Start

Create a sound, move it through the stereo field, then let the network grow from it.

create

tap empty canvas

draws a generator

two fingers, empty

draws an acoustic instrument playing a newly woven phrase; an abstract or rhythmic guided path stays inside that path instead

rest one finger, empty

opens the palette at that point: generator regions, acoustic instruments, processor regions and combos

palette, second page

choosing a region opens what is inside it, each named and described; anything lets the organism draw from that region as before

guided path active

taps and palette choices are filtered to abstract, rhythmic or melodic material; none restores the whole fleet

the rhythmic path

everything it draws arrives clocked, so what appears relates to what is already playing

input · in misc

a generator that listens: the microphone, or an interface's inputs, choosing the channel in its controls. the organism never draws one by itself -- in a room with a speaker that would be a feedback loop nobody asked for

play the canvas

tap a node

redraws its own synthesis parameters without stopping it

double-tap a node

switches its rhythmic gate on or off

drag a node

moves it and its stereo position; session settings can assign height to volume or filter

drag a node onto the bin

push it right up against the top edge under the bin, until it will go no further. the bin glows only on contact, not on getting close; let go there and the node is gone

orange · pink · teal

generator · acoustic phrase · processor

ivory

a processor that is the outlet of its chain: nothing downstream, so this is where that branch reaches the master and where its sound sits in the stereo field. it stays ivory only while it plays that part; grow something after it and it is teal again

Build

Hold a node as an anchor. Every additional touch develops the network from it.

grow and connect

hold node + tap empty

grows a processor there and connects the held node to it

keep holding + tap

grows further branches without lifting the anchor

hold node + two fingers

duplicates it with the same sound and controls, but no connection

hold node + tap node

draws a directed vessel from the held node to the tapped one

repeat a vessel

cuts it; if the tapped node hangs only from that vessel, the node goes too

signal rules

source → processors

audio flows along the chain; branches and feedback cycles are allowed

generator → generator

audio-rate cross modulation: ring, amplitude, phase or filter, chosen per target. a holos counts as a generator at either end

kick → voice

an 808 or 909 kick drawn into a generator or a holos ducks it out of the kick's way instead -- a side chain

both directions

mutual cross modulation; both generators remain audible as sources

acoustic node

may feed processors, but cannot receive a vessel or audio-rate modulation -- except from a controller

controller → voice

a broken vessel carrying notes, not sound. into a generator or an acoustic node, one controller to each; nothing is drawn into a controller

thicker vessel

closes a feedback cycle and is automatically attenuated

palette and combos

choose a region

opens its named node types; each entry says what it sounds like. 55 generator families and 71 processors in all, so the regions are how they stay findable

choose a combo

places a complete free-standing processor chain: grind, acid, lurch, haunt, cavern or corrode

under a guided path

the palette and every combo stage are restricted to the active path

controllers

what they are

chartreuse, square nodes that make no sound: the metaseq plays the generators and acoustic nodes it is joined to, the lfo moves the parameters of the generators, processors and holos it is joined to. both are in the palette under controllers, beside the holos

join

hold the controller and tap a voice. hold it and tap an empty spot to grow a voice there, already played by it. the same gesture on a joined voice cuts the vessel

metaseq

a line in the session's scale, on the grid. a synthesis voice plays each note at its own pitch, from its root plus the octave setting; an acoustic node stops its own phrase and plays the line in its own range. several voices joined to one controller play the same line

editor

the second tab of its sheet: the line in a piano roll, two bars at a time, rows in the session's scale. tap a cell to add a note, tap a note to remove it, drag a note to move it, drag its right end to lengthen it. an edited line plays as written and does not evolve; the generate controls, randomize or a tap start a new one, and back to generated returns to it

tap · randomize

a tap on the node, or randomize in its sheet: a whole new melody, with both engines and every control drawn again

