getting started

Blossom: Getting Started

A real-time MIDI harmoniser. Play a melody, Blossom builds the harmony around it as you play, and sends it wherever you want.

Download The Creator's Guide (PDF)

watch the walkthrough

The 2-minute guide

the mental model

What Blossom is (and isn't)

Blossom is a MIDI effect: notes in, more notes out. It generates harmony voices around your melody and sends each one to a different instrument.

What it is

A harmony generator that sits in front of your instruments. You play one line; it builds the voices around that line, in real time, and routes them out over MIDI.

What it isn't

An instrument. Blossom makes no sound of its own. Your instruments do. If it's silent, it just isn't routed yet.

the signal path

One line becomes an ensemble

  1. You play one melody
  2. Blossom generates up to 9 voices
  3. Each voice gets its own MIDI channel
  4. Point them at different instruments

One hand becomes an ensemble.

nine voices

The voices

  • M (Melody) The note you actually played. Pass it through, quantize to a scale, or mute it and let the harmony carry.
  • T1 to T4 (Tone voices) Each one picks a note from the 'chord of the moment' guided by your melody note, and moves with it. This is the core Blossom sound, creating shimmering contemporary harmonies. The chord of the moment is either manually selected (Manual mode) or inferred from what you play (External chord and Listen modes).
  • H1 to H4 (Harmony voices) H voices are additional harmony voices drawn from the 'scale of the moment'. This creates fuller, harmonic support including traditional harmonisations. H voices provide a support to the tone voices. The scale of the moment is either manually selected (Manual mode) or inferred from what you play (External chord and Listen modes).

Each voice can be muted, routed, and channelised separately.

what drives the voices

Harmonic concepts

Two things sit behind every voice Blossom generates: a chord and a scale. Each one drives a different half of the ensemble.

The chord

Dictates the T voices. For example G∆7#11 — the tone voices pick their notes from that chord.

The scale

Dictates the H voices. For example G Lydian — the harmony voices are drawn from that scale.

Who chooses them? In Manual mode you select the chord and the scale yourself. In External Chord and Listen modes, Blossom infers them from your playing.

setup

Getting sound out

New to Blossom? You don't need to configure anything to start. Load a preset. It sets up the voices and routing for you. Pick a sound, and play.

Where to start? Try the preset 'A Small Turn' as a nice start.

Ableton Live
  1. Drop Blossom on a MIDI track.
  2. Switch MIDI Out on inside Blossom.
  3. Make a new instrument track.
  4. Set that track's MIDI From to the Blossom port, on a specific channel.

Watch the input routing. Wrong input routing in Ableton can cause a feedback loop. Never this:

  • The Blossom track listening to the Blossom port. This will create an infinite MIDI loop.
  • Setting an instrument track fed by Blossom to All Channels.
Logic Pro
  1. Add Blossom in the MIDI FX slot above your instrument.
  2. Play. You get sound on the first note. No routing needed.

how it decides

The three harmony modes

Manual

Set the key and chord yourself. Full control over what it harmonises to.

Ext. Chord

Play chords in, and Blossom harmonises to them.

Listen

Hands-free. Blossom infers the harmony as you play.

Start with LISTEN. It's the fastest way to hear what Blossom actually does.

first five minutes

Try these first

  1. Switch on LISTEN and improvise

    Enable T1 and T2, then just play. This is the shortest path to the sound.

  2. Split T1 / T2 / T3 to three instruments

    Give each tone voice its own channel and its own sound, and the line stops being one line.

  3. Turn the arp on

    Set DIST to Round Robin and let the voices trade the notes between them.

which one

The versions

Blossom

MIDI FX, AU and VST3

The core harmoniser

Blossom Pro

MIDI FX, AU and VST3

Full voice count, routing matrix, MIDI port, extended arp and echo

Blossom Pro Live

Instrument, AU and VST3

The same engine optimised for Ableton Live

Blossom Complete

Bundle, Installer

Pro, Pro Live and the light pack (a visualiser for Native Instruments Komplete keyboards) together

ready to play

Get Blossom

Get Blossom The Creator's Guide (PDF) → Watch the full guide →

macOS only for now. Windows coming.