Fragments of a sound fall through a field of forces. In FALL, every one that hits something plays a grain of it; in CLOUD, each one sounds all along its way. It is how particle effects are made for film, aimed at sound instead. What you see fall is what you hear.
A first tourFour things to try in your first minute.
Play Bell machine: brass pours down a spiral on the beat, and a bell in a bowl answers once a bar. At the foot of the page, open MASTER CHAIN and turn the DELAY off, then on again, to hear the echo it adds.
In Objects, change the spiral's material from Brass to Wood and hear the same pour struck on wood. Then swap FALL for CLOUD, and the strikes turn into a cloud.
Drag a force's ring across the field and listen to the matter bend round it.
Press GENERATE a few times. Don't like one? Undo.
SourceThe sound the matter is made of.
Choose one of the thirteen built-in sounds: glass, wire, water, a vowel cloud, carbon static, water drops, bronze bells, plucked strings, a breathing reed, wooden bars, a glass harmonica, a tam-tam or an analog pad. Or LOAD AUDIO to use your own: choose a file, then cut it to the part you want, up to 30 seconds, in mono. USE THIS opens it in the Grain view, so you hear one grain of it first.
Read position picks where in the sound the grains come from, and Time spread widens it. Read motion moves it with the tempo: Sine and Triangle sway back and forth, Ramp scans forward, Random wanders somewhere new each time round. Depth is how far it goes, Cycle how long one pass takes.
Under the waveform you can add up to three more sounds. Each fragment takes the next one in turn, so four sounds share one rain. Change one from its row, or press × to take it out. Each has its own colour, and so does the matter that reads it.
MatterWhere it falls from, what it is made of, and what it lands on.
The emitter comes first. Band rains across the top of the field. Point throws from one spot in every direction, Spray aims a jet, and Drip lets go one drop at a time. Drag its handle in the field (Alt for its height). Carried by an object, it rides along: a sprinkler on a spinning arm.
+ Add emitter gives you another, up to two here, each with its own place, sound and rhythm. Share sets how much of the matter each one gets, so the level stays the same.
The fragments, from Splinter to Coin, change how the matter flies and how long each grain rings. The material changes the ring itself. The landing surface changes the bounce and the attack: Water and Felt are soft, Steel and Glass are hard.
The surface form bends the floor: a Bowl, Ridges, Terraces for the matter to cascade down, Pegs to scatter it. FALL sounds where the matter lands. CLOUD sounds all along its way.
ForcesPush the matter around as it falls.
Add up to eight: Attract, Repel, Vortex, Wind, Turbulence, Drag, Lift, Pulse, Shear and Wave. Drag a ring in the field to move one. Height lifts it, Reach sets how far it pulls, and Edge softness how gently it fades out.
They all act at once, so their order doesn't change the sound. Drag a card to sort them the way you like. Use ON to turn a force on or off, SOLO to hear it alone, and Bypass Stack to take them all out for a moment.
Pulse, Wave and Turbulence can follow the tempo. COMBINATIONS swaps in a ready-made set, and Undo brings yours back.
ObjectsThings in the field for the matter to hit.
Add up to six: spheres, blocks, plates, pillars, cones, spirals, rings and bowls. A spiral is a ramp the matter runs down, striking it turn after turn; a bowl catches it and rattles it round. Drag the square to move one, and use Height, Yaw and Tilt to place it.
Each has its own material, rebound and tuning, so it rings a note of its own. ON takes it out of the way without removing it. Keep solids apart for clean strikes.
Give it Motion and it moves in time: Sway, Orbit, Bob, Spin or Rock. Cycle is how many beats one pass takes, Reach how far it goes, Phase where it starts. A moving object hits harder, so a swinging beam plays whatever it meets.
A construction swaps in a whole set of objects with its floor, fragments and room; your sound and your forces stay. Undo brings back what you had.
RoomThe space it rings in. The walls can play too.
Pick a room, from a close, dry one to a stone cathedral, a water cistern, an ice cave or a night forest. Reverb size, Absorption, Early reflections and Wet shape it. The Singing pipe and the Dome observatory sing along on your key's root, fifth and octave.
Room size moves the walls the matter bounces off, and the floor and the emitter's band with them. Objects, forces and the listener stay where they are.
In Walls, each wall and the ceiling either Strikes, sounding where it is hit, or Bounces, without a sound. A striking wall rings in its own material, or As the floor. All strike sets them all at once. A small room full of striking walls sounds like a cage.
ListenerSpeakers, or every grain around you on headphones.
