88 Synthwave: Retro Synth

88 Synthwave writes complete synthwave tracks and plays them on its own synths.

Press write and you get the whole track: an intro, verses, builds with a riser

and a snare roll, choruses with the hook lifted over a pumping mix, a breakdown,

solo or bridge in the middle, a final chorus an octave up, and an ending. That

can be the arp left running, a fade, or one hit and silence.

Everything is synthesized, so there is nothing to download. An analog-style

polysynth with up to five detuned oscillators per voice, where no two notes are

quite in tune, plays the pads, saw leads, arps and basses. A four-operator FM

engine plays the bells, electric piano, brass and sax. Four classic drum

machines sit behind a gated-room reverb and a sidechain pump.

The tracks come from chaos maths. A Lorenz attractor draws the melody and the

hook's rhythm, and a logistic map picks which steps the arpeggiator plays and

where the ghost notes fall. Chaos on its own is noise, so a small model filters

it: it is rewarded for consonant intervals and learns as it writes. The

CHAOS / TASTE slider decides how much say each one gets.

There are eleven styles, and each one sets its own scale, drum machine, rack and

effects: Outrun, Night Drive, Darksynth, Dreamwave, Disco, Synthpop, Cyberpunk,

Horror Synth, Space Disco, Miami Nights and Vaporwave. Tick STYLE LOADS RACK and

each style brings its own sound.

The sound is half the record. There are four channels (bass, pads and stabs, arp

and keys, lead), each with a preamp or amp, a tone stack and a speaker: a studio

monitor, a guitar cabinet, a bass cabinet or a car door. Eight one-click racks

set a whole sound at once. The effects are the production: sidechain pump,

gated room, chorus, tape, bit crush, phaser, width and tape hiss, with a plate,

a hall, a spring and a tempo-synced delay on the master.

Every track is built from its seed. Write the seed down and you can have that

exact track again, note for note. A seed from the browser version rebuilds the

same track here.

You can play over it, too. The pads are the notes of the track's key rather than

a piano keyboard, so nothing you touch is wrong. The sixteen-step lane stays in

key when the writer picks a new track. Both play any of 22 voices through that

voice's own channel.

Turn on RADIO and it keeps playing, picking a new style, key, scale and tempo for

every track.

You also get:

• 11 styles, 21 scales, 12 keys, tempo and density

• 22 voices: pads, leads, brass, FM bells and keys, arps and basses

• 4 drum machines, 14 channel voicings, 6 speakers, 8 racks and 8 effects

• Seven-part mixer with a meter on every part

• Export any track as a MIDI file, free

• Render a WAV mix, or stems - one WAV per part, in a zip

• UI scale, for tablets

• Live spectrum and waveform, and the chaos engine drawn as it runs

Plug in a USB MIDI keyboard and it plays whichever voice you have selected.

Every part sends on its own MIDI channel and every drum, riser and impact has a

note and a channel of its own, so the app can drive external synths and drum

machines.

The app is free: every track, every sound and MIDI export are yours without

paying. Rendering to audio - the WAV mix and the stems - is a one-time

purchase.

No account, no ads, no subscription. Works offline.