Support

Press PLAY at the top. In Matter / Field the matter starts to fall, and every fragment that hits something plays a grain, a short piece of the sound. In Polite Disorder the kit starts to play. The ? button opens the guide, and VISUAL gives the instrument the whole screen. In the apps on iPhone and iPad, the sound carries on when you switch to another app.

Choose Headphone 3D and the sound is placed around you: in front, to the sides, above. It’s in the Listener tab in Matter / Field, and at the top of Master output, in the bar along the bottom of the window, in Polite Disorder. Connect headphones and the app switches to it by itself. Press Check positions to hear a short test tone from six places, so you know where each one lands. If Spatial Audio is on for the app in Control Center, turn it off: Headphone 3D does its own, and the two together blur the sound.

With supported headphones, such as AirPods Pro, AirPods Max and AirPods 3 or later, Head tracking keeps sounds in place as you turn your head. Turn it on where you chose Headphone 3D, face forward, and choose Set front to set the direction you face. The first time, your device asks to allow motion. It works in the apps on iPhone, iPad and the Mac (macOS 14 and later), not in the plug-ins.

On iPhone and iPad, tip the device to pour.

In Matter / Field, turn on Tilt, under Gravity in the Environment tab or in the visual mode, and the matter pours toward the edge you tip down. On an iPhone, Haptics, under Sound › Output, lets you feel the beats or the strongest strikes.

In Polite Disorder, turn on TILT in VISUAL to pour the room toward the low side, and shake it for a burst of disorder. Press LEVEL and the way you’re holding it now counts as flat.

On iPhone and iPad each app is also an AUv3 instrument for GarageBand, AUM, Logic Pro for iPad and other music apps: look for Matter / Field (listed as Matter Field) or Polite Disorder among their instruments. On the Mac they are AU, VST3 and CLAP plug-ins.

Both play in time with your host. In Polite Disorder, MIDI notes from C1 up play its six voices. In Matter / Field, MIDI notes play the field, and MIDI out, under Sound › Output, sends a note for every strike to your other instruments.

In hosts that support multiple outputs, each voice or emitter gets its own. On a track of 4 or 16 channels, the sound goes out as ambisonics (AmbiX), for a decoder.

Save keeps your work as a file wherever you choose, and Open brings it back: a scene in Matter / Field, a project in Polite Disorder with its patterns, sounds and samples.

Load Audio brings a sound of your own into Matter / Field, and LOAD SAMPLE, + ADD A LAYER or REPLACE, in a voice’s sound, into Polite Disorder: from a file, or recorded right there with RECORD.

Export renders a WAV faster than real time: in Matter / Field a scene for 8 to 32 bars, 1 to 5 minutes or the whole song, and in Polite Disorder a pattern for 1 to 16 bars or the whole song, or stems, a WAV for each voice. Choose stereo as you hear it, or AmbiX for an ambisonic decoder.

Live input works from the last few seconds your microphone hears. In Matter / Field, turn on LIVE INPUT in the Source tab to use the latest 2, 4 or 8 seconds from your microphone or audio interface. Choose how often it refreshes, every 1, 2 or 4 bars, then press Keep to save the latest capture as the scene’s source sound. Nothing is saved unless you press Keep.

On the Mac, choose the input in the app’s Settings. In a host, send a track to the plug-in’s sidechain.

In Matter / Field’s Objects tab, + Add object, then Model, brings in a 3D model of your own (OBJ, STL or PLY) as an object the matter strikes. Load scan, under the surface form in the Matter tab, turns a scan of a room or a place into the ground surface the matter lands on. The scene keeps both.

Each app keeps a few settings of its own: Matter / Field’s under Sound › Output, and Polite Disorder’s in its Plugin tab. Plays sets whether it follows your host or plays on its own. MIDI and Velocity set what notes do.

Quality: Standard sounds as the browser version does. Studio uses a little more of the processor: in Matter / Field each strike sounds the moment it lands and grains stay clean as you pitch them, and in Polite Disorder every voice and shaper runs at four times the sample rate. Matter / Field starts on Studio.

The software and fonts the apps are built with, and their licenses: on iPhone and iPad in the Settings app, under Matter Field or Polite Disorder; on the Mac in the app’s About window.

Write to csm@complexstatemachines.com. For app support, include the app and version, your device and operating system, and what happened. If you’re using a plug-in, include your music app and plug-in format. It helps to say what you did just before it happened, and to add a screenshot. What the apps keep and send is on Privacy.