Meet TWEAKER: BaseHead’s Built-In MIDI Sampler
Turn your sound library into a playable instrument — without ever leaving basehead.
Sound designers spend their days hunting for the perfect sound, but sometimes it’s faster to make it with raw materials that you stack, layer and mutilate.
What Is TWEAKER?
TWEAKER is an 8-slot polyphonic MIDI sampler built directly into basehead’s NodeTree panel. Plug in a MIDI controller (or use the on-screen virtual keyboard), load sounds from your library into slots, and start playing — instantly.
Key Features
8 Independent Sampler Slots
Each slot is a self-contained instrument with its own:
- Volume & Pan — full mixer-style control per slot
- Solo & Mute — isolate or silence individual slots on the fly
- MIDI Key Range — define exactly which notes trigger each slot (Low Key / High Key)
- Root Note — set the original pitch so TWEAKER automatically pitch-shifts when you play higher or lower notes
- Playback Direction — forward or reverse
- Loop Modes — one-shot, loop, or ping-pong (in both directions — six modes total)
- Region & Trigger Markers — restrict playback to a specific section of the sample and set a custom start point
Drag-and-Drop Loading
Found a sound in your Results grid? Drag it directly onto a TWEAKER slot. That’s it. Cloud Pack files download automatically — you’ll see a progress bar right on the slot until it’s ready.
MIDI Learn
No manual note entry required. Hit the Learn button on any slot, then play two notes on your controller — TWEAKER sets the key range automatically. The same goes for Root Note: one button, one keypress, done.
Real-Time Visual Feedback
Every sampler slot displays a mini waveform with a live playhead, region markers, and trigger position. A MIDI activity LED confirms your controller is connected and talking. Each of the eight slots has its own color for instant visual identification.
Preset System
Dialed in the perfect multi-slot configuration? Save it as a preset. TWEAKER stores everything — file paths, mixer settings, MIDI ranges, loop modes, marker positions — as a portable JSON file. Load it back anytime, update it in place, or start fresh with Reset All.
Presets live in Documents/basehead/Presets/Tweaker/ and are fully portable between sessions.
Virtual Keyboard
No MIDI controller handy? TWEAKER includes a 2-octave on-screen keyboard (C3–B4) so you can trigger slots with mouse clicks. Great for quick auditioning or when you’re working on a laptop.
Under the Hood
TWEAKER supports up to 128 simultaneous voices per slot. Pitch-shifting is calculated from the interval between the triggered note and the root note, giving you wavetable-style resampling from a single loaded file. The full ADSR envelope and filter controls are accessible through the dedicated ADSR panel for deeper sound shaping.
The Workflow…
- Browse library in basehead
- Drag sounds onto slots
- Tweak the knobs and sliders and whack the midi keyboard until you make something fresh.
- Record your new creation with “Performance Take Recording” (Included with the TWEAKER License) or use basehead Connect to route to your DAW for recording.
WanNa Try It Out?
TWEAKER with be available as a licensed addon module in basehead after the BETA phase is completed. To try out the BETA you must join the #tweaker channel on the basehead SLACK Workspace.
Happy tweaking.