pitch · rhythm

the engines. pitch: weave, markov, l-system, walk, recamán, fibonacci, lorenz, automaton. rhythm: euclid, stream, clave, automaton, thue-morse, golden, broken

the sliders

density, complexity (triplets, ratchets, figures that run across the bar), range, leap, form (repetition against new material), evolve (how much the line mutates each cycle), swing, accent and legato

octave · bars · speed

octaves from a synthesis voice's root, -2 to +3; the line's length; how fast it reads the grid

lfo

joined to up to six generators, processors or holos, with a tab in its sheet for each, in the order they were joined. on each tab three lfos: the parameter each moves, its waveform -- sine, triangle, square or random -- its depth, and its rate, from one cycle in a hundred seconds to forty a second. a node joined gets three drawn for it, and its own lfo stands aside -- its lfo button greyed out -- until the lfo is cut loose, when it comes back as it was

lfo · randomize

a tap on the node, or randomize all in its sheet: every tab's three lfos drawn again. each tab has its own randomize beside the tabs, for that node's three only. hold randomize all for a second and it flashes and lets every lfo go of its parameter

holos

what it is

a whole patch in one node, electric blue with a ring inside it: a voice, sometimes a second voice modulating it, and up to three processors, all taken from the fleet and wired inside -- in a chain, crossed, round a feedback loop, or split and mixed back

palette · holos

assembles one where your finger rested, on the chosen path -- its voice and every stage come from that path's own vocabulary, a melodic one plays a sampled phrase. with no path chosen it picks one of the three. every holos is a new patch

how it hangs together

colour -- a filter, a resonator, a shaper -- before motion, a space only ever last, and never more than one destructive stage

its eight sliders

knobs brought out from the pieces inside, each named for the knob and whose it is -- cutoff · moog, grain · cloud. every piece has at least one, and each slider moves its knob over a window of its own, sometimes reversed. the edit header says what is inside, in signal order

tap it

redraws every value inside -- the eight sliders and every hidden knob -- and glides to them. the same pieces and the same wiring, a different sound from them

wiring

it is a voice, and a generator as far as wiring goes: it feeds processors, another generator or holos drawn into it modulates the whole patch, and an 808 or 909 kick drawn into it ducks it. drawn into a generator, it modulates that

Perform

The buttons separate deliberate edits, generative change, the gesture looper, storage and transport. The fx sequencer has a tab of its own.

left buttons

trash · tap

arms node deletion; tap the button again to disarm

trash · hold

clears the whole canvas

trash · drop

a node pushed against the top edge under this button touches the bin: it glows, and letting go there deletes the node. coming near it does nothing -- the node has to be put in

sliders · tap

arms editing; tap a node to open its controls

randomizer · tap

opens a sheet with three tabs: create, transform and expand. while angiogenesis runs, create is greyed out; transform and expand work on the canvas as it is, and ending angiogenesis still returns the canvas it started from

angiogenesis · tap

engages the search: it moves, rewires, grows and prunes processors around the existing sources. it never creates a generator and never removes one, it leaves a live input set the way you set it, and it keeps at least two processors on the canvas. the button flashes while it runs; tap it again to stop it and return to the exact canvas it started from

angiogenesis · hold

while it runs: pauses it where it is. the button glows solid, nothing moves, and the canvas can be stored into a pattern as it stands. tap to carry on; tap again to stop, and the canvas returns to where it began

create

clears the canvas and grows a whole patch: abstract, rhythmic or melodic

transform

throws what is there: node positions, wiring, every node's gate, processors included -- a fresh rhythm or none, drums excepted -- every generator's parameters or every processor's parameters; lfos deals a new modulator to about half the generators, processors and holos, and structures draws every running rhythm and melody again -- rhythms, the 303's line, chords, acoustic phrases, metaseq lines

gates · lfos · structures, held

takes off what that button dealt: every gate, or each node's modulator or rhythm and melody as they were before the first tap. the button flickers and says cleared; one undo step

