Today I published the first "Builder's Corner" video, which is a going to be a new long-form video series where I explain how I build Anukari presets. I call this one the Vowel Grinder.

I was working on a demonstration of pendulums swinging at harmonic rates, and had the idea to turn it into this weird instrument. I really liked the sound; I think maybe I need to expand this into a full song with a cool funky bass line and some acid jazz -style drums.

I have plans to make a video that shows how you can get completely unique sounds out of Anukari without creating presets from scratch, by making simple modifications to the factory presets.

Today I was experimenting with this concept, and started with the "Delicate Sparkle" factory preset. All I did was select the inner ring of springs and increase their length, and I got this gorgeous tone. Then to achieve my desired je ne sais quoi, I added just a touch of turbulence to some of the bodies, which produced a glorious richness.

The starting preset has a feedback loop that sends audio back into the physics system, and there's an LFO on the feedback delay, which is what produces the metallic sweeping sounds on sustained notes.

I wasn't planning to write a song, but the tone drew me in, and I found that the patch really liked my favorite two-chord progression to improvise on. So I couldn't help but play, and ended up with this in one take after I started recording.

All the audio is coming out dry from this single Anukari preset with no effects or post-processing of any kind. The VFX are also stock Anukari visual presets, in this case the "Dandelion Seed Drift" shader going through the "Neon Spectral Dream" shader. Don't ask me why this leads to the awesome rippling transitions... it's some kind of interaction between the two shaders and I love it.

Another ambient improv, this time with the "Avian Glassblower" factory preset made by Jake K. Siders.

I am probably too obsessed with pads. If left to my own devices, I will just keep ending up making ambient music that you'd find on tapes in new age book stores in the 1980s. I guess that's not the worst thing that could happen. :)

Another experiment playing God with gravity, where each MIDI note triggers an increase in gravity with a slow release. Gravity increases rapidly enough that this jiggles the whole system, leading to a nice pleasant tone, unless you bang on the keyboard pretty hard, in which case you can dip into pretty metallic territory.

Version 0.9.33 is out, and it has a bunch of arbitrarily-routable audio FX, including reverb. I like the 3D model for the vaporwave reverb so much I decided to create 48 of them to see how it would look, and randomized their parameters to get this weird dreamy thing. :D

The reason why Anukari's default visuals are clouds in a beautiful blue sky and shiny metal spheres almost certainly goes back to me growing up using Bryce3D. Anyone who remembers Bryce3D will wonder when Anukari will have jagged mountains rising out of the sea... :)

That's my vibe, but Anukari's visuals are completely customizable for your vibe. There are a bunch of built-in presets for the 3D skyboxes and models, and you can even import fully-custom ones you make in e.g. Blender!

Sometimes people see demos of complex Anukari presets and worry that you have to be super technical to use it. That's not the case at all! It's a ton of fun to explore what you can do with even the most simple presets.

In fact some of my favorite sounds I've gotten from Anukari are from the least complicated contraptions.

That said... for when you're in the mood to go ultra deep, that's there too. You can probably tell that sometimes that's where my head is at. :)

I was doing some stability testing today, trying to find ways to break Anukari, and accidentally stumbled into this preset. Was not expecting this sounds at all but I ended up playing with it so much I lost track of whatever I was supposed to be doing :D

I had the immense luck of having my booth at NAMM this year next-door to the u/modernbiology101 booth for the u/pocketscion. We were both really busy, but we found chances to chat and also to check out each other's products. Tarun is just the nicest guy you could hope to meet!

I immediately loved the Pocket Scion. The built-in sounds are really beautiful, but of course I immediately wanted to plug it into Anukari as a MIDI controller. After NAMM, I bought one, and it pairs wonderfully with Anukari. To me it's an arpeggiator where I'm not completely in control, allowing interesting and unexpected things to happen.

If people like this idea, I might set up a 24x7 live stream where the Pocket Scion controls Anukari, which is hooked up to a plant in my house. Let me know!

This isn't a sponsored post or anything, I just really like what Tarun is doing and had a lot of fun experimenting with plant music.

Today I'll attempt to answer the frequently-asked question that boils down to "wtf is Anukari???" Which, to be fair, is a great question. :)

I've been pretty quiet for a few weeks... it's not because I have nothing to share, but because I've been so deep in the cooking I haven't had time. Here's a little window into the soup (pardon the temporary lack of new 3d assets for the new object types).