Your first patch

This guide walks you through making a sound and saving it. You will add two modules, connect them with a cable, adjust the tone, and save the result. It takes about ten minutes.

Start the audio

When you open the studio, you see a grid with no modules and no sound.

Web browsers block a page from playing audio until you interact with it. A fresh load shows a pulsing button that reads Click anywhere to start audio. Click anywhere, or press any key. The audio starts and the button disappears.

The power button at the top right reads ⏻ On and is already on. It mutes and unmutes the whole synth at once. It does not mute individual modules.

There is no play button for sound. A signal plays as soon as you connect a sound source to an Output module, and a clock module starts running as soon as you connect it. The ▶ and ■ buttons at the bottom of the screen control the automation timeline. They do not start or stop the audio.

Build the patch

  1. Right-click the empty canvas. The Add Module browser opens and lists every module, grouped by category, with a search box at the top. Type osc, then click Oscillator, or press Enter once the search narrows to one result. The oscillator appears where you right-clicked.
  2. Right-click an empty spot again. From the I/O category, add an Output. Sound reaches your speakers only through an Output module.
  3. Connect a cable. Press on the oscillator's Saw jack and drag. A cable follows the cursor. Release on the Output's In L jack. You can drag from an output to an input or from an input to an output. To cancel, release the cable anywhere that is not a jack, or press Esc while dragging. A single cable into In L plays in the center, because In R uses the left signal until you patch it.

You should now hear a sawtooth tone. It plays continuously, since nothing is telling it when to start and stop yet.

Shape the tone

Double-click the oscillator to open its parameter window. Drag the Freq knob to change the pitch. Double-click any knob to reset it to its default. Right-click a knob to type an exact value.

The ? button in the window's title bar opens that module's manual page. The page stays open while you keep patching. The thumbtack button pins the window so it stays in place when you click elsewhere.

Open the Output's parameter window the same way. Its Vol knob sets the listening level for everything arriving at the Output. It ranges from 0 to 10 and defaults to 5.

Fixing mistakes

  • Press Ctrl+Z to undo any change, including adding or deleting a module, moving a cable, or turning a knob. Press Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z to redo. Undo and redo work only from the keyboard. There are no on-screen buttons for them.
  • To remove a cable, double-click and hold the jack it is plugged into, then drag. The cable comes off the jack on the second press. Drop it on empty space to delete it, or on another jack to move the connection. Release it back on the same jack to reconnect it. The Patching guide covers every cable gesture.
  • To remove a module, click it and press Delete, or right-click it and choose Delete.

Save your work

The studio saves your work continuously. Close the tab and it reopens exactly where you left off.

To keep a patch permanently, open the File menu and choose Save, or press Ctrl+S. The first save asks you to name the patch. After that, Ctrl+S updates the same patch in place. The free plan holds three saved patches in the cloud.

To start from a finished patch, open the File menu and choose Presets. The studio ships with 20 built-in patches, from a drum machine to an acid line to a granular cloud, and none of them need sample files. Each preset loads as a new, unsaved copy, so you can change it freely without affecting your own saved patches.

Tips

  • Move the cable from Saw to Sqr or Sin to hear the oscillator's other waveforms. Any output can connect to any input on another module, though a module cannot patch into itself. A single input can accept several cables at once.
  • Add a Filter between the oscillator and the Output, then sweep its cutoff. Placing a filter after an oscillator is a common way to shape a sound.
  • To play the oscillator instead of holding one continuous tone, add a Keyboard and connect its pitch output, labeled CV, to the oscillator's V/Oct input, the jack that sets its pitch. When you want the patch to play on its own, add a BPM Clock and see the Sequencing guide.