The Alternative Desktop Synthesizer Garden
We make synths that are kind of nifty, at best. They don't work well on mobile. Some work with midi. Get off your dang phone.
We make synths that are kind of nifty, at best. They don't work well on mobile. Some work with midi. Get off your dang phone.
Every great synthesizer begins as a seed. Or a weed. I failed school, so I cannot confirm. It is a quiet idea planted in the soil of curiosity, watered by late nights and a computer fan that sounds like a jet engine. Pizza rolls are often times present. Here, we tend to those seeds with care and also fear.
This garden is a collection of desktop instruments, each one native to the machine it lives on. They are not emulations of hardware past. They are mutilations of hardware past. They are tools grown from whatever the personal computer itself has to offer, which is usually weird and always running too many tabs.
We build for the future of music. For the producer at 2 AM. For the producer at 3 AM who forgot to eat. For the producer at 3:30 AM whose reverb sounds incredible but whose life is a disaster. For anyone who believes the desktop is not a limitation, it is a landscape. Put plants in it. This is all very serious.
An equal-tempered instrument born from the keys beneath your fingers. The keyboard becomes a keyboard. May we frighten you?
Experimental Tuning
A love letter to an era when the desktop was a frontier. Nostalgia rendered as sound, dial-up tones turned to drones. Is it practical? That's for me to know and for you to know too, unless you don't want to. idk
Canned Nostalgia
An instrument that tends itself. Knobs turn without your touch, parameters drift like wind through olive branches. Surrender control. Try playing some notes and hitting the wild button frantically for a different, less pleasant approach.
Autonomous Synth
One note to rule them all, and in the equal temperament bind them. One ground note, locked in perfect (well, equal) temperament, while every overtone floats above in pure just intonation. It's like building a church on a parking lot. Beautiful above, asphalt below. Does it sound incredible? Only if you don't think too hard about the foundation.
Hybrid Tuning
A polyrhythmic synthesized drum machine that plays in more time signatures than you can count on both hands. And maybe some feet. Set your ratios, hit start, and try not to think about the existential implications of a hi-hat existing in 7/4 while the kick is in 4/4. Your brain will adjust. Probably.
Polyrhythmic DrumsThese are not static tools. They are living instruments, meant to evolve with you. It is indeed go time, broski. Grab a light beer and do your thang miss twang.
"We do not build synthesizers to recreate the past. We grow synthesizers to recreate the present."
Each instrument in this garden is free to use, free to modify, and free to inspire. The desktop is our soil. Water is our liquid. Sound is what blooms.
