TEMPER — Physical modeling instrument

Physical modeling instrument

Strings · Bars · Plates · Membranes · Bells

TEMPER is a carefully calibrated physical modeling engine. Six exciters — strike, pluck, noise, contact, felt hammer and bow — drive a string coupled at a bridge to a surface, from strings and bars to plates, membranes and bells, with every voice resonating through one shared body. Its 115 factory programs span fourteen families, each shown as a picture of its own instrument.

Anchored tuning calibrates the coupled model to pitch, three quality modes balance detail against CPU, and material memory lets the instrument respond to how it has been played. The Stage seats whole sections of players in a hall under a conductor, and Orchestrate scores one played line or chord across them. Four macros on the front panel, a full-screen modulation page and an eleven-module effects rack complete the instrument.

AU
VST3
Standalone
TEMPER FX
v0.1.35

Watch the film The Stage Read the docs

The TEMPER editor playing Acoustic Bass Guitar: the Finger card with Pluck, Strike and Bow, Finger, Pick, Nail and Tsume, Touch, Strength, Release, Where, Palm mute and the Macros row on the left; the bass guitar in the middle with Rings and Tone below it; the String card and the Material pad on the right; the keyboard strip along the bottom — **The instrument** How it is played on the left, a picture of the instrument in the middle, and the string and the material pad on the right.

The TEMPER Stage on Cellos · 6 players: the section's controls on the left, the seating chart of a string orchestra in the middle with the Cellos card open, the conductor below it, and the halls and their acoustics on the right — **The Stage** Sections seated in a hall, heard from your seat, with a conductor and Orchestrate.

The TEMPER Modulation page: LFO 1 and LFO 2 and Env 1 and Env 2 with their live displays and knobs on the left; the Patch with a cable from Wheel to Material Y, the Macros and Hands on the right — **Modulation** Two LFOs and two envelopes drawn live, a patch of cables, the macros and the hands, on one page.

The TEMPER Effects page: the chain rail from In through Phaser, Drive, Chorus, Ensemble and Convolve to Out, the Phaser open with its graph and Rate, Depth, Feedback and Mix, and tiles for the other modules — **Effects** A reorderable chain, the selected module on one large graph, and live tiles for the rest.

Overview

What TEMPER does

TEMPER is played from MIDI and uses no recordings. You choose the instrument, what it is made of and how it is played, and every note is modelled as you play it.

A picture of every instrument

Each of the 115 programs shows a photoreal picture of its own instrument, with the point where the note is played marked on it.

Played in plain words

Pluck, Strike or Bow; finger, pick, nail or tsume; Touch, Strength, Release and Where. Every value reads as a musician would say it.

The material pad

Every program has two named axes and four named corners to blend between. The home corner is the preset as voiced, and the mod wheel moves the vertical axis.

Macros on the front panel

Each program’s four macros sit under the playing controls, named for what you hear, such as Mute, Brightness, Body and Ring.

The Stage

Bowed and plucked programs play as sections of up to 16 players, seated in one of six halls with a conductor. Orchestrate turns one played line or chord into a part for every section.

TEMPER FX

The effect version puts the same instruments on an audio track: Free Running rings under the input, and MIDI Gated sounds only through the notes you hold.

Instrument

The instrument page

One page per program, drawn for the instrument it plays. Select a number to explore each region. The window opens at 1160 × 740 and resizes from 900 × 600 to 2200 × 1400.

The TEMPER editor playing Acoustic Bass Guitar, with numbered markers over its regions

