tapey-1alpha

A tape synth for everyone.

Everything you play runs through a tape machine, with its saturation, hiss and age, so it sounds warm from the first note. Free, open source, and you play it from your laptop keyboard.

Play in your browsernothing to install DownloadmacOS · Windows · Linux · plugins
The tapey-1 panel: a speaker grille, a black screen with two tape reels and four tracks, four coloured knobs, rows of round keys, an orange record key and a two-octave keyboard.
The whole instrument is this one panel. What every key does

01 · why I made it

Free, open source, and not impossible to use.

Most free music software is made by experts for experts: you wire modules together or write code before anything sounds good. The instruments that are easy to pick up cost hundreds or thousands. I wanted one that is free and that anyone can play.

  1. Free, really.

    No trial, no tiers, no sign-up. The whole instrument, on the computer you already have or in a browser tab, and every line of it is open under the GPL.

  2. Easy, on purpose.

    The middle row of your keyboard plays notes, the sounds are ready to use, and the screen shows what each knob does in its colour. You can make a song before you know what an envelope is.

  3. Shaped by its players.

    Sounds, drum kits, samples and skins come from the people who play it. A person checks every one before it reaches everyone's library.

02 · what is inside

A small studio, made by hand.

The same engine runs in the app, the plugin and the browser. Play it with the computer keyboard, a MIDI keyboard or the mouse.

synth

Eight engines

Pulse, FM, digital, string, chip, phase, cluster and a sampler. Four knobs shape each one, with an envelope, seven effects and three LFOs.

sampling

Mic, then a key

Press mic, hold any key while you make a sound, and it plays across the keyboard. Or drop a sound file on the panel. Play it as keys, slices or grains.

drums

Eight kits, 24 hits each

Kicks, snares, hats, toms, bass hits and noises, all synthesized. Record or drop a sample onto any key.

sequencers

Five ways to loop

Chain, pattern, arpeggio, curve, and bounce, which throws your notes around a spinning drum.

tape

Four tracks, six minutes

Overdub, cut and paste takes, loop, reverse. Slow the tape and everything slows with it. Grab the reels and scrub by hand.

mixer

Mixer and effects

Level, pan, EQ, mute and solo for each track, a master effect with sends, and two mix memories to flip between.

projects

One file per song

Save the whole piece as a .tapey project, sounds, samples and tape included, and bounce the mix or the tracks as WAV or FLAC.

undo

Try anything

Every knob turn, sound and tape edit can be undone, up to 500 steps. It keeps your work as you go, so a crash costs seconds, not songs.

Read the docs

03 · where it plays

On your computer, in your browser, inside your music program.

macOS
11 or later. Apple Silicon and Intel, each a .dmg.
Windows
10 and 11. One .exe, nothing to install.
Linux
x86_64, a .tar.gz. Needs WebKitGTK 4.1 and ALSA.
Plays with
The computer keyboard, the mouse, any MIDI keyboard.
Samples from
Any sound input, or a sound file dropped on the panel.
Keeps
Your work as you go, and whole songs as .tapey projects.

All downloads

04 · share sounds

A library anyone can add to.

Synth sounds, drum kits, samples and skins live in the community/ folder of the repository. Add yours with a pull request. A check runs on every file, a person listens to it, and once it is merged it shows up in the Library of every copy of tapey-1.

  1. 1Make something you like, and save it from Settings, Sound files.
  2. 2Put it in a folder under its kind, with a short meta.json.
  3. 3Run the check, and open a pull request.
How to share yours
tapey-1/community
community/
├─ synth/
│  └─ velvet-keys/
│     ├─ velvet-keys.tapey.json
│     └─ meta.json
├─ drum/
├─ sample/
└─ skin/

05 · if you want it

It can also jam with your AI agent.

The desktop app can let an AI agent, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, press keys, turn knobs and record to tape beside you. It stays on your own computer, you see every key it touches, and the Agent button under the panel stops it at once. It lives in Settings, Agents, where you can also turn it off.

Connect an agent
Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http tapey-1 http://127.0.0.1:7341/mcp
Any other MCP client
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tapey-1": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:7341/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Open the desktop app first. More in the docs, and agents can read llms.txt.