Quiet Music has introduced a new physics-based generative instrument plugin for Windows and macOS (VST3/AU).
MotionTones lets users drop balls onto a 2D canvas, with every collision playing a note from a set scale or chord, voiced by one of 25 internal ambient instruments.
You start with an empty canvas and drop a ball. Gravity pulls it down, it strikes the floor, a wall, or a shape you have drawn, and at the moment of impact it plays a note, chosen from the scale or chord you have set, in the key you have chosen, voiced by a hand-tuned ambient instrument. Drop a handful of balls and they scatter into a living, self-playing pattern that never repeats the same way twice. Draw a triangle, a circle, a slanted wall, or a gravity field, and you reshape the music by reshaping the space. It is a marble run for sound: part instrument, part generative sequencer, part toy you cannot stop watching.
MotionTones features
- Generative instrument driven by a real-time 2D physics world: balls fall, bounce and collide, and every impact plays a note.
- Draw the space: walls, circles, triangles and gravity fields reshape the motion and therefore the music.
- 25 internal ambient instruments (kalimba, handpan, marimba, bowls, bells, pads, chimes, felt piano and more).
- 62 built-in scales, many from handpan tunings, plus a 45-chord library and a custom scale and chord builder.
- Reference tuning including concert 440 Hz, 432 Hz and the Solfeggio frequencies.
- Bounce engine: tempo-synced cinematic bouncers with 9 shapes (Together, Arpeggio, Sine, Phasing, Up/Down, Random, Center, Converge, Custom).
- Step-grid arpeggiator (Custom bounce) with per-step accents, swing, octave shift/spread and a one-click Euclidean rhythm generator.
- Note-range and anti-repetition controls that keep the collision melodies fresh and evolving.
- Natural ambience layer: rain and forest, with independent levels.
- Internal reverb with long tail plus an echo.
- 10 canvas themes, 13 ball palettes, 3 atmosphere variants, adjustable trails.
- MIDI in (spawn balls), MIDI out, and internal capture with drag-to-DAW as a MIDI clip.
- 65 factory presets, built into the plugin and deployed automatically.
MotionTones is available to purchase at an introductory price of €18 EUR until July 23rd, 2026 (regular €35 EUR). Prices ex. VAT where applicable.
