BRAIDWORKS

Music from braids.

Strands weave over and under each other across a loom. Every strand is a bell; every crossing strikes one. The braid is the score. Play it right here in your browser, best on a laptop or tablet.

Play in browser ↓ How it works
How it works

The pattern of crossings is the music

A braid is a set of strands that cross over and under each other, one column at a time. Its crossings are deterministic, but they never repeat on a loop: structure and memory instead of random numbers.

Each strand is a bell

Strand 1 is the highest, the last the lowest, drawn from the note pool you set. A strand keeps its pitch wherever it travels.

A crossing strikes the pair

Each step weaves a new column. The strands that cross in it sound; the ones that run straight are the rests.

Over is loud, under is soft

The strand passing over rings as an accent, the one beneath as a ghost note.

Lanes become a rhythm

A row is struck top lane first on a grid of beats, so the shape of the braid sets the rhythm — and it folds itself down at fast tempos so it never blurs.

The instrument

A braid loom that plays itself

Up to four layers weave 3–12 strands across up to 64 columns with one of twelve rules, from change-ringing plain hunt to Yang–Baxter slides and Burau waves.

BraidPulse in Linen Dark: a wide loom of coloured strands crossing, a deck of controls and a note pool beneath BraidPulse in Linen: the same loom on pale cloth
Braid MIDI generator

BraidPulse

Click the loom to change the weave; it rings your changes. Here it plays through its own peal of bells, or sends its notes to any synth through Web MIDI.

  • Hold a chord on the on-screen or MIDI keyboard and the braid rings that chord
  • Runs in your browser: the plugin's own C++ core compiled to WebAssembly, nothing uploaded
  • MIDI in and out in Chrome, Edge and Firefox (Safari has no Web MIDI, so it keeps the bells)
  • Presets and seeds are the same files as the VST3 and standalone
Play BraidPulse →
About

A personal project

BraidWorks is a personal project by dazjjackson, exploring what braid groups can do as musical engines. It is a sibling of CellWorks, which does the same with cellular automata. Everything here is free to play and runs entirely in your browser, with no accounts or sign-up. Your session is kept in this browser; RESET on the plugin page starts again from the defaults.

Standalone and VST3 versions are under development.

Credits & licences →