expand

reads what the canvas leans towards -- rhythmic, melodic or abstract -- and extends the network that way without clearing anything. mostly processors: chains deepened, sources given a second outlet, rooms several chains share, vessels run between chains; and the voices the organism lacks, a kick under a kit first, wired to duck the bed. simple, medium and complex are degrees of network complexity. in a rhythmic organism every new voice arrives on the grid, at the division the canvas plays, with a part written in the gaps of what is already playing. one undo step, however much it adds

simple · medium · complex

the three sizes of expansion, as budgets of network: three to four processors and at most one new voice; six to eight and one or two; ten to thirteen and two or three, with rooms and cross-vessels in step

dismantle

expansion run backwards: takes nodes off the outside of the network, only ones whose going silences nothing else, and never the last voice. how many is read off how busy the canvas is -- one or two from a small one, up to six from a crowded one; the tab says how many before you press. one undo step

capture · the looper

records what you do to the canvas and gives it back, layer over layer. it has a section of its own below

compass · tap

opens guided paths; an active path also constrains processors and parameter changes during the search

compass · hold

opens global steering: one control moved on every node that has it -- filter across the generators, the holos and the acoustic voices, dry/wet across the processors -- grouped by kind, in each kind's colour, with the count of nodes each will move

mixer · tap

arms mute; tap nodes to silence or restore them, hold one to solo it with its chain -- hold it again to bring the rest back

mixer · hold

opens bit crush, saturation, compression, delay, reverb and output

rebalance · tap

spreads the outlets evenly across the stereo field, in the order they stand. levels are left alone. one undo step

undo

steps back one gesture; a whole slider sweep counts as one

grid · tap

opens the 32 pattern slots

grid · hold

opens the fx sequencer, which has a tab of its own in this guide. the button stays lit while a pattern morphs or any lane has bars on it

gear · help

sessions and settings · this guide

help · hold

puts the notes back over the interface itself, with each region ringed; it is shown at every launch until that is switched off, on the overlay itself or in global setup

right buttons

play / pause

a general stop: the sources, the looper's layers, the search and the fx sequencer's playheads all hold where they are, and all pick up from there. processor and master tails ring out naturally rather than being cut at the output, so it stops the way a player stops playing. as a plugin, the host's transport drives it: vascular plays when the host plays and stops when it stops, and the button follows

tap · tempo

beside play. tap the number to type a tempo, 10 to 300, whole numbers; or tap the tap button in time, two taps or more. it drives every clock, gate, sequence and woven phrase. as a plugin, the host's clock sets it and both are dimmed

record · tap

counts four beats in at the session's tempo -- wooden knocks, and the number on the button -- then starts a 16-bit stereo take on a higher knock. the knocks are not recorded. tap during the count to call it off; tap during the take to stop it. the button flashes while it runs

record · hold

opens recordings, to play, rename, share or delete them

the gesture looper

what it is

angiogenesis is the organism moving itself. this is the same thing played by hand: what you do to the canvas is kept and given back, and you can stack layer on layer over it

tap · arm

the button lights. nothing is recorded until the canvas actually changes, so a layer starts on a movement rather than on a button. tapping again while armed drops back out

play · record

everything that happens is taken: nodes seeded, grown, duplicated, chosen from the palette, vessels drawn and cut, nodes deleted, and every drag, tap, gate and mute over the top. however it arrived -- your hand, the palette, or angiogenesis running at the same time

tap · close

the layer plays at once, from its own top. it is as long as you played it, held silence at the end included. what you built during the take blinks out and comes back at the moment you built it, because at nought seconds into the take none of it had happened yet

tap · overdub

arms another layer while everything already down keeps running. up to thirty-two layers, each its own length, none divided from a bar and none lined up with the others -- so they drift against each other the way two loop pedals left running would

temporary and permanent

anything the canvas gained while a layer was recording belongs to that layer: it appears and vanishes with the loop and is gone for good when the looper is emptied. what you built before arming, or between takes while it was only playing, is permanent and untouched

