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 — three layered partials with a soft attack and a long, evolving ring, each bell placed in a reverberant space.
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 a layer of filtered pink noise.
Space & shimmer
All bells pass through a convolution reverb — an algorithmic room that gives each tone space to decay naturally. In addition, bells above the Shimmer Cutoff frequency are also routed through a feedback delay loop, so high partials accumulate into a trailing shimmer. Raise Feedback for longer tails; lower the Cutoff to draw more of the register into the shimmer effect.