InsectSwarm

InsectSwarm aims to be insects at any number, from one to a hive.

A recording of a swarm arrives with its distance, its hive and its particular minute already fixed in it, and it loops. InsectSwarm computes every wingbeat at the moment it happens, so the same instrument is one bee against a window, a wasp crossing the microphone, a mosquito that will not leave, or forty-eight bees at a hive entrance — and no two takes are alike.

Seven species are fitted to a reference library of 67 field recordings, from the hornet’s 85.7 Hz wingbeat up to the mosquito’s 463.7. Each carries its own measured harmonic stack, not a rate and a filter: the bumblebee’s second harmonic really does sit 11.7 dB above its fundamental, which is why it reads as heavy rather than merely low, and the dragonfly is shipped as the barely pitched clatter it measures as rather than forced into a buzz it never had. The cicada and the cricket get a mechanism of their own, because a tymbal is a train of clicks ringing a resonant body and not a beating wing at all.

It features 53 parameters across the swarm, one individual’s wing, a flyby, the stridulation layer, distance, a field bed, a filter and a full ADSR. 16 factory presets ship, each fitted and then checked by rendering it back and measuring it.

Native CLAP and VST3 for Linux and Windows.

Preset examples: