Quick start

Get VEKTE running in your environment in under a minute.

1. Insert VEKTE on a MIDI / instrument track (on iOS: load the AUv3 in your host, or run the VEKTE app).
2. Start your DAW transport (or press Play in the iOS app).
3. Turn on a lane (the colored square at a lane's left) — notes generate.
4. Pick an algorithm (top-right dropdown of each lane) to change the pattern.
5. Route VEKTE's MIDI to your synth(s) — see MIDI routing.

The host transport drives the plugin. The iOS standalone app opens stopped and has its own Play / Stop.

Layout

The VEKTE workspace is divided into a global header and a stack of five lanes.

The full plugin. Top: BPM box and the 16 channel slots (1a, 2a…). Below: the yellow NOTE lane over four MOD lanes (orange, purple, cyan, red) — each showing its per-lane controls, knobs including the four algorithm parameters, the selected algorithm (top-right), and a live visualization.

Header

• VEKTE logo + version (left).
• BPM box with an EXT indicator (lit when the host supplies tempo).
• Play / Stop (iOS standalone app only — the host transport runs the plugin).
• 16 channel slots — see Channels & slots.
• Menu (hamburger) — presets, MIDI output, randomize.

The five lanes

Top to bottom: NOTE (yellow), MOD 1 (orange), MOD 2 (purple), MOD 3 (cyan), MOD 4 (red). Each lane has:

• Enable square — lane on / off.
• RND — randomize this lane's algorithm + parameters.
• LOCK — keep this lane's pattern when randomizing.
• AUTO — auto-rotate: shift the pattern by ROT every cycle.
• Q — playhead direction (see Playhead modes).
• D: — step division (note rate, e.g. 1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4…).
• NOTE only: S: scale, C: chord, SNGL, DRM, TIE.
• MOD only: CRV (smooth curve), T: target, CC# picker (when target = CC).
• Algorithm dropdown + a one-line description of the selected algorithm, top-right.
• Knobs (left half) + visualization (right half).

The NOTE lane

The NOTE lane generates pitched notes snapped to the chosen scale.

Determinism. The four algorithm knobs (P1–P4) + the algorithm choice are the source of truth. The same algorithm + knob settings always produce the same 32-step pattern. STEPS is a window over it, ROT navigates it, DENSE is a deterministic fill — all replicable across sessions.

Octave stretch. The algorithm's output is normalized to fill the chosen OCT−…OCT+ range and snapped to the scale, so the full range is always used.

Scale-locked editing. The piano-roll shows only in-scale rows, so notes you draw stay in key. Select Scale: NONE for free chromatic editing.

SNGL / DRM.

• SNGL (Single): collapse notes to the base pitch; the chord still plays.
• DRM (Drum): mono, base pitch only, no chord.

TIE. Notes sustain toward the next note by TIE% of the gap (0–100%). TIE% is dimmed when TIE is off.

Editing the piano-roll

Click / drag in the grid to toggle steps and set pitch (snapped to scale). The bottom strip shows the trigger pattern. The playhead sweeps in real time.

MOD lanes (1–4)

Each MOD lane runs its own algorithm to produce a smooth 0–1 value sequence, then writes it to a target.

Like the NOTE lane, every MOD lane has the same four algorithm parameters (P1–P4) — renamed to whatever its selected algorithm controls — plus MIN / MAX to set the output band the value sweeps within, and its own HUMN humanize.

CRV (curve): smooth Catmull-Rom interpolation between mod steps — great for glides, filter sweeps, and evolving modulation. MOD lanes free-run (no forced quantization), so curves stay smooth.

When a MOD lane drives an internal control (octave, steps, scale, chord, etc.), the corresponding NOTE knob / dropdown shows the live modulated value.

Playhead modes (Q)

Adjust the playback order of your pattern steps.

"Q" variants reverse the step order but keep each step's internal motion forward.

Groove — swing & humanize

Add human micro-timing and stylistic pocket adjustments to your sequences.

• Swing (per channel, −100…+100) — delay or advance off-beat NOTE steps.
• Humanize on the NOTE lane and on each MOD lane — deterministic timing and value jitter. Double-click a Humanize knob to reset it.
• Swing lock per MOD lane — lock a lane's groove to the main swing so it stays in the pocket on its own division.

