Kangas Sound Editor (QI) features

• You can create music and sound-effects from scratch with it.
• It uses a system of frequency ratios for pitch control, making it more suited to just intonation rather than conventional music notation and equal temperament. A MIDI start pitch can be specified using conventional music notation, however.
• Instruments, both melodic and percussion, can be created from scratch by specifying harmonics or anti-harmonics (AKA inharmonics) which are stored in a database.
• There is a cellular-like structure to compositions, with cells or boxes representing entities at low levels of abstraction (e.g. Harmonics) or at higher levels of abstraction (e.g. Chord Groups). For details of cell/box types used by the program click here
• User-definable graphs are widely used in the program; for example, for control of volume and pitch, or for shifting the balance of stereo over time.
• Audio output is to uncompressed .WAV files.
• Audio input for Recorded Sound boxes is from uncompressed .AIFF, .AU or .WAV files.
• Kangas Sound Editor uses an external database engine (MySQL) for storage of compositions and other data (e.g. graphs and harmonics), whereas Kangas Sound Editor QI uses an internal database engine (HSQLDB).
• From version 3 of the software, users can collaborate with and build on the work of others through an XML import/export facility.
• The software is open-source and is free to download and use.