Rumour is an always-listening effect that keeps the last few seconds of whatever you play and retells them as loops drifting out of phase, grains and spectral washes. Stop playing and it carries on, a little different each time.
Five steps from opening Rumour to hearing what it does. It runs in Chrome, Edge and Safari, on a computer or an iPad.
Controls on the left, the inkblot on the right, the input along the top. Everything on screen, numbered:
The tabs move to the bottom and the drawer slides up from there, under the inkblot. Everything else is the same, except the dials and the tweak button: they step aside while a tab is open in a tall window, and in a window narrower or shorter than about 560 px (a phone) they aren't shown, to leave the inkblot its room. The same six controls are in the tabs.
It's always listening. Everything you play goes into a short memory, up to 10 seconds of it. When the input stays below the listen level for a second and a half, Rumour decides you've stopped: the memory stops recording and holds on to what you played. There's no record button and nothing to start or stop. The memory tab sets how far back it reaches and what time does to it.
Five stages retell it. Two of them replay the memory as it was: loops and grains, on the replay tab. Three change the sound: follow plays your playing back at another pitch, smear blurs it into a wash, and resynth rebuilds its strongest notes with oscillators. They're on the morph tab. Each stage has a fader in mix; a stage at 0 is off.
The loops drift out of phase. Up to six loops play at once, each a slightly different length, so they line up differently on every pass and the pattern never quite repeats. By default each new note you play starts a new loop, replacing the oldest one.
It carries on after you stop. With linger at forever, the loops keep finding new moments in what you played, so it changes slowly for as long as you leave it. Bloom keeps the effect quiet while you play and lets it open up when you stop, and regen records the effect back into the memory, so it turns into a wash that keeps shifting.
You can play it like a pedal. Rumour captures on its own, but catch, hold and swell under the inkblot let you step in.
Rumour is an effect, so something has to play into it. in ▾ at the top chooses what, and shows what's playing in now.
Plays your mic, or your computer's audio input, into Rumour as you play: a voice, or a guitar or synth through an audio interface. The browser asks for permission the first time. Rumour takes the input as it is, without the noise reduction and level control browsers apply to calls. Choose it again to turn the mic off.
The input control in mix sets how much goes in, and listen sets how loud it has to be to count as playing.
The other three choices put one sound into the memory, so Rumour plays on its own, like an ambient generator:
Records a take from the mic. A red ■ at the top counts the seconds; tap it to stop (it stops by itself at 10 s). The take doesn't go through the speakers, so it can't feed back.
Any audio file your browser can read. Rumour uses the first 10 seconds of sound.
Ready-made sounds: glass, rain, choir and bells are always there, and more appear when Rumour is online. The test phrases are at the bottom of the same list.
Rumour trims the silence at either end, sets a steady level and fills the whole memory with it (a short sound is repeated to fill 10 seconds). The loops spread across it at once, and hold turns on by itself so your playing doesn't record over it. Release hold to let new playing in; choosing the mic or a test phrase releases it too.
With a sample in, repeat becomes loop. On, the sample also plays round and round into Rumour, so you hear it as it is as well as retold. Off, it only sits in the memory; ▶ (or space) plays it through once. Turning loop off lets the pass that's playing finish. The sample is gone when you reload the page.
Four short phrases built into Rumour, so you can hear it without a mic: keys, synth, guitar and pad. Pick one at the bottom of sound bank.
Plays a phrase now (or, with a sample in, plays the sample once). With the mic on, it switches back to the test phrases.
On, the phrase comes back by itself after a gap of 5 to 9 seconds, often a little higher or lower. Off, it plays once per ▶. The gaps are where you hear what Rumour does when the playing stops.
The phrase and repeat are remembered on this device, not in presets. Rumour doesn't use MIDI; the browser's limits are under Tips and limits.
Three big buttons under the inkblot, for playing Rumour like a pedal. They change what's happening now, and they aren't saved in presets.
Every loop takes the last few moments of what you played at once, each its own length, so they still drift apart. While you play they end now; once you've stopped they end with your last notes, so a catch a few seconds later still takes what you played (with regen up, after about two seconds they end now again). The resynth listens again at the same moment.
Set capture to on catch and nothing changes until you press it.Keeps the memory as it is and lets you play over it. Tap to latch it on and tap again to let go; or press and keep holding, and it lets go when you release.
While it's on, nothing new goes into the memory, the loops keep changing inside what's held, your new playing doesn't reach the smear or the resynth, and the effect stays open as if you'd stopped. With regen up, the memory keeps reworking itself.