All groove is computed per cycle and drawn on the canvas, so what you see is exactly what plays.

Scales & chords

VEKTE ships 73 scales and 39 chords, grouped into families in the S: and C: dropdowns. The dropdown shows each as a short code (its full name below). When a MOD lane targets Scale or Chord, it sweeps within the current family so changes stay musical. NONE = chromatic / free editing; --- = monophonic / no chord.

All 73 scales

All 39 chords

Channels & slots

VEKTE is 16 channels wide, running 16 independent sequencers simultaneously.

The 16 buttons in the header are slots, and each slot is a complete, independent generator: its own NOTE lane, its own four MOD lanes, its own algorithms, scale, chord, groove, and output MIDI channel. Think of the 16 slots as 16 sequencers running at once inside one plugin, all sharing the host transport.

What a channel holds

Each of the 16 channels stores, independently of the others:

• The NOTE lane — algorithm, P1–P4, STEPS, DENSE, PROB, ROT, octave range, BASE root, scale, chord, STRUM, TIE, SNGL / DRM, and any manual piano-roll edits.
• Four MOD lanes — each with its own algorithm, P1–P4, STEPS, ROT, MIN / MAX, CRV, target (T:), and CC number.
• Groove — swing, humanize, and per-MOD swing lock.
• Playhead mode (Q) and step division (D:) per lane.
• The output MIDI channel (1–16) the whole slot sends on.
• Enable / lock / auto state per lane, and each lane's reproducible seed.

Everything above is what a channel key captures (see Presets, sharing & keys).

The live slot indicator

Every slot draws a small live readout even when it isn't selected:

• A NOTE blink on each trigger, with a tie fade showing sustained notes.
• Four mod-output bars — one per MOD lane — whose width tracks the live mod amount, so you can see all four modulators moving at a glance.
• A slot with no active lanes is faded; a muted slot is struck through.

This lets you watch all 16 channels breathe from the header without opening each one.

Output channel & auto-grouping

Set a slot's output MIDI channel with the NOTE lane's MIDI knob (1–16). Slots that share the same output channel auto-group: they sit adjacently, get a faint surrounding box, and are labeled 1a / 1b / 2a / 2b ….

Grouping is how you layer — put two or more slots on one MIDI channel to stack parts on a single instrument (e.g. a bass line on 1a and its octave doubling on 1b, both hitting channel 1). Because each slot still has its own algorithm and groove, the layers can be rhythmically and harmonically independent while playing the same synth.

Channels are also modulation destinations. A MOD lane can target another lane's P1–P4, so with grouping + cross-lane targeting you can have one channel's modulator reshape a layered channel's pattern.

MIDI routing

VEKTE emits all 16 channels on one MIDI port, with per-channel routing.

macOS

VEKTE publishes a CoreMIDI virtual port named "VEKTE". In your DAW, set each destination track's MIDI From / input to VEKTE and choose the channel (1–16). In Ableton Live this is the reliable path — Live flattens track-to-track MIDI to channel 1, so the virtual port + the track's input channel filter preserves channels.

Windows

There is no built-in virtual MIDI. Install loopMIDI (free), create a port, then in VEKTE's Menu → MIDI Output choose that port. Route your DAW tracks from that port + channel filter.

Reaper / Bitwig / Cubase (chain-based hosts)

These pass MIDI channels through device chains — use the bundled Vekte2Live helper after VEKTE, or filter by channel on the receiving track.

Transport stop always sends clean note-offs.

Ableton Live — macOS vs Windows

Live is the one host that needs platform-specific handling, because Live's own track-to-track MIDI routing collapses everything to channel 1. VEKTE emits on 16 channels, so you must route around Live's internal flattening. The mechanism differs by OS:

The key idea on both: don't chain VEKTE → instrument on the same track (Live flattens that to channel 1). Instead send VEKTE out a virtual/loopMIDI port and pull it back in on each instrument track with MIDI From = that port + channel N. That per-track channel filter is what keeps your 16 channels separate.

Alternatively, on either OS you can place the bundled Vekte2Live helper after VEKTE on a track to split channels without the external port round-trip — handy on Windows especially.

Windows one-time setup: VEKTE's Windows installer bundles the system runtimes it needs; loopMIDI is a separate free download you install once.

Strum

Create natural, acoustic-style note spreads with precision timings.

