Choplab
Turn any song into an instrument.
A browser sampler. Drop in a track, Choplab slices it into eight chops mapped to the home row. Trigger with the keyboard, shift pitch, change speed, record a take, export it.
Why
Started learning sampling on Ableton a few months ago. Wanted my own version — something I'd actually use instead of buying another plugin. Building it was also the fastest way to understand what the good plugins are quietly doing well.
What works
- Auto-chops a single uploaded track into eight slices.
- Eight playable pads with keyboard shortcuts (a–; row).
- Real-time pitch shift and playback speed on every trigger.
- Record a performance, export the take as webm.
What’s still rough
- Auto-chops by equal length, not by onset detection — real musical moments come later.
- Pitch and speed share a source — independent time-stretching needs a phase vocoder.
- Can't edit a recorded take inside the app yet.
- No EQ or fx on the channel strip.
Process
Framer 3.0 agents drafted the first iteration — features, layout, basic interactions. Then I restyled the layers by hand to land on the look I wanted: small surface, dense controls, no chrome between you and the sample.
Next pass: manual slice handles, onset-aware chopping, an EQ stage, and a real time-stretch.