2. Using the Plugin

Overview

The plugin interface is organized from top to bottom as follows:

• Title bar -- displays the plugin name and version number; the ? button on the right toggles tooltip mode (see Tooltips below), and the cog opens the Settings dialog
• The Preferences tab has Save and Cancel buttons. Pressing Cancel (or the title-bar ✕ / Escape) closes the dialog. If you have unsaved changes, a confirmation prompt appears — click OK to discard them, or Cancel to keep editing.
• Preset controls -- browse, save, and delete presets
• Voice and Stereo / Output row -- the Voice panel on the left (Material selector lead, then the Bright, Damp, Length tone shapers) and the Stereo / Output panel on the right (Pan Layout selector, Width, Volume)
• Resonance, Pairing and Wind row -- the Resonance panel (Sympathy, Body), the Pairing panel (Pairing toggle, 12-string toggle, and the Mix blend they gate), and the Wind panel (Wind, Turb, Gust, Breath knobs) side by side
• Harp canvas -- visual centrepiece showing the instrument; strings vibrate in real time and serve as the primary tuning interface
• Notes and Tune mini-panels -- small framed brass-button panels in the open space to the left (Notes) and right (Tune) of the harp: randomise, reset, or set-all string notes (Notes) and randomise/reset fine-tuning in cents (Tune)

The plugin window is resizable: drag the bottom-right corner (or resize the host window) to scale the whole interface between 75% and 300% of its default size -- useful on 4K/Retina displays. The aspect ratio stays fixed so the layout never distorts, and the chosen size is remembered the next time you open the editor (it applies to all instances, independent of presets).

Preset Controls

The preset bar at the top provides, left to right: - A "Preset" label identifying the row - ‹ / › buttons to step through presets - Preset dropdown to select any preset by name - Save to save the current settings as a new user preset - Delete to remove a user preset (factory presets cannot be deleted)

The preset list is a collapsible tree grouped into two top-level sections: a USER node containing the presets you have saved, shown first, and a FACTORY node containing all built-in presets (organised beneath it into category sub-headings such as GLACIAL or DARK LONG DRONES). The USER section only appears once you have saved at least one preset. Each preset is tagged with its origin — [User] for your saved sounds and [Factory] for the read-only built-in bank.

Every heading carries a chevron (▾ open / ▸ closed); click a heading to expand or collapse that branch. The dropdown remembers what you expand and collapse while the plugin window is open, and always opens with the branch containing the currently-selected preset expanded so you can see the sound you are on; that preset is highlighted in the list so it is easy to spot. (This memory lasts for the session; reopening the plugin starts fresh with just the current preset's branch expanded.) User presets are stored in your system's application data directory.

When the plugin first loads it starts on its built-in default settings, which do not correspond to any saved preset — the preset bar reads Default until you choose a preset or save your own.

Once you load a preset and then nudge any of its controls, the preset bar appends a * to the name — e.g. Cathedral Wind * [Factory] — to show the sound no longer exactly matches the saved preset. The marker clears when you save your changes (over the same name or a new one), load another preset, or return every control to its saved value. It is purely a status indicator; bypassing the plugin does not count as a change.

Switching presets is gapless: there is no silent moment in the middle of the change. The previous sound keeps ringing while the new preset is charged up internally, then the two are crossfaded so the new sound arrives already at its full body — even a slow, gentle preset is at full strength immediately instead of taking several seconds to swell in. The result is a smooth, click-free, uninterrupted transition straight into the loaded sound, and browsing quickly through several presets stays continuous with no drop-outs.

Material and Pairing

The controls are grouped by function. The Material selector leads the Voice panel (its tone shapers sit beside it on the same row), and the Pairing panel (Pairing toggle, 12-string toggle, and the Mix blend those toggles gate) sits on the second control row between the Resonance and Wind panels. The Pan Layout selector lives beside the controls it belongs with (see Icon Controls below).

Material selector -- a rotary selector knob, the same size and cherry-ring style as the tone-shaper knobs beside it. A 3D brass pointer on the knob points at the current material, and the three option names (Gut / Metal / Nylon) fan around the knob, each tinted in its own material shade. Drag up or down to step through the materials, or click the knob to advance to the next one (it wraps around). The three available materials shape the overall character:

Pairing toggle -- enables or disables octave-pair blending. The 12 strings are arranged in 6 paired courses; when pairing is on, each fundamental string is blended with its octave partner. When pairing is off, all 12 strings are treated as independent.

12-string toggle -- when on, pairs 4 and 5 (the lower-pitch courses) are tuned in unison, matching the traditional 12-string guitar layout (4 octave pairs + 2 unison pairs). When off (default), all 6 pairs are tuned one octave apart. This setting is captured by each preset and is DAW-automatable like the other main-panel controls. The 12-string layout only applies to paired courses, so this toggle is greyed out and has no effect when the Pairing toggle (to its left) is off.

Mix (0 -- 1, default 0.3) -- controls how much of the partner strings are blended in. At zero only the fundamental strings are heard; higher values bring in the partner strings for a fuller, chorus-like sound. This control is greyed out and has no effect when Pairing is off. Mix sits immediately beside the Pairing and 12-string toggles because it is the amount those toggles gate.

Wind Control

The Wind panel sits at the right end of the second control row, beside the Resonance and Pairing panels. It is a cherry-plank panel carrying the four wind knobs. The wind itself is shown drifting through the soundbox on the harp canvas below (see Harp Canvas), rather than across this panel.

Four rotary knobs sit on the panel on a single row, each labelled underneath. From left to right:

• Wind -- base wind strength. Higher values drive the strings harder, exciting higher harmonics and producing more complex tones. Lower values produce a gentle breeze that excites only the most responsive harmonics.
• Turb -- turbulence: the moment-to-moment jitter and chop of the wind. Higher values make the wind feel choppy and busy; lower values make it steadier. Turbulence also drives a small per-string phase wobble in the excitation, adding life to the tone.
• Gust -- depth of the slow swells and lulls (~3 second cycles). Think of it as the weather: at zero the wind is steady (only the fast moment-to-moment jitter from Turbulence remains); at maximum the wind sweeps through deep, slow gust cycles.
• Breath -- how audibly the instrument breathes with each gust cycle. While Gust shapes the wind source, Breath shapes how deeply the wind's drive into the strings rises and falls with each slow gust: during a lull less energy feeds the strings, so notes already ringing simply decay naturally rather than the whole sound being ducked, and sympathetically-coupled tails ring on through the lull. The Breath knob is greyed out when Gust is at zero (it has no audible effect then).

The four knobs share the same cherry-ring + brass-indicator look as the IconControls above and below, so they read as a consistent set of tone controls.

All four knobs use JUCE rotary drag (vertical or horizontal mouse drag changes the value) and are fully DAW-automatable. Hover any knob to see a tooltip.

Icon Controls

Seven parameters are presented as drag controls with iconographic glyphs (Gust and Breath were moved into the Wind Control panel and are now rotary knobs). The Voice tone shapers sit on the first control row beside the Material selector; the Resonance and Stereo / Output controls sit in their own panels (Resonance on the second row, Stereo / Output at the right of the first). All work the same way: drag upward to increase the value, drag downward to decrease it. The glyph animates to reflect the current value. The groups also carry two non-drag group-mates -- the Sympathetic coupling toggle (with the Resonance controls) and the Pan Layout selector knob (leading the Stereo / Output panel).

Voice (Tone and Ring Time)

Resonance and Stereo / Output

(Gust and Breath now live as rotary knobs inside the Wind Control panel -- see the Wind Control section.)

These are two framed panels. The Resonance panel groups the Sympathy and Body amounts. The Stereo / Output panel groups the Pan Layout selector with the Width spread it arranges and the master Volume as the final output stage.

Pan Layout selector (Stereo / Output cluster) -- a rotary selector knob in the same style as the Material knob. A 3D brass pointer points at the current mode and the four short labels (Low-L / Low-R / Low-C / High-C) fan around the knob; the centre lens lights up with the current layout's icon in a warm red glow. Drag up or down to step through the modes, or click to advance to the next one (it wraps). It is co-located with the Width control whose spread it arranges. The four available modes set how the 12 strings are arranged across the stereo field:

This selector changes the mapping; the overall amount of spread is set by the Width control beside it.

Seeing the stereo field -- the mic row. Just below the divider that separates the controls from the harp, a row of small studio-microphone icons floats above the soundbox and shows, at a glance, what the Width and Pan Layout controls are doing. Each mic's pickup end points down at the soundboard, and a letter beside it (L, R or C) marks which side of the stereo image it feeds. As you raise Width the mics move further out toward the top corners of the soundbox; as you change Pan Layout they swap sides and regroup to match the table above (for the two "Centre" modes a single C mic sits on one side and the L+R pair sit together on the other). Mics placed off-centre tilt inward, aiming at the middle of the board. At Width 0 (mono) the row collapses to a single, bolder mic pointing straight down in the centre, with no letter. The row stays in its own fixed band and never overlaps the tuning pegs or the soundbox, even as String Length and Body resize the instrument.

