BirdMachine

Overview

BirdMachine puts 60 birds on the keyboard, one per key, laid out like a tree: owls, doves and corvids on the lowest branch, then water and farm birds, woodland birds, thrushes, and small songbirds at the top. Every bird has two voices. One is a bank of real recordings, about 350 takes cut from field recordings on xeno-canto, iNaturalist, Freesound and BigSoundBank, every one CC0 or CC BY and checked at its source. The other is a synthesised song built the way a spectrogram reads: syllables that sweep, bend, warble and trill, grouped into motifs that repeat. The Blend slider moves between them, so you can play the real bird, a clean electronic version of its song, or both at once. Each key can sing one call, keep singing while you hold it, or follow the note length in Gate mode. Melodic mode turns one bird into a playable instrument in pitch, and it is the heart of the factory library: 24 of the 32 presets are melodic birds, from leads (Hermit Thrush Lead, Wood Thrush Flute, Nightingale Lead) and keys (Sparrow Bells, Wren Pluck, Blackbird Marimba) to pads (Thrush Choir, Skylark Haze) and basses (Loon Lake, Owl Sub, Curlew Bass). Flock puts up to six birds on a key with spread and scatter, Dawn Chorus fills the background with other birds from the tree, and Habitat places everything in a garden, forest, meadow, wetland, jungle or canyon with its own ambience. Three Warp modulators bend pitch, tempo and distance. The FX chain is the RatBells one: EQ, saturation, compressor, OTT, chorus, delay with a throw pad, shimmer reverb and a ducker. The Canopy shows the whole tree, and every bird lights up and ripples when it sings. Thirty-two presets: 24 melodic leads, keys, pads and basses, plus natural scenes, flocks, synth birds and sound design.

Features

• ▸60 birds, one per key from C1 to B5, arranged like a tree from owls to wrens
• ▸Real recordings for every bird: about 350 CC0 / CC BY takes, each licence checked at its source
• ▸A synthesised song for every bird, and a Blend slider between recording and synth
• ▸Melodic mode plays one bird in pitch: 24 melodic presets of leads, keys, pads and basses
• ▸Flock (up to 6 birds per key), Dawn Chorus background birds, 6 habitats with ambience
• ▸Three Warp modulators for pitch, tempo and distance
• ▸8-module FX chain: EQ, saturation, compressor, OTT, chorus, delay, shimmer reverb, ducker
• ▸The Canopy: an animated tree where each bird sings when you play it, 32 factory presets

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