Around 2000-ish I was making music with a similar piece of software called Jeskola Buzz which is also a modular[1] tracker[2].
About 5 years ago I remember thinking it would be cool if I could use that type of UI again and it would be great if something like that existed that could run on my tablet. So I searched and I was amazed when I found SunVox. It's a very capable piece of software, highly recommended
Jeskola Buzz[1] is a very influential tracker. The source code was lost for a while, but I recently learned that development re-started around 2008.
Buzz was amazing. Although it crashed quite a lot it was a marvel for my music production in 2000.
So much love and respect for SunVox, watch this unbelievably beautiful example song with crazy surprise about halfway through: https://youtu.be/AHFSrxlouh8
Immediately reminded me of Jeskola Buzz [0]. While most screenshots don't show it, it also had a tracker included [1].
One of the very few softsynths that has good interface for touchscreens, think it is the only one I have found that I actually enjoy using. Not a big fan of its sound, just not what I am after, but I don't mind it and it works great as a portable scratchpad.
I've been using SunVox on and off for like 15 years now. I'm not really musically inclined, but I always come back to toy around for a bit. The creator is the sort of mad genius type, he seems to have made his own programming language and cross-platform rendering toolkit to make it all work and has a number of projects based on it. Because of this, SunVox is available on basically any platform you can think, including both major mobile OSes app stores and Linux for a few dollars ($5, iirc) and is definitely worth it. If you're familiar with a sequencer workflow (other notable projects: LSDJ [^0]), it doesn't seem too "out there", though the built-in synthesizers tend to lean towards a more airey feel. Highly recommend loading up the example projects, lots of people (including the creator) have some samples in there to poke around with. It's really interesting seeing how different people use the tools provided to compose, sometimes taking wildly different approaches to get similar results.
TLDR: download it and load up the sample projects, it's really fun
A more 'hi-fi' alternative to LSDJ is M8 Tracker: https://www.dirtywave.com
I want one of those so bad, but not musically inclined enough to justify the cost.
It's never too late to get started! Also, if you're keen to try M8 before investing, you can make a "headless" M8 from a $30 teensy board, but you have to use it via a web emulator. If that sounds intimidating in any way, it's really not - there's no enclosure, no soldering, and no real configuration other than just flashing the teensy with a GUI app.
https://github.com/DirtyWave/M8Docs/blob/main/docs/M8Headles...
I've been using M8 for ~4 years now, it's an amazing and fun way to make music, and I think it gels for a lot of people who aren't traditionally trained in music.
Polyend Tracker is the other hardware tracker out there. Similar price though.
Ah, SunVox. It's like an instrument that Alexander Zolotov (AKA NightRadio) made for his own (excellent) music, and has generously shared with the world, creating a virtuous cycle of refinement in both his music and the instrument.
I can't say enough nice things about SunVox. When I first saw it I was looking for trackers, and didn't spend much time with it. The second time I was looking for modular synthesizer apps, and that's when I fell in love. SunVox was my "gateway drug" to deeper learning about audio synthesis and processing techniques.
You can create entire compositions and useful effects processors with SunVox using only the modular synthesis parts of it. It's very tracker-oriented, and you can do lots of tracker things with it, but don't be fooled into thinking it's a tracker. It HAS a tracker, and that is a strong part of its history and common usage, but it is much more than that. The modular interface is very approachable and powerful once you get accustomed to some of the fundamentals.
"MetaModules" are one of its secret weapons. They let you package an entire SunVox project into a module, and expose an interface of up to 96 controllers, along with audio and note I/O. They can be arbitrarily nested… MetaModules all the way down. Besides sharing full compositions, MetaModules are one of the primary ways people share their creativity in the SunVox community. One prolific producer just released a collection of 236 modules built over the last four years. [1]
Heck, it's even Turing-complete. Someone implemented a CPU using SunVox! [2]
SunVox has a library version that lets you embed the audio engine into your own app [3] and there's even a WASM version. It's particularly well-suited for games, because you can control up to 16 independent SunVox instances at a time (to separate music and SFX for example) and it will mix them together.
