AquaSynth DSP Usage Manual For Music Agents

kind: manual tier: core-doctrine topic: AquaSynth DSP usage for composition and production

Owner

This manual owns the minimum practical DSP and DSL knowledge a musician agent needs before writing a song candidate, so retrieval starts from usable AquaSynth technique instead of copying weak prior patches.

Transfer Rules

Start with form, not timbre. Declare meter, harmonic center or progression, lane gates, section-level mix motion, and target duration before building voices.
Treat every sound as a role owner. Leads, bass, drums, pads, and texture need separate control surfaces so the next agent can adjust them without surgery.
Use reference analysis as constraints: tempo/autocorrelation for gates, register/root/scale for pitch lanes, band stats for filtering, and RMS/motion coverage for arrangement density.
Write the simplest patch that makes ownership inspectable. Do not hide a song in one giant voice or one full-duration noise bed.

Current AquaSynth Authoring Surface

Composition sugar:

meter bpm=128 beats=4
sequence name=kick pattern=x...x...x...x... step=.125 high=.9 low=0
scale name=hook path=/seq/lead/freq root=220 scale=minor degrees=0,2,3,5,3,2 step=.25
chords name=pad root=220 scale=minor progression=0,5,3,4 voicing=0,2,4 paths=/chords/pad/root,/chords/pad/third,/chords/pad/fifth step=bar
mix name=pad points=0:.10,4:.22,8:.15,12:.30,16:.12

The sugar lowers into visible param and curve owners. Bind those paths from voices with gain=@/seq/kick, freq=@/seq/lead/freq, or gain=@/mix/pad/gain.

Voice-like leads:

voice name=vowel_lead wave=saw freq=@/seq/lead/freq gain=@/mix/lead/gain sustain=.18 decay=.22 fm=3 fmi=.25 lpf=.62

Use syrinx/acoustic ownership when the reference has singing, vocal chops, creature calls, reed-like lead, or expressive vowel motion, but only if the patch includes a complete, known-valid acoustic graph scaffold. A lone source_port or acoustic_network line does not render. Start from patches/advanced/syrinx-voice.aqua or patches/advanced/bird-syrinx.aqua when using syrinx in the swarm; otherwise use a formant-filtered ordinary lead for the attempt and write the missing syrinx scaffold as an Aqua gap. A static syrinx badge is not a vocal line.

Subtractive drums:

sequence name=kick pattern=x...x...x...x... step=.125 high=1 low=0
voice name=kick_body wave=sine freq=54 gain=@/seq/kick env=ad attack=.002 decay=.14
voice name=kick_click wave=noise gain=@/seq/kick hpf=2500 lpf=7000 env=ad attack=.001 decay=.035

Drums need body plus skin. Use sine/triangle bodies for kick/snare weight, filtered noise only for click, skin, dust, or air, and gates from target tempo. Noise alone is a placeholder unless it has band limits, a gate, and a musical job.

Additive/PAD beds:

layer name=pad engine=pad freq=@/chords/pad/root gain=@/mix/pad/gain
harmonics name=pad_bank source=pad partials=1:.7,2:.25,3:.18,5:.08
spectrum name=pad_air source=pad_bank centroid=1800 bandwidth=.35

Pads own harmonic field and emotional bed. Use harmonic banks and slow brightness/gain motion. Do not let a pad occupy every band for the full target unless the reference really does.

Texture and recording color:

texture name=dust_hat role=dust pattern=x..x..x. step=.125 gain=.08 sustain=30
texture name=air_wash role=air gain=.035 sustain=30
texture name=codec_bed role=codec gain=.04 sustain=30

Texture owns band-limited color, not arrangement. It should support a scene with motion, gates, or slow modulation. A static broadband noise voice is failure pressure.

Production Checklist

Producer brief: target feel, energy contour, meter, tonal center, section map, role map, and mix priority.
First attempt: prove parsing, duration coverage, and audible lane ownership.
Later attempts: change one hypothesis at a time: timing, register, role assignment, filter band, envelope, or section/mix motion.
Listening journal: write what sounded alive, fake, static, missing, or too generic after every render.
Gap ledger: name missing AquaSynth primitives or sugar only when a concrete production problem forced the workaround.

Failure Modes

Naming kick, hat, pad, or syrinx without audible role behavior.
Copying one stock drum grid across unrelated targets.
Letting texture keep the tail non-silent while composition dies.
Hand-writing isolated frequencies when the reference suggests a tonal center or progression.
Treating a metric bump as a lesson without a reusable owner sentence.

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