Documentation
Node reference & user guide
grafer is a visual node graph for algorithmic composition. You build musical structures by placing nodes on a canvas, connecting their ports, and letting data flow from source to output. Every connection carries typed musical data — pitches, rhythms, curves, dynamics — and updates in real time as you change parameters.
Guides
From the first node to a rehearsal on tablets.
Getting started
The canvas, the port types, the basic workflow and how grafer measures pitch in midicents. Ten minutes from an empty…
Idea boards
The Preplan sketchpad: draw, write and arrange ideas, with handwriting recognition, before any of it becomes a node.
Polymetric sketches
Sketch meters against each other before composing: 3 against 4, 7/8 against 5/8, Ligeti-style layers, accelerating…
Harmonic progressions
Plan a harmonic progression as a row of pitch circles in any equal division of the octave, read its analysis panels…
The Score view
How grafer engraves your voices with Verovio, what the viewer toolbar does, click-to-audition, and the playback engine…
Live performance
Turn a score into a non-linear performance: the rhizome of cells, conductor controls and recording, the performer view…
Settings
The rendering presets and every engraving option grafer exposes: margins, spacing, fonts, beams and slurs.
Node reference
138 nodes in 24 families. All families.
Pitch
Nodes for generating, transforming, and organizing pitch material — from simple transposition to…
Turkish Makam
Turkish art music on the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek (AEU) system — the octave divided into 53 Holdrian…
Swedish Folk
Swedish spelmansmusik — the asymmetric polska and the tradition's "in-between" intonation. Polska…
Harmony
Common-practice tonal harmonization — turn a melody into a four-part chorale, realize a figured…
Jazz
Compose from a lead sheet. A chord-symbol vocabulary (Cmaj7#11, D-7b5, G7alt, Eb6/9, slash chords)…
Tintinnabuli
Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli technique — a systematic, stepwise M-voice and a T-voice drawn…
Rhythm
Nodes for building, transforming, and combining rhythmic structures — from simple tuplets to…
Spectral
Nodes for spectral composition — working with harmonic series, frequency-to-pitch conversion…
Score
The final assembly nodes that combine pitch and rhythm into playable, exportable musical structures.
Control
Curve generators and control signal nodes for shaping musical parameters over time — break-point…
Dynamics
Nodes for shaping and sequencing velocity (dynamic) values applied to musical events.
Articulation
Nodes for assigning and sequencing performance articulations and timbral mappings.
Stochastic
Nodes for generating musical material through controlled randomness and probability-weighted…
Chaos
Mathematical chaos generators that produce deterministic yet unpredictable sequences for driving…
Transform
General-purpose list transformation nodes for reordering pitch sequences.
Combine
Nodes for merging, filtering, and reordering multiple pitch sequences.
Sequence
Nodes for repeating, concatenating, and progressively transforming pitch material over time.
Profile
Nodes for shaping musical material according to continuous contour curves.
Math
General-purpose numeric operations for manipulating lists of values.
Integer Sequences
Classic natural-number sequences composers reach for — Fibonacci, Lucas, Tribonacci, Primes…
Morphologie
Analytical and organizational nodes for sorting, deduplicating, and measuring pitch material.
Compose
Higher-level structural nodes for building multi-section and multi-voice compositions.
Bus
Wireless connections by name. A Send broadcasts a value on a channel and any Receive on the same…
Integration
Bridge a Voice on the canvas to external synthesis — SuperCollider, Max, Pure Data, or anything…
Composition chains
Techniques as wired graphs you can rebuild. All chains.
Spectral Composition (Saariaho style)
Start with a Harmonic Series node set to your chosen fundamental (e.g., 131 Hz for C3). Generate…
Serial Technique (Schoenberg/Webern)
Begin with a Tone Row node and enter your twelve pitch-classes (0–11). The node automatically…
Counterpoint Workflow (Fux to Hindemith)
Feed a cantus firmus (a Pitch List or any pitch source) into a Counter-line node. Start with…
Minimalist Phase (Reich)
Start with a short repeating pattern in a Pitch List — typically 8–12 notes. For Clapping Music…
Boulez Pitch Multiplication
Define two pitch-class sets using PC Set nodes. Set A might be a trichord like [0, 1, 4] and Set B…
Ferneyhough Rhythmic Complexity
Build a deeply nested Rhythm Tree with multiple layers of tuplet subdivision — for example, a…
Xenakis Stochastic/Sieve
Start with stochastic raw material: Random Pitches for uniformly distributed pitches across a…
Spectral-Rhythmic Integration
The key insight: use the same BPF curve to drive both pitch contour and rhythmic density…
Chaos-Driven Composition
Use a Logistic Map node (r between 3.57 and 4.0 for chaotic behavior) or a Henon Map to generate…
Dynamic Shaping
Use waveform generators to create smooth, periodic dynamic contours. A Gen Sine node produces…
Microtonal Techniques
Two approaches to microtonal quantization. The first uses Microtonal Quantize with any equal…
Multi-Section Form
For large-scale compositions, build each section as a separate sub-graph with its own…
Beethoven Fate Motif (Symphony No. 5)
The opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is built entirely from one four-note rhythmic cell…
Studies
46 pieces in every account's Examples folder, each taken apart on its own page. All studies.
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