Sylvaris beta quick-start

Ten minutes from download to a useful bug report. This round is three builds — SYLVARIS 0.9.3 BETA, UNDERSTORY 0.9.1 BETA and EVERFALL 0.9.1 BETA — macOS only, and all three stop working on 2026-12-01. Sections 1–6 are Sylvaris; section 7 is the other two.

On iPad? The iPad beta is open on TestFlight, no application needed: Sylvaris, Understory and Everfall.

Install First sounds The header The four tabs Gestures Reporting Understory & Everfall

1. Install

1. Get the three disk images from the downloads page in your build email (it asks for the passphrase from the same email). Open each and run the .pkg inside: Sylvaris.pkg, Understory.pkg, Everfall.pkg.
2. Each installer puts three things in the system-wide places every host looks:
   • /Applications/<Name>.app — the standalone
   • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/<Name>.component — Audio Unit (Logic, GarageBand, MainStage)
   • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/<Name>.vst3 — VST3 (Ableton Live, Reaper, Bitwig, Cubase, Studio One)
3. If you have an earlier build of any of the three, the new installer replaces it in place; the new version number makes your DAW rescan on its own.
4. Every build is signed and notarized. If macOS blocks one anyway, that is a bug — report it with your macOS version.
5. Some hosts scan for new plugins only at launch: restart your DAW once, then look under Greenlit Audio for Sylvaris (an instrument), Understory and Everfall (effects).

Start in the standalone. With no host in the way, anything that misbehaves is the instrument's fault and we both know it. Move to your DAW once you have a feel for it. In the standalone, audio and MIDI devices are behind the Options button at the top of the window.

The build is universal (Apple Silicon and Intel) and runs on macOS 10.15 or later. On 2026-12-01 it stops: the audio goes silent and the window shows This beta has expired. That is deliberate — it is a beta, not a release. Beta testers get a free license at launch.

2. First sounds

1. Pick a preset. The pill in the middle of the header shows the preset name; the ‹ › arrows step through the bank, and tapping the name opens the browser (ALL · PADS · KEYS · PLUCKS · TEXTURES · BASS · USER). Play keys while the browser is open to audition. Click a card and it loads.
2. Play. Any MIDI keyboard; MPE controllers work out of the box (see the header's cog › MIDI if you want plain poly or one channel per part).
3. Touch the pond. The GROVE tab opens as one big XY pad. The two chips at its bottom-left say what the axes do right now — X → MORPH · 50, Y → CUTOFF · 100 and so on. Tap a chip to point that axis somewhere else.
4. Turn the four macros under the pond: BLOOM (harmonics + structure), TANGLE (timbre + brightness), DRIFT (morph + grain drift), AIR (space + width). Each moves several parameters at once.
5. Let it play itself. In the SEEDS · ARP strip, tap ON. The chips around it set the rate, octave span, root key, scale and the model (FLOW / DRUMS / MARKOV). LOOP latches the phrase it just found. There is no separate RUN any more: ON is the whole transport.
6. Play some chords. Tap the chip at the pond's bottom-right until it reads CHORD. The pond becomes a grid of chords in the current key; touch a column. Section 4 has the rest.
7. Roll the dice. The die in the header rerolls every sound-shaping control at once (never the routing, the engine choice or your MIDI settings). ⌘-click it to undo the last roll. Anything you like, SAVE AS… in the browser.

Something sounds too quiet or too bright after a roll? That's within the dice's range by design — roll again or undo. A roll that goes silent, though, is a bug: note the preset and report it.

3. The header

Left to right — the same bar on every tab.

4. The four tabs

GROVE

The pond is the tab: an XY pad with two independently mappable axes. Under it sit the four macros, the SEEDS strip (its four knobs REVERIE, RUSTLE, CANOPY and THRUM shape the pattern: lock, timing drift, pitch spread, density) and the KEYS block (the keyboard's voice, and whether it plays part A, B, both or a split).

The mode chip at the pond's bottom-right cycles SCENE FOLLOWS SYNTH → SCENE HELD → PLAY → CHORD. In the first two the pond is an XY controller. In PLAY it is a keyboard: X picks single notes in the current key and scale, TAP / GLIDE chooses the gesture and 1 OCT–3 OCT the span. In both playing modes Y becomes the PAD Y source; drag that chip onto a knob.

CHORD. The pond becomes a grid: one column per scale degree, labelled with its numeral and chord name. Touch a column to play that chord; move up the pad for a higher voicing. Only the notes that change are re-struck. The key and scale are the SEEDS strip's key and scale chips, so one pair of chips sets the key for the pad, SEEDS and SEASONS. The row along the top picks the chord type for every column (TRIAD, 6, 7, ADD9, 9, 11, 13, SUS2, SUS4, 7SUS4). Along the bottom: CLOSE / OPEN / WIDE is the spread, BASS puts the root underneath, and LATCH keeps the chord sounding after you lift (touch the same column again to release it).

