Music

A studio for beats and bass lines for Windows: drum machines, acid synth, piano and brass, as a standalone application or as a plugin.

In preparationCreate an account

Music installs on your device (Windows) and opens with your Prophetix account, the same one as for the web applications.

Music stacks up to eight machines in a single project: an acid bass synth, two drum machines (one soft, one hard), a piano, woodwinds, brass, third-party VST3 instruments and SoundFont sound banks. Each machine has its own sequencer, from one to sixty-four steps, its own speed, effects chain, volume and pan.

An echo, a reverb and a mix compressor round out the sound. Patterns are played on a MIDI keyboard, written in a tracker, assembled into a song, and rendered offline to WAV or MP3.

One codebase gives three forms: a standalone application, a VST3 plugin and a CLAP plugin, usable in commercial music software. Music has no web version. It is not yet offered as a subscription, and export requires a valid license.

Music is in preparation. It will join the Prophetix subscription catalogue when it is released.

Every feature of Music

64 features in 11 areas

Machines and sequencer

Stacks up to eight machines in a single project, which can be reordered and collapsed.
Gives each machine its own sequencer of 1 to 64 steps, with polymeter between machines.
Sets the speed of each machine from ÷4 to ×4 of the song tempo.
Sets the volume and pan of each machine, with mute and solo.
Adds a machine from the left-hand column, which also shows a preview of each machine and lets you open only the active machine.
Transposes a machine's playback from −4 to +4 octaves on the transpose keyboard, without touching the notes of the pattern.

Core sounds

Plays acid bass lines: oscillator with five waveforms, resonant filter, envelope, accent and slides.
Drives a soft drum machine and a hard drum machine, each with its own bass drum, snare, toms, hi-hat, cymbal and percussion voices.
Sets the level, tuning and length of each drum voice, with brightness and accent.
Plays a concert piano, an electric piano and a harpsichord.
Plays woodwinds (flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, saxophone) in legato monophonic mode.
Plays brass (trumpet, trombone, horn, tuba) with vibrato and pitch rise.

Tracker

Writes patterns in a grid of 1 to 64 rows on 4, 8, 12 or 16 tracks, with note, instrument, volume and effect in hexadecimal.
Provides 16 instruments per tracker: a rack machine, a built-in synth or a sample.
Loads external sounds in WAV, MP3, FLAC, OGG, AIFF or M4A format, looped or not, with their base pitch.
Drags a sound from Explorer onto a track or an instrument to assign it.
Shows an oscilloscope for each track, which a click mutes or restores.
Enters notes on the computer keyboard, with AZERTY or QWERTY layout detection.

Effects and mixing

Chains up to eight effects per machine: distortion (soft, clipping, fold, fuzz, bitcrush), resonant filter, three-band equalizer with its curve, compressor.
Collapses, bypasses, moves, removes and copies each effect; copies a whole chain from one machine to another.
Sends each machine to a stereo echo synced to the tempo, with repeats, tone and ping-pong.
Sends each machine to an adjustable reverb: size, treble damping, width and return.
Compresses the final mix and adds up to eight VST3 effects on the mix.
Keeps the echo and reverb tails after playback stops.

Patterns and song

Stores 32 patterns per machine, in banks A to D of 1 to 8, with copy and paste between patterns and between machines.
Chains patterns at the end of the current pattern; the pattern can be automated from the host.
Displays the grid in pages of 16 steps and doubles a pattern by copying its sequence.
Composes the song in the Song tab: one column per machine, one row per bar, 128 bars.
Places, paints, erases and picks up patterns with a click or a drag, and sets a loop on the ruler.
Plays the arrangement in Song mode, or shows machines and song side by side.

Third-party instruments and sound banks

Hosts third-party VST3 instruments and effects, in the standalone application as well as in a host program.
Scans for installed plugins, without a faulty plugin reaching Music, and keeps the list.
Opens a plugin's editing window and saves its state with the project.
Loads SoundFont (.sf2) sound banks for piano, woodwinds and brass, and selects the preset you want.
Finds a project's plugin on another computer if it is installed there.

MIDI and host programs

Plays the machines from a MIDI keyboard: channel n plays machine n.
Sends each step played out as MIDI to drive another instrument.
Provides a separate output for each machine, in addition to the stereo mix.
Follows the tempo and position of the host, or keeps its own internal clock.
Exposes the settings as host parameters, which can be automated and are saved with the project.

Projects, demos and export

Starts on an empty project and offers three demos: a basic rack, a funk song at 112 BPM and a tracker example.
Opens, saves and saves as a .pxgroove project that contains settings, patterns, song, tracker, instruments and samples.
Copies the sounds used into the project folder, without overwriting a different file of the same name.
Opens a project dropped into the window by drag and drop.
Exports the song or patterns offline as 16- or 24-bit WAV, or as MP3 at 128, 192 or 320 kbit/s, with the mix, the effects and the tail.
Clears notes, song, instruments or settings selectively, after confirmation.

Interface and settings

Sets the sound card, the sample rate, the buffer size and the MIDI input and output ports.
Chooses the folders for projects, sounds, exports and VST3 plugins.
Zooms the interface from 50 to 400%, and respects the Windows display scale up to 500%.
Switches to full screen with F11, resizes the window and restores size, position and view at launch.
Explains the item under the pointer in the status bar.
Arranges the machines in columns on a large screen.

Standalone application and plugins

Exists as a Windows standalone application, a VST3 plugin and a CLAP plugin, built from the same code.
Runs on x64 and ARM64 PCs.
Checks for updates at startup, in the application as well as in the plugin, and displays a banner when a newer version exists.
Requires signing in to the Prophetix account and a valid license, including two-factor authentication if your account requires it.
Shares the session with the other Prophetix applications already signed in on the computer.

Good to know

Music has no web version and is not yet offered as a subscription.
Export requires a valid license; without a valid license, Music stays silent.
A third-party VST3 plugin that crashes brings down Music and its host: they run in the same process.
Third-party plugins have no latency compensation, and only their main stereo buses are connected.
A process loads only plugins of its own architecture: on an ARM PC, most commercial plugins require the x64 version of Music.
After each installation or update, the application must be launched once so that host programs see the new plugins.
Music is not yet published in the Microsoft Store, and its trial installer uses a development certificate.