Humusbeta

Getting started

Get Humus

  • Download it. Open the account page and type your email. A six-digit code is mailed to you - check the spam folder if it does not arrive - and typing it in opens the account, where the newest build for your platform waits with your licence beside it; Help ▸ Enter License takes the licence into the app. The code signs you in; there is no password to keep.
  • Build it. The source lives at github.com/phobos-instruments/humus, and Build from source has the steps. The compiled app is the whole application, so the download only saves you the build.

The first time you open a downloaded build

Our builds are not yet signed with a paid developer certificate, so both desktop systems stop an unknown app once and ask you to confirm it. Each takes a few seconds and you only do it once per version. Nothing is wrong with the download.

macOS. The disk image itself opens normally; it is the app, once you have dragged it to Applications, that is held. Double-click it and the first answer is a refusal.

  1. Open System Settings > Privacy & Security and scroll to Security.
  2. There is a line naming Humus, with Open Anyway beside it. Click that.
  3. Confirm with your password or fingerprint. It opens, and every launch after this one is normal.

On macOS 15 and later this is the only route: holding Control and choosing Open from the app's menu used to work and no longer does. Apple documents the same steps for whichever version you are on at support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac.

If you would rather do it in one line, xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Humus.app clears the same flag.

Windows. The installer shows a blue screen saying an unrecognised app was prevented from starting. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Linux. Nothing blocks the AppImage, but a downloaded file arrives without permission to run. chmod +x Humus-*.AppImage and it starts.

Signing both builds properly is on the list; it needs a certificate from each vendor, which is a cost rather than a piece of work.

First launch

A short tour opens, then a setup wizard picks your audio device. Both come back from the Help menu as Meet Humus and Setup Wizard. The start window offers the demo song and your recent patches, and after a crash it offers to recover what you had not saved; Help ▸ Start Window brings it back. File ▸ Examples holds ready-made patches to open and take apart, a few more with every release.

Going back to an earlier version

File ▸ History lists snapshots of the patch you have open. One is taken every five minutes while the patch changes, when you save, when you open it, and before you close, revert or restore it, so a version that sounded better an hour ago is still there after a break. Each line says when it was taken and what changed since the one before. Restore brings a version back in place of the current one, and the current one stays in the list, so a restore can be undone the same way. Open as Copy opens it as a new untitled patch instead. The last hour keeps every snapshot, the last day one per hour, the last month one per day; Keep gives one a name and it is never thinned out. Snapshots hold the patch, not the audio files it uses, and they live beside the app's settings, never next to your patch file.

The first launch also scans your plugins. A large collection takes a few minutes once, then the result is cached.

The workspace

  • Patcher - the canvas where organisms live and cords run. The organism list down its side holds everything you can add: double-click an entry, or drag it where you want it.
  • Properties - the editors of whatever you select, stacked as a rack.
  • Timeline - tracks, clips and automation, below the patcher.
  • Transport - along the top: play, tempo, loop, capture.
  • The window rail - buttons for the Metapad, Parameter Control, Notes, the Document Switcher, Help and the Library.

Panes hide, detach into their own windows, and stay where you left them.

Build a patch

  1. Add organisms. A new patch already has a SoundOut, the master output.
  2. Wire them. Drag from an outlet at the bottom of a node to an inlet at the top of another. Audio cords are solid, MIDI cords dotted, video cords wear their own colour. A drag from the left of a stereo pair wires both; hold Option/Alt as you let go for just the one, Shift to wire every channel in order, or Shift and Option/Alt to fan one outlet across every inlet from there on.
  3. Edit a cord. Right-click it to delete it or insert an organism into it. To move one, grab its end at the inlet (the cursor turns into a hand) and drop it on another inlet; drop it on empty canvas to unplug it. A stereo pair moves together, hold Option/Alt as you let go to move just the one. Cmd-drag (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) an outlet to move all its cords to another outlet.
  4. Tidy up. Edit ▸ Auto-arrange lays the patch out as a top-down flow.
  5. Turn knobs. Select a node and its editor opens in Properties. Right-click a knob for Automate, MIDI Learn, OSC Learn, Control with (let another organism move it), Random and Reset.