The preset box shows the family and program number above the name; click it to open the Library, or step with ‹ ›. Scale opens the tuning menu, with Scala files and MTS-ESP. Quality is Eco, Normal or High, Tuning is Anchored or Free, and Volume sets the output level.
Two pages for a program that can play as a section: the instrument itself, and its section on the Stage.
The card is named for what plays the note, here Finger. Choose Pluck, Strike or Bow and the tool, set Touch, Strength and Release, then Where along the string and how much Palm mute. Every value reads in words, such as “a little way from the bridge”.
The program’s four macros, each named for what you hear: here Mute, Brightness, Body and Ring. On programs where the mod wheel also turns a macro, a small wheel mark shows which.
A photoreal picture of the program’s own instrument, with the point where the note is played. Drag it to move the pluck, strike or bow point.
How long the note rings and how bright it is, in plain words: here about 5 seconds, and warm.
The string’s material, then Ring, Tone and Body, and the Sympathetic strings switch for extra strings that ring along. More opens the rest of the part.
The material pad: two named axes and four named corners for every program, here Fingers, Picked, Muted and Thump. The home corner is the preset as voiced, and the mod wheel moves the vertical axis.
Five octaves with pitch and mod wheels, and the playing settings: Keys, Transpose, Voicing (Poly with its voice count, or Mono with glide), the Bend range and MPE, and how velocity plays the note.
Modulation ↗ and Effects ↗ open their full-screen pages. The version sits beside PANIC, which silences every voice, tail and effect at once without changing the program.

The Finger card on Acoustic Bass Guitar: Pluck, Strike and Bow; Finger, Pick, Nail and Tsume; Touch reading Soft, Strength reading Firm and Release reading Stopped; Where, a little way from the bridge; Palm mute, off; and the Macros row with Mute, Brightness, Body and Ring — **How it is played, and the macros** The playing card on Acoustic Bass Guitar. Release runs from stopped, a hand coming down on the strings when you lift the key, to let ring. The four macros sit at its foot.

The String and Material cards on Cellos · 6 players: the string set to Wound cello (measured), Ring reading Long, Tone reading Dark and Body reading Natural, the Sympathetic strings switch, and the material pad between Open, Silky, Muted and Veiled, reading Mostly open, some muted — **The string and the material pad** On Cellos, the pad blends between Open, Silky, Muted and Veiled, and says where you are in words.

Stage

The Stage

A bowed or plucked program can play as a section. Every section on every track sits on one stage, in one hall, heard from one seat, with a conductor shaping how the players play together.

Sections: 1 to 16 players, each with their own instrument, tuning and timing. Seven String Orchestra and five Guitar Ensemble programs arrive seated.
Seating chart: Every track in its own place, its desks lit as its players play, labelled with its size, its job and the notes it plays. Drag a section to reseat it.
Halls and seats: Studio, Chamber, Concert, Scoring, Church and Cathedral, heard from Close, the Podium, Row F or the Balcony, with Size, Surfaces, Room, Length, Warmth and Brightness.
Conductor: Together, In tune, Vibrato and Width, and a level fader per section. Live adds no latency; Mixdown lands the section on the beat with latency the host compensates.
Orchestrate: Play one line or chord and every section plays its own part: Chorale, Flowing, Pulse, Driving, Waltz, Tremolo, Answer, Counter-melody or Strum.
Playing: Principal or Section, Chords or Line, Divisi on or off, and one, two or three leaders playing in full detail.

Modulation

The Modulation page

Modulation opens full screen from the footer, on one page with no tabs. Every source is drawn as it moves, and every route is a cable you can see and pull.

LFO 1 and LFO 2 with their live displays, Rate and Depth and five shape buttons, and Env 1 and Env 2 with their drawn contours, Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release; Env 1 also shows Delay and Velocity — **Sources** Two LFOs and two envelopes on live displays with draggable points. Drag a source’s coloured header into the patch to route it.

The Patch with one cable from Wheel to Material Y; the Macros, Mute, Brightness, Body and Ring, each naming what it moves, and Random; and Hands, with meters for Velocity, Pressure, Slide, Breath and Wheel, Keyboard, Breath and MPE, a touch curve, Learn and Bend ±2 — **Patch, Macros and Hands** Each route is a cable from a source to a target; its thickness is the amount. The hands show what you play, live.

