INSTRA

instra

Point the camera and shoot. instra reads the photo left to right and plays it spectrally — light pixels sing loud, dark ones stay soft, high up the frame is high in pitch, all snapped to a musical scale. Flip the switch to Vid to record a 10-second clip instead — it loops while the playhead sweeps it live, so the spectrum moves as the picture does. Tap ◐ to invert that — let the dark drive the volume instead. Press the picture and slide: drag up–down to push the contrast, harder or softer; left–right shifts the saturation. The Sens dial sets how sensitive the sound is to light — turn it up so even dim pixels still sing. The note slider on the right transposes every note up or down together — drag it up for a higher root, down for a lower one, up to two octaves either way (centre = E2). The Focus dial tilts the spectrum — turn it down to roll the super-highs off and lean into the lows. Voices sets how many tones sound at once, from the full stack down to a single note, and Balance weights which survive toward the bass or the highs. The Cutoff dial silences the highest notes first, sweeping down the scale like a low-pass on the note triggers — turn it down to cut deeper, up to open the top back. The Zoom dial magnifies the picture around its centre — the picture itself stays static. Tap ◑ to wash the picture in darkness (and hush it) — keep tapping to deepen, once more to clear. The Lines dial rules vertical bars across the frame for rhythm — up for black rests, down for white accents — Space slides them closer or further apart, and the Kick dial snaps them to a classic kick-drum groove (cycle through six). Tap crop then drag a box to play just part of the frame, then drag inside the box to slide the selection or drag outside to sculpt the contrast. Pick a scale, set it to loop or one shot.