Parallax is a polysynth with two layers in every voice. Hold a chord, then move it with six expression controls and three rings, while each of its eight voices keeps a character of its own.
Five steps from opening Parallax to a chord you've shaped yourself. It runs in Chrome, Edge and Safari, on a computer or a tablet.
Controls on the left, the scene and the rings in the middle, the dials and the keyboard along the bottom. Everything on screen, numbered:
At 900 px wide or less, undo, redo and the random preset button ⚄ move into ⋯. In a tall window the tabs go along the bottom and the drawer slides up from there, under the scene and the keyboard. In a tall window (a phone, or an iPad held upright) the drawer starts shut, so the dials are showing; open a tab and the dials (or the tweak button, if they were hidden) step aside, to leave room for the rings and the keys, and close the tab to get them back. In a window shorter than about 560 px (a phone on its side) the dials float over the foot of the middle of the screen, smaller, and a first visit there starts with them hidden; tweak shows them and ✕ hides them. Everything else is the same.
Every voice has two layers. Each note you play sounds a clear layer and a soft layer at once. Each layer has its own waveform, tuning, drive, filter, and its own contours for brightness and loudness, so one can pluck while the other swells, or one can sit an octave above the other. layer balance blends them. The layers and contour tabs set them up, one layer at a time.
Eight voices, each a little different. Parallax plays eight notes at once, and every voice keeps small differences of its own in tuning, position, filter, timing and drive. voice variation sets how different they are, and wander lets each one drift slowly on its own path, so a held chord never sits quite still.
Your settings stay put; expression works on top. The six dials behind tweak each move several things at once (a sub, the filters, drive, the space), but they don't move the sliders on the other tabs. Set all six to 0 and you hear your settings as they are. Each preset sets how far the six reach, so the same move can sound different from one preset to the next.
The rings shape it with your hands. Three rings in the middle of the screen push the expression controls, brightness and layer balance, each in its own direction. Drag one out and the sound follows; bring it back to the middle and the change comes off again. More on the rings.
It moves, then the effects take it further. The movement tab has wander, slow oscillator motion and the cycle, a rise and fall that loops in every voice. Then the fx run in order: saturation, wavefolding, ring modulation, ensemble, echo, reverb and, last of all, tape.
Three ways in: the computer keys, the keyboard on screen and a MIDI keyboard.
The middle row plays a white key on each letter and the row above plays the black keys, like a piano: a is C3, w C♯, s D, and so on up to ' (F, an octave and a bit up). z and x move down and up an octave, up to two each way; changing octave lets go of the notes you're holding. how to play in ⋯ shows the keys as a reminder.
Tap ♪ keys for two octaves on screen, C3 to C5. Play with several fingers. The keyboard does two things a key press can't:
On touch screens the keyboard is on to begin with; Parallax remembers whether you leave it on. Hiding it lets go of any notes it was holding.
Plug in a MIDI keyboard and open ⋯ › midi in. The first time, the browser asks whether Parallax may use MIDI. Then pick all inputs or one device; off stops listening. The row in ⋯ shows what it's listening to. Parallax remembers your choice in that browser and connects again next time, and a device you plug in later is picked up when it arrives.
Every MIDI channel plays. The harder you play, the louder and brighter the note and the quicker it starts, and the notes light up on the keyboard on screen. All notes off and all sound off (CC 123 and 120) are panic. Pitch bend, the mod wheel, the sustain pedal and aftertouch don't do anything.
When you open Parallax again with MIDI already on, the browser still keeps it silent until you tap the screen or press a key on the computer keyboard. A note from the MIDI keyboard on its own can't start the sound.
Three faint rings in the middle of the screen, for shaping a held sound with your hands. They never play notes.
The direction sets what changes, the distance sets how much. At the middle a ring does nothing; towards the edge it pushes harder. Up adds phase, right adds flare, down adds gravity, left adds halo. The corners add drift (top left), brightness (top right), eclipse above 50 (bottom right) and more of the soft layer in layer balance (bottom left). Between two directions you get some of each. There are no labels on screen; the territory you're in glows faintly.
The rings add to your settings. They turn those dials as you drag (watch the dials), on top of where they were when you started. Bring a ring back to the middle and its part comes off again. Loading a preset puts all three back in the middle.
Three rings, three fingers. On a touch screen you can drag all three at once, and each ring adds its own push. The rings stay where you leave them, and they're saved with your sound. A whole drag is one step for undo.
Select the middle of the screen first: press tab until it's outlined (clicking it doesn't select it). 1 to 3 pick a ring, the arrow keys move it (hold shift for small steps), Home brings it back to the middle and shift+Home brings back all three.
hide ui in ⋯ (or i) fades the controls away and leaves the scene. The sound carries on, the computer keys still play, and the rings still work across most of the screen. To bring the controls back, tap ⋯ in the corner, or press i or esc.
