SSSwing – the Pendulum Wave Music Machine – is an app for iPhone and iPad, available on the App Store in most countries.

Create new music and musical ideas as the SSSwing pendulum wave progresses. Be inspired by the dreamy ‘Marimba Wave’, the haunting ‘David of the White Rock Variations’, and other demo songs.

With SSSwing you can create new music from a few notes, chords, or melodic fragments as the SSSwing pendulums fall in and out of sync.

Load some pendulum sequences and start the pendulum wave. Listen to your music as it evolves, and visualise its progression on the SSSwing Pendulum Wave Music Machine (in AR or 3D) or on a piano roll*. Experiment by making one or two edits – with SSSwing a small change can make a big difference to the song. Listen to ‘Frere Jacques Phase’, and create your own phase music. Save your song in a .ssswing file. 

Use concepts from music theory and mathematics if you want to. Or just play!

Provided demo songs

• ‘Marimba Wave’ (featured in the app preview)
• ‘Fundamental Harp 7’
• ‘Timpani Rollover’
• ‘David of the White Rock Variations’
• ‘Circle of Fifths’
• ‘Frere Jacques Phase’
• ‘Guitar Primes’
• ‘Permutations’
• ‘The Marshall – 12 bars’
• Rock Beat Sync
• A blank template for creating your own songs

Edit regions and beats in the Sequences view

• Each pendulum plays its own sequence, consisting of one or more regions, which is looped continuously
• Any notes that start within the period of a beat are grouped together as a ‘beat’, and can be edited together as a group
• Edit regions (copy, repeat, change velocity etc)
• Edit beats (move, copy, change velocity etc) 

Add notes & chords in the Keyboard view

• Use the onscreen keyboard to create (quarter) notes or chords on the notepad
• Place these notes or chords onto an empty beat, or overwrite an existing beat, in any of the pendulum sequences.
• Separate the notes in a chord and place on equally spaced pendulums so that they can resynchronise at regular intervals

Edit notes in the Notes view        

• Edit the pitch, position, duration and velocity of individual notes
• Quickly add notes or groups of notes, including tremolos

Provided SoundFonts**

• Guitar
• Harp
• Marimba
• Piano
• Timpani
• Tubular bells
• Drum kit

How a pendulum wave works

Let’s say we have 18 pendulums, P1 to P18, and P1 is set to make 60 oscillations (60 swings forwards and back) in 60seconds. Then P2 is set to make 61 oscillations in the same time, P3 62 oscillations, and so on, up to 77 oscillations in 60 seconds for P18. If the pendulums are started in sync together, they quickly fall out of sync, but after 60 seconds they are all back in sync again. 

How the SSSwing Pendulum Wave Music Machine works

Each oscillation of a pendulum corresponds to 2 beats, like a metronome. Each pendulum can be given its own sequence of one or more notes to play. Sequences are generally short. Whatever its length, a pendulum plays its sequence to the end and then loops immediately, independently of the other pendulums. If the sequence on each pendulum is 2 beats in length, the length of the SSSwing song is the same as the length of the pendulum wave cycle, but if one or more of the sequences is longer than 2 beats then the SSSwing song can be much longer.

* Visualisation performance in AR/3D will vary across different devices.

** Provided SoundFonts are based on a small number of samples from The University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios, which may be used “without restrictions”, and from the Versilian Community Sample Library, which is under a Creative Commons 0  (zero) license (“no rights reserved”).

SSSwing can also recognise user-supplied external SoundFonts. The end user is responsible for complying with any copyright restrictions.

iPhone and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions.

App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions.

SoundFont is a registered trademark of Creative Technology Ltd.

SSSwing is a trademark of Violet Copper Learning Ltd.

Pendulum Wave Music Machine is a trademark of Violet Copper Learning Ltd.

Copyright © 2025 Violet Copper Learning Ltd. All rights reserved.