LFOs: Two, 0.01–20 Hz or synced to the host, with Sine, Triangle, Saw, Square and Random shapes.
Envelopes: Two, with Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release. Env 1 adds a Delay of up to 2 s and Velocity.
Patch: Up to 16 routes. Drag a cable to change its amount; click it to set its source, target, amount and curve.
Macros: The program’s four macros, each saying what it moves, and per-note Random.
Hands: Meters for velocity, pressure, slide, breath and the mod wheel, each with its settings; Keyboard, Breath or MPE; a touch curve; Learn; and the bend range.
Controllers: MPE, channel and poly pressure, breath, expression, foot and sustain, and two assignable controllers.

Effects

The effects rack

Eleven effect types follow the instrument on one chain. Drag a node on the rail to reorder it; the selected module opens on one large graph above its knobs, and the others run as live tiles.

The TEMPER Effects page on Acoustic Bass Guitar: Hold, Undo, Add, Aux and Mod, Load and Lat, and Bypass across the top; the rail from In through Phaser, Drive, Chorus, Ensemble and Convolve to Out, with Level and Guard; the Phaser open with its moving notches and Rate, Depth, Feedback and Mix; tiles for Drive, Chorus, Ensemble and Convolve

Chain: In, the modules in any order, Out. Up to 16 modules, with a second bank of EQ, Drive, Grains, Delay and Reverb.
Toolbar: Rack presets, Hold, Undo, Add, Aux and Mod, the rack’s Load and latency, and Bypass
Aux lane: A parallel lane between a send and a return, −60 to +6 dB
Output: Level −24 to +12 dB · Guard ceiling −12 to 0 dB, −1 dB by default
Modulation: 16 rack routes: drag a source onto any knob
Rack presets: Warm Studio · Glass Motion · Velvet Ensemble · Body Cloud · Parallel Halo · Inharmonic Echo · Crushed Wood · Body Room · Diffuse Plate

EQ

Three-band equaliser

A low shelf, a mid band and a high shelf, with low and high cuts. Drag the bands on the curve, over the live spectrum. Smooth glides between settings without zipper noise; Legacy keeps the original response.

Low shelf: ±18 dB, 30–500 Hz
Mid band: 200 Hz – 8 kHz, Q 0.3–8
High shelf: 1.5–18 kHz
Cuts: Low 10–1000 Hz · High 1–22 kHz
Latency: None

Controls

Low
Low Freq
Mid
Mid Freq
Mid Q
High
High Freq
Low Cut
High Cut

Modes

Smooth
Legacy

Drive

Distortion

Five characters, from soft saturation and a warm, biased drive to hard clipping, wavefolding and bit-crushing. Its graph shows the curve the signal is shaped by, with a live trail. Changing the character crossfades smoothly.

Bias: ±0.5
Makeup: ±12 dB
Latency: 0, or 30 samples with Oversample on

Controls

Drive
Tone
Bias
Makeup
Mix

Mode

Soft
Warm
Hard
Fold
Crush

Oversample

Grains

Grain delay

A granular delay that reads a window of up to 8 seconds of what it hears. Freeze holds the window; Play Mono follows the lowest held note and Poly plays up to eight held notes. Frozen audio can be kept with the session.

Window: 0.25–8 s
Grain size: 5–2000 ms
Density: 0.5–100 per second
Pitch: ±24 st

Controls

Position
Size
Density
Pitch
Scatter
Reverse
Pitch Jitter
Spread
Feedback
Window
Scan
Seed
Mix

Filter

Play

Off
Mono

Switches

Freeze
Poly
Sync

Delay

Stereo delay

Classic, stereo and ping-pong delay, drawn as taps on a timeline. The repeats have their own low cut, Wow adds slow, tape-like movement, and Duck lowers the repeats while you play.

Time: 1–2000 ms, or 1/32–1/1
Feedback: Up to 0.95
Loop low cut: 20–2000 Hz
Latency: None

Controls

Time
Sync
Division
Feedback
Damp
L/R Offset
Loop Low Cut
Wow
Duck
Mix

Modes

Classic
Stereo
Ping-pong

Reverb

Plate, Hall and Room spaces with dense tails, a separate low-end decay and adjustable early reflections, drawn as the decay itself. A Classic space is also available.

