INSTRA HUE

Hue Spectral Synth
tap to record · 10s
high
low
time →
turn sideways for the full sweep
E2

Take a picture to hear it. Each column is read left to right and its colours are sung back as a stack of sine waves — the pitch follows the hue alone, each 60° of colour stepping up one octave: deep blue rings the bass, cyan the octave above, on up through green, yellow and red.

Speed
Length
Decay
Sens
Focus
Voices
Balance
Cutoff
Zoom
Lines
Space
Kick
Width
Phase
Echo

instra hue

Hue Spectral Synth

Point the camera and shoot. instra hue reads the photo left to right and plays it spectrally — and here the pitch follows the hue alone, on perceptual equal spacing: every 60° of colour rotation is one octave, so deep blue rings the bass, cyan the octave above, on up through green, yellow and red before the wheel cycles. Light and dark no longer move a note — the same colour sounds the same whether it is bright or shadowed; a colour's vividness just sets how strongly it sounds, so flat greys and black stay quiet. Each column rings the tones of whatever colours live inside it, 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 chord moves as the picture does. Tap to invert the mapping — let the bass hues ring high and the air hues low. Press the picture and slide: drag up–down to push the contrast, spreading the notes wider apart; left–right shifts the saturation, vivifying or greying the sound. The Sens dial sharpens or softens which colours sound. 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 toward the lows or the highs. Voices sets how many tones sound at once, dropping the chord 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 — hushing the colours into shadow. The Lines dial rules vertical bars across the frame for rhythm, 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.