AU · VST3 · STANDALONE
B Y P R E S S M A R K
SOUND YOU CAN KNEAD.
CONTEXTURE is a synth built around a ball of sound. A round ball is a pure tone; press it in, pull it out, paint it rough, and you hear every change. Next to it: a wavetable, a sampler and a granulator.
SHIMMER
01 WINDOWEVERYTHING ON ONE SCREEN
ONE WINDOW.
NO MENUS.
The ball in the middle, four knobs on the left, the keys at the bottom. Engines and the mixer are tabs along the top; FX, LFO and ENV slide up from under the ball. The window scales from 50 % to 300 %.
02 ENGINESSCROLL TO SWITCH
FOUR ENGINES.
ONE MIXER.
KNEAD
The ball itself. Additive, up to 96 partials: press a spot and those overtones sink, pull it and they rise, paint it and they breathe noise. One slide morphs the ball into a cube and on into a crystal, each with its own register and ring.
- PARTIALS
- 96
- BODY
- BALL · CUBE · CRYSTAL
- READ
- FORM / MAP
WAVETABLE
Six factory tables of 64 frames, from BASIC and PULSE to FORMANT and GRIT, or drop in your own WAV. Every frame is band-limited per octave, so the top keys stay clean. Unison and detune on board.
- FRAMES
- UP TO 256
- TABLES
- 6 + USER
- KNOBS
- POSITION · WARP · DETUNE
SAMPLER
Drag a WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG or MP3 onto the window. Loop it forward or ping-pong, reverse it, draw a volume line over it. Or press LAST 16S and the last sixteen seconds of the ball become the sample.
- LOOP
- OFF / FWD / PING
- RANGE
- ±5 OCT CLEAN
- CAPTURE
- LAST 16S
GRANULATOR
Every note gets its own cloud of up to 32 grains. Scan through the sound, spray the grains around the head, scatter their pitch, flip some backwards. With no sound of its own it grains the sampler’s.
- SIZE
- 10–500 MS
- DENSITY
- 2–100 / S
- GRAINS
- 32 PER NOTE
MIX TAB: EACH ENGINE IS A CIRCLE. SIZE IS LEVEL, SIDE TO SIDE IS PAN, UP AND DOWN IS BRIGHTNESS. WHERE CIRCLES OVERLAP THEY SHARE STOPS.
03 TEXTUREEIGHT LAYERS
TEXTURE
IN LAYERS.
After the ball makes its sound, eight textural layers grind and reshape it — most of them locked to your song’s tempo. Stack any of them, in any amount. Every engine carries its own set.
04 PRESETS▶ PLAYS A PREVIEW
PRESETS TO
START FROM.
Pads, leads, keys, plucks, basses, ambiences and effects. Each one is a readable JSON file that carries its shape and even its samples. Star your favourites, make your own categories.
click a row to load, ▶ to hear it. Arrows move, enter loads, esc clears. SAVE next to the preset name keeps the current sound
05 LAUNCHONE EMAIL WHEN IT SHIPS
BE THE FIRST
TO KNEAD IT.
CONTEXTURE is nearly finished: first for macOS, Apple Silicon and Intel. Leave your email and you’ll get a message the day it ships, plus the occasional new sound. Nothing else.
You're in. We'll write once, when CONTEXTURE ships.
Prototype: nothing was sent. On the real site this goes to the mailing list.