Decay: 0.1–20 s
Predelay: 0–100 ms
Low decay: ×0.5–2
Latency: None

Controls

Size
Decay
Damp
Predelay
Width
Diffusion
Modulation
Low Decay ×
Early
Mix

Modes

Classic
Plate
Hall
Room

Chorus

Multi-voice chorus

Two to four moving voices with feedback and a tone control. Changing the number of voices crossfades smoothly.

Voices: 2–4
Rate: 0.02–10 Hz
Delay: 5–35 ms
Feedback: ±0.7
Latency: None

Controls

Voices
Rate
Depth
Spread
Delay
Feedback
Tone
Mix

Ensemble

Detuned ensemble

Three to six detuned voices with slow, vibrato-like and random movement. The Widen modes fold away cleanly when the track is summed to mono.

Voices: 3–6
Mono sum: Widening cancels
Latency: None

Controls

Voices
Detune
Width
Rate
Widen Amount
Tone
Mix

Widen

Off
Soft
Wide
Deep

Phaser

Notches swept around a centre frequency, free or synced to the beat, with a stereo offset between the channels. Its graph shows the notches moving.

Stages: 4 · 6 · 8 · 12
Centre: 100 Hz – 8 kHz
Rate: 0.02–10 Hz or synced
Stereo phase: 0–180°
Feedback: ±0.9

Controls

Rate
Depth
Center
Stereo Phase
Feedback
Sync
Mix

Stages

Comp

Compressor

A stereo-linked compressor with peak or RMS detection, a soft knee and parallel mix, drawn as its knee with a gain-reduction history. Key Low Cut keeps the low end from driving the gain.

Threshold: −60 – 0 dB
Ratio: 1–20
Attack / release: 0.1–100 ms / 10–1000 ms
Knee: 0–24 dB
Latency: 0, or 5 ms with Lookahead

Controls

Threshold
Ratio
Attack
Release
Knee
Makeup
Key Low Cut
Mix

Detector

Peak
RMS

Lookahead

Off
5 ms

Shift

Frequency shifter

Shifts the upper, lower or both sidebands. Track sets the shift as a ratio of the lowest held note, so it follows what you play.

Shift: ±2000 Hz
Feedback: ±0.9
Track ratio: 0.01–4 × lowest note

Controls

Frequency
Feedback
Feedback Tone
Stereo
Ratio
Mix

Sideband

Up
Down
Both

Track

Convolve

Convolution reverb

Places the instrument in another space, with no added latency. The impulse can be the program’s own body, another factory instrument, a room, plate or hall, or your own WAV or AIFF file.

Predelay: 0–200 ms
Your own file: Up to 8 MiB, saved with the session
Latency: None

Controls

Predelay
Length
Low Cut
High Cut
Width
Gain
Reverse
Mix

Impulse

Body
Instrument
Room
Plate
Hall
File

Factory library

115 programs in 14 families

Every program shows its own instrument and names its four macros and its material pad’s axes and corners. In the Audio Unit and standalone versions the programs also appear in your host’s program menu.

Acoustic Guitars

Classical, Flamenco, Baroque, Steel-String, Baritone, Archtop and Gypsy Jazz guitars.

Electric Guitars and Basses

Clean Single-Coil, Jazz Box, Acoustic Bass Guitar, Fretless, Finger, Pick, Flatwound Thumb and Five-String basses.

Lutes and World Plucked

Mandolin, Bouzouki, Charango, Renaissance Lute, Oud, Cavaquinho, two ukuleles, Banjo, Balalaika and Bağlama.

Harps and Zithers

Concert Harp, Celtic Harp, Lyre, Koto, Guzheng, Gayageum, Concert Zither and Autoharp.

Keyboard Strings

Grand Piano, Honky-Tonk Upright, Harpsichord, Clavichord and Hammered Dulcimer.

Bowed Strings

Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass, sul tasto, sul ponticello and col legno, pizzicato, and Bowed Psaltery.

Bowed and Rubbed Objects

Bowed Cymbal, Bowed Tam-tam, Bowed Steel Plate and Bowed Aluminium Disc.

