Single Engine Playground

Single Engine / Playground

Use Single Engine / Playground to hear one complete endpoint patch without first thinking about START→END relationships. It is the quickest place to learn what an FWG generator, tap, Wavetable Type, window, filter, or modulation control actually does.

If FWG is new to you, do Start Here first.

The fresh patch

A fresh Playground starts deliberately simple:

• Classic Waveforms Smooth;
• Topology / Symmetry / Character = 2048 / 2048 / 2048;
• Input 1 = A;
• Input 2 = B;
• Wavetable Type = 0 – Input 1.

That is a centred triangle routed directly from tap A. The shared Root Frequency starts at 110 Hz; change it whenever another pitch is more comfortable or more revealing.

First useful exercise

1. Press Drone, or P.
2. Move Topology slowly. Classic Waveforms lets you hear familiar geometry change continuously.
3. Change Input 1 from A to B, C, or D and listen to the family-specific taps.
4. Return Input 1 to A.
5. Change Wavetable Type from 0 – Input 1 to a two-input construction, then try different Input 2 taps.
6. Press ESC to stop.

Do not try to memorise the menu. Listen to the signal path in order:

Generator Family → taps → Input 1/Input 2 → Wavetable Type → downstream processing.

Main transport and state actions

• Drone starts/pauses the current endpoint audition.
• P plays/pauses Playground.
• ESC stops ordinary audition audio.
• Randomise replaces the endpoint with a seeded random state.
• Reset restores the fresh Classic Waveforms endpoint and auto-auditions it.

Because Reset already starts the restored sound, pressing Drone immediately afterward pauses it.

For the audible endpoint, Reset returns to the same clean triangle/routing state as the Triangle preset. Reset is broader, however: it also restores fresh stored endpoint state such as the default Drawn sine. Pressing Triangle deliberately leaves stored Drawn data alone.

Classic waveform presets

The eight preset buttons—Sine, Triangle, the two Saw directions, Trapezoid, Square 50%, Pulse 25%, and Pulse 12.5%—load known Classic Waveforms states with the routing needed to hear them directly.

Morph START and END have no separate Reset buttons; the same presets provide quick clean endpoint replacements there.

The presets do not erase stored Drawn waveform data merely because they route away from Drawn.

Root Frequency, Pitch Offset, and Nominal freq

Root Frequency is the shared workspace pitch used for audition and render planning.

Each endpoint also has Pitch Offset in cents. Beneath it, Nominal freq shows Root Frequency after the static Pitch Offset, before FM or other time-varying modulation.

Double-click Nominal freq—or focus it and press Enter—to type a target frequency in Hz. Committing calculates the nearest supported Pitch Offset; Escape cancels.

See Pitch, MIDI, and Pitch Offset.

Numeric editing

Typed sound-producing numbers remain provisional until Enter, change, or blur. Sliders and deliberate numeric stepping remain immediate.

Arrow Up/Down changes by ±1 field unit; Shift+Arrow changes by ±10. This avoids auditioning incomplete intermediate digits while entering values such as Root Frequency, Filter Cutoff, or Filter Resonance.

RAM save slots

Playground, Morph START, and Morph END each have four RAM-only endpoint slots.

• Clicking an empty slot saves immediately.
• Clicking an occupied slot offers Load into patch, Overwrite slot with current patch, Clear slot, or Cancel.

Slots survive UI rebuilds during the current page session and disappear on reload/close. They are scratch memory, not files.

Copying to Morph

Playground can Copy → START, Copy → END, or Copy → Both.

These are workflow actions, not silent data copies:

• Copy → START opens Morph and auditions START;
• Copy → END opens Morph and auditions END;
• Copy → Both opens Morph and auditions START.

A useful controlled workflow is Copy → Both, then change only END.

Randomise

🔧 Technical: Playground randomisation uses its own deterministic domain and hidden next-action seed. Successful randomisation advances that hidden seed; random replacement also resets inherited Pitch Offset to 0.00 cents and records a new random-origin baseline.

For visible, repeatable batch seeds, use Bulk Random or Bulk Explorer.

Drawn and Scanning

Drawn is more than a drawing canvas. In Playground it can be:

• routed as Input 1/Input 2 audio;
• combined with another source through a two-input Wavetable Type;
• used as the LFO shape for a Scanning generator;
• used as a modulation shape, including Pitch Offset;
• populated from browser-decodable audio, including audio rendered by FWG itself;
• kept dormant as stored endpoint material until you route or modulate with it later.

The Drawn module summary distinguishes audio and Scanning-LFO use. If Drawn is not in the audible route but controls a Scanning generator, for example, it reports Not audio-routed – used as LFO shape.

A useful experiment is to audition one Drawn shape as audio first, then as a slow LFO. A curve change that seems minor in one role may be conspicuous in the other.

See Drawn Waveform, Drawn Wave-Shape Recipes, and Scanning Recipes.

Related pages

• Start Here
• Generator Families
• Source Taps and Routing
• Wavetable Types
• Drawn Waveform
• START→END Morph