Humusprivate beta

Getting started

Get Humus

  • Download it. Humus is in private beta. Leave your email in the form on the website's front page and you are on the list. When a seat opens, go to the downloads page, type the same email, and a six-digit code is mailed to you - check the spam folder if it does not arrive. Type it in and the newest build for your platform is there, with your licence beside it; Help ▸ Enter License takes the licence into the app. Once the beta closes, downloads will simply be public.
  • Build it. The source lives at github.com/phobos-instruments/humus, and Build from source has the steps. The compiled app is the whole application, so the download only saves you the build.

First launch

A short tour opens, then a setup wizard picks your audio device. Both come back from the Help menu as Meet Humus and Setup Wizard. The start window offers the demo song and your recent patches, and after a crash it offers to recover what you had not saved; Help ▸ Start Window brings it back. File ▸ Examples holds ready-made patches to open and take apart, a few more with every release.

The first launch also scans your plugins. A large collection takes a few minutes once, then the result is cached.

The workspace

  • Patcher - the canvas where organisms live and cords run. The organism list down its side holds everything you can add: double-click an entry, or drag it where you want it.
  • Properties - the editors of whatever you select, stacked as a rack.
  • Timeline - tracks, clips and automation, below the patcher.
  • Transport - along the top: play, tempo, loop, capture.
  • The window rail - buttons for the Metapad, Parameter Control, Notes, the Document Switcher, Help and the Library.

Panes hide, detach into their own windows, and stay where you left them.

Build a patch

  1. Add organisms. A new patch already has a SoundOut, the master output.
  2. Wire them. Drag from an outlet at the bottom of a node to an inlet at the top of another. Audio cords are solid, MIDI cords dotted, video cords wear their own colour.
  3. Edit a cord. Right-click it to delete it or insert an organism into it.
  4. Tidy up. Edit ▸ Auto-arrange lays the patch out as a top-down flow.
  5. Turn knobs. Select a node and its editor opens in Properties. Right-click a knob for Automate, MIDI Learn, OSC Learn, Control with (let another organism move it), Random and Reset.

Right-click an organism for the rest: Edit, Help, Rename (F2), Replace, Insert Before or After, Make Pod, MIDI Receive, Bypass and Disconnect. Bypass switches it out and leaves the cords alone; Disconnect rewires the patch around it and leaves it unplugged.

The organism bar

Every editor carries the same bar under its title:

  • Bypass takes it out of the signal path, and the node dims.
  • The dice roll new settings. The ‹ › arrows beside them step through its history, so a good roll is never lost.
  • The preset strip shows the preset's name, with previous and next, Recall, Store and Evolve. Its menu adds Store as new, Generate with AI, Save as User Preset and the Presets window. Shipped presets stay as they came; yours sit beside them.
  • ? opens the organism's help page.
  • At the end: detach into a window, move up or down the rack, close.

Settings

Eight categories: AI, Audio, Graphics & UI, License & Privacy, MIDI & OSC, Packs, Plugins and Video. The load gauge on the toolbar shows !n after n audio dropouts.

The transport

Play (Space), stop, loop and Capture, the round button of performance capture. Beside them:

  • Tempo, with Tap Tempo, the Metronome and Mark Beat 1.
  • Groove, which swings every sequencer that follows it.
  • Master Limiter, which keeps the output from clipping while you experiment.
  • Ableton Link, for tempo shared with other apps.
  • Computer Keyboard Notes, which plays the focused organism from your keyboard.

Any number box takes arithmetic: /2 halves the value, *2 or x2 doubles it. A plain -6 is still minus six.

Save and share

  • Save writes a .hum patch, plain text that will open for good. Patches start in ~/Documents/Humus/Patches, recordings go to Recordings, presets to Presets.
  • File ▸ Bounce renders audio, MIDI or video: the whole song, the loop or the selection.
  • Control ▸ Record Live Performance writes the master mix to a file while you play.
  • Plugins covers playing a whole patch inside other music software.

When a file has moved

A patch remembers its media by path. Open one whose files have moved and a Missing media window lists them. Locate... finds the first, and every file that moved with it comes back in the same step. Ignore plays silence where the files were, and File ▸ Locate Missing Media reopens the window.