PolyNodes is a licensed software product from Sonic LAB.

PolyNodes extracts and analyzes the temporal properties of the input sound and maps them in a 3D space to create a visible geometric structure.

You can watch PolyNodes demos on the Sonic LAB YouTube Channel. I also made an example video.

So what are soft synths doing for me?

I stumbled across Ongaku and Creature from the Id and liked them because they are fully standalone MacOS applications that don’t require any patching, so that all you do is tweak knobs and switches to make sounds. Software synthesizers that imitate modular synths by emulating modules connected with patch cords are of little interest to me. I have lots of physical modules to patch and much prefer the hands-on approach to patching.

PolyNodes takes this no patching concept and greatly expands it. Starting with a short sound sample, usually 10 seconds or less, PolyNodes uses the “attack onsets” at three levels of granularity and builds a three dimensional graph having nodes and edges. Nodes represent attack onsets, while the edges represent paths along which synthesizer agents travel to produces sounds. I can’t do better than the user manual, which you can ask for.

I’m just getting started using PolyNodes. I’m making samples by taking snippets of my own recordings over the years. In the future I will be posting audio generated by PolyNodes. In this new category Software Synths.

PolyNodes Full Manual