Helenko manual

Click the patch name at the top left of the interface, then choose the sound you want.

These two knobs shape the volume envelope. Attack sets how soft or sharp the initial transient is. Release sets how long the note takes to fall away after you lift the key.

A long attack turns the samples into something closer to a pad. A short release makes the whole instrument tighter, at the cost of the natural decay.

These controls send the signal to the built-in effects.

I captured both from hardware picked for this instrument. Neither one is modelled. They are made for instant use, not for tweaking.

Underneath the knobs there are switches to change the character of the effect. All of them are sampled from vintage analogue hardware.

Lid emulates what happens to the tone as you close the lid on the instrument.

The two small sliders under the icon animate it, which gives you a tremolo. The first sets the depth of the movement, the second its speed.

The volume of the keys as you release them.

A high-pass filter on the effects send.

Keep a patch as wet as you like. The low end of the echo and the reverb will not cloud the mix.

Tape wow and flutter, as suggested by Trentemøller.

Some Afterglow patches take three kinds of controller: CC1, which is the standard mod wheel, MPE, and Expressive E's Touché.

Pick the one you play with here.

The global volume.

Pre-mapped to CC11, so you can automate it without extra setup.

Helenko carries a digital tape loop machine. I built it after Eurorack modules such as the Make Noise Morphagene, and pedals from makers such as Chase Bliss.

It gives you the volume of the loop, its speed, its direction and its texture, to set and to play.

The controls under the digital reels are sliders, not buttons.

Click and drag them. That is what gives you smooth, precise control over the sound.

Lo-fi adds modelled pitch wobble, small speed imperfections and tape noise sampled from a real analogue machine.

On tape, playback speed and pitch are the same thing.

This slider moves it in musical intervals: octaves and fifths.

Plays the loop forwards (arrow to the right), backwards (arrow to the left), or stops it altogether.

Worth experimenting with. It is where the strange textures come from.