Terrarium Machine

A small world that never stops sounding.

Weather happens in it. Small things live in it. Now and then a train goes by behind the hills. Lean over it and poke things.

Terrarium is a generative instrument built from five living layers: wind with its own thunder, rain, insects, running water, and a distant road. None of it is recorded and none of it loops. It is simulated, in order, forever, from a seed, and it is always in key.

THE PICTURE IS TIME
The screen scrolls. The bright line is now, the left already happened, and the right is the next few seconds. The world is drawn ahead of the sound, so you see a raindrop before you hear it land, and you can touch what has not happened yet.

GRAB THE WEATHER
Put a finger on a stream and you hold the tape. Drag it backwards, slow it down, let go fast and it keeps rolling, let go slowly and it snaps back to now. Catch the wind and the storm holds where you caught it. Push up for a gust, pull down for a lull. Fling the wind into the future and a front comes back for you. One finger on empty sky drags the day: pull it toward evening and the bugs wake up. Two fingers hold the whole world's breath.

OR POKE IT
Slide the TOUCH control from GRIP to POKE and your finger provokes the world instead. Tap the rain and a drop falls there. Bow through the wind and it gusts. Double-tap the rain for thunder, the road for a train.

ALWAYS IN KEY
The strip along the bottom is the key everything plays in. Change it, chain keys into a progression, or swap the whole tuning grid: 16 scales and 11 tuning systems, maqam and just intonation among them. The future is written in the key it will play in, so key changes land on the bar, in tune.

SHAPE THE WORLD
Each layer has its own box: breeze to storm, drizzle to downpour, a few crickets to a full chorus, still pond to running brook. Ten worlds to start from, from Cricket Hour to Squall Line, and NEW WORLD rolls a fresh one. Six colour themes.

AUv3 AND STANDALONE
Play it full-screen as a standalone instrument, or load it as an AUv3 in GarageBand, AUM, Logic Pro, Cubasis, Loopy Pro and any other Audio Unit host. Every layer can send its own MIDI notes, so the weather can play your other instruments.

ONE PRICE
No account, no ads, no in-app purchases, no data collected. Buy it once and it is yours.

Terrarium also ships as a VST3 and AU plugin for Windows and macOS at touchmachines.com.