Follow
the notes.
lq-trip remembers your phrases and answers with related notes and harmony. Invite occasional replies or let it become more adventurous.
lq-trip 1.0 / ambient instrument
Make a sound.
Give it somewhere to go.
A tactile ambient instrument for creating evolving soundscapes.
Play notes, transform samples and guide generative music through an expressive hexagonal interface. Explore changing harmonies, drifting textures and musical journeys without a traditional sequencer.
For macOS · standalone instrument
get lq-trip ↗ listen to demos ↓
lq-trip 1.0
Available now.
Get lq-trip 1.0 for macOS, with twelve factory worlds, ten original source sounds and PDF guides.
buy lq-trip ↗ view on Gumroad ↗listen / lq-trip demos
Hear where it goes.
Explore recordings made with lq-trip. Choose a track and take a moment to listen.
guided evolution
Your ideas.
Room to grow.
Play notes, chords and textures. Guided Evolution remembers those ideas and gradually develops them while you keep playing, through two independent but interconnected systems.
Follow
Change
the sound.
Let grain movement, brightness, space and effects drift over minutes. A held chord can become something different without its notes changing.
Guide
the journey.
Couple harmony and texture so they respond to each other, or shape them independently. Set both to zero and nothing evolves on its own.
inside lq-trip / 1.0
An instrument to explore.
Play → Remember → Release → Evolve → Intervene → Capture.
Living Field
Play notes and chords across the hexagonal field with your mouse, trackpad or computer keyboard. Switch between play, grain and orbit layers to explore harmony, recordings and evolving patterns.
Find your way around
Choose harmonic, wicki-hayden, scale-degrees or tonnetz layouts. Pick a root, scale and octave, and highlight the notes in your scale. In tonnetz, major and minor chords are three touching cells.
Granular synthesis
Touch the grain layer to choose a position in a recording, then drag to scrub through it. Explore clouds, fragments, frozen textures and reversed sounds.
Your sounds, or a fresh start
Import WAV, AIFF or FLAC recordings up to ten minutes long. Choose sample, synth or hybrid mode to work with a recording, the synthesizer, or a blend of both.
Release and respond
Play something, then press release to let it keep sounding while lq-trip develops it. Join in, bring it back to the original notes, or let it fade. Undo is there when you need it.
Drone engine
Build sustained sounds and evolving harmonic layers, on their own or blended with a recording.
Four Musical Memories
Capture the sound, harmony, texture and effects of four musical moments. Recall, rename or duplicate them as you play.
Journey
Travel between memories over seconds or minutes, up to an hour. Pause, reverse or steer the transition by hand while you keep playing.
Built-in effects
Tape saturation, wow and flutter; stereo delay with optional tempo sync; shimmer and long-tail reverb. Shape them individually or explore the space macro.
Recording and capture
Record the output as 24-bit WAV, or save the previous 60 seconds after something worth keeping happens—without stopping the music.
Twelve factory worlds
Start with a complete musical environment, from distant light to forgotten transmission, with ten original lowquo source sounds. Worlds open silent and wait for you to play; press return to wake a world's own released notes.
Keep your worlds
Save and reopen your own environments, with autosave, crash recovery and portable export that collects the audio.
Four macro controls
Drift, density, gravity and space shape movement, activity, the pull towards home and the sense of distance.
Completely offline
No account or cloud connection. The instrument runs locally, with no telemetry or analytics. Its evolution follows musical rules, not an online service.
Mac application
A standalone universal app for Apple silicon and Intel Macs, Developer ID signed and notarised by Apple, with audio settings and an in-app guide. A user manual and getting-started guide are included in the release package.
one field / three ways to play
Notes. Grains. Possibilities.
guided evolution
Change the harmony.
Change the texture.
Let related notes emerge from what you play, let the sound drift, or couple the two. You choose how much movement to invite.
memories + journey
Keep a moment.
Travel to another.
Capture four musical memories and move between them over time. Keep playing while the journey unfolds.
under the surface
Shape the whole sound.
Drone, grains, tape colour, delay, shimmer and reverb, together in the engine view.
twelve factory worlds
Somewhere to start.
Somewhere else to end up.
Open a world, play into it and take it in your own direction. All factory source sounds are original lowquo creations.
stay in the loop
Hear what
comes next.
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