Hold turns on by itself when you load a sample.While you hold it, the effect gets up to about 6 dB louder, more of it goes into the space, and the space rings up to three and a half times longer. It opens in half a second and falls back over about two seconds when you let go.
Try the swell pad preset, which stays quiet while you play.Six dials below the catch, hold and swell buttons: speed, regen, smear, space (the send), bloom and high cut. They are the same controls as on the tabs, so turning one moves its slider. Drag a dial up or right to turn it up, down or left to turn it down; double-tap it for its starting value, or focus it and use the arrow keys (⇧ for small steps). The tweak button beside swell, at the right end of the row, shows them and goes while they show; the ✕ in the strip's corner hides them again, and so does ⋯ › hide tweak. Whether they're showing is remembered, and isn't part of a preset. Hide ui takes them away too.
What Rumour remembers, how long it carries on, and what time does to it.
Slows the memory. What's already in it drops in pitch, new playing comes out grainier, and it holds more time: at half speed, an octave down, the memory lasts twice as long. It slows the loops, grains and follow; the smear and the resynth keep running at full speed.
How speed moves: in octaves (full, half, a quarter, an eighth), in fifths and octaves, or smoothly. With octaves or fifths, the number beside speed still shows the smooth value, but you hear the nearest step.
How far back the loops and grains can reach. Short keeps them close to what you played last; long lets them find moments from further back.
The level that counts as playing. Below it for a second and a half, the memory stops recording and holds what you played, and the after-you-stop behaviour starts.
With a mic in a noisy room, raise it until the background alone doesn't count as playing.How long Rumour carries on after you stop. At the top, forever, it keeps going, and after a couple of seconds the loops start picking new moments from what you played, so it slowly changes. Below the top, the effect fades out over that time and comes back when you play again.
Holds the effect back while you play and opens it up over about two seconds once you stop. At 100 the effect is down to a fifth of its level while you play; at 0 it stays the same.
High bloom keeps your playing clear and saves the wash for the gaps.Records the effect, space and all, back into the memory, kept at the level you played at. While you play it's added to what you play; after you stop, the memory keeps recording over itself, so it becomes a wash that shifts and never quite repeats. The number beside it rounds to 0 or 1, so go by the slider.
Each pass of a loop comes back a little darker and quieter, and so does what regen records.
A slow pitch wobble, about once every two seconds, its speed wandering a little.
A fast pitch wobble, about seven times a second.
The tape speed wanders slowly at random, so the pitch sags and recovers.
Tape saturation, a little uneven between the top and bottom of the wave, so it warms and thickens.
Bit reduction. Gentle near the bottom of the slider; gritty and broken near the top.
Tape hiss under the sound. It follows the level, so silence stays silent.
Where the six tape controls work. wet: on the effect only, before the space and regen, so with regen up the tape builds up pass after pass. everything: on the whole output, your dry playing included, like a lo-fi pedal at the end of the chain.
Two ways to replay the memory as it was: loops and grains. Their levels are the loops and grains faders in mix; grains start at 0, so raise their fader to hear them.
How many loops play at once.
The loops' base length. Short loops are grainy and buzzy; long ones hold whole phrases.
How different the loops' lengths are. At 0 they're all the same length and stay in step; higher, they drift in and out of phase.
On each pass a loop is cut short by a random amount, so it never quite repeats.
How each loop fades at its ends. Low is sharp and rhythmic; high fades all the way in and out, so the loops become swells.
The chance a new loop plays an octave up, an octave down, a fifth up or a fourth down.
The chance a new loop plays backwards.
Where the loops come from.
How much scatter and walk move, and how often the loops find new moments once you've stopped.
The chance a pass goes wrong: it stutters (repeats a half to a sixteenth of itself), plays backwards or drops out. The glitch side of Rumour.
How many grains start each second. Low is sparse drops of sound; high is a continuous cloud.
How long each grain is. Short grains crackle; long ones overlap into a blur.
The share of grains played an octave up, an octave down or a fifth up.
How far back the grains are taken from. Short keeps them on what you played last.
Three stages that change the sound. The switch at the top, follow · smear · resynth, picks which one you're editing; a dot on a name means that stage is sounding. Any of them can sound at once: their levels are faders in mix. Smear starts at 35; follow and resynth start at 0.
Follow keeps sampling what you're playing now and plays it back at another pitch, so a copy trails behind you. It works on your live playing, not on the memory, so it goes quiet soon after you stop.
How far up or down the copy plays, in semitones. +12 is an octave up, +7 a fifth.
Forward, or each sample played backwards.
