dew
A lightweight desktop DAW with an opinionated workflow.
A channel rack, a piano roll, a playlist and a mixer, and one path from an oscillator through its effect chain to a mixer insert and out the master. Five tabs, ten effects already in the box, and nothing to scan or install before the first note.
Working prototype, on macOS, Windows and Linux.
The same screens every session
dew has five tabs and one instrument panel. There are no floating windows, no layouts to arrange and no plugin scan at startup, so the controls are where they were the last time and the second session works like the first.
Five tabs, fixed
Five tabs and one instrument panel, in the same places every time. A channel row carries its own volume, pan and on/off; a mixer strip carries its own chain. No modes, no floating windows to lose.
One signal path
Three oscillators into an amp envelope, into the channel's effect chain, into a mixer insert, into the master. Every knob on that path is automatable from its own right-click menu.
Already in the box
Ten effects, forty factory presets, wavetables, an FM matrix, SoundFont playback and a renderer. Two dependencies in the whole build, no plugin format, and nothing to install per sound.
What is in it
Six groups: the sound, writing notes, arranging, mixing, working with files and devices, and the two other ways to write a song.
Sound
Three oscillators on every channel, and everything that drives them.
Writing notes
Two views of the same notes, and the metre they sit in.
Arranging
Patterns as clips on a timeline, and curves that move things while it plays.
Mixing
Inserts, effect chains, and what you can see of the signal.
Working with it
Getting audio in, getting a file out, and coming back to where you were.
Two other ways to write a song
The score language, and the MCP server an agent connects to.
Open source
Every line is on GitHub under the AGPLv3 — the application, the audio engine, the score compiler, the tests and this site. Free to use for any purpose, with no warranty of any kind.