Press ▶ START AMBIENT LOOP in TRANSPORT and the instrument begins generating on its own — every sound here is synthesised live in your browser, nothing is streamed or pre-recorded. Everything updates in real time while it plays, so it's safe to change any control mid-session. ⟳ RANDOMISE reshuffles most of the character and layer-mix controls in one press if you want a quick starting point.

The tabs at the top switch between two curated setups. PLANETSCAPES is the slow-drifting ambient instrument this page was built around — good for planets, corridors, and quiet interiors. TENSIONS loads a faster, tighter, more dissonant preset for fight and danger scenes: bass and arp switch on automatically, the reverb tightens up, the pad and synth stab get a distorted edge, and an IMPACT layer (a low lub-dub heartbeat paired with a sidechain-style pump on the whole mix) kicks in — something Planetscapes doesn't have at all. Theremin and Choir drop out entirely rather than just going quiet, since those two are what make Planetscapes sound dreamy in the first place. Loading either preset morphs the sound over a few seconds rather than cutting it off, so switching mid-playback doesn't jar. This HOW TO USE tab is just a view — it doesn't change anything you've set.

The slider blends six sound worlds rather than switching between them: 1950s theremin suspense, 1960s tape-lab musique concrète, a 1970s analog haze, a bright 1980s synth stab, a lush 1990s orchestral-synth blend, and a fully orchestral bridge voice at the far end. Positions in between genuinely mix the neighbouring characters. Toggle AUTOPILOT to let the era and TENSION drift on their own over several minutes instead of sitting still — dragging either slider by hand switches it back off.

KEY transposes every layer at once. PROGRESSION decides how the pad's chord root moves each time it changes: WANDER picks a new scale tone at random, STATIC holds one chord throughout, and CLIMB / FALL step steadily up or down the current scale. TENSION (in Signal Parameters) picks which of six scales is in use, from a consonant major pentatonic up through whole-tone, octatonic, and a fully chromatic cluster at the extreme.

Two optional rhythmic layers, each switched off by default and independent of one another. Both lock onto whatever chord the pad is currently voicing, so they always stay in key. DRIVING BASS offers PULSE, WALK, OCTAVE, and SYNCOPATED patterns; SEQUENCER ARP offers UP, DOWN, UP-DOWN, and RANDOM. Each has its own LEVEL fader and a ⟳ RANDOMISE PATTERN button that picks a new pattern and reshuffles its content. Their step rate follows PACE, so they speed up and slow down with the rest of the instrument.

CHARACTER — DENSITY, PACE, TENSION, CHAMBER (reverb amount), and LEVEL (master volume). LAYER MIX — independent volume for each of the seven layers: THEREMIN, PAD, TEXTURE, SYNTH, DRONE, CHOIR, and IMPACT (audible only when the Impact layer is triggering, i.e. on Tensions). MODULATION — WOBBLE (pitch flutter), BRIGHT (overall tone filter), REVERB (the size and length of the reverb tail — distinct from CHAMBER, which only controls how much of it is mixed in), DELAY and FEEDBACK (echo timing), and WIDTH (stereo drift).

Even with every slider left untouched, the mix keeps moving. Density and volume swell and thin out on their own, occasionally dropping toward near-silence on Planetscapes (Tensions keeps the intensity more sustained instead). Rare interference bursts, signal dropouts, and rising sweeps break the pattern unannounced every minute or two — none of that is scripted, it's generated fresh every time.

▶ START AMBIENT LOOP starts or stops instantly. FADE IN and FADE OUT, either side of it, do the same thing but gradually — a 6-second ramp up from silence or down to silence — for a smoother transition in and out of a scene rather than a hard cut. ● RECORD captures whatever's currently playing and encodes it to a real WAV file. Press it again to stop, and a save dialog opens so you can name the file before it downloads — browsers won't let a webpage open your OS's native folder picker, so it still lands wherever your browser's downloads are configured to go, but you control the name. Start the ambient loop (and any groove modules you want) first, then record. Nothing is captured until you press the button.