Free documentation from Aphelion
Phonon University
Phonon is a large application and it does not pretend otherwise. These courses walk through it a room at a time: what each part is called, what it is for, and what you can do once you know.
Every screenshot here is the real application, captured from the build you can download, in the state you actually meet it. Nothing is staged and nothing is a mock-up, which occasionally means a lesson has to explain something that is empty or switched off, because that is what is in front of you when you open it.
- 01Getting aroundThe window, the things in it, and how to move through time.Where everything is and what it is called. Nothing here makes a sound: it is the vocabulary the rest of the courses spend, and it is written for the state you actually meet on the first launch rather than a tidied-up screenshot of a finished track.5 lessons
- 02Making soundModules: finding one, loading it, and playing it.An empty track does nothing until something is in it. This course is about the module browser, the difference between an instrument and an effect, what a panel is showing you once it opens, and how to make any of it move on its own.4 lessons
- 03HarmonyThe chord the project is on, and everything that follows it.Phonon keeps one harmonic context that modules can read, which is why the lattice on the right of the window is there at all. This course covers where the chords come from, how to write your own, and which modules change their behaviour when they hear one.4 lessons
- 04Writing partsThe modules that write rather than play.Drum patterns, basslines, chords, leads and the arpeggiators. What each generator decides for you, what it leaves alone, and how to take a part it wrote and make it yours.In progress
- 05FinishingThe mixer, the master, and getting a file out.Levels, the master chain, and the bounce dialog, including the video side of it. The shortest course, and the one that turns a project into something you can send to somebody.In progress
How these are built
The pictures are captured from Phonon itself, and so are the red boxes drawn over them: each one is measured from the panel it surrounds while the screenshot is being taken, in the same run. A box therefore cannot be in the wrong place unless the panel is, and a test in Phonon fails the day a panel one of these lessons names stops existing.
The order within a course matters less than it does in Battuto. An application is a place rather than a proof, so a lesson here says what it lets you go and do rather than claiming the next one could not proceed without it. Read them out of order if you already know your way around.