
Turn Your Life Into a Playable Instrument
The sounds we think have no pitch are the ones that contain every pitch. Rain, traffic, keys jingling, a coffee grinder running—broadband texture with no discernible tone. But hidden inside is every note on the keyboard. Anima uses resonant filters to extract pitched, playable instruments from recordings you'd never expect to sing.
Drop in a field recording from your morning walk. Play a chord. Listen. The transients in the source—the drips, the footsteps, the unpredictable bursts of noise—trigger resonances that swell and shimmer in ways you couldn't have designed. Each voice plays at a different speed. They cycle in and out of phase. You end up with sounds so delicious you just want to lean in and keep listening.
I built Anima because I wanted to embed my life into my music. One of my presets is a recording of my kitchen—my fiancée moving around in the background, the clatter of mugs and glasses. Now she's baked into the sound. Every time a resonance rings, I know what that texture means. This is the instrument for people who believe found sound adds magic that samples and synthesizers can't touch.
Drums, field recordings, pure noise—the less pitched the source, the more surprising the result. Transients trigger resonances. Dynamics create evolving timbres. Static sounds stay static. Dynamic sounds become alive.
String, Membrane, Bar, Plate, or Bell—each with harmonic ratios from real acoustic physics. Spread stretches or compresses the overtones differently per material.
Surgical resonant filters at natural harmonic ratios extract tone from texture. Per-harmonic gain, pan, mute, and solo. The frequencies you boost become the pitch. Everything else falls away.
Layer the same recording at different start points. Each voice plays at a different speed based on its MIDI note. The transients phase in and out—almost polymetric, not quite random. Tickles of sound you couldn't have programmed.
Detected attacks appear as markers on the waveform. Drag the loop start and it snaps to the nearest hit. Adjustable sensitivity in the sample slot menu.
Each harmonic drifts independently—slow tape-like wow, fast flutter. The imperfection is per-overtone, not global. Instruments that breathe and wander. Hold a chord and just listen.
Blend two textures with independent filter banks and envelopes. One for attack, one for sustain. Or two field recordings at different harmonic intervals. Crossfade between them in real time.
Per-note pitch bend that's scale-aware—bend always lands on the correct semitone. Pressure controls amplitude. The main voice plays your note while the second voice adds a fifth or sixth above. Insanely expressive.
Major, minor, Hijaz, Pelog, Darbari, Ethiopian Tezeta, Bebop Dominant. Transpose per slot using scale degrees—musically correct intervals, not just semitone math. Concert pitch tuning supports A=432Hz, 415Hz (Baroque), 444Hz, or custom input from 400-480Hz.
Record audio directly from your DAW into the sample buffer. Hear something in a mix, capture it, play it as an instrument. Auto-Gain normalizes samples to -12dBFS on load. No bouncing, no file management.
Innovative and inspiring. Easy to understand and capable of creating amazing instruments from the most basic samples.
— Nigel Turley
Sequins replied:
Thank you so much Nigel! Happy exploring :)
January 3, 2026
A beautiful and inspiring instrument that I bought rather randomly on Christmas Eve after catching Lex’s livestream and liking his vibe. I’m loving it. It’s really easy to use, very musical and creative with modulation and mpe use and has you immersed in evolving sound from the get go. That’s probably my favourite element, the fact that it’s ‘listen led’ sound-design rather than ‘decide-program’ sound-design. It’s a proper instrument as well a capable tool.
— Richard Milligan
Sequins replied:
"Listen-led" sound design is an absolutely killer line Richard. Thank you so much for the kind words and I'm thrilled you're enjoying Anima as much as I am :)
January 2, 2026
It's my go-to for sound design ever since I installed it and started nonstop creating.
— BIGDAVEMUZIK
Sequins replied:
Cheers Big Dave! So happy you've been creating nonstop :)
January 1, 2026
I have a folder of field recordings I've never used because they just sat there being... recordings. Loaded a sample of frying bacon (don't ask) into Anima, and within 60 seconds I had a playable instrument that sounds like something from a Nils Frahm record. This plugin is magic.
— Josh Malik
Sequins replied:
Hahahah this really made me giggle. Bacon... it's good eating and it's good sampling. Stoked you're enjoying Anima, Josh :)
December 26, 2025