# How to make instruments that sound good?

**URL:** <https://uzu.lurk.org/t/how-to-make-instruments-that-sound-good/5512>\
**Category:** TidalCycles\
**Tags:** questions\
**Created:** [18 November 2024 22:32 UTC](https://uzu.lurk.org/t/how-to-make-instruments-that-sound-good/5512 "2024-11-18T22:32:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![james\_gmz](https://uzu.lurk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@james\_gmz](https://uzu.lurk.org/u/james_gmz)\
**Post date:** [18 November 2024 22:32 UTC](https://uzu.lurk.org/t/how-to-make-instruments-that-sound-good/5512/1 "2024-11-18T22:32:06Z")

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Heya, I'm new to Tidal and enjoying learning the syntax and how I can encode interesting music in it. Separately from those pieces, I'm struggling with going from having all of the right notes encoded, but having the instruments themselves sound fairly bland. I can twiddle around with settings I don't fully understand to try and shape the soundscape, but it would be wonderful if there was more plug and play I could access, like "here's a warm jazz guitar sound".

Pointers much appreciated!

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**Author:** ![cleary](https://uzu.lurk.org/user_avatar/uzu.lurk.org/cleary/32/177_2.png) [@cleary](https://uzu.lurk.org/u/cleary)\
**Post date:** [21 November 2024 04:57 UTC](https://uzu.lurk.org/t/how-to-make-instruments-that-sound-good/5512/2 "2024-11-21T04:57:44Z")

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Tidal as it turns out, just generates patterns - it's not specifically a sound generator. The sound generation comes from Supercollider/SuperDirt who choose to interpret the patterns tidal sends in the context of samples and synths that those tools control.

A way for you to get what you're looking for is to find a software/hardware synth that provides presets you like (eg a warm jazz guitar sound), and control it via tidal. Midi is probably the most common way to do this, and is supported through SuperDirt setup:

> **[MIDI | Tidal Cycles](https://tidalcycles.org/docs/configuration/MIDIOSC/midi/#superdirt-midi)**
>
> Tidal can send and receive MIDI messages. You can talk with external synthesizers and hardware and receive data from your controllers. All the mapping is done directly through the language in an intuitive way.

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**Author:** ![james\_gmz](https://uzu.lurk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@james\_gmz](https://uzu.lurk.org/u/james_gmz)\
**Post date:** [21 November 2024 20:48 UTC](https://uzu.lurk.org/t/how-to-make-instruments-that-sound-good/5512/3 "2024-11-21T20:48:06Z")

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Thank you, that's quite helpful. I ended up using the MIDI integration with SuperCollider to control instruments in Logic Pro. It's made all my tidal programs sound a ton better. There's a weird glitch where every now and then I hear a weird chime sound, I'll try to get to the bottom of that. But this is a great route to allow me to separate out the sounds from the music patterns themselves, like you callout