SET turns the grid into a chord editor. Tap a column and pick its quality from the strip that opens (each pick plays a preview), or tap ROOT to build it on any of the twelve notes. The + column at the right edge adds a column, up to five extra and twelve in all, so a progression that leaves the key still fits on one pad. AUTO puts a column back on the scale; ALL AUTO resets the pad. Tap SET again to play.

DUAL. The SINGLE chip at the top right splits the pond into two pads, each with its own X and Y chips. The second pad's mode chip switches between FOLLOWS and PLAY. Put the left pad in CHORD and the right in PLAY and you have chords under one hand and a lead under the other; the right pad's +1 OCT chip shifts the lead. A pad in PLAY glows where its notes belong to the chord that is sounding. That is a guide, not a lock: every note still plays.

Pad voice. In PLAY or CHORD the chip left of the mode chip reads KEYS: the pad plays the same voice as the keyboard. Tap it to give the pad its own profile, part, oscillator, envelope and filter.

The lamp. LAMP OFF → LAMP WANDER → LAMP PATH. A lit lantern moves the pad for you: WANDER drifts around where you left it, PATH replays a gesture you drew, locked to the tempo. Hold the chip for REC, rate and range; tap REC, then draw on the pad. A finger on the pad always wins.

The SEEDS strip. ON starts and stops it. If SEASONS or a loop is already running, ON blinks and comes in on the next bar. The FOLLOW chip chooses how SEEDS answers the keyboard (FIXED, FOLLOW, LATCH, PLAY, JOIN). DIA / CHROM decides what a held key does to SEEDS and SEASONS: in DIA it moves them by scale steps and they stay in key; in CHROM it transposes the key. LEARN builds a scale from what you play: tap it, play some notes, tap it again. The first note you played becomes the key. Under a chord from the pad, SEEDS follows the chord's root.

In a DAW. Settings › DAW TRANSPORT chooses FREE (ON plays any time, and lines up with the host's bars when the host plays) or FOLLOW (ON waits for the host to play; the chip sits dim until then).

PATCH

The voice. Top row: ROOTS (the oscillator; page 2 is OSC 2 — tap the engine name to pick from forty models; MACRO is each model's own extra law), FORCES / HOLLOWS (exciter and resonator — FORCES' SING knob sustains a note with a feedback loop, and pressing a key harder does the same per note; HOLLOWS has fifteen bodies and an EVEN knob), FILTER (two pages, tap the type name), ENV (LPG or ADSR per page). The A / B chips above them choose which part the cards edit — Sylvaris holds two complete instruments. Second row: WINDS · LFO BANK (four LFOs; drag an LFO 1 label onto any knob to modulate it) and SYLVARIS ROUTES, the 32-slot modulation matrix where every route you've dragged appears and can be reassigned.

FX

The effects. GNARLS (two modulators with ten modes each: WARP, SHIFT, MANGLE and Understory's seven saturators), MISTS 1 and MISTS 2 (two Clouds engines; the mode chip picks GRAN / STR / DLY / SPEC / RPT — RPT is the beat repeater and wants a generator ON), then DELAY (DIGITAL / TAPE / PINGPONG / ECHO / WORN; TONE colours the wet signal), REVERB (ROOM / PLUME / EVERFALL / SPACE / SPRING / GATE) and the UNDERSTORY card (eight filters, a notch, and sixteen Understory effects, LOOP among them). The model chips open a picker; tap the name. The strip across the top shows where KEYS, SEEDS and SEASONS are sent and holds three chips: ORDER (which of GNARLS and MISTS runs first, or both in parallel), CHAIN (MISTS 1 and 2 in parallel or in series) and TAIL (delay into reverb, reverb into delay, or side by side).

A layer per part. At the left of that strip, SHARED means both parts run through one set of effects. Tap it to SPLIT and each part gets its own; the A and B chips above and below choose which one you are editing. The UNDERSTORY card's PART / SUM chip chooses between the focused part's Understory and the one on the whole instrument.

The looper

A tape looper for audio. The quickest way in is the record button at the top right of the header: with nothing looping, a tap loops the whole instrument. It arms, and the first note you play starts the take. Tap record again to close the loop and overdub, again to just play. The play button stops and starts it; hold play to undo or redo the last layer; hold record to erase. The left button reverses.

With the metronome off and no host tempo, your first loop sets the BPM: Sylvaris reads it as a whole number of bars. With the metronome on, record gives you a one-bar count-in and the loop closes on the bar. Loops run up to sixty seconds, in 4/4. On the UNDERSTORY card in LOOP, the knobs are SPEED (half to double), DUB (how much of the old layers survives an overdub), TAPE (tape character) and MIX. Set the card to PART and LOOP to loop one part instead of everything.

SEASONS

A Stages sequencer with up to six groups. Sixteen segment columns, each a shape knob, a type light and a level fader; tap the light to cycle RAMP → HOLD → STEP (the legend on the tab says what the knob and fader mean for each). Tap a jack in the gutter between two columns to split there and start a new group; tap it again to join. Tap a group's band once to select it, tap it again (or hold) to choose what it drives; drag the band onto a knob to route it. RANDOM rerolls the selected group's values; ON starts the sequencer, on the bar if SEEDS is already running.

