A digital audio workstation you can play like an instrument. Auwen is a command line interface tool for improvising and performing electronic dance music live — no preparation required.
Improvising electronic dance music is hard, and it's not immediately apparent why. Most tools make you build a workflow before you can perform. Auwen is built for live performance from the outset, so you can show up and play.
Desktop (recommended) (Mac, Windows, Linux): soniare.net/auwen
Create full songs, edit with a piano roll, export stems, and record live performances — all from the command line. Everything you can do with the piano roll you can also do with commands, so you're never forced out of your flow.
Type commands to load sounds, build tracks, and control every aspect of the music. The CLI keeps you moving fast, thinking in music rather than menus.
Preview sounds privately in your headphones, then send what you like to the audience speakers. This is the core of live improvised performance — build the next part of your set while the crowd hears the current one.
Auwen automatically adjusts the frequencies of your sounds to fit the Fletcher-Munson curve (the human ear's natural response). Less time mixing, more time playing.
Auwen works with microtonal scales and pitch classes by default. Choose from hundreds of known scales, build your own using scale creation algorithms, or load a Scala file. You can work with scales of any size — 32 steps or more.
The tonic of your scale is synchronized to your BPM, so as you change tempo, the pitch of the bass also shifts. This means every track you make is harmonically compatible with every other — easy remixing, easy blending.
Run infinite polymeters — multiple time signatures playing simultaneously. The meter command builds complex meters from a shared pulse, so your polymeters always align in a musically coherent way. meter random generates one for you.
Auwen works great at algoraves and live coding events, but it doesn't use code. There's no text file to write. Instead, you use a command line interface to manipulate an internal sound system in real time — like sculpting a song and using commands as your tools.
Export any sound and optionally share it with the Auwen community. Other users can search and download community samples with the cs command. A growing library of sounds built by performers, for performers.
Save sets of sounds into named banks and load them during performances. Combine pre-made banks with live improvisation — flip through your best loops or start from scratch. You're always capturing ideas.
Create a room and invite other musicians to send commands that run on your machine in real time. The Auwen community runs multiplayer sessions several times a week on Discord, and has released four compilations on Soniare Bandcamp.
Auwen grew out of the desire to do for electronic music what busking does for guitar — show up somewhere and just play. Record your live set directly in Auwen (only the speaker output, not your headphone monitor), and release straight from the performance. No bedroom required.
Play videos, show a webcam feed, load animated dancers, switch themes, and build custom music-reactive visualizers with the viz poly system. Project it live and watch the crowd respond.
Ask the built-in AI any question and it responds with the commands to run. Musicians with no prior experience have gone from their first session to playing live shows in 3–5 weeks. The community and regular workshops in San Francisco help you move even faster.
Other DAWs let you perform live, but you have to build the workflow yourself. Auwen handles the mixing, mastering, recording, and headphone monitoring for you — everything is thought through so you can focus on the music and start treating your computer like an instrument.
- Getting started guide: https://www.soniare.net/guide
- Command directory: https://www.soniare.net/commands
- Discord community: https://www.soniare.net/d
- Releases: https://soniare.bandcamp.com