1874 Sakura: Koto Studio
1874 Sakura Studio writes complete pieces of Japanese and Chinese music and plays
them on koto, guzheng, shakuhachi, erhu and a taiko ensemble. Press generate and
you get a whole piece in jo-ha-kyū form, the shape of nearly every Japanese
performing art: a slow opening called by a temple bell or a pair of wooden
clappers, a development, a still centre where a flute plays alone over the shō,
a rapid finish where the whole ensemble converges on the melody, and a closing
that thins back to nothing.
One melody carries each piece. It is previewed, stated, slowed down alone over
the drone, and lifted an octave for the finish — so you can hum it back after one
listen. The harmony works the way this music does: no chord changes, but a tone
centre that moves by fourth or fifth over a tonic the shō never leaves.
Every instrument is synthesised from how it makes sound. Plucked strings — koto,
guzheng, shamisen, biwa, pipa — are modelled as vibrating strings, with the koto's
pressed-string bend. Flutes — shakuhachi, dizi, xiao, hichiriki — are mostly air,
with the pitch arriving from underneath. The erhu slides and sings. Temple bowls
and bells ring from inharmonic partials. The taiko ensemble plays from real
recordings, or switch them off and every drum is modelled.
The pieces come from chaos maths. A Lorenz attractor picks the melody's rhythm and
shape and then its notes; a logistic map drives the percussion, so no two bars
need be alike. A small model learns as it writes, rewarded for the fourths,
fifths and steps this music is built on. The CHAOS / TASTE slider decides how much
say each one gets.
Twelve styles. Eight traditional — Sakura folk, Gagaku court music, Guzheng, a
Taiko ensemble, Zen meditation, Silk Road, Kabuki theatre and Neo-Tokyo fusion —
and four fast action styles built for games: Samurai, Shinobi, Wuxia and Cyber
Edo. Twelve pentatonic and Chinese scales, from hirajōshi and in-sen to gong and
yu. Choosing a style loads its melody instrument and its ensemble.
Every piece is built from its seed. Write the seed down and you can have that
exact piece again, note for note. A seed from the browser version rebuilds the
same piece here.
You can play over it, too. The pads are the notes of the piece's scale rather
than a piano keyboard, so nothing you touch is wrong, and the sixteen-step lane
follows the piece and your host. Both play the melody or any part of the ensemble.
Turn on RADIO and it keeps playing, picking a new style, key, scale and tempo for
every piece.
You also get:
• 12 styles, 12 scales, 12 keys, tempo and density
• 24 instruments and 13 one-click ensembles
• A full instrument editor: string, breath, bell, vibrato, filter and envelopes
• Sampled or synthesised taiko, switchable
• Six-part mixer with a meter on every part
• Temple reverb, tempo-synced echo, ensemble width and a filter sweep
• MIDI in, so your keyboard plays whichever part you have selected
• Export a MIDI file, a WAV mix, or stems — one WAV per part (in the app; in a
host you record the audio there)
• A note and a MIDI channel for every drum
• UI scale, so the panel is not tiny on a big iPad
• Live spectrum and waveform, and the chaos engine drawn as it runs
Two Audio Units, an instrument and a MIDI processor. Each part sends on its own
MIDI channel and every drum has a note and a channel of its own, so one instance
can drive a rack of your own sounds. The MIDI version passes your keyboard
through. Both follow your host's tempo and transport, and one install registers
both.
The app is free and nothing in it is held back. Using the Audio Units inside
other apps is a one-time purchase, and each AUv3 session plays for two minutes
first so you can try them properly.
No account, no ads, no subscription. Works offline.