Six dials above the keys, each moving several settings at once. They work on top of the tabs and never move their sliders.
Weight underneath: a sub an octave below each note, steeper and darker filters, and more drive into them.
Play low with gravity high for a bass.Lets every voice wander further on its own, in pitch, filter and timing, and makes the voices more different from each other. At the top, wander can reach 15 cents out of tune instead of 5.
Edge: more drive in each layer, more resonance, a brighter clear layer against a darker soft one, and tape saturation on the whole mix.
Brings in the cycle: a slow loop that moves the filters, the layer balance, the drive and the stereo width. In free mode, a cycle that's off starts at a slow pace of its own, and more phase runs it faster. It never changes your internal tempo.
Space: spreads the layers wider, adds ensemble, and pushes the reverb forward, into a larger, longer room, with less bass building up in it. Near the top the room takes over.
How the two layers relate. At 50 it does nothing. Above 50 they're drawn together: they wander and cycle as one, the soft layer's filter moves towards the clear one's, and more of the soft layer comes through. Below 50 they pull apart: they move against each other, the soft layer darkens, the clear layer comes forward and the two spread wider.
Both sides add some wander, so you can hear the relationship even on a sound that otherwise sits still.Turning them. Drag a dial up or right to turn it up and down or left to turn it down, double-tap it for its resting value, or focus it and use the arrow keys (⇧ for small steps). Hover a dial for a one-line reminder of what it does. Each dial wears its symbol above it, amber and sage in turn. Eclipse rests at the top; the other five rest at the left.
Showing and hiding. The tweak button just right of ♪ keys, at the right end of the row above the dials, shows the dials; while they show the button is hidden (♪ keys stays at the right edge, above them), and the ✕ in the strip's corner hides them again (⋯ › hide tweak or show tweak does either). In a tall window they step aside while a tab is open (more). The rings in the middle of the screen push all six (see the rings).
The clear and soft layers: how they mix, then each one's oscillator and drive.
The blend between the layers: 0 is only the clear layer, 100 only the soft one.
A sine an octave below each note you play. It follows the note, not either layer's transpose, so it stays put if you move a layer up an octave.
Spreads the two layers apart and lets the voices move around left and right, before the effects. Some of the sound always stays in the centre.
How different the eight voices are from each other, in tuning, position, filter, envelope timing and drive. Each voice keeps its own differences, and notes take turns across the eight voices, so even a repeated note comes out slightly different.
Pick the layer the sliders below belong to. The same switch is on the contour tab, and the two always agree.
A smooth sweep: from a round sine through to a bright saw (the readout counts up to 99 saw), then from saw to a hollow pulse (0 pulse to pulse). The in-between settings have a character of their own.
Nudges the layer's pitch by up to a quarter of a semitone. A few cents between the layers gives a slow beating.
Moves the layer up or down in semitones, up to an octave each way. Put the soft layer at +12 st for an octave above every note.
Drives the layer before its filter, so its harmonics are shaped by the filter after. Each layer has its own: clear layer drive and soft layer drive are separate sliders.
What kind of drive: rounder saturation to the left, sharper folding to the right, a mix of both at blend. It only does something when drive is up. Clear layer character and soft layer character are separate too.
The filters, and how brightness and loudness move over each note. Two shared controls at the top, then three graphs for the layer you pick.
Opens both filters together. They also follow the note, so high notes come out brighter.
Saturates each voice on its way into the filters, which makes resonance bite harder.
Then clear or soft picks the layer, as on the layers tab. The other layer's curve shows faintly, dashed, behind each graph.
The shape of the layer's filter, drawn for a held C4. Drag the handle sideways for cutoff offset, up and down for resonance. The line under it gives the cutoff in Hz.
Moves this layer's filter up or down against brightness, in octaves. A soft layer an octave darker than the clear one is a good start for pads.
A peak at the cutoff. High settings sing.
How steeply the filter cuts: gentle at 0, steep and a little coloured at 100.
How the filter moves over each note. Drag the first handle for attack, the second sideways for decay and up and down for sustain, the last for release. Time runs on a log scale, so short settings get room.
How far the contour opens the filter. At 0 the filter stays still. Each layer has its own: clear filter contour amount and soft filter contour amount.
The filter contour's four stages as sliders. Decay reaches 4 s on the clear layer and 6 s on the soft one.
The same graph for volume: how the layer arrives, settles, holds and fades.
Sustain at 0 makes every note a pluck. The soft layer reaches further: attack up to 3 s and decay up to 6 s, against 2 s and 4 s on the clear one.
