What is blocksalat?

blocksalat is a modular synthesizer based on blocks that can be puzzled together. It's free and open source, and it runs completely in the browser. The synth engine is based on kabelsalat.

Hello World

Here is a very simple example that generates a sine wave:

Press "play" to start the sound!

Amplitude Modulation

Let's modulate the amplitude using mul:

Frequency Modulation

Let's modulate the frequency instead:

Subtractive Synthesis

A lonely sine wave is pretty thin, let's add some oomph with a sawtooth wave and a low pass filter:

Impulses & Envelopes

We can apply a simple decay envelope with impulse and perc:

We can also use ad to get an attack + decay phase:

Sequences

The seq4 blocks allows us to cycle through 4 different values using an impulse:

lag

lag acts as a so called "slew limiter", making the incoming signal sluggish, preventing harsh clicks. It can also be used for glissando effects:

Feedback Delay

Feedback is a core feature of blocksalat. You can plug a block back to itself using a so called lambda block:

Multichannel Expansion

We can create multiple channels with the poly blocks:

Look what happens when poly blocks are used in more than one place:

Explanation: the channels are automatically mapped to each other. The 111Hz sine wave gets multiplied with 1, and the 442Hz sine wave gets multiplied with .25.

fold

fold limits the signal in between [-1,1] by wavefolding:

Distort