A flock made of sound. Up to 128 grains read the last 16 seconds of whatever you feed it, and move together like starlings at dusk.
Get the highlights.
See every grain. Each grain is a bird over the waveform: where it reads, how high it plays, which way it flies.
Freeze and stretch. Hold the pedal and the memory stops; Scan walks through it ten times slower without changing the pitch.
Grains in tune. Random pitch snapped to octaves, fifths, chords or scales, shimmer an octave up, and MIDI to choose the notes.
Every control in reach. Forty-eight controls in eight groups: grains, time, pitch, envelope, tone, two LFOs, effects and MIDI.
The film.
A flock made of your sound.
Everything that comes in is written into a memory of up to 16 seconds. Up to 128 grains, from 5 ms to 2 s long, read that memory at once, each with its own place, pitch, direction, fade and position in the stereo field. Short and many, they blur into a cloud. Long and few, they overlap like echoes of phrases. Detuned, they become a chord.
Freeze stops the recording and the grains keep playing what was there, for as long as you want. Scan moves the reading point through the memory at its own speed, so a sound can last ten times longer without getting deeper. Feedback sends the cloud back into the memory, and with octave grains it rises like a choir.
- Memory
- 1 to 16 seconds, recorded continuously; Freeze from the button or the sustain pedal
- Grains
- up to 128 at once, 5 ms to 2 s, 0.5 to 200 per second, cubic interpolation
- Pitch
- ±24 semitones, fine tune, random spread free or snapped to semitones, octaves, fifths, a major or minor chord, the pentatonic or the whole-tone scale; octave-up and octave-down grains
- Time
- position, spray, and scan from −2 to +2 times speed; reverse grains
- Rhythm
- grains on the host grid from 1 bar to 1/32, with triplets, dotted notes and chance
- Movement
- two LFOs with five shapes, free or synced, on 9 targets
- After the grains
- low and high cut, feedback, ducking, tempo-synced delay and plate reverb
- MIDI
- Pitch mode plays the grains' pitch from a keyboard; Gate mode plays the cloud only while keys are held
128
grains at once
16s
of memory to take grains from
30
presets in eight categories
0.6%
of a CPU core at most for a factory preset, M4
Hear it.
Every clip is a clip from our instruments played through a Murmur factory preset, offline, with no edits: the source is named in each line. Only the level was matched across clips.
-
Vocal Cloud
Starling Cloud on ATFS1 singing vowels: the phrase scattered into a flock.
0:43 -
Shimmer Choir
Choir Rising on an AT101V pad: feedback and octave grains that keep rising.
0:44 -
Stretched Chord
Stretch Ten Times: Freeze at 4 s and Scan at 0.1 hold an AT20V chord and stretch it.
0:46 -
Sixteenth Stutter
Grains on the sixteenth-note grid, jumping octaves, over an AT101V acid line.
0:40 -
Octave Shower
An AT42 flute line broken into grains spread over four octaves.
0:43 -
Tape Scatter
Short grains from twelve seconds of an AT20V organ, half of them backwards.
0:46 -
Chords of Grains
MIDI Pitch mode: four chords played into Murmur set the pitches of the grains.
0:42
See what you hear.
The window draws the memory as a horizon and each grain as a bird: its place is the moment it reads, its height is its pitch, its size follows its fade, and grains playing backwards fly the other way. The light band shows where grains are born. The Simple page puts the flock next to the knobs that matter most.
Every grain under your hand.
The Advanced page shows all 48 controls in eight groups, and the help line explains each one as you point at it.
- Grains. Size, density, their randomness, a voice limit, and rhythmic triggering on the host's grid with a chance to skip.
- Pitch. Transpose, fine tune and a random spread snapped to chords and scales, plus shimmer an octave up and sub an octave down.
- Shape. Grain envelopes from a soft bell to a hard gate, skewed for swells or plucks, spread across the stereo field.
- LFOs. Two of them, on position, spray, size, density, pitch, pan, tone, mix or feedback.
Freeze it. Stretch it. Play it.
A granular effect becomes an instrument when you can hold a sound and choose its notes.
