Patches as a starting point
Rasgo Modular does not open on a blank page: it offers a patch already built and sounding, for you to play from — re-patching by hand, adjusting, letting it drift, or taking it all apart and building from scratch.
What it is
A generative modular environment with 58 modules, written in C++17 with no dependencies in the core. Modules are described as data — each declares its own panel in millimetres — and one engine drives two front-ends: a cross-platform JUCE app and an X11 test panel.
It is not a plugin and needs no DAW. It opens, sounds, records. MIDI and audio input exist as optional adapter modules — and are only opened when a patch contains one, because asking for a microphone from someone who will never use it is noise.
The eight families
- SOURCE — generate
- TRANSFORM — transform
- MODULATE — move
- TIME — keep time
- DECISION — decide
- ROUTE — route
- SPACE — place and remember
- OUT — mix, meter, send
The cable is an object, not a wire
This is the idea that separates Rasgo Modular from a conventional modular. In an ordinary patch a cable only carries: connect it and the signal passes. Here it has state of its own, and that state is playable.
Conductance
A cable can conduct probabilistically — passing sometimes rather than always. The same patch breathes differently without a single module changing.
Relation
Instead of merely carrying, a cable can combine what crosses it with a second signal: ring modulation, wavefolding or difference. Including with itself.
Rupture with a scar
Breaking a cable does not produce abrupt silence: the scar holds the last block and repeats it, decaying. The cut is a musical gesture, not an accident.
How you use it
There are two ways in, and neither is the "advanced" one.
One: press SEED and steer what comes out. Every patch has a number, and the same number always reproduces the same sound — the variation is reproducible, not lost. Let VARY move the parameters live, or use CHANGE, EVOLVE and CROSS to take the patch somewhere else.
Two: press n to pull every cable at once — the modules stay, the sound stops — and build the piece connection by connection. Ctrl+Z steps back one action, cable by cable.
Hovering any knob, jack or module writes into the LEARN box what it does, why, and what to try next — in Portuguese, English, French or Spanish.
Listening and output
A recording comes out as a pair: the .wav of what you heard and
a .score.txt logging the topology at the start of the take and
every gesture made during it. The patch itself is a separate file — the
.rmp, which stores the instrument, not the sound.
The output follows the RASGO family's common architecture: excellence protection on the final bus (DC blocking, ultrasonic guard, look-ahead limiter driven by true peak, −1 dBFS ceiling) and a safety guard at the sink that cannot be bypassed. BS.1770-4 loudness metering — momentary, short-term and integrated — to inform decisions, never to normalise a performance on its own.
Status
v0.1.0 is available. One installer per system, built
and packaged by continuous integration from the v0.1.0
tag.
Two things said in full before you download. The
Windows and macOS packages were built, packaged and tested by
continuous integration only — the author has never opened the
application on either system. And the .dmg is ad-hoc
signed, with no Developer ID and no notarisation: Gatekeeper will warn
about an unidentified developer on first launch.
Installation, requirements and how to build from source are in INSTALL.md; what changed is in CHANGELOG.md.
| Platform | Built | Run | Audio verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux x86-64 | yes | yes | yes, on real hardware |
| Windows x86-64 | continuous integration only | no | no |
| macOS (Universal 2) | continuous integration only | no | no |
The distinction matters: continuous integration proves the project builds and packages on all three systems, and verifies that the macOS package really is Universal 2. It does not prove the app opens and sounds on a real machine — and that will not be phrased any other way here.
Module guide
All 58 modules, family by family: what each one is, where it sits among its neighbours, and a chain to try. It is the same text the LEARN box shows inside the instrument.
Contact
Lúcio Araújo — authorship and development. Bugs, licence, credit: