Make xenharmonic music and explore musical tunings.

Resources

• Changelog
• Scale expressions

Overview

microwave is a microtonal modular waveform synthesizer based on:

• tune – a microtonal library
• Nannou – a UI framework
• FluidLite – a soundfont renderer

It features a virtual piano UI enabling you to play polyphonic microtonal melodies with your touch screen, computer keyboard, MIDI keyboard or mouse. The UI provides information about pitches and just intervals in custom tuning systems.

Installation

bash cargo install -f microwave

To install microwave (build it from scratch) additional dev dependencies required by Nannou might need to be installed. On the CI environment (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) the following installation step is sufficient:

bash sudo apt install libxcb-composite0-dev libasound2-dev

To run microwave you need the appropriate runtime libraries for your graphics card. For me (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) the following step worked:

bash sudo apt install libvulkan1 mesa-vulkan-drivers vulkan-utils

If this doesn't help or you don't use Ubuntu/apt try following these instructions.

Usage

bash microwave run # 12-EDO scale (default) microwave run steps 1:22:2 # 22-EDO scale microwave run import my_scale.scl # imported scale

This should spawn a window displaying a virtual keyboard. Use your touch screen, computer keyboard or mouse to play melodies on the virtual piano.

Soundfont Files

For playback of sampled sounds you need to provide the location of a soundfont file. The location can be set via the environment variable MICROWAVE_SF_LOC or the command line:

bash microwave run --sf-loc /usr/share/sounds/sf2/default-GM.sf2 steps 1:22:2

If you like to use compressed sf3 files you need to compile microwave with the sf3 feature enabled. Note that the startup will take significantly longer since the soundfont needs to be decompressed first.

Modular Synth – Create Your Own Waveforms

On startup, microwave tries to locate a waveforms file specified by the --wv-loc parameter or the MICROWAVE_WV_LOC environment variable. If no such file is found microwave will create a default waveforms file for you.

Let's have a look at an example clavinettish sounding waveform that I discovered by accident:

json { "name": "Clavinet", "envelope_type": "Piano", "stages": [ { "Oscillator": { "kind": "Sin", "frequency": "WaveformPitch", "modulation": "None", "destination": { "buffer": "Buffer0", "intensity": { "Value": 440.0 } } } }, { "Oscillator": { "kind": "Triangle", "frequency": "WaveformPitch", "modulation": { "ByFrequency": "Buffer0" }, "destination": { "buffer": "AudioOut", "intensity": { "Value": 1.0 } } } } ] }

This waveform has two stages:

1. Generate a sine wave with the waveform's nominal frequency and an amplitude of 440. Write this waveform to Buffer0.
2. Generate a triangle wave with the waveform's nominal frequency and an amplitude of 1.0. Modulate the waveform's frequency (in Hz) sample-wise by the amount stored in Buffer0. Write the modulated waveform to AudioOut.

To create your own waveforms edit the waveforms file by trial-and-error. Let microwave's error messages guide you to find valid configurations.

Live Interactions

You can live-control your waveforms with your mouse pointer or any MIDI Control Change messages source.

The following example stage defines a resonance filter whose resonance frequency can be controlled with a MIDI modulation wheel/lever from 0 to 10,000 Hz.

json { "Filter": { "kind": { "Resonance": { "resonance": { "Mul": [ { "Value": 10000.0 }, { "Controller": "Modulation" } ] }, "damping": { "Value": 0.2 } } }, "source": "Buffer0", "destination": { "buffer": "AudioOut", "intensity": { "Value": 1.0 } } } }

Feature List

• Sound features
  • Built-in modular waveform synhesizer bash microwave run --wv-loc <waveforms-file-location> [scale-expression]
  • FluidLite soundfont renderer bash microwave run --sf-loc <soundfont-file-location> [scale-expression]
  • External synthesizer via MIDI-out bash microwave run --midi-out <midi-target> [scale-expression]
  • Microphone / aux input bash microwave run --audio-in [scale-expression]
  • WAV recording
• Control features
  • Sequencer / piano keyboard via MIDI-in bash microwave run --midi-in <midi-source> [scale-expression]
  • Computer keyboard (configurable isomorphic layout)
  • Touch Screen
  • Mouse
• Effects
  • Low-pass
  • High-pass
  • Resonance
  • Spatial delay
  • Rotary speaker
• Microtuning features
  • Custom scales
  • SCL import
  • Tuning-dependent automatic keyboard layout
  • MIDI-out retuning via Single Note Tuning messages
  • Display frequencies and rational number approximations

Help

For a complete list of command line options run

bash microwave help