Marble mode

Marble mode is the tray of water under your hands. Nothing you do here generates MIDI; every gesture is a deformation of the sheet, applied immediately, exactly. It is the default on desktop and in the browser, and the mode the tablets start in.

The gestures

Gesture	Tablet	Desktop / web mouse	Operator
Ink drop	tap	left click	Drop — under Anod, the spark
Comb stroke	one-finger drag	left drag	Tine
Vortex	two-finger twist	right drag	Vortex — the profile is the settings’ Vortex profile: exponential (diffuse) by default, Rankine, where the disk between your fingers turns rigidly, or the wave torsion
Fold	two-finger pinch	Shift + left drag	Pinch — the fold axis is the finger line (or the drag angle)
Stylus wake	pen stroke	middle drag (scroll wheel sets the tip)	Wake — pressure sets the tip radius; the fluid (inviscid doublet or viscous stroke) is a setting
Pressure	long press (hold 250 ms)	Shift + right drag	the press lays a drop and becomes Play mode’s Y axis: hold or push up = ink feed on that drop, pull back = Lamb–Oseen swirl with the drop as its core

The vortex profile and the pinch variant come from the settings. On the tablets a MIDI instrument plays into Marble mode exactly as it does on desktop — the gestures and the instrument share the water.

The same settings everywhere

Every platform carries the same settings: the thirteen layouts, the two media with their palettes and substrates, viscosity and ink feed, tempo and roll speed on the piano rolls, the expression routing rows (per-note bend, channel pressure, CC 74 and the pinch style, vortex profile, stylus wake and its spread), the operators’ knobs, presets, the prints ledger, replay, the sound engine, and the CC map. Desktop has them in the settings window, the browser in its panel, the iPad and Android apps in the sheet behind the gear. Two platform differences remain: the web panel has no CC map editor (Web MIDI hands the browser its ports, and the panel keeps the default map), and Android has no full-resolution toggle because its thermal listener owns the simulation scale. Every row, its range and what it drives: Settings reference →

While an instrument plays

Marble mode is where a second player belongs. One person plays the ROLI, the other combs and stirs what the notes leave behind — or an Airwave does it hands-free, its Raise, Tilt, Glide and Flex dimensions arriving as CCs that the CC map routes to vortex strength and centre, viscosity, roughness and palette. Devices →

Fresh sheets and prints

Paper dip clears the tray to plain water: a settings action on every platform, never a MIDI message. Save print writes what touched the water — the ripple shimmer is surface motion and is not in a print. Paper and prints →

Layouts still matter

Marble mode has no cells to touch, but the pitch layout decides where an instrument’s notes land: around the circle of fifths, on the chromatic grid, across the three Jankó rows, on the piano grid, on a scrolling piano roll — or on the trumpet’s partials under a controller’s valve CCs, across the strings, along the theremin’s width. Layouts → · The instruments →

Two media

The same gestures under Sumi are ink on washi; under Anod a tap is a spark, a drag a torsion, and the water draws its own deformed grid over black glass. The medium →