Murmur: Endless ways to play one sample.
A smart granular synth.
macOS · Apple Silicon + Intel · VST3 / AU / Standalone
Windows 10/11 · x64 · VST3 / Standalone
// WATCH_IT_WORK
See it in action.
Morph
Morph
0%
Layer A
Layer B
Match on, D3 up to F#3
Every grain reads both, 0 percent of the way to B
Drag the knob, press a mode
// 01_MORPH
Drop in a second sound.
MORPH sets how much of it each grain reads. Blend both, scatter at random, alternate, or switch when a grain lands on the second sound's own transient. FOLLOW gates the first sound with the second one's loudness, so drums chop a pad in their own rhythm. RESONATOR strikes a tuned body with the second sound, and needs long grains to ring.
MATCH puts it in the same key. Put an LFO on MORPH and the cloud walks between the two.
Layer scope
Size
98 ms
Layer A
98 ms
Layer B
280 ms
AB, the dial drives both layers together
// 02_LAYERS
Point a knob at one layer.
PITCH, POS, SIZE and SCAN each carry a small AB, A, B strip. On AB the dial drives both layers, the way it always has. On A or B it edits that layer alone.
DENSITY splits with a ratio chip instead, 1:1 down to 1:4, so layer B runs thinner than A.
The FX rack splits per module. Route the delay to layer B and leave the reverb on both.
Grain placement
Magnet
0%
Free scatter, grains land anywhere
Drag the knob
// 03_MAGNET
Grains land on the hits.
Turn MAGNET up and a breakbeat grooves instead of smearing.
Murmur marks every transient in your sample. MAGNET pulls each grain to the nearest one, from free scatter to dead on the hit.
Playability
Root found, mapping is off
Press TUNE
// 04_TUNE
Play any sample in key.
Switch TUNE on and C plays C, whatever you dropped in.
Murmur reads the key off the filename, and works it out by ear when the name is no help.
Grain coherence
Cohere
8%
Free-running grains
Drag the knob
// 05_COHERE
Texture becomes tone.
Turn COHERE up and a granular wash firms into a solid synth tone.
It locks grain timing, position and length to the sample's own pitch, so the grains stop fighting each other.
Position mode
Grains read from wherever the playhead sits
Press a mode
// 06_SLICE
One key per chop.
Load a loop, hit the keys, you're playing the chops. Nothing to cut up first.
SLICE lays the onsets across the keyboard from C1 up. Say how many slices you want and Murmur lays that many down, or drag a boundary to move it, add one it missed, or delete one it invented. Zoom into the waveform when the hits are close together.
Step sequencer
Layer A
Layer B
A walks eight steps, B walks five
// 07_WALK
Sequence the slices.
WALK plays the slices in time with your host. Forward, ping-pong or random, or a pattern you write yourself.
Sixteen steps, and every step holds its own slice, level, pitch and probability. Turn a step off and the groove breathes. Set one to a coin flip and no two bars come back the same.
Layer B walks its own row, at its own length. Five steps against A's eight realign every five bars.
Click a step to hold it and see what it plays.
Rate cluster
REPEAT off, the playhead runs free
Press REPEAT, pick a division
// 08_REPEAT
Stutter it on the grid.
Press REPEAT and the fragment under the playhead fires on every tick of the grid, from half notes down to 1/32.
Put a macro on the division and ride it live. Drop to a sixteenth for the fill, back out clean for the downbeat.
Modulation
Position
0%
LFO 1 → Position +0.62
LFO 2 → Position -0.44
RANDOM → Position +0.30
2 of 3 sources on this knob
Drag a source onto the knob, or press it
// 09_MODULATION
Modulate anything.
Drop a source on a knob and a ring appears. Drag the ring to set how far it reaches.
Two tempo-syncable LFOs, a random source, four macros, and GRAIN RND, which deals a fresh number to every grain rather than once per note. Every source keeps its own colour, so a glance at a knob tells you what is driving it.
FX rack
Chain: FILTER > SATURATE > SQUASH > CHORUS > PHASER > DELAY > REVERB
Drag a module to move it
// 10_FX_RACK
Order matters.
Delay into distortion is a different instrument to distortion into delay. Drag a module sideways and the chain reorders under your finger.
Glitch delay re-slices what you just played back at you. Shimmer hangs a pitched octave in the reverb tail. Put an LFO on the filter and the whole rack breathes.
