Manual
An instrument you play by moving. No keys: you tilt, turn, drag, and slow drones grow out of the motion. Everything stays in key, so there's nothing to get wrong.
Why it feels different
Three ideas do most of the work.
Play by motion
Left and right is the note; forward and back opens the sound; rotation colours it. You don’t press keys: you lean the phone and the drone follows you.
Always in key
Every note is locked to a scale, so nothing you do is out of tune. Pick one of seven modes, or hand-pick the notes yourself.
Loop, alone
The looper records what you play and hands it back, so you can build a whole piece in layers by yourself: no grid, no timeline, just the room you’re in.
MIDI out
Take the motion into your studio.
Your gestures, as MIDI
Nimbus sends what you play as MIDI. The note each voice sounds becomes a MIDI note; your tilt, rotation and effect moves become continuous controllers (CC). Route them to any soft-synth or hardware and capture the performance you feel, the exact gesture, not just the result, straight into a DAW.
One instrument, any sound
Because the motion leaves the app as data, the same tilt that breathes a drone here can drive a filter, a swell or a whole rack somewhere else. Nimbus becomes an expressive motion controller for everything in your session.
Start
Find your footing. Make the first sound.
The screen
Top: the title and the SETTINGS · MIDI · LIBRARY menu, plus a live read-out of your tilt (LR / FB / RT degrees) and the note each voice is sounding. Middle: the play field with your orbs. Bottom-left: the six voice pads. Bottom-right: the LOOP and ■ (stop) transport.
Voices (the 6 pads)
Each pad is a voice. Tap a pad to switch that voice on or off; stack as many as you like. The little dots on a pad show how many effect layers it has active. Long-press a pad to open its sound editor.
Two ways to play
Move the phone (gyroscope) or drag the orbs with your finger (touch). They work together, or turn the gyro off in Control to play by touch alone. Either way, left/right = the note, up/down and rotation = effects.
Your first two minutes
Tap pad 1 to start a drone. Tilt slowly left and right to hear the pitch move through the scale. Tilt forward/back to hear an effect open up. Add pad 2 for a second layer. When it sounds good, press LOOP, play a phrase, press LOOP again: it now repeats.
Notes
Long-press a pad to open its editor. The top half is pitch: the scale, the notes it's built on, the ones you silence, the octave it sits in.
Mode (scale)
Tap the Mode row to cycle through scales: Standard, Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian. The row shows the mood and the exact notes. A scale means only its notes ever sound, so left/right tilt always lands in key. "Standard" leaves every note available.
Base Notes (chord)
Pick up to 3 notes (shown as "2/3"). The first is the root; the extras sound together with it as a chord under one voice. Example: tap C, then E and G for a warm major triad. Tap a selected note again to remove it. The scale always transposes from the root.
Exclude Notes
The note row shows the 12 notes. Tap one to mute it: it goes dim with an ✕ and will never play, even if your tilt passes over it: the pitch skips to the nearest allowed note. Tap again to bring it back. Great for carving a pentatonic feel out of a scale, or removing a note that clashes with your loop. Editing here switches the mode to "custom".
Octave
Sets how low or high the whole voice sits (1–6). Lower octaves for sub-drones and pads, higher for glassy or bell-like tones. Pick different octaves on different voices to spread them out.
A practical example
For a calm bed: Mode = Dorian, Base Note = A, Octave = 2, and exclude the 2nd so tilts feel more open. For a bright shimmer on top: a second voice at Octave 5, Mode = Lydian.
Sound
The lower half shapes the tone. Six layers: tap one for a Wave and five macros, or ▾ ADVANCED for everything beneath them. The check box switches a layer on.
Wave
The oscillator shape. Richer waves (saw, square) give the filter and drive more harmonics to carve into; sine and triangle stay clean even under heavy resonance.
The 5 macros
volume the layer's level · tone filter cutoff, dark → bright · motion how much the built-in LFO wobbles the tone (its speed is lfo rt in Advanced) · space reverb amount · echo delay/echo wet mix (its timing lives in Advanced · Delay). These five cover most sound design without opening Advanced.