STRUM (NOTE lane) spreads a chord's voices across time instead of playing them at once. Range −100…+100: positive strums low → high, negative high → low; the spread scales with the note length. Only active when a chord is selected. STRUM can also be a MOD target for dynamic, evolving strums.

Visualization

The GUI draws real-time data to help you sculpt patterns visually.

• Live piano-roll and bar / curve views with neon lane colors and a smooth 60 Hz playhead.
• Gate length shown as a tail inside each note; probability-muted notes shown for the current cycle; swing and humanize visible on the grid.
• Tooltips on every control.

Presets, sharing & keys

Because VEKTE is fully deterministic, a pattern is a recipe, not a recording.

A given algorithm + its knob values always regenerate the exact same 32-step buffer. That is what makes sharing tiny: VEKTE only needs to store your inputs, then rebuild the notes on the other end.

Channel keys — share a whole channel as text

A channel key is a compact, copy-and-paste text string that captures one entire channel (all five lanes, groove, scale, chord, output channel, and your manual edits — everything listed in Channels & slots).

• In the Menu → Copy Channel, the key appears in a select-all textbox with a Copy button.
• It is short enough to drop into a chat message, a forum post, a caption, or a link. Send it to anyone.
• They paste it into Menu → Paste Channel in their VEKTE and get your channel back identically — down to the note, on any machine or platform.

Why keys stay small. The key carries your parameter inputs and any manual piano-roll edits as a diff; the engine regenerates the algorithmic bulk locally. Two people with the same key hear the same thing because the generators are deterministic and versioned, not because the notes travelled in the key.

Compatibility & safety.

• Older keys and saved files keep working — the format is backward compatible, so a key you shared last version still loads.
• A key is validated on paste. If it references an algorithm a given build doesn't recognize, VEKTE rejects the key cleanly rather than loading a wrong or silently different pattern — so a shared key never mis-plays.
• The five newest algorithms (Pack I, #31–#35) use integer-exact math, so keys that use them are identical across macOS, Windows, and iOS with no drift.

Three levels of recall

1. Channel key — one channel, as text, for quick sharing.
2. Song — all 16 channels together (key or file), for a whole setup.
3. DAW project — full plugin state saves inside your session automatically; reopen the project and every channel, edit, and seed returns exactly.

Seeds: Each lane also shows a seed you can type back in to reproduce a randomize roll you liked. Seeds save with the project and are part of the key, so a shared channel reproduces the same roll, not a new random one.

Why a key grows — and when

A key's length is a direct readout of how much of the pattern is deterministic versus hand-made:

• Purely generative channel → short key. If every note and value comes straight from the algorithm and its knobs, the key only has to carry those few inputs. The engine regenerates the 32 steps on the other end, so the string stays tiny.
• Edited notes or values → larger key. The moment you draw or move notes on the piano-roll, or hand-edit mod values away from what the algorithm produced, those overrides can't be regenerated — they must be stored literally as a diff. The more steps you edit away from the deterministic output, the longer the key gets.

So a key that stays short means "all recipe"; a key that has grown means "recipe + your manual edits baked in." Both reload identically — the size just reflects how much you personalized by hand.

Try it free / licensing

Evaluate VEKTE with our fully-featured unrestricted demo timer.

• Start with a full 15-minute demo — the whole plugin, nothing held back. The timer only counts active use, so idle time with the editor open doesn't burn it. When the time's up your work stays exactly as it was; restart the demo or enter your license to keep going.
• A license unlocks the plugin permanently and keeps working offline.
• The plugin shows what's new when an update is available, plus the occasional note from Vald Labs — each dismissible.

Feedback, straight from the plugin

Menu → Feedback opens a box — "what's working, what's broken, ideas…" — that sends your message to Vald Labs along with your version and DAW, so reports arrive with the context needed to act on them. It's an open beta; this is the fastest way to shape it.

Tips

Speed up your sound design sessions with these workflow shortcuts.

• Hover any control for a tooltip.
• LOCK a lane you like, then RND / CHAOS the rest.
• AUTO + a small ROT gives slowly evolving patterns.
• Use CRV on a MOD → CC lane for smooth filter / parameter sweeps.
• Layer two slots on one channel for thicker parts (e.g. 1a + 1b).
• Type a lane's seed back in to reproduce a roll you liked; seeds save with your project.