Resonance

An instrument for playing drones on the Playdate.

Use Headphones

You really need to hook up the Playdate to an external speaker or headphones to use Resonance. It's called Resonance for a reason, the Playdate's tiny speaker isn't going to like a few sine waves interacting.

Controls

Main Menu

The Playdate menu button will show a 'patches' menu. From here you can load in various presets, or save/load/delete your own patches.

Global Menu

A global menu is available by holding down B then pressing A - it's a simple gesture that allows a menu to be displayed without invoking the Playdate's main menu and system sound.  From the global menu you can set the waveform of all the note nodes, randomise a patch and apply effects (delay and a low pass filter) and add new note and player nodes.

Player Nodes

Tapping A will step through the 'player nodes'. Player nodes cause note nodes to emit a sound when they get close, you can manually move player nodes around note nodes to use Resonance as an instrument. 

Turning the crank will change how far a player node influences note nodes.

Long-pressing A will bring up a context menu where you can set 'orbits' and 'oscillators'. An orbit is just a circle path, an oscillator is a straight line, with these you can create simple sequences.

Note Nodes

Tapping B steps through the 'note nodes' selecting each in turn. When selected you can use the D-pad to move a node. Long-pressing B shows a context menu that lets you edit the waveform for a node individually, or remove it from the patch. The crank will change the midi note of a selected note node.

Waveforms

As well as the usual sine, triangle, saw, and square waveforms there are three Pocket Operator synth sounds. These three synths make use of the in-built accelerometer to change aspects of the sounds (turn the accelerometer on in the popup menu: hold (B) then press (A)) - try them out and wave the Playdate around...

Effects

There's a full suite of effect in the popup menu. The low pass is great when the Playdate is connected to an external speaker. Be careful with the delay when used with the overdrive... 

Serial Interface

You can control Resonance from a web browser using the page at: https://orllewin.uk/resonance/ Connect your Playdate to your computer via USB (from 1.0.6 onwards), open the page in Chrome, toggle the Playdate screen on and off again (button at the top of the device) then click Request USB Access.

Open Source

Resonance is Open Source, if you know Lua and want to contribute the repository is at: https://github.com/orllewin/resonance