Make xenharmonic music and explore musical tunings.

Resources

Overview

microwave is a microtonal modular waveform synthesizer with soundfont rendering capabilities based on:

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.

Demo

Download / Installation

Option A: Try out the web app to get a very first impression:

Option B: Download a precompiled version of microwave for the supported target architectures:

Option C: Use Cargo to build a fresh binary from scratch for your own target architecture:

```bash

If you are using Linux: Make sure all dev dependencies are installed.

On the CI environment (Ubuntu 20.04) we only need to add one library:

sudo apt install libasound2-dev

Make sure pkg-config is installed

sudo apt install pkg-config

cargo install -f microwave ```

microwave should run out-of-the box on a recent (Ubuntu) Linux, Windows or macOS installation. If it doesn't, the problem is probably caused by the Nannou framework. In that case, try following these instructions.

Usage

Hint: Run microwave with parameters from a shell environment (Bash, PowerShell). Double-clicking on the executable will not provide access to all features!

bash microwave run # 12-EDO scale (default) microwave run steps 1:22:2 # 22-EDO scale microwave run scl-file my_scale.scl # imported scale microwave run help # Print help about how to set the parameters to start microwave

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

MIDI In/Out

To enable playback via an external MIDI device you need to specify the name of the output device and a tuning method. The available tuning methods are full, full-rt, octave-1, octave-1-rt, octave-2, octave-2-rt, fine-tuning and pitch-bend.

bash microwave devices # List MIDI devices microwave run --midi-out name-of-my-device --tun-method octave-1 microwave run --midi-in "name of my device" --tun-method octave-1 # If the device name contains spaces

To listen for events coming from a external MIDI device you only need to specify the name of the input device:

bash microwave devices # List MIDI devices microwave run --midi-in name-of-my-device microwave run --midi-in "name of my device" # If the device name contains spaces

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.

Audio Options

The command-line enables you to set set up sample rates, buffer sizes and many other audio parameters. To print a full list of available options run:

bash microwave run help

Modular Synth – Create Your Own Waveforms and Effects

On startup, microwave tries to locate a config file specified by the --cfg-loc parameter or the MICROWAVE_CFG_LOC environment variable. If no such file is found microwave will create a default config file with predefined waveforms and effects for you.

waveforms section

The waveforms section of the config file defines waveform render stages to be applied sequentially when a key is pressed.

You can combine those stages to create the tailored sound you wish for. The following example config defines a clavinettish sounding waveform that I discovered by accident:

yml waveforms: - name: Funky Clavinet envelope: Piano stages: - Oscillator: kind: Sin frequency: WaveformPitch modulation: None out_buffer: 0 out_level: 440.0 - Oscillator: kind: Triangle frequency: WaveformPitch modulation: ByFrequency mod_buffer: 0 out_buffer: 1 out_level: 1.0 - Filter: kind: HighPass2 resonance: Mul: - WaveformPitch - Time: start: 0.0 end: 0.1 from: 2.0 to: 4.0 quality: 5.0 in_buffer: 1 out_buffer: AudioOut out_level: 1.0

While rendering the sound three stages are applied:

  1. Generate a sine wave with the waveform's nominal frequency F and an amplitude of 440. Write this waveform to buffer 0.
  2. Generate a triangle wave with frequency F and an amplitude of 1.0. Modulate the waveform's frequency (in Hz) sample-wise by the amount stored in buffer 0. Write the modulated waveform to buffer 1.
  3. Apply a second-order high-pass filter to the samples stored in buffer 1. The high-pass's resonance frequency rises from 2F to 4F within 0.1 seconds. Write the result to AudioOut.

To create your own waveforms use the default config file as a starting point and try editing it by trial-and-error. Let microwave's error messages guide you to find valid configurations.

effects section

The effects section of the config file defines the effects to be applied sequentially after the waveforms have been rendered.

Use the following config as an example to add a rotary-speaker effect to your sound.

yml effects: - RotarySpeaker: buffer_size: 100000 gain: Controller: kind: Sound9 from: 0.0 to: 0.5 rotation_radius: 20.0 speed: Controller: kind: Sound10 from: 1.0 to: 7.0 acceleration: 7.0 deceleration: 14.0

The given config defines the following properties:

Live Interactions

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

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

yml stages: - Filter: kind: LowPass2 resonance: Controller: kind: Modulation from: 0.0 to: 10000.0 quality: 5.0 in_buffer: 0 out_buffer: AudioOut out_level: 1.0

If you want to use the mouse's vertical axis for sound control use the Breath controller.

yml resonance: Controller: kind: Breath from: 0.0 to: 10000.0

If you want to use the touchpad for polyphonic sound control use the KeyPressure property.

yml resonance: Linear: value: KeyPressure from: 0.0 to: 10000.0

Feature List

Help

For a complete list of command line options run

bash microwave help

License

microwave statically links against OxiSynth for soundfont rendering capabilities. This makes the binary executable of microwave a derivative work of OxiSynth. OxiSynth is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1.