Mac app: version 0.1.0 · macOS 26+ · Apple Silicon Windows studio: current Chrome or Edge · HTTPS · MIDI permission
STUDY 01A LITTLE ROOM TO BREATHE
Sound, with a little space.Made on a Mac. Played by an MPC.
NEW / ORO
A synthesizer made of landscape.
Place the dot. Shape the land. Listen to the ground.
Oro / wave terrain synthesizerSwell and Massif terrains, rose orbit · Rendered from Oro's own terrain data
Oro turns landscapes into sound. A closed path circles a dot placed on a 3D map, and the height of the ground under that path becomes the waveform. Move the dot and the tone changes. Grow the orbit and it gets brighter. Blend two terrains, fold the peaks, or let a marble roll downhill and play the valleys it finds.
Choose from nineteen mathematical terrains and 320 original images at 512 by 512 resolution, then trace one of twenty orbit shapes. Or import an image, wavetable or complete recording. In Roll mode, drop a marble anywhere and it follows the slopes; Keep rolling carries it over the hills. Choose Strum to play notes by dragging across the land, or FX to sweep the filter, echo, reverb and wave folding, then release to glide back. The dot can also drift or explore, and lock positions to sequencer steps. Window, Mangle and mirroring reshape the path as the sound travels. Rather watch the sound itself? Swap the map for a scope, spectrum, waterfall, stereo field or halo.
02
Shape the sound.
Build a voice with up to eight unison copies, two seven-wave subs, eleven morphable partial profiles, phase and ring modulation, and a Karplus-Strong pluck. Four noise colours, synthesized loop textures and imported recordings add air and grit. Three ladder colours, SEM and diode-inspired digital filters shape the result. Forty parameters each have an LFO, a six-stage envelope and four controller slots, with 32-step modulation to keep the sound moving.
03
Make music with it.
Layer up to sixteen tracks with patterns, an arpeggiator, four effect slots per track, 40 effects and ten routing layouts. The Score desk writes a piece from a few words, such as an anime opening or lofi with rain, and plays it on Oro's own orchestra, drum kits and ambience, then renders it to a WAV file or saves it as MIDI. Loop and overdub guitar or vocals, capture a held note as a terrain, then resample a loop into another instrument. A sampler plays one recording from the keyboard: the microphone in mono, or a file, the loop, or the full mix, in stereo. Slice marks can be edited, and each step can play a chosen slice. Granular mode sprays short grains. Looper speed is one slider, normal in the middle and backward to the left, with pitch following the speed. A tuner listens from the sampler and from Settings. A vocoder in the mix rack is shaped by the microphone or another track. A piano roll adds notes between the steps, and the 16-step grid stays. Jam shares played notes with up to five people. Help includes eleven short lessons. Connect an Akai MPC XL over USB-C for pads, Q-Links and shared tempo. Experimental guitar chords need clean input, respond more slowly and can miss quiet or octave-doubled strings; real guitar hardware remains untested.
Browser: current Chrome or Edge for MIDI; sound works in any modern browser. Desktop: macOS, Windows 10 or 11, Linux. Early release without a paid Apple or Microsoft signing certificate, so the operating system asks for confirmation at first launch. On a Mac, use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. An independent, clean-room project. Not affiliated with Conductive Labs; Terrain Synth is their trademark. MIT licensed.
01 / MPC STUDIO
An idea becomes a place to play in.
Start ambient. Follow the feeling. Guitar welcome.
Load a pad or instrument on the MPC. The default ambient setup sends the musical parts to one MIDI channel, leaving room to explore before building a full project.
02
Keep it moving.
Loop a soundscape and enable evolving variations. Small changes in the notes and feel make space for listening, improvising, or finding the next idea.
03
Shape it.
Change key, tempo, density and swing. Split the parts across MPC tracks, perform with pads, or export the MIDI and keep shaping the music.
02 / A FEW STARTING POINTS
What does it feel like?
AI turns a description into a musical plan. The offline engine works from musical rules, the controls and simple prompt keywords. Each route gives editable notes.
A slow, hazy soundscape in D minor. Warm chords, glassy notes, a quiet pulse, and lots of air.
Try a prompt like this in MPC Studio.
AmbientBoom bapTrapHouseMetal / guitar
03 / A CHOICE OF ENGINE
One Mac. Any musical direction.
Start with the built-in engines. Connect another model any time.
NATIVE MAC APP
Apple Intelligence.
Use the language model already on the Mac to turn a feeling into a constrained musical plan. No API key is needed. Apple manages the model's compute.
MAC & WINDOWS
A musical rule engine.
Generate on the CPU without a model or generation service. Seeded phrases and chord movement respond to the controls. The native app also recognizes simple directions such as “sparse” or “no drums.”
OPTIONAL MODEL SERVER
A model of choice.
Connect a locally installed model through Ollama or LM Studio, with GPU use configured in that server. MLX is an Apple Silicon option. Or choose a compatible HTTPS cloud endpoint and a personal key.
PLAN → NOTES → SOUND
The Mac app's engines feed one MIDI renderer, with open chord inversions, smooth voice movement and seeded motif development. The Windows browser has its own CPU music engine. CPU code arranges notes and schedules MIDI; the local model server controls GPU offload and memory use. The MPC supplies the sound.
These engines design MIDI arrangements, not neural waveform audio. Built-in generation keeps musical directions on the computer. A custom model receives them only when music is generated or evolved with that engine selected.
04 / YOUR FIRST SOUNDS
Mac. USB-C. MPC.
A short setup on the hardware. Then a little room to experiment.
01
Open the app.
Download and unzip MPC Studio on an Apple Silicon Mac with macOS 26 or later. It selects on-device AI when Apple's model is ready, or the offline engine otherwise. Check the composer picker before generating.
For AI, enable Apple Intelligence and allow its model to download. This build is locally signed and not notarized. If macOS blocks the first launch, review the app and use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
02
Connect and load a sound.
Connect the MPC XL's USB-C computer port with a data cable. Keep it in Standalone mode and load a plugin, keygroup, or drum kit. The app looks for MPC MIDI destinations automatically.
03
Give the notes somewhere to go.
On the MPC, enable Track for USB MIDI Port 1 in MIDI/Sync. Set the loaded track's MIDI input to that port, channel 1, with In or Merge monitoring. Generate a soundscape, preview it on the Mac, then play it on the MPC.
Mac preview uses a General MIDI sound bank. The MPC plays whatever sounds are loaded and routed. A USB connection alone does not load an instrument or prepare a track.
To keep the notes, export MIDI or record incoming MIDI into a prepared MPC track. CC and transport controls need the corresponding MIDI Learn or Receive MMC setup. Leave external MIDI clock off when recording guitar or sampling audio: the MPC manual says audio recording is disabled while receiving MIDI Clock.
Early release. Apple on-device generation and MIDI rendering have been tested on a Mac. Physical MPC playback and optional model-provider connections still need end-to-end validation; protocol fixtures do not establish those results. Locally signed, not notarized. Unofficial software, not affiliated with Akai, inMusic, Jackson or Fender. Source available under the repository's PolyForm Small Business license.
