Tessera Sequenced Resonator vs Gamelan Lab

Tessera is a tuned resonator. Play a drum loop, a guitar, a vocal, or a field recording into it, and it blooms that sound into twelve pitched voices that ring, shimmer, and decay in tune. At its core are twelve parallel resonators, each locked to a note of a chord or scale you choose. Whatever you feed them excites those voices, so a single hit becomes a lush chord, a sustained pad, or a slowly evolving cloud. Pick a root and a scale, from majors and minors through ninths, elevenths, whole tone, and chromatic, and the whole instrument retunes at once. Choose from eleven resonator models: plucked strings, struck bells, singing bowls, glass, membranes, tuned bars, plates, and hollow tubes. Shape each one with decay, damping, brightness, and stereo spread, moving from tight and percussive to vast and cathedral-like. Five motion engines decide how the voices arrive: Contour spreads them into shimmering, arpeggiated waves. SEQ steps each voice through its own rhythmic pattern. Strum rakes across the chord like fingers on strings. Arp cycles the voices one note at a time. Swarm lets them weave and drift around a moving center. Any of it can lock to your host tempo, so rhythmic patches stay in time. Play Tessera three ways: leave MIDI off and let the resonators sound on their own tuning, key them live from a keyboard, or gate them with held chords. Balance the effect with the dry and wet mix, blur the tails with the diffusion stage, and add motion with the built-in vibrato LFO. Microtonal tunings are supported for the pitch-obsessed. One hundred factory presets get you going, from plucks and drones to bells, rhythmic sequences, strummed chords, arpeggios, and dark cinematic textures. Tessera runs as an AUv3 plug-in inside your favorite host, and as a standalone app.

Gamelan Lab is a real Indonesian gamelan you can play, learn from, and compose with. Built on 281 real recorded notes from a physical Javanese gamelan (Casa da Música, Porto — licensed for reuse), not synthesized approximations. Every degree you tap is the actual tuning of a real bronze instrument — no two gamelan ensembles in the world share the same tuning, and this app captures one of them faithfully. Play • Pélog (7-tone) and Sléndro (5-tone) scales, switchable anywhere • Saron, Bonang Barung & Panerus, Gender, Gambang, Kenong, Kempul, Gong Ageng, and kendhang drums — all real samples • A circular cycle wheel visualizes the colotomic structure (Gong/Kenong/Kempul/Kethuk) as a living clock, with a continuously sweeping playhead — tap any beat to reshape the cycle • Three traditional forms (Lancaran, Ketawang, Ladrang) as starting points, or design and save your own Learn • Kotekan Lab: build a melodic cell and hear the interlocking technique itself — Nyog Cag, Imbal, Kotekan Telu, and Kotekan Empat, with Polos and Sangsih highlighted note-by-note as they play • A 7-article Theory tab (what gamelan is, Java vs. Bali, Pélog & Sléndro, colotomic structure, Kotekan, the instrument family, cultural context) — three articles you interact with directly, not just read • Two real traditional pieces (Gangsaran, Lancaran Kebo Giro) with their cultural context and sources, loadable straight into the sequencer Compose • Multi-track step sequencer with independent subdivision per track (1x/2x/4x), per-track volume/mute/solo, one-tap randomize (per track or all), and undo • Mute the colotomic base to hear your sequenced pattern in isolation • Save and reload full compositions, plus your own custom colotomic cycle shapes Export & integrate • Bounce your piece to audio (4 loops) or as isolated per-instrument stems, ready for a DAW • Export Standard MIDI — multitrack, one named track per instrument, with Pitch Bend measured from this gamelan's own real tuning (not a flattened equal-tempered guess) • A built-in AUv3 instrument plug-in lets you play these exact samples from GarageBand or any other Audio Unit host on iPad/iPhone — its own panel has a mixer with per-track volume/mute, tap-to-edit step pattern, dice randomizer, a live preview button, and an animated cycle wheel • Turn on "Sync sequence to recording" and the plug-in plays your whole piece from the start the moment the host starts recording — timed to GarageBand's own count-in automatically, so a take lines up without any manual setup Designed for iPhone and iPad — Theory opens as a persistent sidebar, controls and the cycle wheel scale up, and layouts use the extra iPad screen space rather than just stretching the phone UI. Whether you've never heard a gamelan before or you're a practicing musician exploring a different tuning system, Gamelan Lab is built to be understood by ear first.