Harp Canvas

The harp canvas is the large central panel showing the instrument's wooden soundbox, bridges, and all 12 strings stretched between them. The box is drawn as a 3D wooden enclosure with a torn X-ray cutout through the front face -- the cutout lets you see the strings vibrating inside the body, while the surrounding wood band (carrying the mute / ghost-mute strips along the bottom) hides their ends so they read as anchored inside the box; the tuning pegs sit on the lit top panel of the box above the strings. The right end of the box is open: looking past the front edge you see straight into the body -- the dark back wall (styled like the cavity behind the strings) and a triangular slice of the box's internal floor at the bottom right, with the cut thickness of the wooden planks visible along the edges. The left end is likewise open, so the wind has a path through the instrument. The wind is shown as pale blue streaks that fly all the way across the panel, from the left-hand side to the right-hand side -- the box is inset slightly from the panel edges so the streaks first appear over the bare wood background to the left of the box, before they reach it; they then pass behind the vibrating strings as they cross the soundbox, continue through the open right end in front of the back wall (and behind the wooden plank edges, which hide them just as solid wood would), and finally stream off over the background to the right of the box, brightening to an icy white-blue and quickening as you raise the Wind, Gust, and Turbulence knobs above. This left-to-right flight, entering and leaving beyond the body, makes it clear the wind is travelling through the box. The canvas updates at 30 Hz and serves as both the primary visualization and the tuning interface. Several main controls have a direct visual analogue on the canvas so the instrument looks like it is being altered, not just heard differently:

• Damp lowers a piano-style damper assembly that emerges from behind the top wood band and seats down onto the strings inside the cutout. The assembly is a wooden block with a cream felt pad glued beneath it (a thin glue seam between them); the felt's lower edge carries an upside-down-V notch over each string. At zero the assembly is fully retracted behind the front face; as Damp rises it descends and each string sinks deeper into its felt V channel, and at maximum it is fully seated and contacting the strings.
• Body controls the visible depth of the soundbox, which is drawn as an open-ended wooden box at a shallow isometric angle. The back wall is always visible; raising Body pushes it further back, deepening the box so more of the interior back wall, the lit top, and the internal floor triangle come into view.
• Length scales the height of the soundbox so the bridges follow the strings. Raising Length grows the box (and the visible string span) vertically; lowering it shrinks the box. The tensioner pegs and the mute / ghost-mute strips re-anchor to the bridges automatically.

Pairing layout -- when the Pairing toggle is on, the 12 strings are visually grouped into 6 tight courses with a wider gap between each course, mirroring the way a 12-string guitar arranges its paired strings. When Pairing is off the 12 strings are laid out with uniform spacing to signal that they are independent. This is a purely visual cue -- no DSP behaviour is affected by the layout itself.

String visualization -- each string vibrates laterally, and its motion now tracks the controls that audibly shape it, not just its raw energy:

• Playing level -- the lateral amplitude responds smoothly to how hard the string is ringing. It is no longer pinned to the maximum wiggle the moment a string sounds, so quiet strings move a little, loud strings move more, and there is always visible headroom for Wind and Sympathy to push the motion further.
• Damp -- raising Damp visibly calms the strings (the wiggle shrinks); lowering it lets them ring more freely (the wiggle grows). This mirrors the audible shortening and lengthening of the ring time.
• Bright / Material -- Brightness (scaled by the selected Material) changes the shape of the vibration. A dark or Nylon string sways as a smooth single arc; a bright or Metal string breaks into a crystalline multi-node standing wave that shimmers with finer, faster ripples and reads slightly lighter. Gut sits between the two.

Each string is shaded with a gradient across its thickness: the left edge shows the fine-tuning offset and the right edge shows the selected material.

The left-edge tuning colour:

• Green -- tuned to the centre (0 cents)
• Blue shades -- tuned flat (negative cents), darker with larger offset
• Red shades -- tuned sharp (positive cents), darker with larger offset

The right-edge material shade follows the Material control:

• Gut -- warm cream (the lightest)
• Nylon -- warm neutral grey
• Metal -- cool steel (the darkest)

The Material selector knob shows this same shade -- each of its three option names is tinted in its material shade (the selected one brightest), matching the strings on the canvas, so the control and the instrument always agree.

