Modular

An online modular synthesizer

A modular synthesizer for generative ambient: modules, cables, chance.

Modular is a free online synthesizer for generative and ambient music that runs right in the browser with nothing to install. It has 39 modules: a drone, a polyphonic voice, an oscillator and a noise source, a sampler with a granular mode and a looper, an on-screen keyboard, MIDI input and a microphone, clocks, dividers and Euclidean rhythms, random notes and a scale quantizer, an eight-step sequencer, chords and a chord progression by scale degrees, an LFO, an ADSR envelope, a timeline that shapes a whole piece, a sample and hold and an envelope follower, bridges from notes to CV and back, a filter, EQ, a sidechain compressor, delay, reverb and chorus, a VCA, a mixer, a panner, an attenuverter, a macro knob, a scope and sticky notes on the canvas. Knob positions can be stored as scenes and morphed between live. Modules connect with cables just like a real modular system: audio, control voltages and events.

Ready-made presets show how ambient is built: slow drones through a breathing filter, random melodies in a pentatonic scale, raindrops made of noise, glass bells on a dotted delay, granular clouds and a pumping sidechain. A seven-lesson interactive course builds patches from scratch and explains what an LFO is, what cutoff and resonance mean, how delay feedback works and why quantizing keeps notes in key, goes on to live playing from a MIDI keyboard, recording samples from the microphone and looping, and ends with the form of a whole piece: a chord progression, a timeline and scenes. Every patch can be saved to a shareable link, public patches gather in the gallery, and the result can be recorded to WAV.

All modules

• Drone — A sustained low tone from a few detuned oscillators
• Voice — A polyphonic voice with envelope and filter that plays notes
• Oscillator — A simple tone generator at a fixed frequency
• Noise — White, pink or brown noise for wind, rain and textures
• Clock — The patch's metronome: fires triggers in time with the BPM
• Divider — Passes every Nth trigger
• Chance — Passes each event with a given probability
• Random Note — Emits a random note in a range on every trigger
• Quantize — Snaps any note to the nearest one in the chosen scale
• Sequencer — Eight steps repeating in a loop
• Chord — Builds a chord on every note with a slight strum
• LFO — A slow wave that modulates knobs on other modules
• ADSR — An envelope: attack, decay, sustain, release from a gate
• Filter — Removes highs, lows, or everything but a band around the cutoff
• Delay — An echo with feedback, tempo-synced or free
• Reverb — Space: from a small room to an endless hall
• Chorus — Widens and thickens the sound, like several players at once
• VCA — An amplifier whose volume is controlled by CV
• Mixer — Sums four audio signals into one, each with its own level
• Attenuverter — Scales and offsets CV, and can flip its sign
• Scope — Shows the waveform or the spectrum of a signal
• Output — The way to the speakers: everything you hear passes through it
• Keyboard — An on-screen piano and QWERTY keys: play notes by hand
• MIDI In — Notes, gate, velocity, mod wheel and pitch bend from a MIDI controller
• Audio In — A microphone in the patch: live sound as an audio signal
• Sampler — Plays a sample from notes: one-shot, looped or granular
• Looper — Records a few bars and cycles them, with overdubbing
• Note → CV — Turns notes into gate, pitch and velocity as CV
• CV → Trigger — Fires an event when CV crosses a threshold on the way up
• Follower — Tracks the loudness of a sound and outputs it as CV
• S&H — Captures a CV value on each trigger and holds it
• Euclid — Spreads N hits over M steps as evenly as possible
• Macro — One big knob that turns many parameters at once
• Compressor — Evens out loudness; the Side input gives sidechain pumping
• EQ — Three bands, low, mid and high, each with its own gain
• Pan — Moves sound left and right and controls the stereo width
• Timeline — A slow CV that travels a curve over a number of bars
• Progression — A chord sequencer that follows the degrees of a scale
• Note — A sticky note on the canvas: a comment, a section name, instructions