Emily Hopkins, a harpist and composer uniquely blending the traditional and modern, has released Chippo, a free chiptune-inspired sequencer plugin for macOS and Windows.
If you ever wanted to hear a harp through a talk box but didn’t know where to find it, Emily’s channel is the place to go. Emily also uses various FX pedals and hardware to transform a very traditional instrument into something that’s perfectly at home in modern electronic music.
Emily’s latest project is Chippo, a sequencer plugin inspired by retro chiptune music.
Chippo is a simple plugin that quickly generates melody, bass, and drums that you can modify in various ways.
Before generating a new pattern, you can set the Root, Scale, Density, and number of Steps (up to 64).
You can select from a range of scales and modes, including bebop and blues, along with the usual suspects.
Speaking of The Usual Suspects, check out JE-8086; it’s officially out.
Chippo has three main sections: Melody, Bass, and Drums.
Each section has simple generate and clear pattern buttons:
- The Melody section features Shape and ADSR controls; the Shape control modifies the waveform.
- The Bass section is almost identical to Melody, with the Shape control replaced by Glide.
- The Drums section has dedicated generators for Kick, Snare, and Hat.
If you don’t like something that Chippo generates, you can push the button again or manually adjust steps in the sequence to make smaller changes. You can also go for something completely random, which often produces good results.
The milk-and-cookies-themed interface is meant to look playful, of course, but it does the job well.
In true chiptune fashion, Chippo generates melodies that you probably wouldn’t play on a keyboard, and you get lots of jerky movements. But it’s not just retro gaming vibes; Chippo creates some cool modern grooves to play over.
Like the melodies, the grooves often have kick or snare patterns that you wouldn’t typically use, and that’s always good for getting out of a creative block.
Emily, in collaboration with Cycling ’74, created Chippo to provide fast, easy access to making music for producers of any level, and it does that.
If you follow Emily’s typical approach and throw in some external FX, you can turn Chippo’s chiptune vibes into chilled, ethereal sounds.
Chippo is available in AU and VST3 formats for macOS and Windows. If you want more information on the project, check out the Cycling ‘74 GitHub page.
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Last Updated on December 30, 2025 by Tomislav Zlatic.