Right-click an organism for the rest: Edit, Help, Rename (F2), Replace, Insert Before or After, Make Pod, MIDI Receive, Bypass and Disconnect. Bypass switches it out and leaves the cords alone; Disconnect rewires the patch around it and leaves it unplugged.

The organism bar

Every editor carries the same bar under its title:

  • Bypass takes it out of the signal path, and the node dims.
  • Random rolls new settings. The ‹ › arrows beside it step through its history, so a good roll is never lost. Right-click it and tick Protect From Random to keep this organism out of the transport's Randomise everything and out of a pod's roll; an amber dot shows it is protected.
  • The preset strip shows the preset's name, with previous and next, Recall, Store and Evolve. Its menu adds Store as new, Generate with AI, Save as User Preset and the Presets window. Shipped presets stay as they came; yours sit beside them.
  • ? opens the organism's help page.
  • At the end: detach into a window, move up or down the rack, close.

Settings

Eight categories: AI, Audio, Graphics & UI, License & Privacy, MIDI & OSC, Packs, Plugins and Video. The load gauge on the toolbar shows !n after n audio dropouts.

The transport

Play (Space), stop, loop and Capture, the round button of performance capture, which records every knob move, morph and note in one pass; right-click it for Touch or Latch. Keep turns the last 8 bars you played into lanes after the fact, with nothing armed beforehand. Go to start puts the clock back on 1-1.00 and Go to end jumps to the song-end marker, or to the end of what is there. Panic stops every hanging note, and Random rolls every organism at once; right-click either to map it to a pad or a modulator. Beside them:

  • Tempo: drag the number, or right-click it to automate or map it. Tap Tempo sets it from two or more taps, and starts over after a two-second pause. Mark Beat 1 moves the bar lines to now without changing the tempo. The Metronome ticks every beat, brighter on beat 1; right-click it for its volume and the count-in.
  • Groove, which swings every sequencer that follows it.
  • Master Limiter, which keeps the output from clipping while you experiment. It does nothing until the output nears full scale, adds no latency, glows amber while it is working, and is saved with the patch.
  • Ableton Link, which locks tempo and bar phase with other Link apps and devices on the network. The button counts the peers connected; right-click it for start and stop sync.
  • Computer Keyboard Notes, which plays the focused organism from your keyboard while a piano strip is open; Z and X shift the octave.
  • The audio and MIDI buttons switch the real-time engine and the MIDI devices on and off.
  • The load gauge shows how much of each audio deadline the patch uses, peak-held, and after a ! the number of blocks dropped. A dropped block is a glitch you can hear; report it if you get one.

Any number box takes arithmetic: /2 halves the value, *2 or x2 doubles it. A plain -6 is still minus six.

Save and share

  • Save writes a .hum patch, plain text that will open for good. The first save of a new patch makes a project folder around it: save Jam and you get Jam Project/Jam.hum, with Loops/ and Recordings/ beside it as they are needed. Takes you made before saving are copied in. The patch names what is inside its project by relative path, so the folder can be moved, zipped or sent and still opens whole.
  • Save As inside a project adds another patch to the same folder, sharing its recordings and keeping loops of its own. Saving over a patch that was never in a project leaves it as it was.
  • Projects start in ~/Documents/Humus/Patches. Until a patch is saved its recordings wait in ~/Documents/Humus/Recordings; presets live in Presets.
  • File ▸ Bounce (Cmd+B, or Ctrl+B on Windows and Linux) renders audio, MIDI or video: the whole song, the loop or the selection.
  • Control ▸ Record Live Performance writes the master mix to a file while you play.
  • Plugins covers playing a whole patch inside other music software.

When a file has moved

A patch remembers its media by path. Open one whose files have moved and a Missing media window lists them. Locate... finds the first, and every file that moved with it comes back in the same step. Ignore plays silence where the files were, and File ▸ Locate Missing Media reopens the window.