Tincture Synth

TINCTURE is an expressive instrument for iPad — a field of wormholes (tiny, playable black holes) scattered through a living 4D swarm, over a warm, ever-shifting drone. Pluck them, bow them, and watch the light bend and fall into each one. Less a synthesizer, more a small universe you play with your hands.

Built for the sound-obsessed.

WORMHOLES YOU PLAY

Every note is a wormhole — a little black hole glowing its own colour, pulling the surrounding swarm in, gravitationally, in 4D. Pluck one and it flares; bow another and it sings. Crisp event-horizon edges, a coloured core swirling inside — unmistakable, and beautiful. Shuffle the whole field anytime.

HOLD A BOW — IT COMPOSES ITSELF

Bow one wormhole and don't let go. After a few seconds it collapses into a singularity that pulls every other wormhole toward it — and an endless, self-generating sequence ignites across the field, perfectly locked to tempo. Move your finger to shape it live: up/down for density, left/right for variation, press harder for velocity. Lift off and it keeps playing.

NOVA — SPEAK A SOUND INTO BEING

Tell NOVA what you hear — "a glassy frozen choir with a long tail" — and it designs the whole instrument around your words. No menus. No knobs. Just intention, answered. Runs entirely on-device; nothing you type ever leaves your iPad.*

EXPRESSIVE TO THE FINGERTIP — MPE

Bring an MPE controller and every wormhole bends, slides and swells on its own. Press deeper, glide sideways, lift away — the most expressive way there is to play it.**

A DRONE THAT BREATHES

Underneath everything, a warm chord glows and slowly drifts. Whatever you play lands inside the harmony — nothing can sound wrong.

MOVEMENT, MADE VISIBLE

Open the modulation matrix and wire slow tides and breathing waves to anything — a wormhole's pitch, the drone's colour, the light in the field. Free-running, or locked to your tempo.

THE FULL RACK

Echo, reverb, chorus, drive, motion, compression — every dial that shapes the body, the air and the shimmer. Plus a library of hand-made sounds to open and make your own.

LINK HOST — PLAY IN TIME, EVERYWHERE

Run Tincture as an AUv3 in your Mac DAW, hit Link Host, and your iPad follows the DAW's transport — tempo, play, stop — in real time over Wi-Fi. Phase-locked and zero-lag, on any DAW, with nothing to set up. (Host = the macOS AUv3 · Client = the iPad standalone.)

STANDALONE & AUv3

Play it on its own, or load it as an AUv3 instrument inside your favourite host. Sends and receives MIDI; every parameter is automatable from your DAW.

* NOVA runs on-device and needs a recent iPad with on-device AI (iPadOS 26 or later). Everything else works everywhere.

** Requires an MPE-compatible controller (ROLI Seaboard, LinnStrument, an MPE keyboard…).

Crafted by Mike Gazzaruso.

What's New (v1.0)

1.0 — the first release of Tincture. A playable field of wormholes, a self-generating sequencer you launch by holding a bow, NOVA on-device sound design, full MPE, the modulation matrix, the FX rack, and Link Host. Welcome in.