How long each piece it plays back is. Short, it works as a pitch shifter; long, whole phrases trail behind you at the interval.
Feeds follow back into itself, so the intervals stack up: an octave, then two. Its number rounds to 0 or 1; go by the slider.
Smear averages the sound's spectrum over a stretch of time and rebuilds it with new, random phases, so notes blur into a wash without any attack.
What it listens to: your playing, the loops (with the grains and follow), or both.
How long the spectrum is averaged over. Short follows you closely; long is a slow cloud that changes over many seconds.
Low keeps the smear tonal, close to the notes you played. High makes it noisier and more artificial, like a distant memory of them.
Moves the wash up or down in pitch.
A slow glitter across the wash, as single frequencies rise and fall.
Holds the wash as it is, however you play.
Resynth listens for the strongest frequencies in the sound and plays them again on a bank of up to 33 oscillators, spread left and right. Each time it listens again, each oscillator glides to the nearest new frequency, so the chord moves rather than jumps. It keeps going after you stop when it listens to the loops.
What it listens to: your playing, the loops (with the grains and follow), or both.
How many oscillators. One follows the loudest frequency; 33 rebuild most of the sound.
How often it listens again. Short tracks you as you play; long gives a chord that steps to a new one every few seconds.
How slowly what it hears may change. At the top it stops changing.
How slowly each oscillator slides to its new pitch.
The oscillators' shape. Sine sounds closest to the original; saw and pulse add harmonics of their own, for a brighter, more synthetic chord.
Moves the whole bank up or down in octaves.
Moves it up or down by up to a fifth.
The middle of the band it listens to.
How wide that band is, in octaves. At all it hears everything.
Narrow it to about 1.5 oct and move the centre slowly for sounds like vowels.Feeds what it plays back into what it listens to. Near the top it keeps itself going, a held chord that drifts on its own. Its number rounds to 0 or 1; go by the slider.
Pulls every oscillator towards the nearest note of the key and scale below. At 100 they land in key.
The key's root note for snap.
The scale snap pulls towards. pent is the major pentatonic.
Holds the chord it has now.
Four macros, A to D, on two XY pads. Each macro moves up to four controls at once, so one drag can change the whole sound.
The top pad plays A (left and right) and B (up and down); the bottom pad plays C and D. Each axis is named in the corner it points to.
The middle is the preset as saved. Right or up adds each of the macro's amounts to its controls; left or down takes them away. So the pads work with any preset, and where several macros move one control, their moves add up. Double-tap a pad to put it back in the middle.
A slider a macro has moved shows a ring at the value you're hearing.
Below the pads, one macro at a time. ‹ › step through A to D and round again. Tap the name to rename it. The number at the left (+0) shows where the pad has it, from −100 to +100.
Opens a picker: stages on the left, with a count of how many of the macro's controls are in each, and that stage's controls on the right. Tap a control to add it or take it out. It stays open, so you can pick several; a macro holds four at most.
Tap learn, move up to four controls in any tab, then tap learn again (or done in the bar at the top; cancel forgets it). The controls you moved most replace the macro's, each with the amount and direction you moved it. They go back to where they were and the macro goes to its full amount (the right or top edge of the pad), so what you hear doesn't change.
Loads a ready-made macro (below), or clear to empty it.
Rolls a random macro: three or four controls, mostly from different stages, each with an amount of 25 to 60 either way.
Each control in the macro has a slider, named stage › control, for how far and which way the macro moves it. ✕ takes it out.
A starts as dissolve, B as distance, C as age and D as unrest.
| Macro | Moves |
|---|---|
| dissolve | length (down), edges, smear, time |
| distance | send, pre-delay, decay, bloom |
| age | regen, wear, wow, high cut (down) |
| unrest | roam, jitter, faults, drift |
| octaves | harmony, octaves, grains, shift |
| spectral | resynth, refresh, blur, smear (down) |
| grit | speed (down), bits, saturate, drive |
| cloud | grains, density, size, loops (down) |
Switches can't be in a macro: the choices such as capture, wave or tape on, the freezes, interval, octave and speed steps, and volume, input and solo.
Your macros and where the pads sit are saved with your own presets. The factory presets have no macros of their own, so loading one keeps your macros and puts both pads back in the middle.
Slow modulators, up to six: a preset keeps as many as it was saved with. Point one at a control and it moves it for you, so a sound keeps changing while you leave it.
Beside each mod's name (mod 1, mod 2 and so on). Off keeps its settings. The number at the right of a running mod is where it is now.