building underneath

the layers play over whatever canvas they find, so you can go on growing, connecting and deleting while they run. a layer never repeats the deletion of something you built outside it -- that happened once, at the time

reading the button

dark nothing captured · lit magenta armed · flashing pink recording · steady violet playing, brightening as the stack gets deeper. a white stutter says a hold emptied it, and a red one says thirty-two layers are already down

hold · stop

one and eight tenths of a second empties every layer and takes every temporary node with it. this is the only way to stop the looper: a press always means take another layer, so there is nothing to remember mid-phrase. undo does not reach a recorded layer, which is why the hold is the long one

with the search

both can run at once, and that is the intended pair: angiogenesis moves and rewires while your own layers play their shapes over whatever it leaves standing

layers belong to a pattern

storing a pattern stores the layers running at the time -- as layers, not as the half-built moment they were in. recalling that pattern starts them again from the top of each, and recalling one that was stored with nothing looping stops the looper and takes its temporary nodes with it. nothing a layer made outlives the pattern that holds it

patterns and randomizer

tap a slot

recalls it: node identity, controls, positions and wiring morph over the session's pattern morph time, the fx sequencer's lanes switch at once, its looper layers take over from whatever was running, and the sheet closes so you are back on the canvas. an empty slot does nothing

hold a slot

stores the canvas, the looper's layers and the fx sequencer's lanes there, and that slot becomes the current one; it flashes to confirm, and the sheet stays open

a filled slot

shows how many nodes and vessels are in it, and a plus for the looper layers it will start; the current one is lit

randomize position

keeps every node and vessel, but redistributes the stereo field

randomize wiring

keeps every node and deals processors into new source-fed chains

randomize gates

deals every node a fresh rhythm or none, processors included and drums excepted; at least one node always changes

generator parameters

re-voices every source in place: the wiring, the positions and the processors are left alone

processor parameters

the same for every transformation, leaving the sources as they are

new patch

replaces the canvas with a composed abstract, rhythmic or melodic network; undo restores what was there

FX sequencer

Hold the patterns button. Four processors, each drawn as bars over its own lane, played onto the outlets of the canvas.

what it does

a lane

one processor -- any of the fleet -- and the steps it is on, in sixteenths of the session's tempo

a bar

a run of drawn steps. each time the playhead enters it, the lane's processor lands on one outlet of the canvas, chosen at random, and stays there to the end of the bar. the next bar, or the same one next time round, can land somewhere else

an outlet

wherever a sound reaches the master: an ivory processor at the end of a chain, or a generator with nothing after it

two bars side by side

are one bar. leave an empty step between them for each to pick an outlet of its own

the canvas

does not change: no node or vessel is drawn for a lane, and undo does not step through it

the playhead

a line across each lane, on the clock the lane actually steps by; the bar it is inside is lit. it stops with the transport and picks up where it stopped

drawing

touch an empty step

starts a bar there; drag to extend it either way

touch a drawn step

erases from there; drag to erase more

drag back

shortens what you are drawing rather than leaving the steps you passed over

the end grip

drag it, or touch past the end of a lane, to set how many steps that lane runs before it comes round -- one to thirty-two. each lane has its own, against one clock, so a lane of seven over a lane of thirty-two is a polyrhythm. bars past the end are kept, and come back when the lane is pulled out again

a lane's controls

the name

tap to re-roll the processor's parameters; the die beside it turns to say it did

the region chip

opens every processor by region; choose one to put it on the lane at its own defaults, keeping the bars. take it off the lane removes the processor and keeps the bars

clear

wipes the lane's bars and keeps its processor

sync · drift

in sync the lane steps on the session's grid. lit, it drifts: a clock of its own that runs ahead, falls behind, stops for a while and sets off again, so its bars land when nobody could say. no two drifting lanes wander together

wet

how much of the outlet the processor replaces while a bar is on it; all the way up is an insert

the dice by done

new fx

deals four different processors onto the lanes, favouring the ones whose effect is unmistakable in a bar; your bars, lengths and sync settings stay

steps · lengths · params

draws new bars on every lane, with a new length and new parameters for each; the processors stay

a new session

opens with four processors already dealt, and no bars, so the playheads run over empty lanes until you draw

saving

a pattern slot stores the lanes with the canvas, and recalling it puts them back at once; a lane whose processor is the same keeps running. the session keeps the lanes as you left them too. the master chain is the one thing that stays with the session