Changing a string's note -- drag a string up or down directly on the canvas to step its pitch through the chromatic scale. Dragging up raises the note; dragging down lowers it.

Tensioner pegs -- mounted along the lit top panel of the soundbox, above the strings, each string has an interactive peg styled as a side-on skeuomorphic guitar machine-head, a glossy black ebony button on a tapered post:

• Drag the peg up / down -- fine-tunes the string by up to ±50 cents (half a semitone). While you drag, a small floating value box appears just above the peg and tracks the live note and fine-tuning (e.g. "A3 (+12 ¢)"), the same readout the rotary knobs show; it disappears when you release.
• Click the peg (or right-click) -- opens a note picker for coarse pitch changes. A modal panel (titled with the string number, e.g. "String 3 Note") dims the rest of the window and shows two selectors: drag (or scroll) the left one to choose the note name (C through B) and the right one to choose the octave (1 to 6). Click the green ✓ to apply the chosen note -- the peg's note label flashes to confirm -- or the red ✗, press Escape, or click outside the panel to cancel with no change.

The peg turns as you fine-tune, just like turning a real tuning machine viewed side-on -- the button appears to rotate around a vertical axis. At 0 cents it sits face-on and ebony black; as you tune flat it turns to the left and tints blue, and as you tune sharp it turns to the right and tints red. As it turns, the visible button face narrows and an angled side edge is revealed, and the depth of the colour deepens -- all tracking how far the string is detuned, mirroring the green/blue/red tuning colour the string itself shows below.

The default tuning follows a paired-course arrangement similar to a 12-string guitar: E2/E3, A2/A3, D3/D4, G3/G4, B3/B3, E4/E4. You can retune any string to create custom scales, microtonal tunings, or drone textures. Retuning also re-derives the sympathetic coupling (see Sympathetic Resonance below), so bringing strings into unison or octave relationships strengthens their resonant interplay — and pushing the Sympathy knob high on a strongly coherent tuning is where the resonance is most pronounced.

String mute strip -- a row of speaker-icon buttons sits below the lower bridge, one per string plus a "Mute All" button on the right. Clicking a button toggles a hard mute on that string: the string falls completely silent and contributes no energy. Clicking "Mute All" mutes or unmutes all 12 strings at once.

Ghost mute strip -- a second row of buttons sits above the mute strip. A ghost-muted string is silent in the audio output but its delay line keeps running, so it continues to participate in sympathetic resonance. This lets you shape the harmonic texture without hearing the string directly.

Notes Panel

A small framed Notes panel sits in the open space just to the left of the harp, level with the tuning pegs at the top of the soundbox. It has three brass disc buttons that act on each string's note (not its fine-tuning):

• Randomise (top) -- re-notes each string to a new pitch chosen at random within one octave (±12 semitones) of its default note, so each string stays in its own register. In paired mode only the main string of each course is re-noted; its partner follows automatically. When you press it, each affected tuning peg's note label briefly flashes red to show you which strings changed.
• Reset (middle) -- restores every string to the note specified by the currently selected preset. If no preset is selected (you have a modified or unsaved sound), it restores each string to its built-in default note instead.
• Set all to… (bottom, three-bar glyph) -- opens the same modal note picker the tuning pegs use — a small pop-up dialog that dims the rest of the plugin — titled "All Major String Notes". Drag the two drums (note name and octave), or scroll them, to choose a note, exactly as you would for a single string. As you change it, the note is applied to every string live so you can hear it before you commit, so the whole harp sounds one pitch across its octaves. Click the green ✓ to keep that note across all strings at once (in paired mode only the main string of each course is set; its partner stays octave- coupled to it), or the red ✗ (or press Escape, or click outside the dialog) to close and restore the notes you had before opening the dialog. When you apply, each affected peg's note label flashes red to show what changed.

