A four-track sculpting sampler with a composer inside. Drop a sound on a track and it writes a piece around it, every note in key. Or turn the composer off and sculpt the sound yourself, grain by grain.
This page is the manual. It is kept up to date here, so there is nothing to re-download when something changes. Last updated 5 September 2026 (v2.1). Product page: tunaryinstruments.com/soundscape/drusk.
It's an instrument that needs a sound to start from
DRUSK goes on an instrument track, a software-instrument track or a synth track, whatever your host calls it, not on an insert of a plain audio track. It makes music from samples. Three example sounds are built in, so it plays the moment you press RUN, and anything you drop on a track becomes part of the piece.
The one that catches everyone first. A fresh copy shows an unlock card and stays silent until you paste the licence key from your receipt. One activation, in any format, unlocks all of them.
The fastest way to hear it
I hear nothing
Four things in order. One, DRUSK is on an instrument track, not an audio track. Two, it has been activated (no unlock card showing). Three, RUN is lit, or the host transport is running. Four, none of the four M chips is lit and the track level knobs are up. In Pro Tools, also check that the track is an Instrument track and not an Aux.
The panel, top to bottom
The header holds TEMPO, KEY and mode, the COMPOSER slider and RUN. Under it, four track strips: number, name (click to rename), the waveform of the loaded sample, LEVEL and PAN, and M (mute), S (solo) and FX (bypass the track's effects). Click a strip to select it. Below that, the device chain for the selected track, one page at a time: SOURCE, DUST, FORM, GRIT, AIR, MOTION. To the right, the grain scan and the output scope. At the bottom, PERFORM: macros, punches and scenes.
What the composer does
When a sample lands, DRUSK listens to it: how bright it is, how it attacks, whether it sustains, how many hits it has, and what pitch it holds and how sure it is of that. Then it looks at all four samples together and seats each one in a chair: bass, rhythm, melody, air or bed. The strip shows the chair it was given. A pitched sample keeps its own pitch class; DRUSK picks the key so it plays at its natural pitch.
Then it writes. A chord progression from the scale degrees of your mode, a bass that locks to the rhythm chair's accents, a melody that walks the scale in steps, lands on chord tones on strong beats and breathes at the end of a phrase, an air part on the offbeats, and a chord pad from the bed. The parts are written to answer each other: the melody thins where the bass hits, the air echoes the melody a step later and steps aside when it speaks.
The critic
Nothing plays first-roll. DRUSK rolls up to a hundred and twenty arrangements, scores each one (density in the sweet spot for each part, a bass that anchors the downbeat, a melody that moves in steps with a clear contour and rests, a cadence that comes home, parts that stay out of each other's way, a beat that makes sense) and only the best plays. It also refuses any tune more than twenty percent similar to the last forty it made, so two rolls never come out the same.
COMPOSER: how much it does
Your hand always wins. Choose a KEY or a mode yourself and the composer keeps it. Choose a SOURCE type on a track and that track is never re-cast. Load a sample on a track and the composer re-plans the band, but never overrides a choice you made by hand.
Key and mode
KEY is C to B. The modes are Minor (epic), Major (hopeful), Dorian (floating), Lydian (dreamlike) and Phrygian (dark). Each carries its own scale and its own progressions. Changing the mode writes a new tune in it. Every note DRUSK plays, on every part, sits in that scale; the drums are tuned to the tonic too.
Track strips
The track's level, including its reverb. Drag up and down; double-click resets; the mouse wheel nudges.
Left to right. Centre is straight up.
Mute, solo, and bypass the track's effects (filter, resonator, grit, sends). A solo silences the others.
SOURCE
A one-shot sequencer. Tap steps on the grid or press GENERATE RHYTHM (best of eight rolls). 8, 16 or 32 steps. TUNE and DECAY shape the hit; a pitched hit sits on the tonic of the key.
A tape buffer of the sample that the granular engine reads from. The default for melodic material.
Plays the sample through as it is, for long recordings.
Play the sample from the on-screen keys. The track holds the note you press.
HOLD is an endless wash. PULSE retriggers at RATE. PLAY loops a phrase the composer wrote for this track; NEW PHRASE rolls another (best of eight).
Snaps a dropped sample to the nearest musical pitch so it fits the key. Leave it on unless you want the raw pitch.
DUST (granular)
SEEK picks the spot in the sample. DRIFT is the tape speed of the playhead, 50% is natural. SCATTER spreads grains around the spot. SCAN sweeps the position in a pattern.
Grain length in milliseconds and how many grains per second. Long and few is smooth, short and many is dense.
TUNE transposes in semitones. BLOOM sends an octave-up halo into the reverb only, so it never chatters against the dry sound.
CONTOUR is the grain window shape. WARP smears grains. WIDTH spreads them across the stereo field. FLIP plays some grains backwards. CHAOS randomises the rest.
FORM (filter and resonator)
The filter's cutoff and resonance; lowpass, bandpass or highpass from the row above.
