THE SOUND OF OBSERVATION
Made In a Dark Room.01 / Image instrument
NO IMAGE LOADEDDrop into a different frequency.
Load a photograph below.
Waveform trace / crop & blend
Upload a waveform screenshot. Crop to one waveform cycle for a cleaner tone; no frequency scale is inferred.
Shape the instrument / advanced
02 / Rhythm desk
SIX VOICES / 16 STEPSTap a pad to audition. Arm Record take to capture live hits.
Individual drum settings
Step sequencer
The 16-step drum bar repeats across the recording. Image loop length controls the photograph scan independently. Click steps to switch hits on or off. Keyboard: 1–6 on the top row or numeric keypad (A S D F G H also work). Turn Quantise off to keep your freehand timing.
Image voices / close listening
Save image-voice settings as named presets within this project. Save project to keep them.
Noise starts from a repeatable image seed and is shaped by local texture. Detail sensitivity is a contrast threshold, not object recognition; small sensor artefacts may still contribute. Solo affects these four image voices only. The overlay shows measured feature strength, not every individual sound event. Project save keeps your seed and layer settings.
03 / Vibrating plate
Output mode · press Play to view the mix.
Input mode adds sound and lets you move the excitation point by touching the plate. Output mode maps measured audio peaks to illustrative nodal patterns. This is not a finite-element solution or a prediction for a physical plate.
04 / Scratch & gesture
IMAGE AUDIO / TOUCHMac trackpad: hover here and swipe with two fingers. Touchscreen: drag with two fingers. A mouse drag also works. Speed changes pitch; touch height controls volume.
Load an image first. Record captures gestures for playback and export.
05 / Mix & take
0 EVENTSClick an event to remove it. New events are heard live; replay to hear the full take together. Export includes the steps and recorded take, not unrecorded auditions.
Notes / working with your sound
Space plays or pauses from your current position, except while typing in a field. Stop returns to the beginning. The loaded image is shown in full at its original aspect ratio; the scan remains inside its boundaries.
All sound is made locally in your browser. The photograph supplies a changing wavetable; synthesized drums and recorded scratch grains become the arrangement. Controls update during playback. Rebuilt audio is crossfaded at the current position, with a brief processing delay for complex changes. Drum edits affect subsequent hits. Export uses the current controls and recorded pad/scratch events; slider movements are not recorded as automation. Save project stores the working image, settings, pattern and take as a JSON file; nothing is stored automatically. Loading another image clears its take.
WAV export is 44.1 kHz / 16-bit stereo for the selected recording time. Image loop length sets how often the image sound repeats; the drum bar follows BPM. Record starts at the beginning and stops automatically at the time limit. Echo tails are cut at that boundary and a short fade softens the end. Playback and export use the same mix with soft limiting. Start at a low listening volume. Copy page code produces the complete embeddable source for your custom page; the layout adapts to the width supplied by your website.
