● Alma

One engine · six apps · one file format

Music for people
who don't make music.

Alma is a family of musical software built on a single belief: simple, great-sounding music should be within reach for anyone, with or without musical training. Every app runs on MusiKa — a one-of-a-kind synthesis engine that captures the essence of real instruments as formulas, not samples — and every app speaks the same .alma file, so your ideas travel freely.

See the apps How the engine works

The apps are in active development and will be available for download soon.
The MusiKa engine will be released as open source.

The apps

Five expressive front-ends sharing one engine. Pick the one that fits the moment — a plugin inside your DAW, a pocket tracker on your wrist, or an improvisation game that writes back.

iOS · iPadOS · macOS

Alma DAW

A mini-DAW-meets-groovebox. Up to 32 tracks, 16-step patterns, drum pads, samples and a Custom Wave sound designer — one clean screen, same engine.

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macOS · desktop

Alma DAW for Mac

The desktop edition tailored for macOS. More room to arrange, the same patterns and patches as the mobile Alma apps.

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iOS · iPadOS

Alma Track

A focused, tracker-style companion for quick pattern sketching on the move. Opens and saves the same .alma file as its siblings.

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macOS · AUv3

Alma Synth

The origin point. A macOS Audio Unit v3 instrument plugin where the MusiKa engine first took shape — drop it into any AUv3 host.

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iOS · iPadOS · macOS

Alma Groove

Half instrument, half game. A pseudo-random improvisation playground driven by the same engine — no theory, no grid, just play and react.

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ESP32-S3 · hardware

Alma Tracker S3

The pocket edition. The MusiKa engine running natively on an M5StickC S3 — two buttons, one wrist, four tracks.

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Instrument essence

We don't record instruments. We listen to them.

A sampler captures a single pluck of a string as a tiny audio clip and plays that clip back. MusiKa does something different: it studies an instrument — its shape, its behaviour, the way it breathes — and rebuilds it from first principles, in code. The result isn't a recording of the sound; it's a miniature version of the instrument itself.

01 Listen 02 Analyse 03 Distil osc · filter · env ~1 KB patch 04 Play One recording of the instrument. Harmonics, envelope, modulation. A tiny set of formulas. Every note, every velocity, live.

What we extract

For each instrument we identify the pieces a player can feel: the body (its characteristic harmonics), the behaviour (how it attacks, sustains and releases), the voice (filter resonance, drive, saturation) and the motion (vibrato, chorus, the small irregularities that make it feel alive).

Why it matters for players

Because a sampled string plays the same pluck every time — a MusiKa patch plays a new one at every velocity, every length, every aftertouch nudge. It responds like an instrument, not like a tape. And because a whole kit fits in a kilobyte, it fits on a watch-sized board as easily as inside your DAW.

MusiKa · the engine

MusiKa is a tiny, portable C synthesis core. What makes it one-of-a-kind is how it captures a sound: instead of storing megabytes of samples, it derives the formulas behind each instrument — its harmonics, its envelope, its modulation fingerprint — and ships them as ~1 KB algorithmic patches.

The same code runs inside an AUv3 plugin, an iPad DAW, a macOS standalone, an improvisation game and an ESP32 microcontroller. Small enough for silicon that costs a few dollars; faithful enough for a desktop DAW.

What ships in every app

  • Polyphonic voice engine with MIDI 1.0 and 2.0 note handling.
  • Multiple oscillator flavours — analog, FM, wavetable, modal, Karplus-Strong, drum voice.
  • Filters & FX — SVF, ladder, diode, chorus, drive, reverb.
  • Factory patches derived from real instruments via essence extraction.
  • One file format — .alma carries song, pattern, patch and mix data across every app.
  • Open source — the engine will be released under a permissive license so anyone can port it, embed it, or build on it.

The philosophy

Most music tools assume you already know what a scale is, what a VST does, and how to route MIDI. Alma doesn't. The goal is the opposite: give someone who never played an instrument the same first-time thrill a musician gets when a song starts coming together.

We do that by keeping the surface tiny and the sound generous. Pick a patch — it already sounds great. Tap a grid, or tilt a device, or let Alma Groove improvise back at you. If you want more, every app scales up; if you just want fun, none of them get in your way.

Shared by design

  • One engine — MusiKa, in portable C.
  • One file format — .alma, readable by every app on every platform.
  • One aesthetic — quiet, minimal, single-accent interfaces.
  • One audience — anyone curious enough to press play.