Advanced · Amp Envelope
How the volume behaves over one held note, in four stages. attack fade-in time from silence to peak · decay the drop from that peak down to sustain · sustain the level held while you keep playing · release the fade-out once you let go.
Recipes — plucky bass: attack 0.01s, decay 0.3s, sustain 0.2, release 0.4s. Slow ambient swell: attack 2–3s, decay 1s, sustain 0.8, release 3–5s. Staccato stab: attack 0.01s, decay 0.15s, sustain 0, release 0.2s.
Advanced · Tone
detune spreads the two oscillators apart for width/thickness (0 = clean mono, higher = wide, chorus-like) · LOW-PASS / HIGH-PASS keep the dark lows or open into airy highs · reso emphasis right at the cutoff (low = smooth, high = whistling/vocal, almost self-oscillating near the top) · lfo rt the speed of the wobble the "motion" macro dials in.
Recipes — glassy bell: high octave, sine/triangle, high-pass, low resonance. Acid-ish pluck: sawtooth, low-pass, resonance 12+, tone macro swept low-to-mid.
Advanced · Filter Envelope
A second envelope, independent of the Amp Envelope above: it sweeps the filter cutoff, not the volume, so a note can sit at full loudness while its tone still opens or closes on its own clock. f.amt how far above the base cutoff the sweep reaches · f.atk / f.decay / f.sus / f.rel the sweep's own attack, decay, sustain and release, shaped separately from the Amp Envelope. This is what makes a tone "bloom" as it starts — a common point of confusion, since it changes brightness, not loudness.
Recipe — a pad that blooms: f.amt high, f.atk slower than the amp attack (1–2s), f.sus low, so the tone keeps opening after the volume has already peaked.
Advanced · Play Feel
glide portamento: the note slides into the next instead of jumping — set it high for smooth, theremin-like legato · chorus a detuned voice mixed in for shimmer and width · drive gentle waveshaper saturation for warmth, or pushed further for grit and edge.
Recipe — thick unison lead: sawtooth, chorus 0.4+, glide 0.15, moderate drive.
Advanced · Punch
A pitch envelope layered on the note: it starts p.amt semitones above the target and falls to it over p.dec. p.amt how many semitones it starts above (0 = off) · p.dec how fast it falls. A little adds "snap"; a lot gives a synth-tom or kick-drum thump.
Recipes — tom hit: p.amt 12, p.dec 0.08, short amp decay, no sustain. Subtle snap: p.amt 2–4, p.dec 0.05.
Advanced · Delay & Stereo
d.time the gap between echoes · d.fbk how much each echo feeds into the next, so higher values repeat more times before dying out (the echo macro sets how loud the repeats are overall; these two shape their rhythm and length) · pan places the voice left or right, -1 to 1.
Recipes — slap-back: d.time short (0.08–0.15s), d.fbk low. Dub-style trail: d.time 0.3–0.5s, d.fbk 0.6+, echo macro up. Pan different voices apart (e.g. -0.6 / +0.6) for a wide, immersive mix.
Reset
RESET SLOT at the bottom returns that whole voice, notes and effects, to its default, for a clean start.
Motion
How movement becomes sound. Tune all of it in Settings › Control.
Gyroscope on/off
On: the phone's tilt plays the orbs. Off: the orbs sit in the centre and only your finger moves them: pure touch playing. A tap toggles it.
Left / Right → Note
The core gesture. Tilting sideways slides the pitch through the scale. Range sets how many semitones a full tilt covers (0 disables it). Angle sets how far you tilt to reach the extreme note: a smaller angle is more sensitive.
Effect Axes
Front tilt, back tilt and flat rotation each drive one target you choose, independently.
Off the axis does nothing · Semitone adds pitch in scale steps, like a second left/right — a rotation-driven glissando on top of the main tilt · Octave jumps the voice a whole octave at a time as you tilt further, for dramatic register shifts · Reverb opens ambient space, the wet mix rises and the sound feels further away · Detune widens the tone toward dissonance and tension, then resolves as you level out · Filter sweeps brightness, dark and muffled at one end, open and bright at the other · Sub Drone fades in a sub-octave layer underneath, adding weight without moving the note · Wobble (LFO) speeds up the "motion" wobble — the further you tilt, the faster the tremble · Volume louder ↔ softer, and doubles as intensity over MIDI out.
