MotionTones

MotionTones is built on a simple, hypnotic idea: give a note to every collision.

You start with an empty canvas and drop a ball. Gravity pulls it down, it strikes the floor, a wall, or a shape you have drawn, and at the moment of impact it plays a note, chosen from the scale or chord you have set, in the key you have chosen, voiced by a hand-tuned ambient instrument. Drop a handful of balls and they scatter into a living, self-playing pattern that never repeats the same way twice. Draw a triangle, a circle, a slanted wall, or a gravity field, and you reshape the music by reshaping the space. It is a marble run for sound: part instrument, part generative sequencer, part toy you cannot stop watching.

At the heart of MotionTones is a real-time physics world and a bank of 25 internal instruments tuned for calm and space: kalimba, handpan, marimba, vibraphone, music boxes, glass chimes, felt piano, Tibetan and crystal bowls, warm pads and choirs. You choose the harmony from 62 built-in scales, many of them drawn from handpan tunings, plus a 45-strong chord library and a custom scale and chord builder, so the balls can only ever land on notes that belong together. Root, octave and a reference tuning that includes 432 Hz and the Solfeggio frequencies let you place the whole piece exactly where you want it.

Alongside the free-falling balls sits a second layer: the Bounce engine. These are cinematic balls that bounce in time with your DAW, laying down arpeggios and rhythmic patterns locked to the tempo. Choose from bounce shapes like Arpeggio, Sine, Phasing, Up/Down and Converge, or switch to Custom and paint your own pattern on the step grid, with per-step accents, swing, a one-click Euclidean generator, and octave spread. The free balls give you chaos and life; the Bounce gives you structure and groove. Together they are a full generative voice.

Around the physics sits everything you need to shape the result: an internal reverb with a long, lush tail, an echo, per-source levels, note-range and anti-repetition controls that keep the melodies moving, and a layer of natural ambience, rain and forest, to sit the music in a place. Ten canvas atmospheres, thirteen ball palettes and three tone variants make the moving picture as considered as the sound.

MotionTones is an instrument, so it makes sound on its own; no incoming audio required. It also speaks MIDI when you want it to: feed MIDI in to spawn balls, send its generated notes out to other instruments, or capture what it plays and drag it straight into your DAW as a MIDI clip. Print it, resample it, or leave it running live.

It ships with 65 factory presets, built into the plugin and deployed automatically on first launch, so it plays out of the box.

Drop a ball. MotionTones does the rest.

Features:

• Generative instrument driven by a real-time 2D physics world: balls fall, bounce and collide, and every impact plays a note.
• Draw the space: walls, circles, triangles and gravity fields reshape the motion and therefore the music.
• 25 internal ambient instruments (kalimba, handpan, marimba, bowls, bells, pads, chimes, felt piano and more).
• 62 built-in scales, many from handpan tunings, plus a 45-chord library and a custom scale and chord builder.
• Reference tuning including concert 440 Hz, 432 Hz and the Solfeggio frequencies.
• Bounce engine: tempo-synced cinematic bouncers with 9 shapes (Together, Arpeggio, Sine, Phasing, Up/Down, Random, Center, Converge, Custom).
• Step-grid arpeggiator (Custom bounce) with per-step accents, swing, octave shift/spread and a one-click Euclidean rhythm generator.
• Note-range and anti-repetition controls that keep the collision melodies fresh and evolving.
• Natural ambience layer: rain and forest, with independent levels.
• Internal reverb with long tail plus an echo.
• 10 canvas themes, 13 ball palettes, 3 atmosphere variants, adjustable trails.
• MIDI in (spawn balls), MIDI out, and internal capture with drag-to-DAW as a MIDI clip.
• 65 factory presets, built into the plugin and deployed automatically.
• Formats: VST3 and Standalone on Windows (64-bit); VST3, AU and Standalone on macOS (notarized universal binary, Intel and Apple Silicon).

Technical specs:

• Type: generative instrument (physics-driven). Makes sound on its own; MIDI input optional.
• Formats: VST3, AU (macOS), Standalone.
• macOS 11.0 or later, Intel and Apple Silicon (universal binary, code-signed and notarized).
• Windows 10 or later, 64-bit.
• Instruments: 25.
• Scales: 62 built-in plus a custom scale builder (2-octave, 23 degrees).
• Chords: 45-chord library plus a custom 8-note palette.
• Reference tuning: 11 options (440 Hz, 432 Hz, and 9 Solfeggio frequencies).
• Bounce shapes: 9, including a step-grid Custom pattern with accents, swing and Euclidean fill.
• Ball limit: up to 60 simultaneous (Performance mode).
• Sample rates: 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz.
• Factory presets: 65 (built into the plugin, deployed on first launch).
• MIDI: input (spawn balls), output, and internal-capture drag-out.

Buy: https://quietmusic.gumroad.com/l/isekmj

Free demo: https://quietmusic.gumroad.com/l/eflccx

More plugins by Quiet Music: https://quietmusic.eu

Support: support@quietmusic.eu

{See video at top of page}