What a group can drive. Any knob, as a control signal. NOTES: the group plays a melody, each step a scale degree, with a dot under each fader for play, rest or tie. Or CHORDS: each step plays a whole chord, voice-led into the next. Drag a fader and the popup names the chord. A CHORDS group uses the same columns as the GROVE chord pad, so the chords you assigned there with SET are the chords it plays. With CONDUCT lit, SEEDS and the other groups follow its chord, and the chord pad shows where it is.

The strip above the columns edits the selected group: DIV (its clock), DIR (direction), OCT, KEYS (how the group follows the keyboard, the same five choices as SEEDS), a voice chip, and SOW, which captures the phrase you are hearing into the group.

Modulating steps. Drag any source chip onto a step's fader to modulate that one step, or onto a group's band to modulate the whole group. On NOTES and CHORDS groups the depth reads in scale steps. Right-click the band to change the depth.

5. Gestures

The cog › GESTURE GUIDE shows these in the plugin.

• DRAG A SOURCE CHIP ONTO A KNOB — new mod route
• RIGHT-CLICK OR HOLD A MODULATED KNOB — mod depth
• HOLD THE BPM READOUT — metronome and tap tempo
• DOUBLE-CLICK A KNOB — reset to default
• DRAG A KNOB — live shape bubble
• PLAY KEYS WHILE BROWSING — audition presets
• ESC OR CLICK OUTSIDE — close any panel

Knobs drag vertically. Every knob's tooltip ends with its current value. Right-click on SING opens its harmonic and onset controls, and on the HOLLOWS or REVERB DAMP knob the resonance controls; elsewhere right-click is left to your host. Hover a tab while dragging to cross tabs. The window resizes from the bottom-right corner grip (half size up to double, aspect locked), or by the ZOOM row in Settings, and opens fitted to your screen.

User presets live in ~/Library/Application Support/Greenlit Audio/Sylvaris/Presets as plain .xml files — attach one to a report if a sound misbehaves and it will reproduce here.

6. Reporting

Two things are worth more than any praise: anything that crashes, and anything that sounds wrong. Bugs go through the feedback form linked in your kickoff email, so they don't get lost in an inbox, or reply to the build email. Anything conversational, just reply.

What a useful report contains

• The build string — open the cog at the top right; the bottom line of that panel reads SYLVARIS 0.9.3 BETA · GREENLIT AUDIO. Understory and Everfall show theirs in the same place (the i button), with the expiry date. Three products, so this line is what tells a report apart.
• Where you were — Standalone, or the DAW and its version.
• Your Mac — macOS version and chip (Apple Silicon or Intel). The universal build is tested on both, so "sounds different on Intel" is a real finding, not noise.
• Steps — which preset, what you did, what you expected, what happened. A report that can't be reproduced stays open; one that can gets fixed.
• One report per bug. Three bugs, three reports.

Known already — no need to report these

• MISTS has a faint audible kink at the pool's ring boundary at 1× speed.
• BEAT REPEAT keeps looping its last slice for up to a pool length after the transport stops.
• The KEYS configuration popover can overlap the edge at some window sizes.
• The master volume knob has no label.

Please keep the build to yourself. The cohort is small on purpose, and the download link is yours alone.

7. Understory and Everfall

Both are effects, so they go on a track or a return rather than on a MIDI channel. Both share Sylvaris's header idiom: preset pill with arrows and a browser, A / B compare, the die (roll, ⌘-click to undo), undo and redo, and the i button with the build string. Both have a BYPASS chip at the bottom left.

Understory

1. Put it on a track with something already playing. Four cards, GRIT, SWAY, GLOW and GRAIN, each holding seven effects; tap the model name on a card to pick one, and the ON chip to hear it or not.
2. Three knobs per card, AMOUNT in the middle. The VOL bar under them is that module's level.
3. Drag a card by its grip to reorder the chain. Any of the twenty-four orders, in series.
4. Record a gesture: tap the red dot in the header, turn some knobs, tap stop. It loops the movement while you keep playing. This loops knob movement, not audio; the tape looper is in Sylvaris.
5. MIX and OUT in the header are the wet/dry and the output level. Twelve factory presets, five categories.

Everfall

1. Put it on a return, or straight on a pad. Then push TIME all the way up: the tail stops decaying. That is the point of it.
2. GRAVITY is bipolar: up, the tail swells after the note; down, it collapses. SHIMMER adds a harmonic layer either side of centre. RESO and TUNE make the tail ring at a note.
3. FREEZE holds what is in the tail and keeps new input out. PRE-DLY runs free or locks to tempo with SYNC; the chip beside it picks the division from a grid.
4. Eight factory presets. Sylvaris's own REVERB in EVERFALL mode is the same engine, so anything you learn here carries over.

Both windows resize from the bottom-right corner, half size up to double, and open fitted to your screen.

Report the same way as Sylvaris, with the product name in the report. The two things I want most are the same: crashes, and anything that sounds wrong.