∿ sine, ⋀ tri, ⊓ square (flips between two values), ⟋ saw ↑, ⟍ saw ↓, ⁘ s&h (a new random value each cycle) and 〰 wander (glides between random values, so it never repeats).
What it moves, by stage: memory · speed; tape · wow and drift; loops · length and roam; grains · density and size; follow · sample; smear · time and shift; resynth · refresh, blur and centre; space · send and size; clean-up · low cut and high cut.
What happens when the mod would push past the end of a control's range: fold bounces back off it, clamp stops there.
How fast it cycles, from once every 100 seconds to four times a second. Slow rates suit Rumour best.
How far it moves the control, and which way. 0 is no movement.
Removes the mod. There's always at least one.
Adds a mod under the others, already on and pointed at a control no other mod is moving. At six it greys out.
Sends every mod somewhere new: a new shape, rate, depth, fold and destination for each, most of them on and no two on the same control. It keeps the number of mods and is one undo. The random preset (⚄ or r) leaves the mods alone.
A slider a mod is moving shows a ring where the mod has taken it. Many presets come with their own mods, often a slow 〰 wander on the loops' length.
Every level as a fader, then the space (the reverb) and the clean-up.
One fader per stage. Drag up or down; double-tap to put it back. The bright line inside each one is what that stage is putting out right now.
dry is your playing, untouched. loops, grains, follow, smear and resynth are the five stages; at 0 a stage is off. wet is everything the stages make together, after the space and the clean-up.
Tap a name under its fader to hear that stage on its own; the others dim. Tap it again, or tap wet, to hear everything. The solo slider at the bottom of the tab does the same. Solo is for listening and isn't saved in presets.
How much of the effect goes into the space.
Small at the bottom; bigger than a cathedral at the top.
How long the space rings. At the top, ∞, it never dies away.
Dark at the bottom, where the top end dies first; bright at the top.
A gap before the space answers.
Sends your playing into the space as well, so you're playing in the same room as the effect.
Feeds the space back an octave up, so its tail climbs in pitch.
Takes the low end off the effect, so the smear doesn't turn to mud. Your dry playing isn't touched.
Takes the fizz off the top of the effect. Low, it gives dark, distant washes. It comes before the space and regen, so each regen pass gets softer.
Tilts the effect darker or brighter, around 800 Hz.
Saturation on the effect: warm it up, or ruin it. Quiet sounds pass through clean; loud ones thicken.
The effect dips while you play and comes back up in the gaps.
How much goes in: the test phrases, the mic or a looping sample. It isn't saved in presets.
37 factory presets in six banks, each built for a different side of Rumour. Your own go in yours. Each preset has a line in the list saying what it does.
| Bank | What's in it |
|---|---|
| start here | All-rounders that suit any sound: first light · phasing · facets · cloud · long notes (for pads and drones) · init (the plain settings). |
| after you stop | Quiet while you play, open in the gaps: afterglow · standing wash · fade with me (dies away about 6 s after you stop). |
| tides | Slow pieces that keep moving once you stop, with long walking loops, a big space and slow mods: slow tide · neap tide · spring tide · undertow · sea glass · low water · tide pool · ebb · slack water. |
| spectral | The smear and the resynth up front: smudge · glass choir · partials · spectral steps · vowels · resynth drone · spectral freeze. |
| tape & time | Speed, regen and tape: cassette · worn reel · half speed · grit · whole tape (the tape on your playing too). |
| pedal | Made for catch, hold and swell, plus follow and the glitches: catch & hold · swell pad · cathedral · a fifth behind · under, backwards · stutter · flicker. |
Good places to start: first light for loops into a gentle smear; slow tide with a sound bank sound, for an ambient piece that plays itself; standing wash, where regen turns what you played into a pad that never quite repeats; partials, to hear the resynth on its own; catch & hold, where nothing changes until you press catch.
Type a name under save this preset and press save. Saving with the same name again overwrites it. A preset holds every setting, the mods and, in yours, the macros and where the pads sit. It doesn't hold the volume, the input level, solo, what's playing in (test phrase, mic or sample), or catch, hold and swell.
Copies the current sound as a line of text starting rumour1. Paste it into a message, a note, anywhere.
Paste a rumour1. code and press load code to hear it.
Saves all your presets as presets.json (or, if you haven't saved any, the current sound).
Adds the presets from a file to yours.
In ⋯. Saves every preset you've made to one file, rumour-presets-backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json, and says backed up 4 presets when it's done. Its number is how many you have. With none saved it says nothing saved yet. Unlike export file, it only holds yours, and it's the one to keep or send.
