Elysium

Elysium is a software synthesizer where you can build and evolve textured harmonic layers of drone-based bliss from scratch.

Using additive synthesis, construct chords of sine waves, control movement, add layers, apply distortion and reverb, sit back and bliss-out.

Technical Implementation

Elysium is built using the free/open source plugdata environment for the Pure Data visual programming language. This started life in a different guise years ago as an iPhone app, but I recently rewrote it for the modern world as a plugin directly for the DAW.

I refactored the patches from the (now defunct) pd-extended library, to run in pd-vanilla. This will (someday) allow me to compile it in Heavy for C++/native VST development but the UI layer for that is a different (and very time consuming) prospect. I’m saving that for another day.

Download

The download file is a .pd patch. It’s free and fully editable, so you can open it up and explore under the hood. You can even modify and extend it to do new things.

Requirements: To run Elysium, you need to download and install plugdata (Win, macOS, Linux). plugdata runs as standalone application or as a VST3, LV2, CLAP or AU plugin, meaning you can host Elysium in a DAW as a plugin to record, perform, and edit it’s sounds.

Outstanding Tech Tasks in v1: Add DAW parameter controls for automation.

Here’s some screenshots of what’s under the hood: