Getting Started

Welcome. This manual explains everything in Kiwisynth. If you are new to synthesizers, start here. If you are not, this page still shows where things are.

What Kiwisynth is

Kiwisynth is a software instrument. It makes sound, and you play it from a keyboard or from notes drawn in your music software. It runs inside a host program, a DAW, as a VST3 or CLAP plugin on both Windows and Linux. The Linux page covers what that platform needs.

A synthesizer builds sound from scratch rather than playing back recordings. It starts with raw waveforms, shapes their tone with a filter, and gives them a beginning and an end with an envelope. Everything in this manual is a step in that chain.

Two ways to use it

Kiwisynth has two faces, and you can switch between them at any time.

Simple Mode is the easier way in. You shape sound by feel, without needing to know what a filter or an envelope is. If you are new, begin there. It has its own page in this manual.

The full editor shows the whole instrument: every oscillator, filter, envelope and effect, laid out on a set of tabs. Most of this manual describes the full editor.

The tabs

The full editor is organised into tabs.

• Oscillators. Where the raw sound is made.
• Filter and Amp. Where the tone is shaped, and where the note is given its shape in time.
• Modulation. Where you add movement.
• Matrix. A read-only map of all the movement in the patch.
• Effects. Reverb, delay, chorus and more, and the arpeggiator.

The bar along the bottom

Two strips stay visible on every tab. The patch timeline runs across the top of them: a line of the note with snapshots you place to morph the whole patch over a single note, described in its own chapter. Below it sits the preset name with arrows to step through presets, a save button, the master volume, a mod wheel you can move with the mouse, and a small meter showing how hard the instrument is working.

Your first sound

Load a preset from the bar at the bottom, or use the arrows to move through them. Play a few notes. To hear a preset without a keyboard, use the audition bar, described later in this manual. From there, open any tab and start turning controls. Nothing you do can damage a preset. To get back to where you started, load it again.