Resources

Overview

microwave is a microtonal waveform synthesizer based on:

tune – a microtonal library
Nannou – a UI framework
FluidLite – a soundfont renderer

It features a virtual piano UI enabling you to play polyphonic microtonal melodies with your touch screen, computer keyboard, MIDI keyboard or mouse. The UI provides information about pitches and just intervals in custom tuning systems.

Installation

cargo install -f microwave

You might need to install additional dependencies required by Nannou. For me, the following setup worked:

sudo apt install pkg-config libx11-dev

If this doesn't help or you don't use apt, try following these instructions.

Usage

microwave run                     # 12-EDO scale (default)
microwave run equal 1:22:2        # 22-EDO scale
microwave run import my_scale.scl # imported scale

This should spawn a window displaying a virtual keyboard. Use your touch screen, computer keyboard or mouse to play melodies on the virtual piano.

Soundfont Files

For playback of sampled sounds you need to provide the location of a soundfont file. The location can be set via the environment variable MICROWAVE_SF or the command line:

microwave run --sf /usr/share/sounds/sf2/default-GM.sf2 equal 1:22:2

If you like to use compressed sf3 files you need to compile microwave with the sf3 feature enabled. Note that the startup will take significantly longer since the soundfont needs to be decompressed first.

MIDI Input

To use a MIDI device as an input source, use the --ms option:

microwave run --ms 1 equal 1:22:2

More Options

For a complete list of command line options run

microwave help