Beads

Mutable Instruments' texture synthesizer in 14 HP: it records incoming audio into a buffer and replays it as clouds of grains, a delay or a wavetable oscillator.

Key features

• Granular processing of live audio, with grains triggered by DENSITY, a clock or the SEED input
• TIME, SIZE, SHAPE and PITCH set where, how long, how and at what pitch the grains are replayed
• Three attenurandomizers add CV or random variation to the parameters of your choice
• FREEZE holds the buffer; four recording qualities, from bright digital to scorched cassette
• Without an input, becomes a wavetable synth using the wavetables of Plaits
• Made from February 2021 to December 2022; the design is open source