Fugue Machine Rubato

What it does

A MIDI sequencer built on one piano roll read by up to eight playheads at once, each with its own rate, direction, octave, key and velocity. Rubato adds a nonlinear time engine, so a curve makes a playhead accelerate, drag, freeze or reverse instead of stepping evenly. Repeats, echoes, gating and stacked octaves sit on each playhead, and almost every parameter has an automation lane you draw dots into.

In the demo

Jade routes it to Pianoteq, puts a short phrase in, then bends one playhead with curves, adds repeats and echoes, and draws automation over the rate and octave. She sets different playheads to read different regions of the grid, and finishes on the MIDI matrix, sending three playheads out to three instruments in AUM.

Worth knowing

Text and controls are small, so the shift key panels are how most editing gets done, and Jade notes the manual was unfinished at the time of the demo. It generates nothing by itself, the notes are yours to place.