1. Press [ EXEC ] to start the clock
2. Type a pattern in any row — e.g. bd sn hh sn
3. Press Ctrl + Enter to evaluate it live
4. Add more rows with + NEW ROW
5. Adjust BPM with the slider — changes take effect immediately

Syntax can be combined freely. Nesting is supported:

All sounds are synthesised from scratch using FM (frequency modulation) synthesis — no samples.

Basic drum machine:

Polyrhythmic:

Melodic:

Dense / layered:

The settings bar below the header controls global parameters for all patterns. Changes are staged (held in reserve) until you press [ SHIP ].

Tidal Waves separates editing from applying. This lets you dial in a complete new state — new key, new scale, adjusted volumes — and then cut to it at exactly the right moment.

• Move any slider or click any setting → it turns bright white and pulses. The change is staged (queued), not yet live.
• Press [ SHIP ] to commit all staged changes simultaneously — they all go live in one atomic cut.
• The SHIP button shows a count of how many parameters are pending: [ SHIP 3 ].
• Right-click anywhere on the canvas wheel to SHIP from anywhere on screen.
• Stage mode EXEC/HALT/SHIP buttons are full mirrors — no need to exit stage to ship.

Each pattern row has an expandable control panel. Click [ CTRL ] on any row to open it.

Press [ PRE ] to open the substrate selector — 12 pre-composed algorithmic patterns ready to play. Each substrate loads a full configuration: BPM, key, scale, swing, reverb, and up to 5 pattern rows. After loading, all patterns are fully editable.

Append # key val to any pattern to control per-event synthesis parameters. Multiple values cycle across events. Multiple params chain with additional # separators.

Append ~op (or ~op value) after the pattern to make it evolve automatically over cycles. The pattern lives — it changes itself while you watch.

Three global effects are available in the settings bar, all built using Web Audio API — no plugins, no libraries.

Press S (or [ STG ]) to switch to full-screen performance view. The code editor disappears. The cycle wheel fills the screen.

• A minimal HUD shows the BPM large, plus EXEC / HALT / SHIP controls
• An oscilloscope waveform strip runs along the bottom of the screen
• A spectrum analyser fills the centre hub of the wheel
• Press S or Escape to return to Studio mode

Press [ DRAW ] to enter Draw mode — the cycle wheel becomes an instrument you can edit directly.

• Click empty ring position → adds an event at that beat
• Click existing dot → removes the event
• Drag a dot → moves the event to a new beat position
• Changes immediately update the pattern textarea and the live audio
• Added events snap to a 1/16th beat grid automatically

• Patterns are parsed into events with a position (0–1) and duration within each cycle
• A lookahead scheduler fires audio ~100ms ahead of time using the Web Audio clock — this prevents jank
• All audio is synthesised using FM synthesis: a modulator oscillator drives the frequency of a carrier oscillator
• The modulation index (depth) decays over time, shaping the timbre from bright attack to pure tone
• Inline # params are resolved per-event using cyclic indexing — no changes to the parser or scheduler
• Evolution operators mutate the working pattern string each cycle boundary, before it hits the scheduler
• Effects are vanilla Web Audio nodes (DelayNode, BiquadFilterNode, WaveShaperNode) — zero dependencies
• The cycle wheel shows all active patterns as concentric rings — the playhead sweeps all of them simultaneously
• Draw mode reconstructs a beat-quantized pattern string from canvas position, feeding it back to the textarea
• No files, no samples, no network requests after initial load — everything runs in the browser

Additional # parameters added to the synthesis engine:

The ~mk operator uses a Markov chain to rewrite the pattern each cycle. Transition probabilities are built from the token bigrams of the original pattern — so the machine follows the pattern's own grammar.

Every session is automatically encoded in the URL hash after you evaluate or ship a pattern. Copy the URL from the address bar and share it — anyone who opens it hears exactly what you built.

• The hash updates silently after every CTRL+ENTER and every SHIP
• Opening a URL with a hash restores all patterns + global settings automatically
• No server required — all state is in the URL itself

Save named snapshots of your session to browser storage. Recall them from the preset overlay.

• [ SAVE ] in the header opens a name input — type a name and press Enter
• In the [ PRE ] overlay, click the SAVED tab to see your sessions
• Each saved session stores all patterns, BPM, key, scale, and effects settings
• Sessions persist until you delete them or clear browser storage

Save individual patterns with names and reference them using @name syntax.

Render N cycles to a WAV file using OfflineAudioContext — no recording, no screen capture.

• Click [ WAV ] in the header
• Enter the number of cycles (1–64) and click RENDER
• Tidal Waves renders the audio at full speed in the background and downloads a stereo 16-bit WAV
• Maximum render duration is 2 minutes regardless of cycle count
• The filename includes a timestamp: tidal-waves-{timestamp}.wav

The fm instrument uses a 4-operator FM engine with selectable routing algorithms. Use the [ ALG ] button in a row's [ CTRL ] panel to cycle between algorithms.

The filter LFO rate can follow a rhythm pattern. In the FLT section of the global bar, the text input next to the cutoff slider accepts a mini-notation pattern string.

• The LFO rate is set each cycle to events-per-second derived from the pattern
• Filter must be enabled (FLT:ON) for the LFO to be audible

Live-code together in real time. One person hosts a session; others join and hear every pattern change as it's shipped. Uses a Cloudflare Worker for server-side clock sync and shared state — no WebSockets, no WebRTC.

URL parameters:

Multi-user sessions are implemented but not yet enabled on this deployment. The infrastructure uses a Cloudflare Worker for shared state and server-side clock sync.