Etherpad

What it does

A touch-based synth built on the Csound engine. You sweep one or more fingers across a grid of columns and each touch controls its own pitch and timbre, with ripples, trails and glowing columns as visual feedback. There are nine sounds, scale and key selection, octave shift, adjustable grid width, preset saving, recording to files and MIDI input, as standalone or AUv3.

In the demo

Jade plays the standalone in split-screen mode with two sounds side by side, then walks the settings: recording, visualization toggles and color themes. She loads the AUv3 into Coastline to lay down a drone, runs through every sound from Distorted Dreams to FM Bell, and finishes by playing it from a keyboard.

Worth knowing

There is no effects section inside the plugin, so reverb and delay have to come from the host. It suits ambient, drone and improvised textures more than melodic parts that need precise note entry.