RESONA

01Welcome

Most synthesizers start with a waveform and carve it down. RESONA works the way real instruments do. Something sets an object in motion, and the object decides how it sounds. Hit a glass bar and it rings bright and pure. Hit a wooden one and it knocks and fades. Bow a string and it sings for as long as you keep bowing.

Every note you play gets its own object, its own exciter and its own envelope. Play a chord and you hear several objects ringing together, each one reacting to how hard you played.

Around that core sit the TEXTURE engines (wavetable, granular, ring modulation and an envelope follower), a 16-step arpeggiator, and a full modulation system with three envelopes, three LFOs and four macros.

02Installing

RESONA runs on macOS and Windows as a plugin in your DAW and as a standalone app.

In the standalone app, every MIDI keyboard you plug in is switched on by itself, including one you plug in while RESONA is open. Use the settings (gear) button to choose your audio output, or to switch a keyboard off.

Run the installer, then open your DAW. If RESONA doesn't appear in your instrument list, ask your DAW to rescan its plugins. RESONA is an instrument: load it on an instrument or MIDI track, not as an audio effect.

The first time a newly installed plugin opens, your computer may check it before it loads. Let that finish. The next time it opens straight away.

03Quick start

Five steps from loading RESONA to your first sound. For a printable two-minute overview of everything, download the RESONA Quick Guide (PDF).

1. Load RESONA and play a few notes. The Init preset is a clean, dry struck bar: chorus and reverb are off until you switch them on. Every knob sits on a tidy position, and nothing is modulated.
2. Pick a model from the row along the top: Modal, Sympathetic, Inharmonic, FM or Chords. Each one is a different kind of object.
3. Turn the four big RESONATOR knobs. Structure changes the material, Brightness the top end, Damping how long it rings, and Position where it's hit.
4. Change how it's played. Turn up Bow/Blow to keep the object singing while you hold a key, or turn Strike down for a soft, bowed-only sound.
5. Press RANDOMIZE to roll a brand-new sound. ‹ takes you back if you liked the last one better.

04The window

Header

Panels on the SYNTH page

Below the model row, the SYNTH page has six panels: EXCITER, RESONATOR and SPACE across the middle, then MOTION, PLAY and TOUCH underneath. The modulation chips and the on-screen keyboard run along the bottom.

Working with controls

• Drag a knob up or down to turn it. Every knob shows its value underneath at all times.
• Values on hover. Under each knob you see only its name. Point at it or turn it and the name changes to its value; move away and the name comes back.
• Double-click a knob to reset it to its default.
• Right-click a knob to step it back (up to 10 times).
• Shift+right-click any knob for Undo/Redo, its modulation routings, Modulate with ›, Map to MIDI › and Reset to default.
• Right-click a panel title to lock that panel against RANDOMIZE.

05Models

The model decides what kind of object rings. Switching models keeps your knob settings, so it's quick to hear the same performance on a different object.

06Exciter

The exciter is what sets the object moving. RESONA has three built-in exciters, and you can mix them freely. The TEXTURE page adds a wavetable and grains as further exciters.

The two envelopes

The AMP ENV and EXCITER ENV switch flips the four A/D/S/R knobs between the two envelopes.

• AMP ENV shapes the loudness of each note. Attack 1 ms–8 s, Decay 10 ms–10 s, Sustain 0–100 %, Release 10 ms–12 s.
• EXCITER ENV shapes the sustained exciters (Bow/Blow and Osc): how they swell in, settle and fade. Attack 1 ms–4 s, Decay 10 ms–4 s, Sustain 0–100 %, Release 10 ms–6 s. Strike is a single hit and isn't affected.

07Resonator

The four big knobs are the heart of RESONA. Small moves make big differences, and all four are good targets for modulation.

Chord, Key and Scale

• Chord makes every key play a chord: Octaves, m7, Minor, m9, m11, Fifths, add11, add9, Major, Maj7 or sus4, plus Diatonic Triads and Diatonic 7ths, which follow Key and Scale. On the Chords model it tunes the sympathetic strings instead.
• Key sets the key you play in.
• Scale snaps every note into a scale in that key: Chromatic (no snapping), Major, Minor, Dorian, Mixolydian, Harmonic Minor, Pentatonic Major, Pentatonic Minor, Blues, or User. With User selected, click the notes your scale should use.