In ⋯. Opens a file picker for a backup. Presets already saved are left alone and counted as skipped. One with a name you already use but different settings comes in as name 2, and a factory name is skipped. A file that isn't a Rumour backup changes nothing. Import file reads a backup the same way.
Copies a readable list of everything you've changed from the starting settings, what's playing in, the mods and macros, and a code. Handy for describing a sound in an email or a bug report.
The picture on the right is the memory, drawn as ink on paper and mirrored about the middle, like a Rorschach blot. Everything in it comes from the sound.
Switches to the strip: the memory as a waveform, newest at the right, with each loop as a line in its colour and a dot where it's playing. Above it are an input meter with a mark at the listen level and words for what's happening, such as now · listening or stopped · evolving. With the resynth up, its frequencies show as bars underneath. A line under the buttons says what the control you're touching does.
The inkblot needs WebGL; without it, Rumour stays on the strip. Your choice is remembered on this device.
Only the paper and the inkblot are left, and the blot grows to fill most of the window. The sound and the keys carry on. Tap anywhere, press i or esc, or use the ⋯ in the corner to bring the controls back.
Starting points. Each one names a preset to begin from, or begins from init (start here), the plain settings every preset is built on.
Long loops walk through the sound in a big space, and the mods keep their lengths and the space moving, so it never settles. For more movement, try spring tide; for something darker, neap tide.
The loops keep turning the caught phrase over while your new playing sits on top, untouched. Tap hold again to let new playing in. Hold swell (d) at the end of a phrase to open it all up.
Each phrase comes back a fifth higher, a little behind you. Set direction to reverse and interval to −12 st for a backwards echo an octave below.
A narrow band of the sound drifts up and down, so it sounds like a voice shaping vowels. Turn snap to 100 to pull it into key.
Everything drops a fifth and comes back softer and duller with each pass, like a tape played too often. Set tape on to everything to put your playing on the same tape.
The space keeps everything you've played ringing, under whatever you add. Bring decay back down, or press clear, to let it go.
On sliders: drag (hold shift for fine), double-tap to reset, scroll, or use the arrow keys.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| space | play a test phrase, or the sample once |
| a | catch |
| s | hold: tap to latch, or keep it down to hold until you let go |
| d | swell, while held |
| c | clear the memory |
| r | random settings |
| [ ] | previous / next preset |
| i | hide ui, show it again |
| ⌘ z / ctrl z | undo |
| ⇧ ⌘ z / shift ctrl z | redo |
| esc | close a menu (or stop learn), else leave hide ui, else panic |
In this guide, / jumps to find.
An iPad version of Rumour is planned. Until then, the web version runs in Safari on the iPad, with the mic and touch; the limits are under Tips and limits. This section will say what's different once the iPad version is out.
Tap begin: browsers stay silent until you do. Rumour is an effect, so something has to play into it: check what in ▾ shows and press ▶ for a test phrase (with repeat off, press it for each phrase). Then check vol, your device's volume and, on an iPad or iPhone, the silent switch.
If the dry sound plays but nothing else does, look in mix: a stage may be soloed (a dot on the mix tab), or the wet fader may be down.
Rumour says what went wrong:
Recording a take says the same things. If the mic is on but nothing happens, play louder or lower listen, and check input in mix isn't at 0.
The speakers are feeding back into the mic. Use headphones, turn the speakers down, or record a take instead with mic / input (record). Panic stops it at once.
That's linger at forever, where Rumour starts. Press clear (c) to empty the memory, or bring linger down so it fades out after you stop; fade with me is a preset made for that. A space with decay at ∞ or regen high keep things going too.
Hold is probably on: the hold button is lit. It turns on by itself when you load a sample. Tap it to let new playing in. Or capture is set to on catch, so the loops only change when you press catch.
They start at 0. Raise their faders in mix, or tap a name there to hear that stage on its own.
clear empties the memory, so the loops, grains and space start again from nothing. Panic does the same and also silences the output for a moment before fading back in. Neither changes your settings.
They live in the browser you made them in, so they won't appear in another browser, a private window or another device, and clearing site data removes them. Back up presets (in ⋯) keeps a copy; restore presets brings it back.
Once it has loaded, yes: everything but the extra sound bank sounds is inside the page. Nothing you play is sent anywhere.
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.
Rumour is inspired by a variety of creative looping pedals, such as Chase Bliss's MOOD and Hologram's Microcosm, along with Habit, Blooper, Count to Five and Red Panda's pedals. The resynth is inspired by Rossum's Panharmonium.