A generative soundscape built from Conway's Game of Life and the ancient 432 Hz tuning system. Cells live and die on the grid; when new cells are born they ring like temple bells — their pitch determined by column position across a just-intonation scale, their sustain lengthened by cluster size.
The grid
Click or touch any cell to toggle it and hear its tone immediately. Use STIR to seed a random pattern, GUST to add a sparse burst of new life (also happens automatically every ~22 seconds while running), or VOID to clear everything. Press BEGIN to start the automaton stepping; press again to PAUSE.
Tonality
Each column maps to a frequency derived from the selected Scale and Root Note, using just-intonation ratios centred on 432 Hz. The columns cycle through scale intervals across octaves from left (low) to right (high). Pitch Fine detunes all chimes by ±2 semitones for extra texture without affecting the drones.
Drones & movement
Three sustained sine-wave drones underpin the soundscape, each individually tunable to any scale degree. Enable Movement for a slow volume swell (~6 s cycle) and a low-pass filter sweep (~12 s cycle) that breathes warmth through the texture. Enable Wind for filtered pink noise.
Delay & shimmer
Only chimes above the Shimmer Cutoff frequency are routed through the feedback delay loop, so high partials trail and shimmer while bass tones remain clean. Raise Feedback for longer echo tails; lower the Cutoff threshold to draw more of the spectrum into the effect.