Grain filter
Every grain filtered at the same 1.0 kHz
Pick a depth
// 11_PER_GRAIN
Process one grain at a time.
The FX rack works on the finished sound, the way every plugin's does. G-FILTER and G-COMP run inside the engine, on each grain as it is made.
G-FILTER is a low pass, high pass, band pass or notch, with resonance. Every grain carries its own, so the cutoff can be a different value on every single grain. Send GRAIN RND to it and each grain lands somewhere new.
G-COMP works a grain at a time too. ACROSS evens the loudness between grains, so the quiet parts of a sample come up to meet the loud ones. WITHIN squeezes the dynamics inside a single grain. Radical flattens hard, Threshold behaves like a normal compressor, and Inverse turns it over: loud grains come out quieter than quiet ones.
Grain cloud
Pitch = height · length = size · envelope = opacity
// 12_THE_CLOUD
Every particle is a real grain.
You can read the sound off the screen, and reach into it.
Every dot is a grain playing right now. Left to right is position, height is pitch, size is length. Click to move the playhead.
// CLOSER_LOOK
A closer look.
Expand to see the FX rack and the routing, all in one place.
// EVERYTHING_ELSE
Everything that's in there.
Slice
One key per chop
Murmur marks every hit in the sample and lays them across the keyboard from C1, at natural pitch. Load a loop and you are playing the chops, nothing to cut up first.
Magnet
Grains on the hits
Every transient gets marked the moment a sample loads. Turn MAGNET up and grain starts get pulled onto those marks, so a breakbeat grooves instead of smearing.
Cohere
Texture into tone
Grains fire in step with the sample's own pitch. Low and it stays loose and grainy. High and the same sample firms up into a solid synth tone.
Morph
A second sample
Drop one on the lower third of the cloud. MORPH blends the two per grain, six ways, and MATCH pulls the second one into the same key.
Tune
Knows its own root
Reads the key out of the filename, or listens and works the pitch out when the name is no help. Then C plays C.
Walk
A sequencer for the slices
Steps the loop in time with the host, forward, ping-pong or random. Or write up to 16 steps yourself, each with its own slice, offset, level, pitch and probability.
Scan
The playhead moves itself
From minus two times speed to plus two, reverse included. Put an LFO on it and the read position crawls or bolts.
Sync
Grains on the grid
Grain rate reads in HZ, or switch to SYNC and grains fire on a division of the host tempo, down to 1/32.
Key
Grains as an oscillator
In KEY the grain rate becomes the pitch of the note you play, so the grain train itself is the tone.
Scale lock
Snap it to a scale
Nine scales and any root. Every grain lands in the scale, and bends still glide.
Repeat
Beat repeat, on the grid
Lock the read position and fire the same fragment on every tick of a tempo division. SIZE steps aside while it runs.
Grain engine
Density, size, spread
Up to 200 grains a second, each one 10ms to half a second long. Jitter and spread scatter them in time and across the stereo field.
Voices
Mono up to 16 voices
Hold it down as a pad, or drop to one voice and it plays like a lead. Per-note MPE expression comes in on each channel: velocity, keytrack, pressure and slide.
Glide
Slides between notes
At one voice, notes bend into each other instead of jumping. Up to two seconds of portamento.
Modulation
Drag a source onto a knob
Then drag the ring around it to set depth anywhere across ±1, or right-click for the exact number.
Sources
2 LFOs, random, 4 macros
Rename the macros to whatever you are actually using them for. Both LFOs can lock to host tempo.
Grain Rnd
New number every grain
A modulation source that deals a fresh random value to each grain as it spawns, not once per note.
FX rack
Seven modules, any order
Filter, saturate, squash, chorus, phaser, delay and reverb. Drag a header sideways to move it in the chain.
Presets
The sample travels with it
A .murmur file has the audio inside it, FLAC compressed, both samples when you loaded a morph layer.
Slice grid
Say how many, then drag
Ask for a slice count and Murmur lays them down. Drag a boundary to move it, add one it missed, delete one it invented. Zoom in when the hits are tight. The morph layer keeps its own set.
Dice
Roll, then undo
Throws the knobs around inside musical bounds. One step back if it goes wrong.
// LISTEN
Hear what it can do.
All Murmur, no other processing.
// WHAT_YOU_GET
Start free. Unlock everything.
One installer. A licence key switches the rest on mid-session, no reinstall.
