Knobs

Drag up or down. Hold Shift for fine moves. Scroll the mouse wheel over a knob for single steps. Double-click to return to the patch's starting value.

Keys

Click or drag across the keys; click lower on a key to play it harder. On your computer keyboard, A to K is the white keys from C, W E T Y U the black keys. Z and X move an octave.

MIDI

Plug in a MIDI keyboard and it plays at once. Notes, velocity, the pitch and mod wheels, sustain, program change and the patch's CC numbers all work, and Patrick follows MIDI clock.

Sounds

Pick a sound in the library and it loads like a cartridge. Save keeps your edits in the next free user slot (U01 to U16). Save state keeps everything, blocks and effects included, for the next time you open Patrick. Voices (Mono, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8) changes how many notes the sound plays at once, so a mono lead can become a pad while you browse. Keep arp holds on to the arp, chord and tempo you have while you change sounds. All off (or Esc) stops everything at once, echoes and ringing strings included. ✦ Stars in the System plate turns the star-filter twinkles on or off.

Super

The Super page adds Star, a fourth oscillator (Super saws, Sub, Wave, Vox, FM), hard sync, ring, cross FM and a wavefolder. Every sound has two mod wheel moves, set there and shown on the library card. The library's Super tab holds the sounds built on it, Models the physical models, and MJ twenty signature sounds from the Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad records (the Beat It gong, the Thriller ARP bass and Casio frog, the Billie Jean CS-80 chords, a Hammond for Bad and more).

Model

Physical models beside the oscillators: a grand piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, clavinet, nylon / steel / electric guitar, finger and pick bass, harp, sitar, koto, marimba, vibes, kalimba, bells, a gong and a bowed string. Engine (top right): Layer plays the oscillators and the model together, Model the model alone, Analog the oscillators alone, and Excite lets the oscillators play the model instead of sounding: the saw bows the string, a square makes it hollow, noise blows across it, and it rings for as long as you hold the key (Excite sets how hard). Velocity is the hammer or the pluck: soft is warm, hard is bright. Into filter sends the model through the synth's filter and contours for hybrids. The Velocity plate makes hard notes speak quicker (Timing), grittier (Bite) and start off pitch (Scoop). MPE: per-note bend, pressure and timbre from an MPE controller (channel 1 master, 2 to 16 one note each), or slide a held on-screen key with Keys bend on.

Seq

Piano roll (the default): click to draw a note, drag right as you draw to set its length. Drag a note to move it, its right edge to resize it, double-click to delete. "Draws" stamps a single note, a chord in the patch's key (Triad, 7th), or a shape (Power, Octave, Sus4, Add9). Select drags a box; Shift-click adds to it. The wheel scrolls octaves (drag the keyboard too), Shift-wheel scrolls in time, Ctrl-wheel zooms. Under the roll: Velocity bars and each note's own MPE Bend, Pressure and Timbre curves, drawn across the note. Patterns ▾ opens the library: four-part chorales, close harmony in the Four Freshmen manner (sevenths tuned with MPE), trance minor chords, rhythms (tresillo, clave, Euclidean) and melodies (arch, gap-fill, sequence, call and response), each moved to the patch's key. Patterns, Blocks and the arpeggiator never change the sound: they play whatever is loaded. With the arp on, the roll and the steps play into it like hands on the keys, so a held chord becomes an arpeggio. Rec writes what you play while it runs. Keys: Delete, arrows (Shift: octave), Ctrl Z / Shift Z, Ctrl A, Ctrl D duplicates.

Steps: sixteen steps, each with its own velocity, gate, chance, ratchet and slide, and three MPE lanes that move only that step's note: Bend (the note bends across its step), Pressure (it swells) and Timbre. A slide bends into the next step instead of striking again. Started while the Blocks loop runs, it waits for the next beat.

Sing

Voices made by physical modelling, no samples: vocal folds (an LF glottal pulse with breath, rasp, jitter and vibrato) and a 44-section tube from the larynx to the lips, shaped by the vowel and by each singer's face and body (age, man to woman, height, neck, jaw, lips, nose). Solo sings one person, legato if you like; Choir gives each note to the next singer; Tutti sings the whole choir on one key, each in their own octave, and shares a chord out low singers to low notes (up to 64). Eight styles, from Classical (the singer's formant) to Pansori. Drag the cross on the vowel chart, or let the vowel move: a wave, an envelope from point 1, steps in time, a path through 1-2-3-4, or a new vowel on every note. Nasal opens the nose; past three quarters the lips close into a hum. The singers stand on a stage in a modelled room heard through two microphones: drag the choir nearer or further, its edge wider, a microphone sideways, or roll the dice. Watch the lips, a face, a 3D face or the whole choir. MPE: pressure is breath and push, timbre moves the vowel. The voices run through the pedals like the other engines, so a wah or the Schaffer works on a choir. The library's Voices tab has 36 presets.

Pedals

Three pedals after all the engines (synth, models and Sing) and in front of the master. Schaffer is after the Schaffer-Vega wireless behind Angus Young's tone: low-mid push, a compander that never quite cancels, op-amp harmonics and a hot output, with an optional plexi and 4×12. Strings are sympathetic strings that ring when the music contains their notes (tuned to the chords, the key, a sitar's tarafs, a drone, a harp or a guitar). Synth Wah is after DigiTech's Bass Synth Wah: envelope filters, a square wave from your note's pitch, Synth Talk vowels, an octave down and an auto-wah. The Rigs plate sets them at once, and under it the signal path: tap ⇄ to swap two pedals (wah into Schaffer for a cocked-wah squeal, Schaffer into wah for a synth wah that tracks a squashed signal, strings first or last). Save state keeps it all.

Blocks

Four bars of chords, each split into 1, 2 or 4. Click the progression's name to open the book: 90 progressions from doo-wop and Pachelbel to the 12-bar blues, the Dark Side and a haunted house. Long ones page through the four blocks as they play. Pick a rhythm; many push the next chord in early, and every fourth bar plays a fill. The Hands rhythms are a pianist: a melody on top, four-note voicings that move as little as they can, a left hand that rolls, strides or walks, every finger with its own touch. Octave moves the chords up or down.

Shortcuts

1 to 9 the pages in signal order: Patrick (the sounds), Seq and Play (what plays them: the sequencer and roll, then Blocks and the arp), Voice, Super, Life, Model and Sing (the engines), Pedals. Space arp on or off, or pause blocks. Esc all notes off. H howl. R record to a WAV file.