About
Williams Instruments · Montreal, Quebec
Williams Instruments is Paul Williams, working out of Montreal. One person writes the DSP, tunes it by ear against real bass recordings, designs the interface, and answers the support email.
That is not a humblebrag about being small. It is the reason the products do a narrow set of things properly instead of a wide set adequately — and it is why you get a reply from the person who wrote the code rather than a ticket number.
What the tools have in common
Built for bass from the start
Most music software is made for guitars and voices first. Bass comes later. You can hear it in small ways. A filter that shaves the bottom off a low note. A setting that hears the click of a slap and not the note itself.
Ours were tuned the other way round. On low B strings. On 808s. On dub with no gaps in it. Where it came down to taste, we chose by listening.
We only say what we can prove
We measure what we build, to see if it does what we say. Where our first try was wrong, we wrote that down.
We do not say it copies anyone's gear. We have not measured anyone's gear.
The same goes the other way. If something cannot be known, we say so. We do not dress up a guess as a number.
Your licence is a file
Nothing calls home. There is no log in. There is no server to check with. There is no monthly fee that dies when a card runs out, or when a company does.
You buy a file. It works with no internet. It keeps working, even if we vanish tomorrow.
The deal is fair both ways. We cannot switch your licence off. And we are trusting you not to pass it around.
SHAPR
It shapes drum hits. More smack in the attack. More room in the tail. Three modes: Kick, Snare and Bus. It runs in Logic, Live and the rest, or on its own.
It moves the hit and the tail on their own. And it looks one millisecond ahead, so the change starts with the hit, never after it.
What is next
Two bass plug-ins are being tested now. One is a compressor made only for bass. The other is a DI and preamp. They will show up here when they are ready, and not before.
Elsewhere
Paul also builds FRETT, a macOS app for learning bass — fretboard and shape study, a scale and arpeggio engine, a tuner and a practice transport. It is a separate project under its own name rather than a Williams Instruments product, but it comes from the same bench and shares some of the same DSP.
Getting in touch
Email support@williamsinstruments.com. It reaches the person who wrote the code. If you have found a bug, a measurement that looks wrong, or a spec that a platform has changed without telling anyone, that is genuinely useful — please send it.
