Free
Mey IVY
Sixteen-voice Polysynth.
Free. First release, no account.
315 downloads
A synthesiser and a sequencer that are one instrument, not two bolted together. Eight tracks, each with a complete sound of its own, and every step able to carry four notes, a condition, a roll and up to forty-eight parameter locks.
Get the highlights.
What it is
One window. Eight tracks.
A track owns a complete sound, so eight tracks are eight instruments sharing one set of voices, one reverb and one EQ, the way eight channels share a desk. Load a kit and a kick, a clap, a hat, a bass and a lead arrive already playing.
One screen with a fixed shape: eight cells lettered A to H, with the same eight controls as knobs underneath. Nothing moves when you change page.
Oscillators
Four oscillators, two syncable pairs.
Eight waveforms each, four of them wavetables. The saw is modelled the way a divide-down oscillator builds one, a staircase of 256 steps, which is what puts the familiar grain on low notes. Each oscillator takes phase modulation from a source you choose, itself included.
Every oscillator answers only to the stretch of keyboard you give it, so one patch can be a whole kit: a kick in the bottom octave, a hat at the top.
Sampler
A sample is a source like any other.
The sampler arrives before the filters, and everything downstream treats it as it treats an oscillator. BW takes the bandwidth down for the grain of an older machine.
KEY MAP builds a kit by hand, one file per stretch of the keyboard, and ZONE VEL lets a soft hit and a hard hit be two different files. The WAVE page holds the root, the loop and the slices.
Filters and envelopes
Two filters, with drive in the loop.
Two filters, four modes each, blended and routed side by side or in series. DRIVE is inside the filter, not after it, which is what makes a resonant low pass bark rather than whistle.
Three four-stage envelopes, one millisecond to ten seconds. The filter and amp envelopes are drawn one above the other, so you see the two shapes against each other.
Modulation
Twelve slots, forty-seven destinations.
Two LFOs, free or synced from a thirty-second to sixteen bars, and a twelve-slot matrix with ten sources. The destinations include the effects: reverb decay and size, delay time and feedback, the EQ. A slow LFO into reverb size is a room that breathes.
The sequencer
Eight tracks, 128 steps each.
Every track sets its own length and resolution, so tracks of sixteen, twelve and seven run against each other. That is polymeter, and it costs nothing here.
Drag across a row and it fills every step you pass but never clears one. Record in GRID, LIVE or STEP, and a new trig takes the last note you played in.
Parameter locks
A value that belongs to one step.
Tap P, click a trig, and turn anything on the panel: that value now belongs to that step alone, for exactly as long as the note. Up to forty-eight per step. It is the difference between a pattern that repeats and a pattern that moves.
Conditions, micro timing, retrig
Sixteen steps that stop sounding like sixteen.
A chance in percent and an Ath of every B rounds decide whether a step plays. Micro timing moves it up to six twenty-fourths of a step. Retrig fires it again at eight rates, with a roll that fades or builds.
RANDOM writes a whole pattern in one press, and each track’s place gives it a job: the first is the pulse, the last ones are sparse and allowed to be strange.
Patterns, banks and mutes
Switch a pattern without landing mid-bar.
A hundred and twenty-eight patterns in eight banks of sixteen. PTN turns the trig row into the slots of the bank, switching when the current pattern comes round. MUTE turns it into eight track switches that act at once. The arrangement is played rather than drawn.
Sounds and effects
Two hundred and thirty-eight to start from.
Nineteen categories, from pads and basses through techno, house, acid and FM to drums. Many are kits with a pattern already written. TO TRK sends the next sound you click to the armed track alone.
After the voices: a chorus, an EQ with drive, a reverb with four rooms, and a dual delay, free or synced, with ping pong.
Tech specs
- Polyphony
- Sixteen voices, shared across all eight tracks
- Oscillators
- Four in two syncable pairs, eight waveforms each
- Sub
- Square or sine, one or two octaves down, with a derived first harmonic
- Sampler
- Key and velocity zones, slices, looping with crossfade, bandwidth
- Filters
- Two: LP 24, BP 12, BP 6, HP 12; parallel or serial; per-filter drive
- Envelopes
- Three, four-stage, 1 ms to 10 s
- Modulation
- Two LFOs, twelve matrix slots, ten sources, forty-seven destinations
- Sequencer
- Eight tracks, up to 128 steps each, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32 per track
- Per step
- Four notes, velocity, length, slide, accent, up to 48 parameter locks
- Conditions
- Chance in percent, every A of B rounds, micro timing in 24ths
- Patterns
- 128 in eight banks of sixteen, switched on the turn
- Effects
- Chorus, EQ with drive, reverb, dual delay, all modulatable
- Presets
- 238 factory sounds in nineteen categories
- Formats
- macOS and Windows: VST3, Audio Unit (macOS), Standalone
- Version
- 0.15.0, free
More is coming.
This is v0.15.0, the first public build of Mey IVY. Feedback is welcome at info@wearemey.com.