- Freeze. Hold the sustain pedal or press Freeze and the memory stops; the grains keep the chord alive, the horizon turns teal.
- Stretch. With Freeze on, Scan walks through the frozen sound as slowly as you like, without changing its pitch.
- Play the cloud. In MIDI Pitch mode the keys you hold choose the grains' pitches; play a chord and the cloud sings it.
- Gate. In MIDI Gate mode the cloud plays only while a key is held: rhythmic swells from your sequencer.
Thirty starting points.
4
Clouds
From thin fog to a dense flock of short grains.
9
Shimmer and pitch
Octaves, fifths, major and minor sparkle, a drone a fifth wide.
3
Stretch
Freeze and scan: a sound held and stretched for minutes.
4
Rhythm
Grains on the beat: eighths, sixteenths, triplets and gated swells.
8
Texture and glitch
Tape scatter, underwater washes, broken radios and skipping CDs.
2
MIDI
Presets made to be played from a keyboard.
Tech specs.
Granular engine
- Memory of 1 to 16 s, recorded continuously, with Freeze (button or sustain pedal)
- Up to 128 grains, 5 ms to 2 s, 0.5 to 200 per second or on the host grid with chance
- Position, spray and scan (−2 to +2 ×), reverse grains, envelope shape and skew, stereo spread
- Pitch ±24 semitones, fine tune, random spread snapped to 8 scales, shimmer and sub octaves
Around the grains
- Low and high cut, feedback into the memory, ducking
- Tempo-synced stereo delay and plate reverb
- Two LFOs, five shapes, free or synced, on 9 targets
MIDI
- Pitch mode: held notes set the grains' pitch
- Gate mode: the cloud plays only while keys are held
- Sustain pedal holds Freeze
Interface
- Flock view: the memory as a horizon, each grain as a bird
- Simple and Advanced pages, help for every control, built-in manual
Formats
- VST3 and Audio Unit effect (macOS) with MIDI input, and standalone app
- Mono or stereo input, stereo output
Minimum
- macOS Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later), or Intel Core i5 quad-core from 2017 or later, with macOS 11 Big Sur or later.
- Windows PC with Intel Core i5-6500 (6th generation, 2015) or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, or better, with Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
- 4 GB of RAM, a 1280 × 800 screen and a 64-bit host for VST3 or Audio Unit, or the standalone app.
- Disk space: 51 MB on macOS (all formats), 16 MB on Windows.
Recommended
- macOS Any Mac with Apple silicon.
- Windows Intel Core i5-12400 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600, or better.
- 8 GB of RAM and a 1920 × 1080 screen.
Measured CPU load
| Setting | Apple M4 | AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT |
|---|---|---|
| First Murmur, the default preset | 0.3 % | 0.9 % |
| Granular Wash, the heaviest factory preset | 0.6 % | 1.5 % |
| 128 grains of 1 s at once, with delay and reverb | 2.5 % | 6.2 % |
Percentage of one CPU core at 48 kHz, sound engine only. With the editor open, the interface adds about 6 % on the M4. Hosts run each instrument on one core, so single-core speed is what counts.
Download Murmur 1.0.0.
Free, no account, no activation, no telemetry.
macOS
macOS 11 or later. Apple silicon and Intel in one universal binary. VST3, Audio Unit and standalone app. 23 MB.
Download for macOSHow to install
- Unzip the file.
- Copy
Murmur.vst3to~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3. - Copy
Murmur.componentto~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components. - Rescan plugins in your DAW and insert Murmur on an audio track, a bus or a send.
Windows
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. VST3 and standalone app. 8 MB.
Download for WindowsHow to install
- Unzip the file.
- Copy
Murmur.vst3toC:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\VST3. - Rescan plugins in your DAW.
Murmur.exeruns on its own and processes your audio input.
The builds are not code-signed yet. macOS may refuse to open them until you run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine on the installed plugins, and Windows SmartScreen may ask you to confirm the first time. Both packages include an INSTALL.txt with the exact steps.
Murmur is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, like the JUCE framework it is built on. You can use it, study it, change it and share it. The source code will be published here soon.