Classic stereo is left to right, the way the field first sounded, for speakers or any headphones. Headphone 3D places every grain around you, in front, to the sides, above and below, heard through measured ears: put headphones on for it, and turn the system's Spatial Audio off for this app. Spatial stage is for two speakers: a stage in front of you, with each grain's distance and direction.
Check positions plays a short pip from six places in turn, so you can hear where each one lands, then your sound comes back. Ears and headphones differ, so front, back and height can take a moment to find.
Drag the listener in the field to move where you hear from (Alt for its height), and Facing turns you round. Width and Depth sit beside them.
Pitch and keysKeep it in key, and play it from a keyboard.
In Pitch, Chord / key snap keeps every grain on the notes of a key and a chord you choose, between Low and High. Free pitch lets them drift anywhere, and Detune drift adds a slow wobble (at zero the notes hold still). A recording of your own with a note in it? Set the note under Source tuning and it plays in key.
Keys, under the field, is a keyboard. Press a key and matter falls that strikes its note at once, and while keys are down the whole field rings them. Hold keeps the notes you play. Arp plays them one at a time, Up, Down, Up and down, Random or As played, over up to three octaves. Gate keeps the field still until you play.
Once the keyboard has the focus, your computer plays it too: A to the quote key, W E T Y U O P for the sharps, Z and X for an octave down or up.
The key sequence, beside the keyboard, walks through up to sixteen keys at the tempo, with a chord of its own on any step. Its switch turns it on, and the key snap with it. Restart starts it again with the loop lanes.
RhythmPULSE: the matter falls in waves, each landing on its beat.
Turn on PULSE, beside FALL and CLOUD (or press P), and the matter falls in waves on the tempo instead of a steady rain. Each wave is let go ahead of its beat so it lands right on it, and its rebounds land on later steps.
In Rhythm, under the field, set the grid and the number of steps. Press a step once for a wave, again for an accent, again for a rest. Pattern has grooves, clave and bell patterns, odd meters and even spreads; Random makes one up, and the arrows turn it round.
Lock sets how tight it is: full lands every wave on its beat, and less lets each fragment's own speed loosen it. Swing delays every second step (about 67% is a triplet shuffle), Chance lets some waves sit a bar out (accents always fall), and Strum rolls a wave's fragments in one after another.
The Rhythm studies play in key. Keep tempo, key and rhythm carries them into the next study.
SynthShape every grain: its level, its tone and its pitch.
Synth, under the field, has three curves for each grain. Amp is its level: Smooth is the grain as it always was, Pluck hits at once and falls away, Swell rises through it, Gate is flat with short edges. Filter moves its tone, Low, Band or High, and Key sets how far it follows each grain's note. Pitch sweeps it onto its note: Drop from above, Rise from below, Zap far and fast.
Drag a round point to move it, or a diamond to bend the line. Double-click or double-tap puts one back. On a graph, Alt and the arrows pick a point, and the arrows move it.
+ Drive lets the matter play the curves. Impact is how hard it struck, Bounce which rebound it is, then Height, Speed, Material (how hard what it hit is) and Random. A hard strike can ring brighter and every rebound darker, so no two grains are alike.
With more than one emitter, each has its own. Copy to all shares it, Reset puts it back, and Grain view opens one grain on its own.
Grain viewOne grain on its own, struck by hand.
Grain, beside VISUAL, opens one emitter's grain on its own, and the field waits while it is open. STRIKE (or Space) plays it, and so does a press on the pad: across is how hard it strikes, and up sets the property chosen under UP. The keys 1 to 8 strike it from soft to hard, and REPEAT plays it on the tempo. FIELD (or Escape) takes you back.
GRAIN is the grain alone. + RING adds its material's ring, + ROOM the room and the echo, and + PLACE puts it where it falls in the field.
Its curves are right there to drag, the same edit as in Synth. READ shows where along its source it reads: drag it somewhere else, or press its number to bring it back. On an iPad the Pencil strikes as hard as you press, and in the apps a MIDI note strikes it as hard as you play.
PerformEvolve, Fracture and Echo, under the field.
Evolve moves the forces that follow it, and Cycle sets how fast. Fracture breaks hard strikes into smaller pieces. Echo repeats in time with the tempo; its note length is in Sound, Output.
Tonality keeps the grains' pitches to a set of intervals, and Spread widens them.
Loop lanesAutomation that repeats: draw how a control moves over a loop of bars.
Touch a control, then Draw lane in its section's Automate menu, and draw its curve under the field. Edit lane goes back to one you have drawn. Up to eight lanes share one loop of 1 to 8 bars, and Cycles repeats a lane inside it. A control a lane moves shows LOOP under its name, in blue, with a dot where the lane has it now. Anything else that moves a control on its own (MOTION, read motion, the song, your DAW) shows its word the same way, and the count beside the study's name lists them all. Tap the word, right-click the control or hold a finger on it to see what moves it. REMOVE takes one away, and Undo brings it back.
