Sound sources | Helin guide

Helin has ten sound sources. Each one has its own popup with a moving picture of the sound, and you can drag the picture as well as turn the knobs. Between them they cover layered drones and pads, electric piano keys and plucks, basses, bells, voices, and everything in between.

A source’s popup. The picture and the two edge bars hold the controls you reach for most; the knob row holds the rest.

Every source has

Unison, the stacked-waves button: up to seven voices per note, detuned and spread in stereo.
Level and its own Amp: a new source comes with an Amp whose envelope suits it, quick for plucks and bells, slow for pads and swarms.
Quick slots with four ready-made settings to start from.
Notes from a cable, so it can play the keys, an Arp or an Octave node.

Basic

Four classic waves. Shape bends them, Sync restarts a second wave from the first, and Super stacks seven saws.

The classic oscillator: sine, triangle, saw and square, with the tools a sound designer reaches for first.

Shape bends the wave and sets the square’s pulse width, so a cable into it gives you PWM. Sync is hard sync, a second oscillator restarted by the first at up to eight times its pitch, for the tearing sync lead. The corner switch turns it into a seven-oscillator supersaw. The picture is an oscilloscope with the harmonics as bars underneath, so you see what each control does.

Lained

Each table is a stack of single-cycle frames. Position picks where in the stack the note plays; cable something into it and the tone travels.

Eight wavetables of single-cycle frames, from glass and organ to vocal and metal.

Position moves through the frames and Fold folds the wave back on itself for bright, ringing harmonics. Cable a slow Oscillator or an Envelope into Position so the tone travels as the note plays. The 3D corner shows every frame at once.

Akord

One key plays a whole chord. Mood picks it, Voicing its inversion, and the keys and the bowed strings play it together.

Whole chords from one key: keys and a section of bowed strings, blended together.

Mood picks the chord from dark to bright and Voicing its inversion; turn the chord wheel to change it. Tone moves the bows from soft over the fingerboard to bright near the bridge. Strum brings the notes in one after another, loosely when the hand button is on, Glide slides between chords and Spread seats the notes across the stereo field.

Kõla

Two waves: one bends the other’s pitch very fast. The harder it pushes, the brighter and more metallic the tone.

Two-operator FM with eight voicings, from warm and punchy to electric piano, reed, bell and tubular.

Step through the voicings with the arrows or slide Voicing to morph between them. Brightness sets how rich it is, and Strike adds a hit at the start of each note, louder the harder you play.

Sumin

A hammer strikes a tine (Must) or a reed (Punane). The pickup turns its swing into sound: the harder you play, the further it swings and the more it barks.

A modelled electric piano with two instruments in one: Must, the tine piano, and Punane, the reed piano. Nothing is recorded; the hammer, the ringing metal and the pickup are worked out as each note plays.

Voicing goes from round to bark, and playing harder brings out more bark. Pickup brings the pickup closer for more drive, Damper sets how quickly a note stops, and Drive pushes the amp from clean into crunch. The wave button opens the tremolo, which pans, swells the level or pulses the tone.

Klirin

A mallet hits a bar or bell, and it rings at sixteen modes. Material moves them from wood to metal to bell; Hardness sets the mallet.

Struck bars and bells, modelled on the physics of real ones: sixteen ringing modes hit by a mallet.

Material morphs from wood bar to metal bar, glockenspiel and bell, and Hardness makes the mallet soft and round or hard and clicky. Drag the picture for Position, where the mallet strikes, and Decay. Tremolo adds a vibraphone’s motor, and Stretch pushes the partials into strange, inharmonic bells.

Hääl

A vowel is a set of resonances in the throat. Vowel glides them from A to U; Formant moves them all, from a child’s throat to a giant’s.

A singing voice and choir that glides through the vowels, with a blown pipe underneath.

Vowel sings from one vowel into the next and Formant goes from a child’s throat to a giant’s. Turn on Choir and every key is sung by four voices, a bass an octave under, the key, a fifth and an octave over. Variety gives every key of a chord its own voice. Blow adds air under the voice, and turned up it becomes a breathy flute, a pan pipe or a blown bottle.

Sahinad

Noise covers every pitch at once. The filter carves it; with Resonance up it whistles at Tone, and Dual adds a second peak.

Noise through a resonant filter that sweeps from low-pass to high-pass.

Clock turns it from crunchy, stepped noise into a smooth hiss. With Resonance up it sings at Tone, and Dual gives two peaks instead of one. Layer it quietly under another source for breath and air, or turn on Keytrack and the whistle follows the keys.

Mesila

A swarm of tiny voices around the key you play. Density sets how many, Scatter how far they wander, Harmony snaps them to a scale.

A swarm of tiny voices and a spray of particles, wandering around the note you play.

Density sets how many, Scatter how far they wander in pitch, and Harmony keeps them on a pentatonic scale. Queen, the crown in the corner, adds a growling voice two octaves under the key. Add Unison for whole colonies.

Bass

A main wave over a sub an octave or two down, locked together. Punch drops the pitch at the start, Growl roughens, Round smooths the top.

A bass voice built for the low end: a main wave from saw to narrow pulse over a sub that never beats against it.

Punch drops the pitch at the start of each note, Growl roughens the main wave and Round smooths the top off; drag the picture for both. Legato plays one voice that slides between held keys, and Pluck gives every note its own voice. Keep the sub on sine for clean weight.

Next: Shape