Ephemera · Physical string synthesizer

STRANDS

one mode tower draws the ribbon and makes the sound

Pluck a ribbon. Let a loop carry the vibration. A visible string and the sound you hear share one physical model, so changing the motion changes the voice. Explore the deeper laws when you want to go further.

Launch Strands Verify the physics

free in browserWebGPU visual pathCPU fallback

Find your part

Physical string synthesizer

Plucked ribbons, ringing loops, and timbres made from a visible string model.

Free in browserPart of Studio

The visual engine uses WebGPU when available, with a CPU fallback.

Your first phrase

Open the instrument and start with an open-ribbon preset.
Strike a string and follow the motion you hear.
Try a closed loop to change the way the vibration travels.

Play Strands

The hero is a visual prelude. Open the instrument to play its sound.

Open ribbonstanding wave

The idea

The visible string is the audible string.

Strands treats a voice as a small tower of modes. The same GPU pass advances the phases, fills the audio ring, and writes the displacement used by the ribbon. The marketing claim is deliberately plain: the picture is not a decoration for the sound. It is the sound's state.

The board

Open strings bow. Closed strings travel.

The surface switches between fretboard-like ribbons and loop cells. Both come from the same mode bank, so visual movement stays tied to the audio model.

Base camps

Load a law, then play it.

The instrument ships with presets that reduce the string model into familiar musical cases and sister-instrument limits.

base camps

Poles · single pole

One mode, GSO on — a single decaying resonant pole. The Poles limit.

base camps

Regge · f0·√n

s=1, a=0, α′=1 — the √n Regge tower of a relativistic string.

base camps

Self-dual · √α′

R = √α′ — the momentum & winding combs coincide (the T-dual mirror snaps shut).

base camps

Gas body

Closed, 32 modes, low decay — a dense quasi-continuous band. The gasman limit.

frontier

Tachyon · howl

GSO off, intercept a → 1 — the bosonic vacuum goes unstable; the fundamental blooms.

instruments

Bowed string

A sustained bowed string — gentle stretch, warm rolloff, medium decay.

How it works

Physics first, synth second.

Strands is built around a few inspectable laws rather than hidden oscillator tricks.

Strike a voice

Keyboard notes allocate string voices. Each voice owns a compact mode tower and a physical template.

Advance the tower

The producer advances phase state, damping, compactification, and boundary law in one scheduled pass.

Hear the state

Audio drains from the same model that writes ribbon displacement, with stereo width and a shared room tail.

Features

A playable string model, not a skin.

Every major control changes the model underneath the sound and the rendered string.

Open and closed boundaries

Switch between anchored ribbons and closed loops with counter-traveling movers.

Regge stretch

Move from harmonic series toward sqrt(n) towers without leaving the instrument.

Compactification

Radius and winding controls expose the T-dual mirror as a playable timbre shift.

Stereo loops

Closed strings spread into decorrelated left/right movers while open strings stay centered.

Sister limits

Reduce to Poles-like single-pole decay or gas-like dense bodies from the same template.

Proof battery

A browser page recomputes the laws and can deliberately fail when tampered.

Falsifiable

The proof page checks the laws live.

Regge towers, harmonic reductions, T-duality, the self-dual fixed point, GSO vacuum behavior, and sister-instrument reductions are recomputed in the browser and checked against external anchors.

Open verification

Regge tower checked

T-dual fixed point checked

GSO tachyon gate checked

Poles reduction checked

Gas body limit checked

Try it first, own it later

Three doors into the same string.

The browser version is the main instrument. The desktop and bundle paths are for offline ownership and export-heavy workflows.

Free Web

The playable Strands surface in your browser. Strike, switch boundary conditions, load base camps, and verify the math.

Launch in browser

Desktop

$19.99

Native app packaging, offline use, save/load workflows, audio export, and the wider Ephemera instrument bundle path.

See Ephemera

Research artifact

Included

The verification surface and headless test route remain open, so the model can be checked outside the marketing page.

Verify Strands

FAQ

What people ask first.

Short answers before the instrument asks for a GPU, an audio gesture, or a proof run.

Do I need to know string theory?

No. Launch it, strike notes, switch boundaries, and listen. The Regge, T-dual, and GSO labels are there because the model is real, not because you need the vocabulary to play.

What makes Strands different from a normal synth?

A normal synth usually hides oscillators behind a visual skin. Strands makes the visual string and the audible waveform share the same mode tower, so changing the model changes both.

Does it require WebGPU?

The primary Strands path uses WebGPU for the mode-bank visual/audio producer. The app also has a CPU fallback path so the surface can still load when the GPU route is unavailable.

Why does sound need a tap or click first?

Browsers require a user gesture before starting audio. The launch page waits for that gesture, then opens the audio graph and starts draining the string producer.

What are open and closed strings here?

Open strings render as anchored ribbons with standing-wave motion. Closed strings render as loops with counter-traveling movers, which also changes how stereo width behaves.

What does the verification page prove?

It recomputes the laws Strands claims to sound: harmonic and Regge towers, T-duality, the self-dual fixed point, GSO vacuum behavior, and reductions toward Poles and gas-like bodies.

Is Strands free?

The browser instrument and verification page run free in your browser. No account, no install. The native desktop build is a one-time $19.99 (and it's included if you own Ephemera Premium), adding offline use, save/load workflows, and audio export.

How does it relate to Poles and Gasman?

Strands contains simplified limits that resemble both: one-mode decays approach the Poles idea, while dense closed-string bodies approach the gas-like texture space.

Strike the string model.

Open the instrument, load a base camp, and hear the same state that bends across the screen.

Launch Strands