Tune Panel

A matching framed Tune panel sits in the open space just to the right of the harp, level with the tuning pegs. It mirrors the Notes panel but acts on each string's fine-tuning (cents):

• Randomise (top) -- applies a small random detune of up to ±5 cents to each string. This creates the natural beating and shimmer of a real harp without shifting any string far from its intended pitch. Note selections are not affected. In paired mode only the main string of each course is randomised; its partner follows the same tuning, so the courses stay in tune with themselves. When you press it, each affected tuning peg briefly flashes its outline red — in its new turned position — so you can see what changed.
• Reset (middle) -- clears all fine-tuning back to 0 cents. Note selections are not affected.
• Set all to… (bottom, three-bar glyph) -- opens a small pop-up dialog that dims the rest of the plugin. It is titled "Tuning for All Major Strings" and holds a single tuning peg with a value readout beneath it (starting at 0); drag the peg up or down to choose a fine-tuning of −50 to +50 cents, exactly as you would a string's own peg. The readout colours by direction — red when sharp, green when in tune, blue when flat. As you drag, the detune is applied to the strings live so you can hear it before you commit. Click the green ✓ to keep that detune across every string at once (in paired mode only the main string of each course is set; its partner stays coupled), or the red ✗ (or press Escape, or click outside the dialog) to close and restore the tuning you had before opening the dialog. When you apply, each peg's outline flashes to show the change, just like Randomise/Reset.

Tooltips

The ? button at the top-right of the title bar toggles between two tooltip modes:

• Off (default) -- hovering a control shows its current value in a short, unit-aware form (e.g. "Bright: 50 %", "Length: 90 cm", "Wind: 50 % Turb: 30 %", "C#3 (+12 ¢)", "String 1: Muted", "Mix: 0.30"). Use this mode when you know the controls and just want to see what they are set to.
• On -- hovering a control shows its descriptive help text explaining what the control does and how to use it. Use this mode when learning the plugin or showing it to someone new.

The ? button itself always shows the same tooltip ("Toggle help text on tooltips. Off = show current value."), regardless of which mode is active. Help mode is a global UI preference and does not affect the audio engine or preset state.

Whole-panel summaries. Hovering the background of any control panel -- the bare area between its controls, not a control itself -- shows a summary for the whole panel. In value mode (? off) this lists the current values of every control in that panel at once (e.g. over the Voice panel: "Material: Metal Bright: 50 % Damp: 40 % Length: 90 cm"); in help mode (? on) it shows a one-line description of what the panel does. This works on all five control panels -- Voice, Stereo + Output, Resonance, Pairing, and Wind.

Live value readout while dragging

While you drag any of the rotary knobs (the tone-shaper knobs -- Bright, Damp, Length, Sympathy, Body, Width, Volume, Mix -- and the four wind rotaries -- Wind, Turbulence, Gust, Breath), a small floating value box appears just above the knob and tracks the value live as you turn it, in the same unit-aware form as the value-mode tooltip (e.g. "Volume: 70 %", "Length: 90 cm"). The box disappears when you release the knob. This works regardless of the tooltip mode above, so you always see exactly where you are landing without waiting for a hover.

The same floating value box appears when you drag a tuning peg up or down to fine-tune a string, showing the live note and cents (e.g. "A3 (+12 ¢)") and disappearing on release.

DAW Automation

Every continuous parameter on the panel can be automated by your DAW, including the iconographic drag controls (Bright, Damp, Length, Sympath, Body, Width, Volume, Mix) and the four wind rotaries (Wind, Turbulence, Gust, Breath). The Pairing and 12-string toggles are also automatable. Per-string note, microtuning, mute, and ghost-mute parameters are also exposed.

When you record an automation pass by dragging a control, the plugin opens and closes a gesture around the move so the DAW captures it as a single edit (and groups it under one undo step). On playback, parameter changes are smoothed over roughly 10 ms inside the audio engine, so block-rate automation lanes do not produce zipper noise on volume, brightness, stereo width, or wind level.

Note for existing sessions: The Sympathetic Coupling toggle (sympatheticEnabled) was removed in version 1.0.0. Any DAW automation lane bound to that parameter will be silently dropped when the session is reloaded. To preserve the intent — disabling sympathetic resonance — set the Sympathy knob to 0, which fully disables coupling.

Tips for Use

• Start with low wind and gradually drag upward to hear strings activate one by one as harmonics enter their lock-in windows.
• Drag the wind control rightward for more organic, evolving textures. The three-layer wind simulation creates realistic gusting at multiple timescales.
• Experiment with String Length -- shorter strings (75 cm) are more responsive and active; longer strings (120 cm) are more selective and meditative.
• Use Sympathetic Resonance to create dense, reverberant textures where energy flows between strings.
• Use the Tune panel's Randomise to add natural shimmer, or drag individual pegs to set deliberate beating intervals between paired strings.
• Try Nylon material with low Damping for soft ambient pads, or Metal with low Damping for bright, ringing drones.