Setup

Edit a node in context, then save the canvas and its performance settings as a session.

inside a node

volume · fx send

sets node level and how much of it reaches the shared master effects

pitch · filter

transposes a generator by ear, and sweeps a filter: open in the centre, low-pass below, high-pass above

transpose − / +

moves every note of an acoustic phrase to the previous or next pitch in the session's root and scale

family sliders

the real arguments of that node's algorithm: up to six for a generator, up to eight for a processor

invert

the box beside a slider: inverts that parameter, reading it from the far end of its range

rnd x-y

assigns two random family parameters to horizontal and vertical node position. while it is on, the pos x and pos y boxes beside each slider choose your own: any parameter on either axis, one axis each

lfo

a tap draws a fresh modulator and targets, every time; a hold takes it off. the button is lit while one runs. a modulated slider is marked ~ and shows where the parameter actually is

padlock

beside every parameter, open by default. locked -- filled in the node's colour -- no randomizer writes that parameter and no lfo, the node's own or a controller's, moves it; one already moving it lets go

drone / clock

one sustained event, or repeated strikes on the grid; percussive families arrive clocked and the rest droning, and drums cannot drone at all

1/8 · 1/4 · 1/2 · 1 · x2 · x4

a clocked node's own speed against the session tempo; every division stays locked to every other

the die

rolls a new four-bar rhythm the moment a node is clocked, or a new line for a sequenced source

loop length

sets this source's own loop; percussion offers one or two bars, acoustic phrases and the 303 also four

input channel

on an input node, which numbered input of the device or interface it listens to -- the number on the back of the box. with one microphone there is nothing to choose

session settings

root · scale

retunes every source into one harmonic field, generators and acoustic phrases alike; touch the scale to open the four traditions and what is in them

mutation rate

requested searches per minute; the device may slow it for safety

return duration

how long the organism takes to come back after a search

pattern morph

how long one stored pattern takes to become another

y position control

gives canvas height a meaning -- volume, filter or nothing; it begins on volume, and processors are left out. on volume, a node's own fader reads how loud it is where it stands, so dragging it down the canvas moves the fader down with it

default dry / wet balance

the balance every processor you add from then on arrives at; what is already on the canvas keeps what it has

sessions and master

select a session

loads its canvas, its settings, its 32 pattern slots and its fx sequencer, on the pattern it was left on

tap the name

renames the session

a settings change

is written immediately; save stores the organism into this session or a new one beside it

leaving unsaved work

asks first, and saving from that prompt writes a new session rather than overwriting the one being left

global setup

the settings sheet's other tab: preferences for the whole instrument rather than for one session — the text size, from small to extra large, and whether the help overlay opens with it. these stay put whichever session is loaded

master effects

six stages in signal order: bit crush, saturation, compression, delay, reverb and output

output · audio output

which of the device's outputs the instrument plays on, in stereo or mono to both. as a plugin the host decides

per-node send

how strongly that outlet enters the shared master chain

as a plugin

the same instrument loads as an AUv3 in a host such as AUM. It keeps its own sessions, patterns and recordings there -- a plugin and the app do not share a container

Nothing matches that. Try a shorter word — the manual uses the instrument’s own wording, so hold, outlet, lane and node all find plenty.

This manual is generated from the guide inside the app. The same text is available offline on the device: the ? key opens it, and holding it starts the guided tour over the live canvas.