MORPH crossfades the filter into a tuned bank of five resonant partials. RING adds a metallic ring modulator. RING PIT sets the pitch of both, as a MIDI note.
GRIT (colour)
DRIVE saturates. TILT leans the drive dark to bright.
CRUSH reduces bits and sample rate. SQUASH is a compressor with makeup. NOISE adds air that follows the sound's own envelope.
AIR (space)
How much of this track goes to the hall and to the shared echo. Both sends sit after the level knob, so LEVEL moves the whole track.
The shared echo's character. TIME, FEEDBK and SIZE set the echo time, its repeats and the hall size for every track at once.
Holds whatever is in the echo forever, with nothing new going in. Press again to let it go.
MOTION (modulators)
Each slot is a robot hand. Press the arrow button on a slot, every knob glows, click the knob you want it to hold, and it is wired. CYCLE moves it like a wave, DICE to random spots, TRACE follows the track's loudness, SHAPE gives one push per note. DEPTH is how far, RATE how fast. The numbered chip turns a slot on and off.
Macros
Eight faders, each sweeping one parameter across all four tracks at once: OPEN (filter cut), GRAIN, SWARM (grain density), BLOOM, MORPH, BITE (drive), SMEAR (warp) and WASH (reverb). Scenes remember their positions.
Punch effects
DIVE dips the whole mix through a filter. STALL halves the speed of every voice, like a tape slowing. REV runs every voice backwards. FLOOD throws the reverb wide open. Tap one and it fires for one beat. Hold it and it lasts as long as you hold. In the plugin these run on the whole mix natively, so they hit hard.
Scenes
A scene is the whole musical moment: every knob on every track, each track's mode and phrase and step pattern, the tune, the key and the mode, the macros and the COMPOSER position.
Eight scenes is eight songs on a row of buttons. Fill them before a set, then play the row.
Locking to your DAW
Press play in the host and DRUSK follows the transport bar for bar at the host's tempo. Stop the host and it carries on at its own clock. Bounce in real time: an offline bounce runs faster than real time and the panel cannot follow it, so parts go missing.
What you can drop
WAV, MP3 and M4A, dragged from your desktop onto any track strip, or through LOAD / DROP on the SOURCE page. Apple Loops in .caf are not supported yet. Up to about eight seconds is used per sample.
What DRUSK does with it
It reads the sample's character (brightness, attack, sustain, how many hits, its pitch and how sure it is), gives it a chair in the band, and plays it as itself when it can. A clearly pitched sample is re-pitched to the notes the composer writes and plays as the real recording. A doubtful or unpitched sample is voiced through a tuned resonator so it holds pitch, with the sample's own texture on top. A short percussive sample is sliced into hits and given the rhythm chair. Your sound always carries at least half the sound of its part.
The example sounds
Three built-in sounds load the first time you press RUN so the piece starts at once. Drop your own on any strip to replace one. Track 1 starts as the bed, a quiet chord pad under everything.
In Logic and Pro Tools
Drop the file straight onto the strip inside the plugin window. If your host swallows the drop, press LOAD / DROP on the SOURCE page and pick the file.
Where is my licence key?
In your Gumroad receipt email and on your Gumroad library page. DRUSK is sold on its own, so it has one key.
Activating
The first time DRUSK opens it shows an unlock card. Paste the key and press UNLOCK. It checks the key once, online, and remembers it. One activation covers the Audio Unit, the VST3, the AAX and the standalone app on that machine. After that it runs offline.
Paste, don't type. A key is four blocks of eight characters. Spaces and lower case are fine; a missing character is not.
A new computer
Install DRUSK and paste the same key again. If a key stops being accepted after a refund or a chargeback, that is deliberate.
Install the easy way on a Mac
Download DRUSK-Installer-mac from your Gumroad library and double-click it. It puts the Audio Unit, the VST3, the AAX and the standalone app where every host looks. macOS asks for your password, which is normal for the shared Plug-Ins folder. To leave a format out, click Customize on the Installation Type screen and untick it.
By hand on a Mac
Unzip DRUSK-Mac. Copy DRUSK.component to ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, DRUSK.vst3 to ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3 and DRUSK.app to Applications. Everything is signed and notarised by Apple, so nothing warns.
Windows
Unzip DRUSK-Windows-VST3 and copy the whole DRUSK.vst3 folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3. Restart your DAW and rescan. DRUSK needs Windows 10 or later with the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime, which every up-to-date Windows 10 and 11 already has.
Where does it show up?
Under Tunary Instruments, not under the product name. Logic and GarageBand: AU Instruments, Tunary Instruments, DRUSK. Ableton, Cubase, Reaper, Bitwig, FL Studio: the VST3 instrument list. Pro Tools: a new Instrument track, then Instrument on its insert, Tunary Instruments.
Not there in Logic? Logic Pro > Settings > Plug-in Manager, search for it, tick it, or select it and click Reset & Rescan Selection. Usually it just means Logic was open while you installed. Not there in Pro Tools? It only scans plug-ins when it launches, so quit it fully with Cmd Q and reopen.
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