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, and it follows your host. Both play any
of 22 voices through that voice's own channel and out on its MIDI 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
• MIDI in, so your keyboard plays whichever voice you have selected
• Export a MIDI file, a WAV mix, or stems, one WAV per part (in the app; in a
host you record the audio there)
• A note and a MIDI channel for every drum and every riser and impact
• UI scale, so the panel is not tiny on a big iPad
• Live spectrum and waveform, and the chaos engine drawn as it runs
There are two Audio Units, an instrument and a MIDI processor. Each part sends on
its own MIDI channel and every drum has its own note and channel, so one instance
can drive a whole rack of synths. The MIDI version passes your keyboard through.
Both follow your host's tempo and transport, and one install registers both.
The app is free and nothing in it is held back. Using the Audio Units inside
other apps is a one-time purchase, and each AUv3 session plays for two minutes
first so you can try them properly.
No account, no ads, no subscription. Works offline.
