Trajectory

Opinion

A different kind of oscillator: instead of a waveform you pick a shape and a launch, and the sound is whatever the bouncing point draws. Triangles are brash and metallic, squares are close to a hollow pulse, and a dozen sides goes soft and organ-like. The interesting part is the movement — put Drift on it and Sides, Start Position, Launch Angle and Bounce Jitter wander, and the tone changes character without ever sounding like a filter sweep. It is happiest on leads, basses and drones. It does not track concert pitch exactly (see below), so tune by ear.

Functionality

The oscillator is a point travelling in straight lines inside a regular polygon of 3 to 12 sides, reflecting off the edges. The waveform is x * X Level + y * Y Level. A note sets the point’s speed (frequency * 4 / sampleRate) and, at note-on, places it on the boundary at Start Position and launches it along Launch Angle. Bounce Jitter turns the heading by a small random angle at each bounce.

It is ported from the Trajectory experiment in the Flues project (https://danja.github.io/flues/trajectory/). The oscillator and its six controls are unchanged; the original’s reverb is removed and its attack/release envelope is now a full ADSR. Eight voices, each with its own point and envelope.

Pitch follows the note — an octave up doubles the rate — but the absolute pitch is a property of the shape: a square launched at 45 degrees repeats at the note’s frequency, a hexagon sits a little flat, a dodecagon about a fourth flat. That is how the original behaves and it has been kept.

The six oscillator controls are CC 1-6 in panel order and CC 7 is Level. Drift’s four lanes emit CC 1-4 by default, so they drive Sides, Start Position, Launch Angle and Bounce Jitter without configuration; point a lane at CC 5 or 6 for X Level or Y Level.

Parameters

Status

Core DSP, deterministic tests, the VST3 target and the catalogue screenshot are complete. Host validation in REAPER remains.