Harmonic Pattern Generator & Drum Computer

NOMN has released RESERVOIR, after a year of work on it. They say that, alongside really interesting abstract harmonic material, it's a style-morphing drum computer and a deep film-scoring tool (12 layers, harmonic conductor with automatic voice leading, preset morphing for macro arcs). 

A spokesperson told us, "Composers have been working with statistics, algorithms, and early computational methods for creative use for over 75 years -- and the algorithmic impulse goes back much further than that. Voice-leading rules, functional harmony post-Bach, species counterpoint: in their own way these are all algorithms. Schillinger, Xenakis, serialism, Markov processes, cellular automata, L-systems -- the 20th century formalized a lot of it. RESERVOIR brings that lineage into a real-time DAW-integrated MIDI engine with an Echo State Network whose memory of recent output feeds back into what comes next. 12 polyphonic voices, 18 rhythm engines, 12 pitch logics, 100+ scales. Output is standard MIDI, capable of microtonality. A reservoir, not an answer -- built for composing with, not for being composed for."

Here's more details direct from NOMN

RESERVOIR is a platform for exploring new (and old) musical pattern -- a way of thinking about notes and their mathematical relationships as producing and erasing culture.

Algorithmic composition has a deep history that is part of a continuum of highly inventive and instructive thinking about what music making and "composing" might be. Before the 1960s, when minimalism and pop took over, there was a computational optimism that by pulling apart cultural inheritance and unquestioned norms would allow for a remaking of what's possible.

Serialism and its many branchings was only one early part of this conversation -- and not the origins even. Just adjacent was Joseph Schillinger, a Russian theorist whose student Lawrence Berk founded Schillinger House -- which became Berklee -- and whose students and inheritors were aesthetically diverse, from Gershwin and Gil Evans to Earle Brown. Schillinger's foundational idea was interference of periodicities: the principle that complex musical time emerges from the interaction of overlapping temporal cycles, not from any single pattern in isolation. He treated rhythm as the primary organizing principle of all music, preceding harmony and melody.

Schillinger was not committed to atonality; he was committed to bridging mathematics, nature, and the arts in a kind of early-20th-century mystic way. Others followed with their own approaches -- Xenakis among them -- and when computers became available in academic settings, "computer music" became a field of research unto itself, with implementations of abstract mathematics, neural networks, and now transformers and diffusion models that will simply "solve for music" based on training data.

RESERVOIR is a resource for exploring the pattern logic of music making, not a solver -- a reservoir, not an answer. A reservoir accumulates. It holds material whose origins are diverse and whose interactions are ongoing. What comes out is shaped by everything that has entered and by the dynamics of the holding itself.

RESERVOIR brings this lineage into a real-time DAW-integrated pattern engine -- not to compose for you but as a vast tunable landscape. A polyphonic texture orchestrator that generates, perforates, and shapes 12 simultaneous voices of MIDI through a pipeline of mathematically grounded algorithms, each rooted in a specific tradition -- and enhanced by a machine learning layer: an Echo State Network whose recurrent neurons hold decaying echoes of the system's own output, producing new patterns through the same kind of temporal interference that Schillinger formalized ninety years ago. It listens to itself and evolves continuously. It's not a step sequencer, though you can make sequences. Not a random note generator, though you can generate quasi-random microtimed clouds. It is a system whose internal logic draws on a century of thinking about how to organize time and pitch with rigor and surprise simultaneously. Future updates will add more logics, but as it stands there are more than 100,000 unique scenarios from which to find material or create textures or new frameworks for whole pieces.

The output is standard MIDI, very particularly timed, capable of microtonality. Route it to any instrument. Record it, edit it, build on it.

What RESERVOIR produces is not raw material. It is patterned material -- patterns drawn from traditions and mathematical logics that precede and exceed any individual's claim to authorship. Composition has always been a negotiation with inherited structures. RESERVOIR makes this negotiation explicit, navigable, and productive.

