Humusprivate beta

0. What Humus is

Goal: understand the one idea behind Humus, hear a patch within a minute of opening it, and keep a moment you did not plan to record.

You leave with: Humus installed, the demo song playing, and one captured moment sitting on the timeline.

The idea

Humus is a live modular instrument that is also a recorder. You wire organisms (instruments, effects, sequencers, controllers) into a patch, you play the patch by turning its knobs and sending it notes, and the soil remembers: one button captures everything you did, audio and gestures alike, and you can scrub back through it or reshape it afterwards.

The name is the point. Humus is the organic matter that joins all forms of life in the soil. Nothing in a patch is a track on its own; everything feeds everything else.

Steps

  1. Install. Leave your email on the website's front page; when your seat opens, the downloads page mails you a six-digit code and the build is yours. Open it and drag Humus to Applications; your licence waits on the same page, and Help > Enter License takes it in. Building from source is the other door, and lesson 10 opens it.
  2. First launch. The tour opens. Walk it, then let the setup wizard pick your audio device. Both come back from the Help menu any time.
  3. Open the demo. The start window offers the demo song, and Help > Start Window brings it back. Press play. Sound.
  4. Touch it. Click any node on the canvas, find a knob in the property rack on the right, and turn it while it plays.
  5. Keep the moment. Play for half a minute and, while it still plays, press Keep the Last 8 Bars on the transport. Your knob moves are on the timeline, without having pressed record first.
  6. Scrub. Drag the playhead back through those bars and watch the knobs return to where they were.

Shot list

  1. The downloads page, an email typed, the six digits from the mail, the download. Then the app icon, launch. Voice: "Humus is an instrument that remembers."
  2. The tour's first card, one click through, the wizard picking a device.
  3. Start window, the demo song, play. Let it run four bars in silence.
  4. Cursor to a node, the rack opens, a knob turns, the sound changes.
  5. Keep the Last 8 Bars pressed, the lanes appearing.
  6. Playhead dragged backwards, knobs following it. Voice: "You never armed anything."
  7. Title card: the ten lessons.

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