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EphemeraMURMUR
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A sister instrument to Ephemera

MURMUR

cohesion → harmony · turns → attack · density → texture

Murmur lets you place elements that influence the natural pattern of a flock of birds. Fly them through scenes that remind you they still make music, too.

Launch the flock →

Free in browser · no account needed

A flock as a chord.

collective shape → harmony

Murmur is a browser instrument made from many tiny sound agents. Their collective shape becomes harmony. Their turns become attacks. Their density becomes texture.

You steer the flock with seeds: wells, eddies, pulses, strips, ridges, and hush zones. A recipe can feel like dawn chorus, starling swirl, evening folk, pond at dusk, a full murmuration, or thunderhead.

Behind everything, the flock never stops moving - harmony you can watch organize itself.

The board

Three rules make one shape. The shape is the chord.

cohesion + separation + alignment → harmony

No agent knows the chord. Each follows three local rules, and the murmuration they make together is the music - its form, its turns, its density all heard.

A murmuration steered by three rulesA flock of birds sweeps from lower-left to upper-right. Three annotations name the local rules each agent follows: cohesion steers it toward the centre of its neighbours, separation keeps a little space, and alignment matches their heading. Together the three rules make the single shape you hear as a chord.cohesionsteer to the centreseparationhold a little spacealignmentmatch neighbours
  • cohesion - steer toward the centre
  • separation - hold a little space
  • alignment - match your neighbours

The seeds you plant

Wellgather a chord
Eddyspin an arp
Pulsefire a beat
Stripscroll changes
Ridgeturn strays back
Husha place to land silent

How it works

Recipe, seed, species.

01

Choose a recipe

recipe → a whole sky

Start from Dawn Chorus, Starling Swirl, Evening Folk, Pond at Dusk, Murmuration, or Thunderhead. Each loads a full canvas of seeds, tuned and ready.

02

Plant seeds

seed → a force, not a note

Wells, eddies, pulses, ridges, strips, and hush zones become musical forces inside the canvas. The flock answers, and its shape is the chord.

03

Tune the species

Lark · Starling · Crow → timbre

Blend Lark, Starling, and Crow, then shape tone, noise, warmth, width, reverb, delay, and attack until the murmuration sounds like yours.

The seed grammar

Six forces. One field.

you place conditions · the birds describe them

You don't write notes. You plant forces and let the murmuration organize. Each seed bends the flock a different way - and the bend is the music.

Well

well → chord anchor

Pulls birds in. Every bird inside sings the same chord, so a Well is a held harmony you place on the field. Drop two and they pair into an orbit.

Eddy

eddy → arpeggiator

Swirls the birds. Their spin runs an arp cursor through the voicing - faster rotation, faster run. A turn in the flock becomes a flourish in the line.

Pulse

pulse → beat stamp

A stamp on the tempo grid. Birds near it fire chord-tone hits on the beat, so a Pulse is the flock's rhythm section - accents you scatter, not program.

Strip

strip → progression lane

A band that holds or scrolls a chord progression. Fly the flock across it and the harmony moves with them - a timeline you cross instead of a grid you fill.

Ridge

ridge → tension colour

Pushes birds out. Squeezed at the margin, they add the upper colour tones - the 9th, the 13th - so a Ridge is how you bend a chord without renaming it.

Hush

hush → mute zone

A pocket of silence. Any voice inside its radius drops out, so a Hush is the rest you carve into a texture - space the flock flies through without singing.

What the flock becomes.

Behind the seeds, a full instrument: voices to wear, timbres to load, loops to lock, and MIDI to carry it anywhere.

Species

lark · starling · crow

Three voices the flock can wear - bright, neutral, dark. The dial blends them and tints the page.

Presets

six timbres

Glass Choir, Reed Drone, Breath Pad, Organ Bloom, Bell Air, Dark Throat - instant character for the bank.

Loops

tempo-lock

Lock the flock to a tempo and its motion becomes a repeating phrase you can layer and bounce.

MIDI

in · out

Send the flock's voicings out as live MIDI, or drive the seeds from a controller and play the field live.

Recipes

Pick a sky.

Each is a real Murmur composition - a field of seeds with its own weather. Open one in the instrument to lean the flock into it and keep shaping.

Dawn Chorus

free-time · add9

A held major chord with no tempo - birds chatter a warm morning over a single low Well.

Open →

Starling Swirl

74 bpm · paired orbit

Two Wells orbit a central Eddy, swinging the chord gently side to side as the flock whirls through.

Open →

Evening Folk

86 bpm · folk round

A scrolling folk progression under a gentle eighth-note pulse - walking, not hammering.

Open →

Pond at Dusk

free-time · sus2

A wide, hollow sus2 in Dorian with a hush corner to land silent - reflective, almost meditative.

Open →

Murmuration

70 bpm · three wells

Three Wells across the field, each a different chord tone - harmony by flight path, not by grid.

Open →

Thunderhead

94 bpm · phrygian

A dark Phrygian Well and a bare-fifth Pulse with a driving ridge - Murmur's other, stormier face.

Open →

Every recipe is just a handful of seeds. Open one and move them.

“A flock is a chord; its turns, an attack.”

The Murmur idea

Try it first, own it later

One flock, three doors.

Free Web

$0

The full flock in your browser. Plant seeds, shape the murmuration, audition, and share by link. No install, no account.

Launch in browser →

Desktop

$19.99

Native app. Offline. Save and load flocks, audio + MIDI export, VST3 hosting in your DAW, and lifetime updates.

Get the desktop app →

Ephemera Bundle

Included

Murmur ships free with Ephemera Premium and flies in 3D inside Dimensional too.

See Ephemera →

One-time purchase · no subscriptions, ever · free forever in the browser

FAQ

Questions, answered.

No. You plant seeds and the flock sings. The chords, modes, and voicings are chosen for you. Drop a Well and the birds inside it hold a chord; that's the whole loop. The harmony names are there if you want them, never required.

Plant your first seed.

plant · flock · listen

Free in your browser, no account. Drop a Well, an Eddy, a Pulse, and let the murmuration find the chord. Then send the flock onward when it needs a larger sky.

Launch the flock →