Touch becomes timbre
Your X–Y position continuously blends all four corner instruments.
iOS instrument · AUv3 plug-in
Sound is no longer a preset.
It is a place.
Contour turns neural timbres into terrain you can touch. Move through a field of instruments, cross measured contour lines, and shape evolving pads, drones, and textures with a single gesture.
- 11
- measured sheets
- 4,845
- possible palettes
- AUv3
- ready for your DAW
POSITION N24.1394 E121.2747
LIVE SIGNAL BRT 01.88 · NSE 0.046
01 / THE INSTRUMENT
An instrument you play
by walking.
Most synthesizers ask you to build a sound one parameter at a time. Contour gives you a landscape instead. Four distinct neural instruments occupy the corners of each sheet; every point between them is a continuous blend.
Touch the map to sound a note. Move your finger to travel through timbre. The ribbon beneath the terrain controls pitch, while the size of your touch shapes dynamics. Hold a location to leave a mark and return to it later.
Pressure becomes dynamics
A wider contact opens the sound without adding another control.
Terrain becomes memory
Drop marks on useful locations and build a personal map of sound.
02 / THE SYNTHESIS
Behind the terrain
Neural character.
Playable control.
Contour is powered by compact neural decoders trained on instruments from the NSynth dataset. The network supplies the evolving spectral character; a real-time harmonic-plus-noise engine turns that description into responsive audio.
Four neural decoders
Each corner holds a different learned instrument. The decoders respond to pitch and loudness 250 times per second.
Continuous interpolation
Your position becomes four blend weights. Harmonic energy, filtered noise, and amplitude move together without preset jumps.
Real-time resynthesis
A bank of 60 harmonics and 65 noise bands reconstructs the sound, then ADSR and spatial processing shape the result.
WHY IT FEELS IMMEDIATE
The neural network runs on a dedicated control path while audio rendering stays on the real-time thread. Control frames are interpolated between updates, and touch motion is adaptively smoothed to reduce hand jitter without making fast gestures feel delayed.
03 / MEASURED TERRAIN
The contour lines
are not decoration.
Every line is generated from the sound the four decoders actually produce. Spectra are projected into a perceptual space, distances are measured, and the result is drawn as terrain. Cross a contour and the timbre has changed by a known amount.
- BrightnessSpectral centre of gravity
- NoisinessNoise-to-tonal energy
- DistanceChange between neighbouring spectra
- ElevationBrightness relabelled as topography
04 / SOUND SHEETS
Eleven distinct landscapes
A palette for every journey.
Each factory sheet combines four complementary instruments and is named after one of Taiwan’s high mountain traverses. Together they span bright, contrasting, breathy, deep, and wide-ranging families of sound.
S–01HehuanBrightest
S–02WulingAll four hold
S–03BeiyiduanWidest contrast
S–04ShenglengHigh contrast
S–05NenggaoBreathiest
S–06QilaiBreath-led
S–07MaboDeepest · 53 dB
S–08BeierduanSteady descent
S–09YushanWidest · 66 st
S–10GanzhuowanWide range
S–11JiamingFocused · 17 st
05 / COMPOSE
Build your own terrain
Describe the sound.
Contour finds the landscape.
Set five musical intentions—brightness, contrast, breath, depth, and range. Contour searches 4,845 valid four-corner combinations, shows where the result compromises, and bakes a new playable map.
- 01Choose a character
Move five focused controls instead of browsing hundreds of presets.
- 02Compare the fit
Hear each candidate as you move, and see the match, stress, shared pitch range, and excluded combinations.
- 03Bake and play
Your sheet is saved on-device and is available inside the Audio Unit.
06 / YOUR WORKFLOW
The same instrument, inside your music
From exploration
to production.
Contour installs as an AUv3 instrument and works in hosts including Logic Pro for iPad, GarageBand, AUM, Cubasis, and Drambo. Play it from MIDI or with a finger on the plug-in's own map, recall sheets with your session, and automate map position as two continuous parameters.
07 / AVAILABILITY
Start without a time limit
The instrument is free.
Go further with Pro.
FREE$0
A complete instrument for exploring, performing, and working in an AUv3 host.
- 3 measured sound sheets
- Full touch instrument and pitch ribbon
- MIDI input and AUv3 plug-in
- Reverb and map marks
- No account and no time limit
CONTOUR PROOne purchase
Unlock the complete atlas and the tools to capture and design your own terrain.
- All 11 measured sound sheets
- Record performances directly to a file
- Attack, decay, sustain, and release
- Compose custom sheets from 4,845 palettes
- One-time purchase—not a subscription
Requires iOS 16 or later · Designed for iPhone and iPad
CONTOUR / NONO.TODAY