How It Works

Every note passes through four stages:

Generation. 18 rhythm techniques determine when notes occur. The complete first book of Schillinger's rhythmic vocabulary -- resultant rhythms, grouping formulas, multi-generator interference, instrumental time rhythms, coordination of duration groups, permutation of durations and rests, homogeneous continuity, distributive powers, growth series, and acceleration curves -- alongside stochastic clouds, Euclidean distribution, L-system fractals, harmonic-series pulse streams, Markov-chain beat grids, and genre-seeded pattern wander drawn from an open source corpus of drum patterns.

Perforation. 7 methods determine which notes are removed -- where the silences fall, and with what logic. Prime sieves, Fibonacci-based filtering, golden ratio quasiperiodic lattices, cellular automata, modular congruence filtering, Euclidean distribution, and density curves learned from an open source corpus of drum patterns.

Pitch. 12 algorithms determine what notes play, drawing from serial exhaustion, spectral interference, Markov chains, combinatorial permutation, symmetric inversion, corpus-learned transitions, arpeggiator patterns, and a harmonic conductor system with user-defined chord vocabularies and automatic voice leading. Across 100+ scales spanning Western modes, Japanese koto tunings, Indian ragas, synthetic formations, and microtonal systems.

Expression. Velocity shaping, 5 articulation styles, continuous CC controllers across 6 groups (dynamics, timbre, vibrato, articulation, effects, pedal) with phrase-reactive envelopes, and 4 micro-timing modes: metronomic, NOMN expressive timing, user groove profiles captured from live MIDI performance, and genre-specific microtiming extracted from the drum corpus. Not random jitter. Contextual groove that responds to density, phrase position, and stylistic tradition.

Key Features:
- 12-Layer Polyphonic Generation: Independent rhythm, perforation, and pitch per layer with 5 coordination modes and composite density normalization.
- Echo State Network: Recurrent network reading self-referential musical features and outputting continuous modulation biases. A machine learning layer that evolves the composition from its own output.
- 18 Rhythm Engines: Full implementation of Schillinger's Book I rhythmic vocabulary plus stochastic, Euclidean, L-system, Markov grid, genre-seeded corpus patterns, and a strict subdivision grid for arp-style workflows.
- 12 Pitch Algorithms: Including a harmonic conductor with user-defined chord vocabularies, automatic voice leading, and ESN-driven harmonic transitions.
- MIR Capture System: Real-time MIDI performance analysis. Play a phrase; RESERVOIR absorbs its character and generates from it.
- Genre-Seeded Pattern Wander: An open source corpus of drum patterns processed into genre-specific prototype patterns. The NOMN Drum Computer engine walks these patterns with controllable wander rate.
- Genre Groove Microtiming: Per-genre timing deviations extracted from the drum corpus for stylistically authentic humanization.
- GPU-Accelerated Visualization: Real-time radial and score display of all layers with 8 color analysis modes rooted in Scriabin, Schillinger, and Rimsky-Korsakov color theory.
- 100+ Scale Library: Western modes, Japanese koto tunings, Indian ragas, synthetic formations, and custom pitch sets.
- In-Plugin Codex: A per-card glossary explaining the math and lineage behind every rhythm, perforation, and pitch engine.
- MIDI Learn: Right-click binding of any parameter to a hardware controller or incoming CC, saved with the project.
- Preset Morphing: Automatable crossfade between any two presets for smooth timbral transitions.
- Audio Gating: Apply perforation patterns to live audio input for rhythmic sculpting of external signals.
- MIDI Export: Multi-track output preserving per-layer polyphonic structure.
- DAW Transport Sync: PPQ-based timing for perfect tempo sync, transport jumps, and loop handling.

Compatibility:
Formats: VST3, Audio Unit (AU).
OS: macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel).

Pricing and Availability:
$63.45

More information:

• RESERVOIR