PlasticSynth is built in the open, one workshop session at a time. This is the story so far, newest first — from a single plastic keyboard to sixteen instruments and a studio that ties them together.
Real keyboards in, offline play on
The keyboards grew a MIDI socket: plug in a hardware controller (or any USB MIDI keyboard), tap the MIDI button on the PS-10 or the studio Keys, and play — notes land in the looper and one-key-play just the same. And the whole site is now installable and works offline: instruments and their samples are cached on the device, so the toys keep playing on a plane, a train, or a bad connection. Also fixed: freshly shared studio links no longer 404.
Real recordings join the sound
The instruments are starting to blend real recordings into their synth voices — always on, no toggles to hunt for. The PS-10's piano preset layers a real recorded grand piano over the oscillator, every PS-16 drum voice pairs its synth hit with a real TR-808 sample, the PS-BAR mallets play real marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel and tubular bells, the PS-CHD strummer plucks a real harp, and the PS-ORG organ hides a real pipe organ under its drawbars. All the samples are self-hosted, so they load straight from the site. More instruments to follow.
One panel for everything
Every instrument now speaks a single control language: real rotary knobs with unit readouts, hardware-style slide switches and round transports, each machine in its own colour (the organ keeps a bank of drawbar faders). And every one grew a live screen — a triggered oscilloscope or a graphic-EQ spectrum, plus a VU meter — so you can watch the sound as you shape it, and tap to switch between waveform and frequencies. A new plain-English Basics guide explains the notes and the knobs for people who don't read music.
The music makes itself
New ways to make music without a blank page. The generator composes a whole in-key track from a genre — or from a mood you type in plain words. Type-a-tune turns any words into a melody, and listen-and-jam reads the key and tempo of music playing near you, then plays along. In the studio, Auto-Evolve keeps a groove quietly re-arranging itself, hands-free. And PS-VOX joined the collection: record your voice, then bend it — pitch, a ring-mod robot, a telephone, bitcrush and space.
Renditions & a place to learn
Famous public-domain pieces — Für Elise, Ode to Joy, Pachelbel's Canon — arranged and played in the PlasticSynth voice, each opening straight in the studio. Alongside them, a whole Learn hub: an Academy that teaches how synthesis works with a playable demo on every page, a plain-English guide to music itself, a short history of the synthesizer, a cross-linked glossary, ready-made examples and a by-the-numbers stats page.
The collection triples
A wave of new machines took the workshop past twenty instruments: the PS-303 acid bass, an 808-style sub, a step lead, a chord progression, an arpeggiator, a draw-your-own wavetable, a supersaw pad, a two-operator FM synth, tuned mallet bars, a Karplus–Strong koto, a nine-drawbar organ, a euclidean rhythm box and a Game-of-Life 'bloom' sequencer — each with its own page and playable in the studio.
The hi-fi studio & the full band
The studio became a wooden stereo: a PS-1000 receiver panel with real rotary knobs, LED windows and twin VU meters, and a component rack that stacks the instruments. Added the PS-CHD Strum and PS-GRN Grain, brought the ribbon and theremin in as looping audio-take tracks, and enriched the embedded sounds — while a global KEY, bar-synced orbits and a magic DICE tie every track together.
A shared clock: the Studio arrives
Instruments learned to play together. One shared clock and tempo, per-track volume, mute and solo, save & load sessions, performance-clip recording on a playable Keys synth, and export to WAV, live WebM, or a Standard MIDI File.
Four more instruments & their own pages
Added the PS-20 Ribbon, the PS-16 Drum Grid, the PS-AER webcam Theremin and the fully-steerable PS-ORB Orbit. Every instrument got its own page with a homepage selector, and playback was polished across the whole collection.
A real front door & full SEO
Consolidated the early experiments into one landing page and added a switchable Tone.js sampled voice to the PS-10. Laid down full SEO — sitemap, robots, llms.txt, a custom 404, Open Graph images and structured data — and tuned the mobile experience for portrait and landscape.
PlasticSynth no.1 — the PS-10
The very first machine: PS-10, a PT-10-style mini keyboard built directly on the Web Audio API, with a rhythm box and a one-key-play mode. The project was set up on Next.js 16 (App Router, TypeScript), ready to deploy at the edge.
In the workshop
Still on the bench: accounts, so your studio sessions and patches follow you between devices instead of living in one browser. When it lands, it'll show up here. Curious how it all fits together? Start with the about page or jump straight into the guide.