Particle Chimes: Ambient Synth

Particle Chimes is an instrument for your iPhone and iPad that is designed for touch, with sounds ranging from gentle strings to glass bells to cathedral organs. Press Auto and start an evolving melody in the key of your choice. Select visualizations like ink swirls, starfields, koi ponds, or stark black and white patterns to match your mood. Play notes or strum the performance ribbon to create a wide range of tones. It's easy to capture your performances with high resolution audio and video exports to share with friends. Set the sleep timer to relax and drift off to your own personal lullaby, or keep it playing in the background for focus time. Connect the app to your TV or projector and create your own personal interactive art installation.

Under the hood, Particle Chimes has a deep generative synthesizer engine. The sound is the real Rings physical-modeling resonator and Clouds granular engine, the same open-source Mutable Instruments algorithms inside two of the most-loved Eurorack modules ever built. Play with the built-in performance ribbon or with external keyboards and sequencers within your favorite AUv3 host such as GarageBand or AUM.

SOUNDS TO START FROM
Thirty-nine sounds, from plucked strings and glass bells to choirs, organs, and slow, stretched washes. The sound browser is a doorway to a wide range of presets.

THE RIBBON
Particle Chimes has three distinct performance ribbons: note mode, texture board, and, in Studio, a theremin-like free mode. Drag across the textured ribbon and notes ring out in whatever scale and tuning you've set: 23 scales from pentatonic to Hungarian minor, tunings from standard 12-tone to Just, Pythagorean, and Bohlen-Pierce, or your own imported .scl file.

PARTICLES
Everything you play is saved in the recording buffer, and the particle engine plays it back in three different ways. GRAINS scatters it into a granular cloud. LOOP repeats a slice of it and can sync to the clock. STRETCH plays it as a slow, pitched loop, with speed and pitch set separately. Up to three playheads read the buffer at once, each at its own pitch.

AUTO
Turn on AUTO and Particle Chimes will begin playing a unique evolving melody. Use one of the three modes to fit your goals: a Turing-machine sequencer, an arpeggiator, and a slow drift generator all help to create soundscapes that don't become repetitive.

MANY WAYS TO SEE THE SOUND
Every visualizer skin responds to what's actually playing, 46 in all. Five are free to start, including Signal Flow, a living schematic that shows you how the instrument works underneath. The rest, including a new set of eight black and white looks, open up with Studio.

USE IT IN YOUR HOST
Particle Chimes loads as an instrument plugin (AUv3) in AUM, Loopy Pro, and Logic for iPad. Play it from a MIDI keyboard or a host piano roll, with parameters exposed for automation and MIDI learn, locked to your host's tempo. AUTO can also start and stop with your host's transport.

FREE TO PLAY, ONE UNLOCK
The full resonator, the full granular engine, reverb, AUTO sequencers, all 39 sounds, five visualizer skins, MIDI, and the AUv3 are included in the free version. One purchase unlocks Studio: the full editing surface for both engines, including the LOOP and STRETCH controls, laid out on a single screen on a full-screen iPad. Studio also brings a tempo-syncable ping-pong delay, a sleep timer that fades the whole mix to silence, your own saved presets, recording and exporting a performance as video, Hi-Res Visuals on supported devices, and every visualizer skin. No subscription.

No account required.