The display

The window above the knobs shows what the resonator is doing. Switch views with the tabs at the top of the display:

When you edit a TEXTURE engine, the display switches to the matching view on its own.

08Space

Chorus, Ensemble and Ping Pong

Switch the effect on with its button and choose a Type.

• Chorus and Ensemble: Amount sets how much you hear, Depth how deep it swirls, Rate how fast it moves (0.05–8 Hz). Ensemble is the richer of the two.
• Ping Pong: an echo that bounces left and right. Amount is the delay mix, Depth sets how many repeats, Rate sets the delay time. Turn on Sync to lock the delay to your song's tempo; Rate then picks a note value.

Reverb

• Space is a long hall that darkens as it fades. Plate is a classic bright plate.
• Mix sets how much reverb you hear, Time how long the tail lasts, Tone how bright it is.

Width

Width spreads the whole sound across the stereo field: fully left is mono, the middle is natural, fully right is extra wide.

09Motion, Play and Touch

Motion

A quick panel LFO for gentle movement, switched on and off in the panel's header. For deeper modulation, use the LFO chips (see Modulation).

Play

Touch

How your playing shapes the sound.

A sustain pedal holds notes the way it does on a piano.

10The TEXTURE page

Four engines that take RESONA beyond a classic resonator. Each one has an on switch in its header. Grabbing any of its knobs switches it on for you.

Wavetable

A wavetable oscillator that can drive the resonator, play on its own, or both.

• Table: 30 built-in wavetables, from Basic Shapes, Saw Stack and Organ to Vowels, Glass, Bells, Wavefold and Noise Spectrum. Or choose User and IMPORT your own: a standard multi-frame wavetable, a single cycle, or any sound, which RESONA slices into 16 frames.
• Position scans through the frames.
• Warp bends the wave: Bend, PD, Sync, Squeeze, FM, Fold, Crush or Flip. Warp Amount sets how far.
• Excite sets how hard the wavetable drives the resonator, like bowing it with the wave. It rings the resonator at a steady level on every model, whatever Structure, Damping or Brightness are doing; on a sound that is already bowed or blown, full Excite plays about as strongly as the bow. It follows the Exciter envelope, but while you hold a key it never drops below half, so even a short exciter envelope keeps it sounding. Direct sets how loud it plays on its own, next to the resonator.

Granular

Two sources, chosen with Source:

• LIVE chops up RESONA's own sound (the last four seconds) into a cloud of grains. Position sets how far back in time the grains read. Mix balances the dry sound against the cloud, Feedback feeds grains back in for swirling washes, and Freeze holds the cloud where it is. A level guard keeps a big feedback cloud from overloading the output, so turning GRANULAR on never pulls the whole sound down.
• SAMPLE plays grains from a sound you load. Every note gets its own grain player. Its grains can Excite the resonator, play directly (Mix), or both. Speed sets how fast the playhead moves through the sample (0 freezes it). Key Track makes the grains follow the keys you play.

Ring Mod

• With Track on, the carrier follows the note you play, and Ratio (0.25–8×) sets its pitch against the note. With Track off, Freq sets a fixed pitch (1 Hz–5 kHz).
• Shape: Sine, Triangle, Square or Noise. Mix sets how much you hear. Spread detunes left and right for a wider, moving sound.

Envelope Follower

RESONA's own loudness moves a target. Loud passages push it one way, quiet ones let it fall back.

• Target: Brightness, Structure, Position, Damping, WT Position, WT Warp, Grain Density, Grain Size, Grain Mix, Ring Mod Mix, Ring Mod Freq or Chorus.
• Amount sets how far, up or down. Attack (1–500 ms) sets how fast it reacts as the sound gets louder, Release (10 ms–3 s) how slowly it lets go, and Gain (±18 dB) how sensitive it is.

11The ARP page

A 16-step arpeggiator. Switch it on with ARP, hold a chord, and it plays the notes in turn. Latch keeps it playing after you let go, with your song playing or stopped. Pressing STOP in your music software stops it; the latched chord comes back when you press play.

