Nodes: build a sound-design instrument

Nodes is a canvas of sources, effects and outputs. Connect cards, set their controls and press Render to hear the patch. Your recordings and the built-in synths supply the sound; the cards give you ways to play it, reshape it and inspect what comes out.

Start with a preset

Open Presets in the Nodes toolbar. It holds thirty-three ready chains in six groups, including Gates & Rhythm, Clouds & Stretch, Dub & Space, Voices and Mastering. Pick a chain, drop a sound onto its Source card and press Render.

A preset’s exposed knob appears under the toolbar. Depending on the chain, it might control gate speed, stretch, delay time, loudness or pitch. Turn it and render again to hear the change.

Use Add Node to find another card. Its search narrows the list, and each entry says what the card does. The (i) on a card explains its controls. Tidy arranges cards by their wiring when the canvas gets crowded.

A phrase patch in about a minute

Try a short pitched sample with Source → Arpeggio → Shimmer → Output.

1. Drag your sample from the Library onto the Nodes item in the sidebar. It arrives as a Source card.
2. Use Add Node to add Arpeggio, Shimmer and an Output. Wire Source to Arpeggio, Arpeggio to Shimmer, and Shimmer to Output.
3. On Arpeggio, choose a chord and pattern, then set tempo and rate. Each step replays the sample at a note of the chord.
4. On Shimmer, try +12 semitones. Each repeat rises an octave. +7 stacks fifths instead.
5. Press Render and listen. Adjust Arpeggio’s gate for the length of each step, or its swing and accent for the phrase’s movement.

The rendered file plays and appears in Tracks. When you change a card, unchanged cards reuse their results, so a later effect adjustment only renders that card and what follows it.

Three ways to change a recording

Paula plays the input through the Amiga sound chip’s constraints: 8-bit sound, integer pitch periods, stepped volume and no interpolation. Its hardware loop has a start and length in samples. Try a Source through Paula to Output, give Paula notes, then compare the power-LED filter and optional 28 kHz output. The pitch range is limited by the chip; a note outside it stops at the limit and the readout says so.

Granular reads little grains from a chosen position in the recording. Set their size, density, pitch and spread. Freeze a position, spray around it, or use an oscillator to scrub through the sound. Keeping the same seed renders the same cloud, which helps when comparing a control change.

Psy-Loop records the input into a tape loop and layers it over itself. It can run forward, backward, slow or fast. An oscillator or a file on its wobble port bends the speed. Try it when you want the recording to fold back over its own earlier passes.

Make a voice sing

The Sing card moves voiced moments to the nearest note of a key and scale, or holds them on one note. Retune speed ranges from a hard snap to a slower arrival. Vibrato enters on a held note, and sustain holds the vowels while the voice keeps its formants.

Use a spoken recording as the input and render through Sing to hear those controls. This card processes the voice recording. The phone remote’s Sing button has a different job: it writes a sung idea down as notes.

Hear the part, then finish the patch

Ear compares a part on its main input with the rest of the mix on its second input. It shows how much of the part is heard, what masks it and where. Its output mixes the two inputs; with nothing on the second input, it outputs the part alone.

Ember EQ shapes tone with separate low boost and attenuation, broad mid bells, high controls and Drive. Using low boost and attenuation together lifts the lows while scooping the low-mids.

Limiter brings the file toward a loudness target and holds peaks under a ceiling. Its readout says what loudness it reached and how deeply it cut. Put it near the output when you want to finish the patch, then render and listen to the result.

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