A note keeps sounding until both layers have faded, so a long soft release rings on after a short clear one.Below the soft layer's loudness contour. It slows the soft layer's attack (up to nearly twice as long) and opens its filter as it grows, so in a held chord the soft layer blooms in behind the clear one.
How each voice moves over time: wander, oscillator motion and the cycle.
Each voice moves slowly along a path of its own: a few cents in pitch (5 at most per layer), and a little in filter, waveform and layer balance. Each note's timing varies a touch too. No two voices move together.
Whether the clear and soft layers move together. Plus links their wander and their cycles, minus sends them opposite ways, and free lets them go separately. It needs wander or the cycle to have anything to move.
Slow detuning and pulse-width movement in the oscillators, for a sound that's never quite still.
One smooth rise and fall that loops in every voice. Drag the peak sideways to change rise / fall, up and down to change amount. While notes play, small dots show where each voice is in its loop: every voice starts at a different point.
How much the cycle moves its destinations. 0 turns it off.
How the loop divides its time: a quick rise and a long fall, or the other way round.
free runs the cycle at a rate, and the voices drift slightly apart in speed. internal tempo counts it in beats instead, at exact beat lengths. Each keeps its own settings when you switch.
In free mode, how often the loop comes round: from once every 33 s to six times a second. The line under the graph gives it in seconds too.
With internal tempo on, the cycle's own tempo. It doesn't follow any other app or clock.
How many beats one loop takes.
Moves both layers' filters with the loop: plus opens them towards the peak and closes them in the dip, minus the other way round.
Leans the blend towards the soft layer at the peak and the clear one in the dip (plus), or the other way round (minus).
Adds drive towards the peak. It works even when the layers' own drive is at 0, so harmonics come and go with the loop.
Widens the voices towards the peak.
The phase dial works on the cycle too: it adds amount and destinations on top of what you set here.
Effects on both layers, in the order they run, top to bottom. Set an effect's amount or drive to 0 to turn it off.
Saturates the two layers together, warm at first and gritty further up, before any other effect.
From a smooth, even saturation to a lopsided rasp with more even harmonics. Saturation character only does something when drive is above 0.
A harder, brighter edge than saturation, from folding the wave back on itself. Some of the clean sound always stays.
Adds metallic tones that don't follow the notes you play. Some of the dry sound always stays.
Ring modulation frequency tunes those tones. Low settings give a rough wobble; high ones, clangs.
Six slowly moving copies of the sound, spread left and right, for a thicker, wider sound.
Echoes that bounce between left and right.
The echo time, the gap between repeats.
How many repeats come back. High echo feedback makes long trails, each repeat a little softer and rounder.
Echo tone: darker repeats to the left, brighter to the right.
How much reverb you hear. Up to 60 it adds the reverb under the sound; above 60 the reverb takes over, and at 100 it's louder than the dry sound. The other six shape the room.
Roughly how long the tail takes to die away.
Darker settings let the top of the tail fade first; brighter ones keep it.
The size of the space. Bigger rooms also wait a moment longer before the tail starts, so it follows the note instead of blurring it.
Gentle movement inside the tail.
How fast that movement goes.
How long the low end rings in the tail, below about 450 Hz. Turn it down on long, large spaces so the bass doesn't build up.
How fast the tail turns into a smooth wash. Lower settings build more gradually, with more of the first reflections.
Tape saturation on the whole mix, after the reverb, with a softened top. It adds density and dirt rather than volume. Flare pushes it further.
27 factory sounds in six banks, and a yours bank for the ones you save. Each preset sets every control, the expression controls included. The factory ones put the rings back in the middle.
| Bank | Presets |
|---|---|
| foundations | First light, Low furnace, Open circuit |
| keys | Glass current, Felt lantern, Willow keys, Round bell, Prism keys |
| brass | Copper brass, Breathing copper, Reed cabinet, Bronze foundation, Living copper |
| slow space | Night water, Silk orchestra, Slow observatory, Dark tide, Wide horizon, Tidal rooms |
| motion | Chrome rain, Two horizons, Fractured light, Pulse pavilion |
| edge | Broken halo, Dust chamber, Hot geometry, Harmonic gathering |
Open circuit is the reference: both layers, no expression, no effects but the saturation. It's a good place to start building a sound of your own.
Parallax remembers the sound you're playing, edits and rings and all, and it's there next time you open it in the same browser. To keep a sound under a name, save it as a preset.
Open the list and look under the banks: yours is the last one. It starts empty, and shows how many presets it holds.
