Introducing WaveShaper apps! My 3D Wavetable scope (beta...), and January 2026 Book update!
Dear WaveShapers!
I'm particularly excited about this month's update, which is, literally, a whole new chapter in Patron benefits!
Over the past year or so I've been "coding" (using AI, I can't take credit for writing actual code) various apps for my own entertainment and the channel. You may have seen my free WebMIDI app that turns Messenger into a paraphonic synth (a feature which Moog has since blatantly put the app out of business with, in a firmware update!). More recently, when reviewing Waldorf's Protein, I thought, wouldn't it be useful if there were a 3D oscilloscope that would show wavetables in real time, unlike other scopes, which are only 2D. I couldn't find any online, so I had a little chat with Claude and after several corrections here and there, a 3D scope came into existence.
AI tools are quite capable of coding actual plugins (I used them to refine my son's MicroKorg 2 C++ logue SDK app), but compiling and then installing and updating them is a hassle, and there's something about the immediacy of web apps that I find very compelling, both to develop and use very quickly.
Web apps have a few problems, though: you can't use them naturally as plug-ins, at least not fully yet (though it seems like solutions are coming - see the book update...), so you do need to be aware of how your route audio and MIDI in your system. It's pretty easy to capture audio from the first two inputs on your interface, but slightly more work to get audio back and forth to your DAW. There are plenty of other "cons" like potential latency, CPU usage, and the different capabilities of various browsers, but these outweigh the one big pro: how easy it is to make things happen and iterate in a browser - without which, the scope, paraphonic messenger and future apps would simply not happen, at least as far as I'm concerned.
I have quite a few ideas for unique apps I want to offer you that I'd like to share over the coming months, so hopefully you enjoy this format and find it useful!
OK enough talking, where can you get the apps?!
Here's a direct link to the first one, the 3D Wavetable Scope, and in the future, rather than look for the link, just head on to loopopmusic.com, there's a new "Patron Apps" tab, and you should find the app and any future apps there.
To use it, you'll need to be logged in to Patreon, as I'm using its API to authenticate whether you're active on the WaveShaper tier. I'm calling this beta because while did a few tests and I hope this will work well, I have no way of knowing until you all try it. So please be patient, and let me know how it goes!
The video above gives you a snippet of what the app looks like, but just poke around and have fun. It supports video capture too if you have a capture card and want to overlay your scope over live footage like I do in my videos :)
If you mess things up too much, just reload the page.
OK - so that's the big news, now for the book update, which is a new big chapter (appendix) with various tips and ideas for using music web apps - starting on Page 659. These techniques apply to any web-based music or MIDI app, of which there are quite a few, so it's not just about me!
There are also a couple of other updates that you can skip to by searching for the string JAN2026.
That's it for now! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the scope, and on this approach to creating musical instruments and apps. If you have ideas for an interesting app feel free let me know. I can't promise I'll make them... but happy to explore original ideas.
My goal is not to create yet another compressor or EQ, but rather to do things a bit differently, as hopefully you'll see with this scope, and there are almost no limits as to what can be done sonically (or visually), for example, I'm working on an interesting twist on granular, I hope to share soon if it works as well as I think it should...
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the scope, and hopefully this inspires you to open up Claude, Gemini Pro or even ChatGPT and put together your own musical web app - it's really quite simple to start, and you'd be amazed at what's possible, just ask! Type in "create an audio web app that does (insert audio dream here)" and see what happens...!
All my best,
Ziv / Loopop