midi-sink

midi-sink

Ink marbling, played with MIDI

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Released
September 14, 2026
Updated
October 22, 2026

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midi-sink screenshot #1 for iPhone
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About

midi-sink models a tray of water with ink floating on it. Every gesture is an exact, area-preserving transformation of the whole sheet — Aubrey Jaffer's mathematical marbling — so the rings stay crisp after a thousand strokes. Two modes. MARBLE MODE is the tray under your hands: tap for a drop, drag to comb, twist two fingers for a vortex, pinch to fold, draw with the Pencil and a wake follows the tip. Plug in a MIDI instrument and it plays into the same water: an MPE controller's strike, pressure, glide and slide become drop, feed, comb and hue; a wind controller draws a single calligraphic line; any keyboard plays drops on the circle of fifths. PLAY MODE turns the iPad into an MPE instrument. A pitch lattice — chromatic grid, Jankó or piano grid — sits under your fingers; every touch is a joystick (sideways bends in semitones, push to feed ink, pull back to stir). The Apple Pencil plays legato across the keys with real force as velocity, its barrel roll deepens vibrato and the Pencil Pro's squeeze is the sustain pedal. A floating strip carries pitch, mod, two assignable wheels and sustain on the MPE master channel. The stream goes out over a virtual CoreMIDI source (also to a USB-tethered Mac), the MIDI network session and Bluetooth LE MIDI, so any DAW or synth records a standard MPE performance while the water paints it. Made for MPE controllers — ROLI Piano and Seaboard, Expressive E Osmose — the ROLI Airwave's gesture CCs, wind controllers (Roland Aerophone, Odisei Travel Sax) and classic keyboards. midi-sink makes no sound of its own: it is a visualizer and a controller. Free software (AGPL-3.0). Collects nothing.
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What's New in midi

2.0

October 22, 2026

midi-sink 2.0: the water sounds, reads two ways, and plays thirteen instruments. New • Sound inside — a sampler for Decent Sampler libraries (bring your own; the Dan Tranh zither plays at first launch) and Suzu, a built-in synth whose oscillators cannot drift: a bowed string that sings under your pressure, a bell, a flute, a saxophone, a trumpet whose lips follow your slide, and six patches fitted to sampled instruments. Layer the two, or keep your DAW's sound and the picture. • Anod, a second medium — the same water read as an electric discharge: every strike a spark, the charge glowing by how far it has been stretched, the water drawing its own field lines. Switch live; the sheet is kept. • Five new layouts — a trumpet and a trombone with valve pads and a slide that retune every held note, the Wicki–Hayden button field, a fretboard in three tunings, and a theremin that is the whole screen. • Palettes — edit your own; colour-blind-safe presets included. • Presets — a whole session in one file, loadable on the iPad, the desktop and the web. • The prints ledger — every paper dip is kept and re-exports at any size, up to 8K. • Session replay — record a performance and play it back frame for frame, here, on another device, or in the browser. Improved • The dip keeps the print; Clear discards. The sustain pedal is musical in Play mode. • A panic button on the strip, a Next button to cycle your chosen layouts, left-handed mirroring, and a per-device layout offer you can accept or dismiss. • The settings sheet is organised by what you are doing: canvas, medium and look, sound, layout, outbound MIDI. • The water's coordinates are stored as displacements now, so a large canvas keeps the same precision at its edges as at its centre. Free software (AGPL-3.0). Collects nothing. The full notes and the user guide: https://midi-sink.vibetuned.com/

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