Etheric Synthesizer

Theremin synthesizer for Android devices

Etheric Synthesizer (EtherSynth) is a theremin-like synthesizer application for Android-based mobile devices. It allows user to play otherworldly theremin-like melody on mobile phone or tablet by swiping their finger on the screen. However, it is not aimed at realistically immitating a real theremin as it only uses a single finger to play.

Features could be summarized as follows:

Project website: http://ethersynth.sourceforge.net/

Contents

1. System Requirement

Etheric Synthesizer is written to run on Android version 2.0 onward (though recommended version is 2.3 or later), with no limitation on hardware platform as no native software library is used. On running, it requires only SD Card access permission which is used in recording function.

For building Etheric Synthesizer from source code, Android SDK or Replicant SDK is required. Version of the SDK is irrelevant, but support files for building Android 2.3 application must be installed. Please note that legacy SDKs cannot be used as they only support up to Android version 1.6. Also, Etheric Synthesizer uses a standard Apache Ant build system, so you would need to have it installed too (tested with Ant version 1.8.3).

2. Compiling

Assuming your Android build tools and Ant are accessible from command line, before starting, you would need to reconfigure project's build file by running following command in source directory:

android update project -p .

Then you can build Etheric Synthesizer by using following command:

ant debug

Once the process is completed, you will see an APK file EtherSynth-debug.apk inside project's bin directory, which you can copy it to your device and install.

If you plan to distribute Etheric Synthesizer APK, you might be better off using ant release command instead of ant debug, but you will need an APK signing key ready at hand to do this; or your Android device would refuse to install the result APK due to the lack of digital signature.

3. Installing

Etheric Synthesizer's installation process is the same as a regular Android application.

Important: Since Etheric Synthesizer is not from Google Play store, you will need to enable Install from Unknown Sources option in your device's Applications settings before you install it (Settings > Applications > Unknown Sources).

4. Quick Start

Using Etheric Synthesizer is quite straightforward. In default configuration, once you started it, you will be presented with a rainbow stripe gradient screen, which you can:

Once you pressed menu button, you will be presented with an options menu which you could:

Please note that if you used record function, recorded files will be placed in Music subdirectory of your phone's storage directory by default. But if you're using Android version earlier than 2.2, the default will be your phone's storage directory. This location could be configured in the corresponding recording options screen.

5. Author

Etheric Synthesizer is written by Nutchanon Wetchasit
Released as Free Software under GNU Gneral Public License (version 3 or later).

For legal information, see LICENSE.html and COPYING.html. Icon files are also available in other licenses, see LICENSE.ICO.html.