button. Treat or trick.
Every press gives your track a treat (warmth, glue, chorus, shimmer, blooming tails) or a trick (backwards beats, frozen moments, tape stops, haunted radio). 22 recipes, and never the same one twice in a row.
By downloading you agree to the Software License and Terms.
Free. No key, no activation. Your email gets the download and puts you on the Techne Signal List. Unsubscribe anytime.
- macOS · Windows
- AU
- VST3
- CLAP
- No key
How it works
Drums, a loop, a vocal, the whole beat. Until you press, the sound passes through untouched.
Out comes a treat or a trick. The tree grins or scowls, and tells you what it did.
Drag the light in the fog: up for more, down for less, left toward treats, right toward tricks. Then press again.
What’s in the bag
Each press also picks a flavour, so two rolls of the same recipe sound different. CANDY CHORUS might come as JUNO, DIMENSION or STRINGS.
make it better
- WARM GLUE
- Tube warmth, then glue.
- OTT SHINE
- Squashed and bright, with a wide top.
- BREATHING WIDTH
- Glued, narrow on the hits, wide in the tails.
- SUB BLOOM
- An octave of sub under the mids.
- GOLDEN TAPE
- Tube warmth, tape wobble, a short dark slap.
- CANDY CHORUS
- Lush chorus over a steady low end.
- PHANTOM DOUBLE
- Two ghost doubles, a hair late and a hair off.
- MOON HALO
- Shimmer. A higher voice feeding a wide tail.
- STARDUST
- The hits echo upward into a haze.
- PULSE BLOOM
- A tail that opens between the hits.
cursed, and in time
- HAUNTED GAPS
- Chopped, with echoes filling the gaps.
- SINKING ECHO
- Echoes that sink into a tape stop.
- DEMON REPEATS
- Stutters whose repeats drop in pitch.
- DESCENDING SPIRITS
- Echoes that fall lower with every repeat.
- CRUSHED STOP
- A tape stop, crushed as it dies.
- POSSESSED CRUNCH
- Bitcrushed, then squashed hard.
- BACKMASK
- Beats played backwards, on the grid.
- FROZEN SOUL
- A moment frozen into a cloud, then let go.
- POLTERGEIST
- A ringing comb that moves on its own.
- TIME FRACTURE
- Loops that tighten into the bar line.
- HAUNTED RADIO
- A thin, crushed, hissing radio that drops out.
- WORMHOLE
- Echoes that spiral as they cross.
Drag the light in the fog. Its height sets how much you hear, its side sets the odds for the next press.
Push the wisp toward either edge and a press can land two recipes, one into the next. A double trick turns the moon to blood.
Close the session and it opens with the same roll. Nothing changes until you press again.
Every recipe is built from Techne’s own plugins (Tube, Arc, DeRez and more), plus a few new ghosts made for Halloween.
Specs
Technical details The roll, the odds, levels, timing and where each part comes from.
In the middle, a press is a fair coin. TRICK ODDS runs from 0 % (always a treat) to 100 % (always a trick). A press never repeats the recipe it replaces.
Each roll first picks a character for its recipe (HAUNTED RADIO as AM, SHORTWAVE or WALKIE; CANDY CHORUS as JUNO, DIMENSION or STRINGS). The character sets every control together, and the rest of the roll moves within its range.
0 % is the input, sample for sample. 80 % is the roll as drawn and 100 % a quarter past it. Double-click the wisp to send it home (odds 50 %, amount 80 %).
No chance at even odds, rising to 70 % at either edge. The pair is two recipes from the same side that share no role (rhythm, colour, pitch, motion, tail). They run in that order, each at four fifths of its strength.
A slow leveler holds treats at the input’s loudness. Tricks are pulled back only when they would come out louder. A guard keeps output peaks within 2 dB of the input’s recent peak; it has no look-ahead and does nothing while the output is no hotter than the input.
Rhythmic tricks lock to the host’s tempo and grid. Recipes triggered by hits follow the input’s onsets and fall back to the beat on material without hits. A loop or locate closes the beat-cut stages and reopens them over 10 ms.
On bass-heavy input the wet paths keep more of the low end out, and SUB BLOOM adds less sub to material that already has it.
Zero. Every stage plays only what has already passed.
The output fades through silence over 2 × 12 ms, and the new recipe starts from a clean state.
The roll’s seed is saved with the project. AMOUNT and TRICK ODDS are host parameters you can automate.
Multiband (its GLUE, OTT and DRUM BUS patches), Aura’s band widths, Arc’s varispeed, repeat, pitch, gate, space and filter, DeRez4’s crush, Field Delay’s tape echo, and Tube’s saturation. New for this plugin: a modulated delay (chorus, doubler, comb), a reverse slice, a frozen grain cloud and a frequency shifter.
Questions
Is it really free?
Yes. Give your email and the download unlocks. There’s no key to enter and nothing to activate. You’ll join the Techne Signal List, and you can leave anytime.
Will a trick wreck my levels?
No. Treats are matched to the loudness of what came in, and tricks are pulled back whenever they’d come out louder. Drag the wisp down to hear less of any roll.
I love this roll. How do I keep it?
Save the project and it reopens with the same roll. Another press replaces it, so if you want it for good, bounce the track first.
KNOCK, IF YOU DARE
Free. No key, no activation.
Drop your email to unlock the download, and hear when new Techne devices drop.
By downloading you agree to the Software License and Terms.
You’ll join the Techne Signal List. Unsubscribe anytime.