During my own explorations of SunVox I reverse-engineered and documented the file format [4] and wrote a library called "Radiant Voices" [5] for Python and TypeScript that lets you read and write SunVox files. If you read/write to specific filesystem locations, you can effectively hook into the SunVox clipboard, making it possible to write auxiliary apps that smoothly integrate with SunVox.
One of my favorite experiments combining those techniques was to create a "MetaModule Construction Kit", which lets you use Python to create and manipulate MetaModules parametrically, experiment with them using MIDI and an alternative UI, then copy them over to SunVox itself once you are happy with the resulting MetaModule. [6]
(Sadly, I don't find myself having enough time as of late to keep those side projects up-to-date with the latest versions of SunVox. YMMV if you decide to explore them. Contact me if you want to chat about them at all, especially if anyone's interested in collaborating to help bring them back in sync with the latest version of SunVox.)
I could go on and on singing praises about this software (and other apps created by the same author), but I'll spare both the reader and myself… for now. :-)
[1] https://vekonvekon.itch.io/acheney-modules
[2] https://logickin.net/logicprocessing/the-most-ambitious-proj...
[3] https://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/sunvox_lib.php
[4] https://radiant-voices.readthedocs.io/en/1.0.0-dev/sunvox-fi...
[5] https://github.com/metrasynth/radiant-voices/tree/sunvox-2.0...
For the adventurous, a new beta was released earlier this month:
For the iOS version: $6, no subscription, no tracking?
Bought it before even looking at all the screenshots, if for no other reason than supporting developers like this.
I used his PhonoPaper software to do this... https://youtu.be/HT0HH_fc4ZU
Check out https://www.bespokesynth.com/ as well and it is completely open source
This is a great sounding synthesizer; but closed-source as it seems; the compiled shared libraries can be downloaded and I found an old version of the source code here: https://github.com/bohwaz/sunvox.
The audio/synth engine source is MIT licensed as part of pixilang: https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/pixilang/
Great, thanks for the hint; though the included lib_sunvox source code looks very different from the one I found on github (which is much older).
Best example of a work done with this software imho
I used it in a few game jams and can thoroughly recommend it.
The interface might be intimidating at first, but with two wave generators and a couple of patterns you can already conjure a passable background track. A bit more complexity and it can sound pretty good.
Wow can't believe this ran on a Palm. I wish I had known this back in ~2005
I was impressed by how fast it launched when I tried it.
man that's so frickin' beautiful
We have vastly different perceptions of beauty.
It's possible they mean the sound as opposed to the look.
It truly is in the eye of the beholder
I always thought this software was weird. To me modular implies parameter modulation for sound design, but this seems to be designed around sequencing fixed sounds, or am I missing something?
There's almost no fixed sounds/sampling in it. It has that, but it's a relatively small part that doesn't usually get used in isolation. The sequencing is for notes and time-domain parameterization of the synthesizers.
Regardless it's modular in the software/building block sense, which was what was being referred to in the description.
There are a bunch of modules, you can connect them in various modulation configurations.
> Module is a basic element of the SunVox. There are several types of modules (...)
modular synthesis isn't named 'modular' in reference to 'modulation', it's in reference to synth 'modules', which are units of functionality from which you can build a synthesizer. for example with an oscillator module, a couple of envelope modules, a gain module and a filter module you can build a typical monophonic subtractive synthesizer.
Modular synthesis usually has a lot of modulation capability though
Modular, not modulator.
But typically modular synthesis allows you to modulate almost any parameter
https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/manual.php#ctlauto
It seems it's possible
It's nice to have, but it's not audio-rate modulation.
You can do audio-rate modulation (up to 32768 Hz) of any controller using Sound2Ctl: https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/manual.php#sound2ctl
Give Drambo and Bitwig a try.
VCV Rack or Cardinal would be the more obvious "modular synthesis" environments to try. Both are available at no cost; Cardinal evens run in the browser if you want to.
Bitwig is a crazy powerful tool, but as a modular synthesizer, it's not particularly distinguished.