how to play the harmonizer

The screen is a landscape with eight beacons on it, marked I to VIII. Each one is a chord. Tap a beacon to sound it, or hold it and drag upward to lift the whole harmony in pitch. Let go and the chord stays, wandering on its own. Tap the open water between the beacons for a ping.

Press j and the instrument plays itself. It walks the eight chords on a tide built from wave periods that share no common multiple, so the sequence never comes round. Colours arrive on their own. This is the way most people use it: press one key and listen for half an hour.

Two palettes, the same eight chords. Cosmos is cool and wide, carried by fifths with the third buried, so the harmony stays open. Womb brings that third into the middle of the chord where it glows, with a quiet sub under the root. Cosmos is distance. Womb is the body. Switch with b and r, or click the pair at the top of the panel.

Four gestures you play over whatever is sounding, always in the current harmony. c a cello, h a bass horn, t thunder, p a run of plucked strings. a lifts in the angelic layer, v forces the rise that otherwise comes rarely and on its own.

The drive fader is the weather. Open it and the gestures gain an edge, they come more than twice as often, and more of them stand at once. It builds slowly, over about half a minute, so give it time before you judge it. At the top it gives a delay pedal something to bite on.

The opposite, and strict about it. One sound at a time, and after it ends a silence about as long as the sound that made it. Short pads, and half the usual distance between soft and loud. Click calm in the panel or press n.

Press f and the moment you are in is held and shimmers, while you keep playing over it. Press it again to let the field move on.

Press m to open the microphone, then use the mic fader. Above the middle your source stands present on top of the instrument; below it, the source dissolves into the field. Your voice, a bowl, a flute, a horn, whatever is in the space with you. It goes into the recording as well.

The eight chords sit on the white keys from C3 to C4. Above that the keys play single notes that snap to the sounding chord, so nothing you press is wrong. With a ROLI or another MPE controller the key sets the harmony and the height, pressure swells the note, and sliding morphs it. You play over the journey while it keeps running underneath. Use Chrome for MIDI.

record writes a WAV from the moment you press it. rewind writes the last minute you just heard, which is usually the one you wanted. Both sit at the bottom of the panel.