Free
$0
No account, no expiry, no watermark
Any sample, any length
Drag it straight in. No import step, no conversion.
POS, DENSITY, SIZE, PITCH, JITTER, SPREAD, SHAPE, MAGNET
The grain engine. Up to 200 grains a second, each 10ms to half a second long.
The amp envelope
Dragged by hand, with bendable slopes.
CLASSIC and SLICE play modes
SLICE lays the onsets across the keyboard from C1, one key per chop.
The slice grid
Set how many, drag a boundary, add one it missed, delete one it invented. Zoom in when the hits are close together.
Slices on the beat
1/1 down to 1/64, or straight off the transients.
TUNE, scale lock and root
Reads the key off the filename, and works it out by ear when the name is no help.
16 voices, glide, output trim
Hold it as a pad, or drop to one voice and it plays like a lead.
The grain cloud
Every dot is a grain playing right now. Click to move the playhead.
Nine templates
Start Here, Soft Pad, Frozen, Grain Cloud, Chop Kit, Beat Grid, The Chop, Magnet Drums, Tone. Params only, no audio inside them. You drop the sample, the template shapes it.
Opens any .murmur file
Sample included, even files saved on the full version.
Full version
$34.99
$59
Launch price, paid once, yours to keep
Everything in free, plus:
MORPH
A second sample blended into every grain, six ways. MATCH pulls it into the same key.
Layer B
Reads where you put it, with its own slices and its own WALK pattern.
COHERE
Texture firming into tone.
WALK
A step sequencer for the slices. Per step: slice, offset, level, pitch and probability.
REPEAT
Tempo-locked beat repeat, 1/1 down to 1/32.
G-FILTER
A filter on every grain as it's born, so the cutoff can differ on each one.
G-COMP
Evens grains out against each other, or squeezes the dynamics inside one.
Two drawable LFOs
Running on time or on grains.
Three envelopes
One for the amp, two to send anywhere.
RANDOM, four macros, GRAIN RND
GRAIN RND deals a fresh value to every grain rather than once per note.
The routing matrix
Any source onto any knob.
The FX rack
Seven modules in any order, all of it modulatable.
Save your own presets
The sample travels inside the file, FLAC compressed.
Every factory preset
Including the ones that lean on all of the above.
// FAQ
Common questions.
Which DAWs does Murmur work in?
Any DAW that hosts VST3 or Audio Units, and it also runs as a standalone app. macOS 11 or later, Intel and Apple Silicon, signed and notarized. Windows 10 and 11, x64, VST3 and standalone, available now.
What does the free version include?
A complete granular instrument: load any sample, the full grain engine, CLASSIC and SLICE modes, the slice grid, slices on the beat, TUNE and scale lock, the amp envelope with bendable slopes, up to 16 voices, and nine templates that shape whatever you drop in. Nothing counts down and the audio never goes quiet.
What does a licence key unlock?
MORPH, COHERE, WALK and its step sequencer, REPEAT, G-FILTER and G-COMP, the FX rack, the whole modulation system, and saving your own presets. Everything comes alive the moment the key goes in, mid-session, with no restart.
How does activation work?
Your key arrives by email after you buy. Paste it into the licence panel, or drop the licence file anywhere on the plugin window. The key is verified on your own machine: no account, no iLok, no subscription, no activation server, and it works offline, now and in ten years. The licence is for you alone: install it on your own computers, but everyone who uses Murmur needs their own licence.
What happens to a paid project opened on a free install?
It opens, and nothing is lost. The morph layer, the WALK pattern and the routes stay in the file, inert, and a free install can never overwrite them. Enter a key and it all comes back on the spot.
Can I use it on commercial releases?
Yes. Anything you make with Murmur is yours to release, sell and broadcast, with no royalties owed. Murmur stays ours; your music is yours.
How do updates work?
When a new build is ready, an UPDATE chip appears in the top corner of the plugin. Click it and run the installer from there.
Found a bug, or want a feature?
Tell us on the feedback page, and it lands straight with the person who built the plugin.
Can I get a refund?
If the full version is not working out for you, write to us and we will sort it out.
// REVIEWS
Customer Reviews
Amazing plugin, infinite fun & creativity
This is an outstanding plugin - I have plenty of granulars, but the workflow and ease of this one really makes a difference. A great deal of thought and respect went into the development of this. Very happy with my purchase.
Murmur, full version
$34.99