Down/back = the lower label, up/front = the upper label; the orb shows where you are.
Recenter
Flat rotation has no fixed zero, so Recenter sets your current heading as neutral. Get comfortable, then Recenter: now that position is the middle of the rotation effect.
Touch & orbs
Every active voice is an orb. Drag it: sideways for the note, up/down for the front/back effect. Hold several orbs with several fingers. Tapping LOOP with another hand won't disturb a held note.
Touch vibrato
Optional (default off). With it on, while you hold an orb, quick little shakes of your finger swell the sound: a touch of pitch bend and detune, mainly opening the filter, with more reverb and delay. The harder you shake the more intense it gets; hold still and it settles back.
Knock to break
Knock the phone anywhere to punctuate the drone with a percussive break; Force sets how dramatic it is.
Gate a hard cut to silence and straight back, a rhythmic stutter/chop · Pluck re-triggers the amp and filter envelopes from their attack, like striking the note again without changing pitch · Glitch a quick pitch drop paired with a burst of noise, a digital stutter · Thump the filter slams shut then reopens, a soft low-end pump like a muted kick under the drone.
Loop
Play something; the looper keeps it and hands it back. Build a whole piece in layers, alone.
Record a layer
Press LOOP to start recording (it turns red and counts the seconds), play your phrase, then press LOOP again to close the loop: it repeats instantly. Press LOOP once more to record another layer on top. The label shows how many layers and the loop length.
Count-in
With the Metronome on (Rhythm), pressing LOOP first plays a one-bar count-in (its beats counted down in amber, following your time signature) and only begins recording on the next downbeat: so you come in exactly in time. Tap LOOP again during the count to cancel.
Smart reverb tail
The loop length is fixed to when you press, so your timing is preserved: but Nimbus keeps listening to the reverb tail of your last notes for a moment and blends it into the start of the loop. So the wrap sounds continuous instead of chopping the reverb off.
Stop & save
The ■ button stops every layer. If you recorded something, it offers to save the mix as an "idea" to your Library.
Staying in time
Set the tempo under Rhythm (BPM up to 500), plus a time signature and a subdivision (♩ quarter, ♫ eighth, ♪♪♪ triplet, ♬ sixteenth) for the metronome. With Quantize on, each loop snaps to whole beats so layers phase-lock instead of drifting. Metronome plays a guide click while recording (you hear it, but it is never captured into the loop); "Hear the metronome" previews it.
Setup
A short map of the Settings tabs, and the Library.
Control tab
Gyroscope and Touch vibrato toggles, the Left/Right note Range and Angle, the three Effect Axes with Recenter, Knock Response with its Force, and the Vibrate-on-note-change haptic.
Rhythm tab
Everything here is the metronome. Tempo is a ruled BPM slider up to 500 (the low, common range fills the first half for finer control, and it snaps gently to round values). Time signature is set by two ruled sliders, beats per bar (1–16+) and beat note (2/4/8/16/32), shown as a stacked fraction. Subdivision adds softer in-between ticks: ♩ quarter, ♫ eighth, ♪♪♪ triplet, ♬ sixteenth. "Hear the metronome" previews it. Below: Metronome-while-recording (which also enables the one-bar count-in) and Quantize loops to the beat.
Haptics
The app gives a small buzz on most actions so you can feel what you press. "Vibrate on note change" (Control) adds a tick each time the played note changes, which helps you feel the scale while tilting.
Library & Premium
Saved ideas live in the Library, where you can play and scrub them. The free version keeps up to 3 ideas; Premium removes the limit and unlocks exporting them as audio files.
A few tips
Start with one voice and a slow tilt to learn its range, then layer. Small movements are usually more musical than big ones. Give different voices different octaves and pans for a wide, spacious mix.