Recent Work · Passion Project
"An ecosystem of audio tools, instruments and games that all share one idea. Everything in it knows the current key, tuning and tempo, so sound, music and visuals stay in tune and in time together."
Visit nexusharmonics.com →The Idea
"Sound is the physics of the world, rather than its background."
For the past stretch I have been building an ecosystem of audio tools, instruments, generative engines and games that all share one idea. It is called SA Nexus, and everything in it is aware of the music around it. Whether it is a sound, an effect, a game object or a visual, each one knows the current key, scale, tuning, root frequency and tempo, so it stays in tune and in time.
Most audio software treats music as samples and waveforms. SA Nexus treats it as live information about what is happening musically at any moment. Every tool built on top reads from that same understanding, so when one changes key, the others know at once. That shared intelligence is what turns a folder of separate apps into a single system.
I pulled the whole thing together this year behind a showcase site, nexusharmonics.com, where the full ecosystem lives with a page for each tool, the games and a blog.
The Tools
Ten tools sit on top of the shared musical intelligence, grouped into the system that authors and reasons about audio, the instruments you play, and the tools that build the worlds.
An adaptive game-audio authoring tool. You author a project that decides which sounds play in response to live game state, and it compiles to a small runtime file the game plays back. Its trick is that sounds retune to stay in key with the music, natively at A = 432.
A professional sound-library manager that also knows the key of every sound, so it can show only the sounds that fit the music you are working on.
A procedural music generator that writes harmonically coherent progressions and voices them intelligently, streaming live over MIDI or rendering through Omnisphere.
A desktop DSP tool that retunes any sound to an exact frequency, sculpts it to a pure harmonic series, and granular-stretches it into hours of ambient texture.
31 audio-reactive visual modes rendered on the GPU, from particle storms to true Chladni cymatics, exported in 4K.
A Moog-style subtractive synthesiser with a hand-painted panel, playable live from any MIDI keyboard, and aware of the current key.
A eurorack-style modular studio for patching instruments, sequencers and whole multitimbral arrangements. A bassline, a lead and a drum kit can all play from a single patch.
A pad-kit drum sampler with per-pad effect sends.
A real-time isometric level editor where the editor is the game engine in edit mode, so what you build is pixel-identical to what ships.
A catalogue and turntable viewer for the 3D meshes the worlds are built from.
How It Fits Together
Every tool reads from the same shared musical state at the core. The authoring tools export a project the game plays at runtime, so what you set up in the editor is exactly what runs in the game.
Author
SA Librarian
Key-aware sound library — surfaces only the sounds that fit the music.
Author
SA Conductor
Adaptive rules, state response, sounds that retune to key at A = 432.
Play
Instruments
SynthA, Modular and DrumSampler — all locked to the current key.
Shared Musical Intelligence · The Core
SA Nexus
A live, queryable understanding of the current key, scale, tuning, root frequency and tempo — shared by every tool at once. Change key in one, and the whole system knows.
Runtime · In the Game
The Games
A compiled project plays back in the game — retuning, mixing, and driving both sampled and synthesised audio in one coherent stream.
The Games
The games are where the ideas become playable, and they are the real test of whether one harmonic intelligence holds up across very different genres.
Game 01
Restoration · Exploration
A story of loss, grief and restoration. A world once full of music fell silent and drained to grey, and you bring its harmony back. As you move, music returns; as music returns, colour bleeds in like watercolour; as colour fills the world, life awakens. Sound is the physics of this world rather than its background.
Game 02
Arcade Action
A fast, modern arcade shooter in the vein of Asteroids, heading toward a full 100-level game, where every shot you fire plays into the music. It runs on the same foundation as the meditative worlds, just in a faster, louder genre.
Game 03
Audio-Reactive Flight
An audio-reactive flight game through six stages of cosmic awakening, where harmony emerges from the light and colour you choose. A slower, drifting companion to Rockslayer's arcade pace, built on the same tools.
The Full Showcase
The complete Nexus Harmonics site gathers everything in one place: an overview of the idea, a page for each tool with screenshots, the three games and a blog. It runs on Cloudflare and I deploy it straight from the command line.
Explore nexusharmonics.com →