Wavelength

Preview Playable in your browser now. The plugin for macOS comes with its first release.

Wavelength Galvanic

A synthesizer you breed instead of program. Every sound is a specimen with 24 genes, from crackling electric arcs to thick, meaty bodies: hear its children, adopt the one you like, splice two together, and charge any of them from Flesh to Electric.

Play it in the browser Watch a minute of it

41 specimens to start from, 24 genes, no knobs. Every gene is a parameter a host or an agent can automate.

This is the real plugin, running in your browser.

The same C++ engine and the same editor as the plugin, compiled to WebAssembly. Press Play loop, then click a child in the dish to hear it (or step around with the arrow keys), double-click one to adopt it, or drag one onto another to splice them. Drag Charge from Flesh to Electric, raise Mutation and Breed for a wilder litter, or plant a Seed. Your computer keyboard plays notes (A to ' from C3), a MIDI keyboard works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and Download specimen saves the sound for the plugin.

Sound starts with your first click or key press. It's made for a laptop or desktop; on a phone the editor is tiny.

A minute in the lab.

Browsing a litter with the arrow keys, a Charge ride from Flesh to Electric, adopting, a wilder litter, a splice, four seeds, genes twisted on the strand, and Jolt making a pluck spark on its hard hits. The sound is the plugin's own engine, rendered from what the editor did.

No knobs. A lab.

Bred, not programmed

A litter of eight children surrounds the specimen, nearer or further by how far their genes strayed. Hear them, adopt one, and a new litter grows around it. The lineage keeps every ancestor to go back to, and a padlock keeps a gene out of breeding.

A creature for every sound

Each genome is drawn as a living thing: girth and sub make its body, arcs and crackle spark from it, coil winds around it, throat gives it a mouth, tail its tendrils. It pulses at its own rate and twitches on every note.

Charge: Flesh to Electric

One rail pulls the whole genome toward thick, warm and fat or toward sparks, grit and bite, and the mod wheel adds Electric, so a wheel ride can spark any sound.

Jolt and Sprawl

Jolt charges each note by how hard it's hit, then lets it relax back into its body: a galvanic twitch. Sprawl gives every key its own sibling of the genome, so a chord is a family.

A spark gap for an oscillator

The Arc fires a discharge at the note's pitch, ringing, buzzing and hissing like a singing Tesla coil. Crackle makes the sparks uneven and stray; the Coil adds a feedback FM growl.

Breeding keeps its level

A loudness model fitted to thousands of random genomes keeps every specimen within a couple of dB of the next, so a mutation changes the sound, not the volume.

24 genes in four strands.

Source

  • Shape sine, triangle, saw, square, thin pulse
  • Girth one body to a stack of seven
  • Sub a sine an octave under
  • Arc a spark gap firing at the pitch
  • Crackle uneven, skipped and stray sparks
  • Coil an FM growl that turns metallic

Flesh

  • Bite a ladder filter, muffled to open
  • Snarl resonance and drive
  • Sweep a slow bloom to a fast zap
  • Throat a vocal tract, "oo" to "ee"
  • Grit gravel, fizz, a crushed rate
  • Fuzz warm toward Flesh, hard toward Electric

Nerve

  • Snap a swell to an instant hit
  • Hold a blip, a pluck, a sustain
  • Tail the release
  • Dive a pitch sweep into the note
  • Pulse a slow breath to a fast throb
  • Throb how hard the pulse moves it

Aura

  • Swarm every body drifting on its own
  • Bloom an ensemble chorus
  • Echo a ping-pong delay
  • Room a booth to a hall
  • Glue saturation and compression
  • Weight thin and lifted to heavy

41 specimens, from live wires to brisket.

Lead 7

  • Tesla Lead
  • Live Wire
  • Sinew Lead
  • Arc Welder
  • Galvani Lead
  • Throat Singer
  • Coil Whine

Bass 9

  • Brisket Bass
  • Gristle Reese
  • Mains Hum
  • Marrow Sub
  • Coil Growl
  • Defib Bass
  • Tendon Bass
  • Gut Punch
  • Brownout Bass

Pad 7

  • St Elmo's Fire
  • Hide Pad
  • Nerve Pad
  • Ozone
  • Tallow Choir
  • Faraday Cage
  • Ball Lightning

Keys 4

  • Muscle Keys
  • Leyden Jar
  • Organ Meat
  • Tube Clav

Pluck 5

  • Galvani's Frog
  • Spark Gap Pluck
  • Rib Pluck
  • Static Drip
  • Nerve Twitch

Stab 3

  • Bone Saw
  • Jacob's Stab
  • Chuck Brass

Texture 3

  • Tesla Storm
  • Flesh Engine
  • Van de Graaff

FX 3

  • Defibrillator
  • Jacob's Ladder
  • Short Circuit