KURARE — beta now running

Every note
is a crowd.

KURARE is a polyphonic swarm synthesizer: two swarms of coupled oscillators per note — red and white, up to 32 each — herdable from a boiling cloud into one fused voice. Built on the Kuramoto model of collective synchronization.

SynthesisKuramoto swarm
Population32 oscillators per swarm
FiltersSEM- & Polivoks-inspired
Download for macOS Download for Windows

v0.5.0 public beta — free while in beta. VST3 · AU, macOS (universal) & Windows x64. Get release notifications.

The Model

One equation,
herded by hand.

In 1975, physicist Yoshiki Kuramoto wrote down the simplest equation for how a crowd of rhythmic things falls into step — fireflies flashing, crickets chirping, heart cells beating. Each oscillator has its own natural tempo; each nudges toward the group. Weak coupling is chaos. Cross a threshold and the crowd snaps into synchrony.

Between the two lies the interesting zone — clusters forming, breathing, drifting, re-forming. KURARE puts that zone under your fingers. Four axes define a swarm, and they are the four macro knobs. A two-phase oscillator core guarantees the locked choir: phases can march in perfect step while pitches stay fanned into sub-octave and overtone layers.

The four axes
POPULATE NHow many oscillators are alive — 1 to 32 per swarm. Dots join and leave the disc as you turn.
DECOUPLE KAt zero, a fused choir. Turn it up and the swarm loosens: beating, breathing, then a free cloud.
DIVERGE ΔωPitch spread that survives full coupling — members fan into octave layers while phases still march together.
EXCITE DTemperature. Deterministic noise agitates phase and pitch — a swarm simmering at the edge of sync.
Coupling freezes; temperature boils. The signature sound lives right at the threshold.
The Instrument

What you hear is what you see.

The disc at the centre is not decoration — those particles are the real oscillators of the note you are playing, driven by the engine's own phases. Cloud at low coupling. Lattice when they lock. Shiver when you turn up the heat.

KURARE interface — swarm disc, per-swarm macro knobs, filter and envelope racks
KURARE synth page in motion: the swarm disc breathing while the macro knobs, filter and envelopes move
Synth The swarm disc and the four macro knobs, with the per-swarm filter, envelopes and effects around them.
KURARE modulation page in motion: three LFOs and two generative MOD lanes driving parameters
Modulation Three LFOs and two generative MOD lanes, each free-running into any parameter on the panel.
KURARE sequencer page in motion: the note grid playing through its pattern with scale and chord controls
Sequencer The onboard VEKTE sequencer: one part per swarm, seven algorithms, scale and chord quantising.
KURARE in motion — the swarm, the two filters and the sequencer, played.
The Waves

Five roads,
two travelers.

Every oscillator reads a wavetable road: 127 single-cycle frames sorted by spectral brightness, so a sweep is a smooth walk from dark to bright — never a lottery. The red swarm and the white swarm each choose their own road.

WAVE X and WAVE Y are two positions on that road, and RATIO mixes them by interference — the two frames are quarter-phase-shifted before summing, so no mix position can cancel to thin. SPLIT keeps each swarm on its own frame; BLND fuses both swarms into one shared wave.

Under the hood the tables are FFT-built with per-octave mip levels, cached across all sixteen voices, and rebuilt double-buffered at a bounded rate — a fast wave sweep costs one build at a time, never a storm, and always lands bit-identical.

The five roads
PROCEDURALAdditive frames generated from the bank seed — the red swarm's home. Sine at one end, pitched near-noise at the other.
CLASSICALThe analog canon: sine into saw into square into reverse saw. The white swarm's home.
VOXVocal and formant frames — the swarm starts to speak.
ACOUSTICFrames drawn from acoustic instruments: plucked, bowed, blown.
DIGITALHard-edged digital spectra — PWM, folded and gritty tables for the bright end.

Two swarms, five roads

Red reads generated additive wavetables; white reads the classics. Five curated roads — Procedural, Classical, Vox, Acoustic, Digital — with wave interference between two positions on each.

The locked choir

A two-phase oscillator core keeps DIVERGE alive at full coupling: phases entrained completely, pitches fanned by construction. No other swarm architecture guarantees it.

Deterministic to the bit

Stateless seeded hashes, pinned math, fixed internal rate. Same patch, same notes, bit-identical audio — and every patch travels as a short share key you can paste anywhere.

Two filter characters

Each swarm picks its own: an SEM-inspired state-variable filter morphing LP → BP → notch → HP, or a Polivoks-inspired one — LP/BP only, its op-amp pair clipping inside the resonance loop. One swarm can scream while the other stays smooth.

Powered by VEKTE

The onboard generative sequencer drives the swarm with seven algorithms — from wave interference to Kaprekar and Fibonacci — plus arp modes, DENSE thinning, swing and humanize.

Herd it live

Three LFOs and two generative modulation lanes reach any parameter; MUTUAL couples the two swarms to each other; octave pills transpose each one whole; MIDI CC learn throughout. Built for hands, not menus.

FormatsVST3 · AU
PlatformsmacOS (universal) · Windows
Voices16 · 32 oscillators per swarm
FiltersSEM- & Polivoks-inspired
PresetsFactory bank + KRR share keys

Join the swarm.

KURARE is in public beta ahead of its commercial release — free to download and use while the beta runs. Leave your email for new builds, launch pricing and development drops.

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Trouble with the beta, or found a bug? Write to hello@valdlabs.com.