The step grid

Click the numbered switches to turn steps on and off. Pick a lane with the lane tabs, then draw on the bars with the mouse:

• Velocity: how hard each step plays.
• Gate: how long each step is held. Turn it down for short, snappy notes; all the way up plays legato.
• Pitch: transposes a step by up to ±24 semitones.
• Glide: slides into the step.
• Pan: places the step left or right.
• Scan: three more lanes, tabs 1, 2 and 3. Each one moves any control you pick under TARGET (grouped by section, or OFF), by its own AMOUNT (−100% to +100%). Draw a step's bar up and that control moves while the step plays: brightness on one lane, structure on another, reverb on the third.

12Modulation

CHIPS are Sequoia's exclusive drag-and-drop modulation. Drag any chip onto any parameter and it moves that parameter. No menus, no matrix to set up first.

Every modulation source lives in the chip row above the keyboard. Each chip shows a live drawing of its source, a fill that rises and falls with it, and a number for how many controls it moves.

Routing

1. Drag a chip onto any knob. While you hover, the knob previews the ring. Let go and the routing is made.
2. Set the depth. A coloured arc appears around the knob in the source's colour, with a dot at each end. Drag either dot to set how far the source reaches that way: each dot moves on its own, and the knob only comes along if you pull a dot past it. On a one-way source (ENV, the macros, VELO, WHEEL, PRESS) the start dot sits on the knob: drag it either way and the knob comes with it, while the far dot stays where it is; the far dot never moves the knob. A small light dot shows where the source has the knob right now.
3. Up to three per knob. Each knob takes up to three modulations; drop a fourth chip and the help bar asks you to remove one first (Shift+right-click the knob). They stack in the order you added them, the first one closest to the knob, and their dots never sit on top of each other, so you can always grab the one you want. Where space is tight, a knob with arcs draws its dial a little smaller to make room, and grows back when you remove them. Both dots of every arc can be automated from your DAW.
4. Even arcs. A two-way chip (LFO, RANDOM, KEY and bend where the plugin has them) swings both up and down, so when you drop one on a knob it gets the same room on both sides: the two end dots sit the same distance from the knob, even when the knob is not in the middle. If the knob is close to an end (within 10%), it can only move one way, so the arc keeps its full depth. One-way chips (ENV, macros, VELO, WHEEL and so on) are unchanged. Dropping the same chip on the same knob again evens it the same way. Projects and presets you saved earlier keep their arcs exactly as they were. To even out an arc later, Shift + right-click the knob and choose Mirror the two ends next to that chip: both ends become the average of the two, shrunk to fit around the knob, never below 10%.
5. Change or remove it. Shift+right-click the knob for depth presets, invert and remove, or use Modulate with › to add a source from the menu.

Routings are saved with your project and in presets.

Envelopes (ENV 1–3)

Click an ENV chip to open its card. Each envelope is AHDSR: attack, hold, decay, sustain and release. Drag the handles on the display or use the five slim faders. Double-click a handle to reset it. A short attack (a few milliseconds, which sounds instant) is drawn straight up; drag the attack dot to the right for a slower rise, or all the way left for none.

• Velo: playing harder makes the envelope bigger.
• Trig: what starts the envelope. Choose every NOTE you play, or the song's beat: 1 BEAT, 1 BAR, 2 BARS or 4 BARS.

LFOs (LFO 1–3)

• Shape: Sine, Tri, Saw Up, Saw Down, Square, S&H or Smooth (random).
• Rate: 0.02–20 Hz, or with Sync on, a note value from 4/1 to 1/32, including dotted and triplet values.
• Morph bends the shape. Choose how with the morph type (Bend, Skew, Mirror, Sync, Fold, Steps, Spike, Ripple or Mutate) and set how far with the Morph amount.
• Smooth rounds off corners and steps. Rise fades the LFO in after each note, up to 5 s. Retrig restarts it on every new note.
• Variation picks which version of a random shape plays.

The card draws two full cycles of the real wave as you shape it.

Macros and the matrix

The four MACROS are single knobs that move many controls at once. Turn them on the MACROS tile or the MACROS card, and drag an M1–M4 chip onto knobs to give it targets.