Or start from Listener orbit, Breathing space, Force drift or Grain weave. Each lane can be Smooth, Linear or Step, between its Low and High. Move an automated control by hand and its lane steps aside.
GENERATE with Motion on writes new lanes for you: Subtle, Expressive or Adventurous. It replaces the lanes you had, and Undo brings them back.
The fieldTurn it, zoom it, and grab what is in it.
Drag an empty part of the field to turn the view. Scroll, pinch with two fingers, or use + and − to zoom. A ring is a force or the listener, a square is an object: point at one to light it and see its name, and drag it to move it. With the field focused, the arrow keys move the view and Shift turns it.
SUSPEND (H) freezes the matter and holds its sound. BURST (B) throws in another 22 fragments. CLEAR empties the field.
VIEW chooses what you see: the matter itself, its Trails, or the Spectrum of what you hear, low to high across and two seconds deep. Each fragment glows while it sounds, from blue for the low end of the sound to orange for the high, or in its emitter's or its source's colour when there are several. With Pulse on, a ring on the floor shows where each wave will land.
Visual modeThe field alone, full screen.
VISUAL (V) hides everything but the field: the matter brighter, the view drifting slowly round the room. Drag to rotate the view yourself.
The strip at the foot keeps PLAY, the study with its arrows, GENERATE, and four sliders that change the sound at once: Rate, Gravity, Pitch and Space. It fades when you leave it alone: move the pointer or touch the screen to show it again. Open ? for the gestures and shortcuts, and PRO for more controls on screen. Escape brings everything back, and the sound plays on.
StudiesA hundred and one starting points in ten groups.
A study is a ready-made scene to play and change: a sound, its matter, its motion and its room. Showcase comes first: each one puts several parts together, so it is the quickest way to hear what the field can do. Stillness comes last: slow, soft and steady, for rest, focus or sleep.
In between are studies of impact, atmosphere, rhythm, places, emitters, synthesis and the master chain, and a few that could never happen. Search them by name, material or description, and GENERATE makes a new one from wherever you are. Lock TEMPO with the padlock beside it to keep your tempo as you go.
SongLine up studies into a song, each one blending into the next.
SONG, beside GENERATE, opens the song. Its name, at the top, opens the ready-made songs: choose one and press PLAY, and the field tours what it can do. Or pick a study from the list and it goes on the end as a block of bars. PLAY plays the blocks in turn, then goes round again. This scene adds the field as you have it now, and GENERATE a new one, made by chance.
MORPH is how a block arrives. Numbers glide in: gravity, the bounce, a force's pull, the echo. Choices switch once, on the first bar line after it is half done: the material, the room, the floor and the key. Forces, objects and emitters in only one of the two studies fade in or out. The new sound rains in a fragment at a time, and what is already falling keeps falling and rings out. CUT changes it all on its first bar line.
TAKES chooses what a block brings: SOURCE, MATTER, FORCES, OBJECTS, ROOM, PITCH and RHYTHM, and TEMPO if you turn it on. Leave one out and the block before keeps it going. Lock TEMPO, with its padlock, and the whole song plays at your tempo.
Under the blocks, AUTOMATION draws a control over the song. + LANE picks one: DIFFUSE, ECHO or DRIVE, an effect in the master chain, or a setting of MASTER OUTPUT. Drag across the lane to draw it. While the song plays, the lane moves its control over whatever the blocks give it: open the low pass through the intro, throw the echo at the end of a block, fade out at the end. MASTER OUTPUT's filters and compressor work only with it on, and the chain's effects only with MASTER CHAIN on.
While the song plays, what you change by hand is heard until the next block, and KEEP writes it into the block. Choose a study as the song plays and the song turns off: your study plays on from there. Stopped, choose a block to hear its study, and what you change goes into it, a study you choose too. With no block chosen, a study turns the song off, so PLAY plays it. The switch at the top of the song's window turns it back on. Save keeps the song with the scene. In a host, FOLLOW HOST puts it on the host's bars, and in the apps Export bounces the whole song.
Sound and outputHow loud, and what to do if it struggles.
OUTPUT opens MASTER OUTPUT, the channel your sound goes out through, and the speaker beside it mutes the sound while the field keeps playing. The meter shows the peaks and how much the protection catches: it never lets them past −1.5 dBFS. With the limiter on in MASTER OUTPUT, its ceiling takes over.
