EventFieldAudio
DriftTune
A microtonal instrument that sweeps between tuning systems.
Western music has worked from the same twelve equal-tempered pitches for most of two centuries. DriftTune treats tuning as something you play: a parameter that moves while the music is running.
It runs a loop — bass, lead, an eight-lane drum machine and a resonant acid voice — and slides the entire tuning system out from underneath it. Equal temperament into 19-tone, into just intonation, into 53-tone. The sequence of notes never changes; what those notes are tuned to does. Intervals stretch and contract, chords move between tempered and pure, and the music shifts character without a single note moving.
Eighteen systems, morphed continuously by a stochastic scheduler you control — dwell time, transit time, variance, and whether it drifts toward neighbouring tunings or lurches to distant ones.
- 18 tuning systems15/17/19/22/24/31/53-TET, 5- and 7-limit just intonation, Pythagorean, quarter-comma meantone, Werckmeister III, Kirnberger III, harmonic series, plus custom cents and Scala .scl import
- Continuous morphingSustaining notes bend through the change rather than retriggering
- Loop lockThe phrase repeats note for note, so the tuning is the only variable you are hearing
- Probability gridsCells hold likelihoods rather than fixed notes, with independent pattern lengths per part for polymetre
- Full synthesisThree Minimoog-architecture subtractive voices and a drum engine whose kick, tom and acid lane stay tuned to the drift
- 41 scalesModes of the major, melodic minor and harmonic minor scales, plus twenty exotic and symmetrical sets
- MIDI in and outPlay it from a controller; export Type 1 MIDI whose pitch bends track the drift on every held note
- No installationOne self-contained HTML file. Runs in the browser, works offline, nothing to sign up for
DriftTune v1.0 · EventFieldAudio · © 2026 James Richmond. Web MIDI input requires a Chromium-based browser; everything else works everywhere.