Mallets and Tuned Metal

Marimba, Vibraphone, Glockenspiel, Celesta, Glass Marimba, Tubular Bells, three gamelan instruments and Balafon.

Materials

Head Materials, Glass Sheet, Glass Rods and Brass Tubes.

Drums and Hand Percussion

Kick, Snare and toms, Cajón, Frame Drum, Bodhrán, Djembe, Conga, Bongos, Taiko, Talking Drum, Claves, Woodblock and Cowbell.

Gongs, Cymbals and Bells

Tam-tam, Opera and Wind Gongs, Crash and Ride Cymbals, Church and Temple Bells, Handbells and Singing Bowl.

Experimental

Ten-Metre Monochord, Harmonic Drone, Aeolian Harp, Rising Gong, Bell Cloud and Rain on Tin.

String Orchestra

Violins I and II, Violas, Cellos and Basses, with pizzicato Violins I and Cellos: sections of four to eight players.

Guitar Ensemble

Classical and Steel-String Guitars I and II, four players each, and Bass Guitars, two players.

TEMPER playing Marimba: the Mallet card with Strike or Bow, Yarn, Rubber, Wood or Metal, Touch, Strength and Strike point, and the Macros Mallet, Damp, Ring and Room; the marimba bar over its resonator tube with the mallet; the Bar card in Rosewood and the material pad between Open, Damped, Soft and Muffled — **Mallets and Tuned Metal / 55, Marimba** A struck bar: the card is named Mallet, and the right-hand card Bar.

TEMPER playing Floor Tom: the Mallet card with a Metal head struck off-centre, the drum with its strike point, the Drumhead card in Polyester film with Ring, Tone, Shimmer and Glide, and the material pad between Tight, Gliding, Muffled and Thud — **Drums and Hand Percussion / 69, Floor Tom** A drumhead, with Shimmer and Glide, and a pad from Tight to Thud.

Updates

Changes by version

The changes in recent TEMPER builds, newest first. A build marked “In development” is not yet the download.

0.1.35 In development
- The factory library is 115 programs in fourteen families, including seven String Orchestra and five Guitar Ensemble sections. Program numbers change with the new library.
- Every program shows a photoreal picture of its own instrument.
- Every program has a material pad with two named axes and four named corners, and the mod wheel moves its vertical axis.
- Each program’s four macros sit on the front panel, under the playing controls.
- The Stage seats sections of up to 16 players in one of six halls, with a conductor; Orchestrate turns one played line or chord into a part for every section.
- Modulation opens full screen: two LFOs and two envelopes drawn live, the patch as cables, the macros, and the hands.
- The Effects page has a reorderable chain rail, one large graph for the selected module, and live tiles for the rest.
- Plucked and bowed strings have a Release control, from stopped to let ring.
0.1.0 Current download
- Each program shows a picture of its instrument, built from the engine’s own measurements, with the pluck, strike or bow point drawn on it.
- The effects rack is colour-coded by module, with A/B banks for EQ, Drive, Delay, Reverb and Granular.
- 92 programs in eight families and nine effects-rack presets.

Specifications

TEMPER 0.1.35

macOS: TEMPER: Audio Unit, VST3, standalone app · TEMPER FX: Audio Unit, VST3 · macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel (universal)
Current download: TEMPER 0.1.0 · 0.1.35, described on this page, is in development
Type: Instrument, and an effect version (TEMPER FX) · MIDI and MPE
Factory library: 115 programs in 14 families · 9 effects-rack presets
Polyphony: Up to 64 voices, set per program
Sections: 1 to 16 players per track · six halls · four seats
Modulation: 16 routes · 2 LFOs · 2 envelopes · 4 macros · per-note random
Tuning: Scala scales and keyboard maps · MTS-ESP in the plug-ins · A4 400–480 Hz
Sample rates: 44.1–192 kHz
Interface: 1160 × 740 · resizable from 900 × 600 to 2200 × 1400
Documentation: Getting started · Tutorials · Technical guide · Glossary

Availability In development · join the waitlist

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