The MATRIX, on the MACROS card, lists every routing in one place: 32 slots in all. Drag an amount bar to change a depth, click × to remove a routing, or click the next empty row to add one.

13Randomize and undo

RANDOMIZE

RANDOMIZE rolls a whole new sound. ‹ steps back (the last 20 rolls are kept) and › steps forward again.

• Right-click RANDOMIZE to choose how far it goes: MILD (a nudge), MEDIUM (a new musical sound) or WILD (everything, plus new modulation). Every roll starts the new sound without the last sound's modulation: MILD and MEDIUM leave none, WILD adds one to three new routings. Lock MOD ROUTINGS (right-click RANDOMIZE) to keep yours.
• Right-click a panel's title to Lock it. Locked panels keep their settings when you randomize.
• RANDOMIZE never touches MASTER, tuning, voices, the arpeggiator, the macros or your MIDI MAP, and it never leaves you with silence.

Undo and redo

Every change can be undone, up to 100 steps back, including randomizing, modulation and MIDI MAP changes. Undo and Redo also sit at the top of every right-click menu.

14MIDI MAP

Let your mod wheel, aftertouch, pedals or controller knobs move any control in RESONA. Mappings are saved with your project (not with presets), and they work with the window closed.

1. Click MIDI in the header. The MIDI MAP sheet drops down.
2. Pick a SOURCE: Mod Wheel (CC 1), Aftertouch, Breath (CC 2), Foot (CC 4), Expression (CC 11), Sustain (CC 64), Resonance (CC 71), Brightness (CC 74) or General 1–4 (CC 16–19). Or choose LEARN… and move any knob on your controller. The NOW meter shows the source's live value.
3. Press + ADD and pick a control from the popular targets, or choose CUSTOM… and simply touch any control on any page. The first touch maps it without changing its value.
4. Set the range with FROM and TO. Set FROM above TO to make the control move the other way.

Mapped controls show a small tag beside their label (MW, AT, CC74). A + means more than one source drives it. The shortcut is to Shift+right-click a knob and choose Map to MIDI › Learn. To remove a mapping, right-click the control (Shift+right-click on a knob) and choose Remove MIDI mapping, or click × on its row in the sheet.

15Presets and files

Factory presets

RESONA ships with 69 presets, each designed for this instrument:

Your own presets

Press SAVE to store the current sound. Your presets are saved as .resona files in your Music folder, under Sequoia Synthesizers / RESONA / Presets, and appear in the preset list alongside the factory sounds. Copy that folder to move your sounds to another computer.

Loading samples and wavetables

The file browser plays each sound as you land on it.

• ↑ ↓ move through the files. → or Enter opens a folder, ← goes up.
• Enter or a double-click loads the file. Esc closes the browser.
• Open your sample folder and press ADD TO LIBRARY once. From then on, the browser opens there every time.

A loaded sample or user wavetable is remembered with your project and presets by its location. If you move or rename the file, load it again.

16Sound recipes

Starting points for the sounds RESONA does best. Begin from Init each time.

17Troubleshooting

RESONA doesn't appear in my DAW

Check that the plugin is in the folder listed under Installing, then rescan plugins in your DAW. Make sure you're looking in the instrument list, not the effects list.

The CLIP light comes on

Turn MASTER down a little, or lower the level of a loud engine (Direct, Mix or Excite on the TEXTURE page). High Damping with many voices and Chords can add up quickly.

My computer is working hard

Lower Voices, turn off TEXTURE engines you aren't using, or raise your DAW's buffer size. LIVE granular and long reverbs cost more than the resonator itself.

Notes stop ringing when I let go

Turn Key-Up Damp to the right, and raise AMP Release.

A sample or user wavetable is missing

RESONA remembers files by their location. If the file was moved, renamed or is on a drive that isn't connected, load it again from its new place.

Does the sample rate matter?

No. RESONA runs at any common sample rate and converts internally, so presets sound the same at 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz.

18Credits

RESONA's resonator is built on the open-source resonator DSP by Émilie Gillet (Mutable Instruments), released under the MIT license. Full license notices are included with the download.

Interface type: Space Grotesk and IBM Plex Mono (SIL Open Font License).