Type a name in the name it… field and press save (or enter). It keeps all 79 sound settings, the expression controls as you set them rather than as they sound, and where the rings are. It doesn't keep vol, the layer you're editing, MIDI or the keyboard octave. The field starts with the name of the preset you're playing, so saving again with that name replaces it. A new name adds another. To rename one, save it under the new name and delete the old.
A name a factory preset has, in any capitals, is refused: the list says "a factory preset has that name. pick another." Typing in the field plays no notes and runs no shortcuts.
Your saved presets, in the order you saved them. Tap one to load it. It works like a factory row: the list stays open, the row lights up and the name shows at the top. Undo takes you back to what you had, though the name stays in the list.
Moving with ‹ ›, [ ] or ⚄ goes to the factory presets, not to yours.
Deletes that preset at once, with no question first, and says deleted and its name. Undo doesn't bring it back, so back up first if you might want it.
Saves everything in yours to one file, named parallax-presets-backup and the date, in your downloads. Its number is how many you have. With none saved, it tells you so instead.
Pick a backup file to add its presets to yours. A preset you already have is skipped. One with the same name and a different sound is added with a 2 after its name. A file from another app, or any other file, is refused and nothing changes. This is also how to move presets to another browser or device: back up on one, restore on the other.
Starting points. Each begins from a preset; hold a chord on the keys while you work.
You hear a short clear pluck, then the soft layer swelling in behind it and ringing on after you let go. To put the soft layer an octave above the pluck, set its transpose to +12 st.
The chord opens, widens and leans into the soft layer about every 12 seconds, each voice at its own point in the loop. Set layer link to −60 and the two layers breathe against each other.
Every held note snaps open on each beat and falls back, with a little grit on top. Try cycle length ½ beat, or load Pulse pavilion for a finished version at 108 BPM.
The chord gets brighter and rougher as flare comes up, with weight underneath from gravity. Pull flare back down and it's polite again; your other settings never moved.
The chord loosens, grows into a bigger space and gets heavier underneath, all from your hands. Move the rings slowly while it plays; shift+Home on the rings puts all three back in the middle.
Each note is a struck bell whose upper octave fades first, with a metallic glint. Raise ring modulation for a harsher, gong-like clang.
Also in ⋯ › how to play. On sliders: drag (hold shift for fine), double-tap to reset, scroll, or use the arrow keys.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| a w s … ' | play notes, from C3 |
| z x | octave down, up |
| [ ] | previous, next preset |
| r | random preset |
| ⌘Z ⇧⌘Z | undo, redo (Ctrl on Windows) |
| i | hide ui, show it again |
| esc | close a menu, then leave hide ui, then panic |
| 1 2 3 | with the middle of the screen selected: pick a ring |
| arrows, shift+arrows | move that ring, in big or small steps |
| Home, shift+Home | centre that ring, centre all three |
In this guide, / jumps to find.
An iPad version of Parallax is planned. Until it's out, play the web version in Safari on an iPad: the touch keyboard and the rings all work with your fingers. A MIDI keyboard doesn't: Safari has no MIDI.
Tap begin (or any key): browsers stay silent until you do. Check vol at the top, your device's volume and, on an iPad or iPhone, the silent switch or Control Centre's mute. Then play a note. Dragging the rings on its own makes no sound: they shape notes, they don't play them.
If it played before and has stopped, panic (esc) and play again, or reload the page.
Open ⋯ › midi in, pick all inputs or your keyboard, and allow MIDI if the browser asks. MIDI works in Chrome and Edge on a computer; Safari, and the browsers on an iPad or iPhone, have none. If the row says blocked, you said no when the browser asked: allow MIDI for this site in the browser's site settings and reload. Until then, play from the computer keys (a to ') or tap ♪ keys for the keyboard on screen. More on MIDI.
Press panic or esc for a hard stop. Long fades can come from the soft layer's release, high echo feedback or a long reverb decay.
That's movement: wander, oscillator motion or the cycle, plus the drift and phase dials. Turn those to 0 for a still sound.
The rings turn them, and move brightness and layer balance too. Drag the rings back to the middle (or shift+Home with the middle of the screen selected) and the dials go back to where you set them.
Press undo (⌘Z) straight away: it takes you back to the sound you had. Next time, save it first: type a name under save this preset and press save. It goes in yours, and loading another preset won't touch it.
Once it has loaded, it doesn't need the internet: nothing is sent anywhere, and it makes no network requests.
Not inside the web version. Record your computer's output with an audio app.
Something missing or wrong? Email support@tinkerhaus.xyz, or see support.
Parallax is inspired by Deckard's Dream and Katla, without copying either.
The reverb is JPverb by Julian Parker, with fixes and interface work by Till Bovermann (MIT licence), compiled unchanged from the Faust libraries by GRAME, which include filter helpers by Julius O. Smith III.