Installing

ScratchCraft comes in two forms built from the same code: a VST3 instrument for your DAW and a standalone app with its own transport. This page covers installing both on Windows.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit (x64).
• For the plugin: a VST3 host. Ableton Live is the main target, and any VST3 host works. See Ableton Live for Live-specific setup.
• For the standalone app: just an audio interface or your computer’s sound output.

Downloading

Downloads are on the ScratchCraft product page. The Windows download contains the VST3 plugin and the standalone app.

Installing the VST3 plugin

The plugin is a folder named ScratchCraft.vst3. Install it into the standard Windows VST3 folder:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3

Copy the whole ScratchCraft.vst3 folder there. Writing to this folder needs administrator permission, so Windows asks you to confirm.

Caution

Close ScratchCraft in your DAW before you install or update it (or close the DAW). Windows cannot overwrite a plugin file that is in use, and the install fails.

After installing, rescan plugins in your DAW so it finds ScratchCraft. In Ableton Live that is Preferences > Plug-Ins > Rescan.

The standalone app

The standalone app is ScratchCraft.exe. It doesn’t need the plugin folder or a DAW: run it directly. It has its own tempo, time signature, play/stop and metronome click; see Standalone transport.

The standalone app is a quick way to try ScratchCraft, practise scratching or test a MIDI controller without opening a DAW project.

First launch

ScratchCraft keeps your own files in a ScratchCraft folder in your Documents folder, shared by every project, every plugin instance and the standalone app:

Folder	What it holds
Documents\ScratchCraft\Samples	The sample library, including its Recent and Saved folders.
Documents\ScratchCraft\Shapes	Your scratch shapes.
Documents\ScratchCraft\Sessions	Session state files (.scsession).

Each sample’s tempo and key are remembered beside the library too, so they follow the sample into every project.

The window opens at its normal size. You can resize it down to 1000×700, and click the gold nameplate at the top left to scale the whole interface to 75, 90, 100, 125 or 150 %. That choice is remembered for all projects. See UI scale.

Once it’s open, the interface tour walks through the window from left to right.

Building from source

ScratchCraft’s source code is on GitHub. To build it yourself you need Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload, and Git. Clone the repository with its submodules, then run the build and install scripts it provides. The repository’s README has the exact commands, including how to run the unit tests.

Note

The install script copies the plugin to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 and asks for administrator permission. Close the plugin in your DAW first.