Sigilgraph: A Modular synth canvas and DAW made with Godot.
I have wanted to share a non-game app that I've been working on for a while. My background is in systems programming, but I am also an amateur music producer. This app is a response to my own pain points with other DAWs and modular synths. I have used Ableton, Reason, Fruity Loops, Cakewalk, and even Max/MSP back in the day, but each of them has a considerable learning curve or feels disconnected from certain forms of music.
Most DAWs give you timelines and a grid to place your clips, but this tends to force you into making music that sounds block-like and square.
I wanted to explore more organic musical possibilities for ambient, electronic, and generative music. Most artists who explore that realm end up building Euroracks or very complex custom software in PureData or Max/MSP, which introduces a considerable distance between the idea and the execution. I also needed a composer companion: an app where I could roll out a simple arpeggio in a scale and start jamming alongside it.
I started up writing my own sound processing modules in standalone C# as a custom synth engine library. I built it from scratch because I wanted it to be portable, cross-platform, and embeddable. To dogfood the library, I decided to embed it in a Godot app. Little by little, I built devices and modules until I had something I could share with others. I got carried away and ended up building a programmatic DAW in C# with a Godot UI.
I did this for myself, to make the music I have in mind. I also have some game ideas in my backlog, and this app was a step in the right direction for making music for those future projects, while getting to know the game engine I plan to use for them.
Links & Info:
- Steam (Coming Soon): https://store.steampowered.com/app/4765870/Sigilgraph_Audioworkbench/
- Website http://sigilaud.io