Etherpad — Dinesh Yadav

Etherpad turns any touchscreen into an instrument. Play ethereal music with your own touch — every finger is its own voice: slide, hold, lift, and the music follows your gesture in real time. No setup, no MIDI cables, no music theory required. Just open and play, on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Android.

Etherpad on macOS — the multi-touch synthesizer surface with pitch columns and visual effects — Etherpad running on macOS — the touch surface with pitch columns and visual effects.

Overview#

Etherpad is a gesture-driven synthesizer built around a single idea: the surface is the instrument. Instead of discrete keys, you play a continuous field of pitch columns. Where you touch sets the note; how you move shapes the sound. Multiple fingers mean multiple independent voices, so chords, glides, and evolving textures all come naturally from the way your hand moves.

Under the hood the sound engine is powered by Csound, giving it a real synthesis core rather than sampled playback — the same audio brain runs across every platform.

Features#

Multi-touch synthesis — every finger plays its own voice
5 sound modes — from lush pads to gritty leads
12 musical scales — Major, Minor, Pentatonic, Blues, Whole-Tone, Chromatic, Octatonic, Bohlen-Pierce, Flamenco, two Overtone Series, and the original Etherpad default
Adjustable key, octave, and grid size — 4–14 notes per row
Optional visual effects — ripples, finger trails, intensity rings, pitch-column glow
iPad split-screen mode — play two independent synths side-by-side
Low-latency audio — optimized for live performance

Etherpad on iPad in split-screen mode — two independent synthesizer surfaces side by side — iPad split-screen — two independent synths at once.

iPad — AUv3 plugin#

On iPad, Etherpad is also an Audio Unit (AUv3) instrument, so it plugs straight into your DAW workflow:

AUv3 instrument — run inside GarageBand, AUM, Cubasis, and other hosts
MIDI input — play from the host keyboard (pad-emulation mapping)
MIDI output — route your touch performance to other tracks (e.g. in AUM)

Standalone on iPhone, iPad, and Mac needs no host at all — the AUv3 path is there for DAW-style workflows on iPad when you want it.

Etherpad AUv3 running inside GarageBand on iPad, layered with drums and other instruments — Etherpad as an AUv3 instrument inside GarageBand.

Demo#

Credits & license#

Etherpad is inspired by the original Android app EtherSurface, created by Paul Batchelor in 2014. The sound engine is Csound, by Barry Vercoe, Victor Lazzarini, et al.