Where sound finds its
furthest orbit.
Phonon is a generative DAW where harmony, modular synthesis, video and real-time visuals orbit a single idea. Compose the rules then watch your song come to life.
Generative, not generated. Phonon uses no AI to write music for you (no LLMs and no agents). Music is for humans and by humans. Its music-theory-driven algorithms simply give you faster ways to build the music you already hear in your head.
230+ modules. Right out of the box.
Phonon ships a full studio's worth of building blocks: subtractive and FM synthesizers, multisample and granular samplers, effects, filters, sequencers, drum machines, MIDI tools and more. Every one drops straight onto a track and wires into everything else.
One key. Every part agrees.
At Phonon's center sits the Harmonic Engine. A global harmonic hub that decides the chord under every beat and broadcasts it across the whole session. Arpeggios, pads, followers and quantizers don't guess the harmony; they listen to it and lock on, in real time.
- ✓Banks & Forms — build progressions as song sections, then re-arrange them as A·A·B·A structure without rewriting a note.
- ✓15 chord types from triads to Maj9 / Min9 / Add9, placed on any scale degree across Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Harmonic & Melodic minor and more.
- ✓Chord-change broadcast retriggers envelopes, swaps arpeggio patterns and re-quantizes melodies the instant the harmony moves.
- ✓Smart followers — the Harmonic Follower, Chord Vamp and Harmonic Quantizer always stay inside the current chord.
Patch your own instrument from scratch.
Blocks is a modular, node-and-cable synthesis lab living inside any track — think Eurorack on a canvas, with 85+ specialized nodes. Drag, wire, and the graph auto-sorts itself for tight, per-sample feedback with no cycles and no block-rate smear.
- ✓Real synthesis — wavetable oscillators, FM operators, Karplus-Strong strings and a Waveguide Tube with flute, clarinet & brass modes.
- ✓Generative brains — a Music-Thing-style Turing Machine, Euclidean rhythms and a Harmonic Quantizer that snaps every note to the Harmonic Engine chord.
- ✓Logic & math — flip-flops, comparators, trig, exp/log, map-range — build envelopes, VCAs and ring-mod from primitives.
- ✓Script nodes let you drop in custom DSP, and patches save as reusable Full Patches.
Modulation that breathes for hours.
The Control Rack is Phonon's hardware-inspired modulation engine: a stack of CV modules writing into 64 sample-accurate buses. Map any knob to a bus with depth and watch your whole mix evolve — from a one-knob morph to a 17-minute glacial swell.
- ✓LFO · VLFO · Audio-Rate Osc — modulation from 0.001 Hz drifts up to 5 kHz FM, all beat-syncable to musical divisions.
- ✓Maths — a dual function generator with rise/fall, cycle mode and sum/difference/OR outputs, straight from the modular world.
- ✓Generative sequencers — Repeater, Stochastic, the polyrhythmic Zularic Repetitor and a Cartesian 2-D scanner.
- ✓One Knob nudges all 64 buses at once; text automation (
m0 cv0, m8 cv1) paints song-length curves.
Music you can watch and scratch.
Video is a first-class citizen in Phonon. Drop a clip onto the timeline, lock it to beats, run it through visual effects, and render the whole performance to MP4.
- ✓Beat-synced playback with frame-accurate seeking, variable rate (WSOLA-stretched audio) and dual decks with crossfade.
- ✓DJ-style scratching — the Scratch Renderer bakes the song to a buffer for tape-modeled, velocity-smoothed jog-wheel performance.
- ✓Pro color grading — levels, gamma, temperature, tint and shadow/mid/highlight balance, then export H.264 + AAC.
A GPU visual synth, wired to your sound.
The Visual Graph is a node-based, real-time GLSL engine which provides generators, transforms, blends and effects, as live shaders for smooth rendering. Every node hears the music: lows, mids, highs, and beats.
- ✓Generators — Fractal, Plasma, Voronoi, Metaballs, Superformula, Lissajous and more, all procedural.
- ✓Transforms & FX — Kaleidoscope, Tunnel, Feedback loops, Bloom, Chromatic Aberration, Glitch and Beat Blend.
- ✓Sources — pull in Video, the Audio & CV buses, a Blocks In bridge or a GlyphVis script node.
- ✓Auto-layout & topo-sort keep the graph readable; a Screen node master-grades the final image.
Write the sound. Write the vision.
Glyph is a new musical scripting language baked into Phonon for building instruments and effects that run per-sample with zero allocation. Its twin, GlyphVis, borrows the same syntax and transpiles to GLSL, so one mental model covers both your DSP and your shaders.
- ✓Glyph —
in()/out()ports, state vars, delay buffers,mtof/ftomand inlineparam()sliders. Real-time safe, no GC. - ✓GlyphVis —
bass(),mids(),treble()plus 256-bin spectrum, fbm/noise/hsv helpers, and bus reads from your Blocks patch. - ✓Built-in presets to learn from: Raindrops, Acid Bass, Soft Pad — and Audio Rings, Neon Grid, Pulse Tunnel, Shatter.
// random pitched drops — pentatonic
float density = in("Density");
if (timer >= nextDrop) {
dropFreq = mtof(60.0 + noteIdx * 2.0);
dropEnv = 1.0;
}
dropEnv *= 0.9992; // decay
out("Left", sin(dropPhase*6.283) * dropEnv);It all orbits the same star.
Phonon's systems aren't islands. The harmony feeds the Blocks. The Control Rack modulates everything. A 64-channel Blocks → Visual bridge lets a synth voice drive a shader — so when you play, the picture answers back.
Set your own rules.
Let the music orbit them.
Phonon is a standalone generative DAW with full VST3 hosting, on Windows and macOS.
Windows and macOS