How the field runs is under Sound, Output. If it crackles, set Voice budget to Lighter. If the picture stutters, set Visuals to Light, or thin the field under Fragment budget: Lifespan, Amount and Alive. FRAGMENTS, on the field, opens it, and FULL puts it all back. These last for this visit and never change a saved scene.
LABELS, in VIEW, shows axis labels and the output trace on the field.
Master chainEffects and an output channel, after everything else.
MASTER CHAIN and MASTER OUTPUT, at the foot of the page, come after the room, the echo and Drive, on everything you hear. Press one to open it over the page, and press it again, or CLOSE, to put it away.
Each has its own switch at its left edge, ON or OFF. Switch MASTER CHAIN off to hear your sound without its four effects. Switch it back on and they return as they were. Switch MASTER OUTPUT off and its colour, filters and compressor step aside. Its limiter and final trim still work. While a switch is off, its box says BYPASSED.
MASTER CHAIN is four effects in a row. Each slot can be saturation, a filter, a comb, bit crush, wavefold, reverb or delay. Turn one on and raise its DRY / WET. Drag a slot, or use its arrows, to change the order.
STARTING POINT, at the top, sets all four at once: a space, a character, something moving or something extreme, and three made for each device and named for it, yours to use on any of them. PRESETS, beside each effect's name, has a few starting points for that effect alone, some of them moving. Choose one and the slot turns on. Either way it sits at about the same loudness as the sound without it, so change anything from there.
A reverb has a CHARACTER: ROOM, HALL, PLATE, BLOOM, which swells up slowly, or SHIMMER, an octave rising in its tail. WIDTH spreads it from mono to wide, and FREEZE holds its tail while the sound coming in passes it by. A delay has a STYLE: STRAIGHT, PING-PONG from side to side, WIDE with the right a little later, or TAPE, each repeat warmer and wavering, more so the more WEAR you give it.
Saturation has seven curves: SOFT, HARD and ASYMMETRIC, then TAPE, softer and darker the harder you push it, TUBE, warm, FUZZ, squared off, and RECTIFY, an octave up. Set its STEREO to MID / SIDE to drive the middle and the sides each on their own, the sides as hard as SIDE DRIVE says. Bit crush's RATE holds the sound at a lower rate, and JITTER makes the hold unsteady.
Besides LOWPASS, HIGHPASS, BANDPASS and NOTCH, the filter's MODE has three more. LADDER is round and warm, and whistles at full resonance. COMB is tuned to the cutoff, so it rings at a pitch: metal, strings, robots. VOWEL talks, the cutoff taking it from A through E, I and O to U. SPREAD on a filter, a comb or a wavefold sets the left and the right apart.
Five more can go in a slot. CHORUS: copies of the sound moving against each other, wide. PHASER: notches sweeping through it. SHIFT: every pitch moved by the same number of hertz, from a slow swirl to a metallic ring. GRAIN: what comes in, taken apart into grains and scattered; FREEZE holds what it has. WIDTH: from mono to wider than it came, the low end kept in the middle below MONO BELOW.
MOTION, on every effect, moves one of its controls on its own. Pick what it MOVES and its SHAPE, set the RATE in time with the tempo or free, and how far with DEPTH. PHASE sets the left and right apart, so the movement crosses from side to side.
MASTER OUTPUT is a channel strip: high and low pass, colour, a compressor and a limiter. A starting point is the quickest way in, and a few are made for each device and named for it, each as loud as BALANCED OUTPUT, so try them on any. The compressor can listen to one emitter alone, so the rest ducks around it.
The meter beside them shows the left and right going out. Its colours are the ranges: the body of the sound, loud from −12 dB, and the last 3 dB before full scale. The number is the loudest peak since you last pressed it, and CLIP lights if anything reaches full scale. Press it to start again.
Most studies open with both off. The CHAIN studies, and the first six in the Showcase, open with their own: turn its parts off to hear what they add. While the limiter is off, the protection still keeps the peaks under −1.5 dBFS.
Record and saveRecord a take, save a scene.
REC records what you hear, up to two minutes. Press it again to stop, listen back, then save the take or let it go.
Save keeps the scene as a file, with a sound you loaded, and Open brings it back. Reset starts again: Bell machine as it first opens, no song and the tempo free. It asks first, and Undo brings yours back. On a phone, and wherever the strip is short of room, they are under FILE. UNDO and REDO, beside GENERATE, step back and forth through your changes. Their arrows light up when there is something to take back or put back.
Your sounds and scenes stay with you: nothing is uploaded.
Every sound here is made as the matter moves, and every study was built for this machine. It starts at a moderate level: turn it up from there. In a background tab the picture can pause while the sound plays on, and a phone may stop a browser's sound when you switch away.
