About

Built by a Producer

Umbral Audio makes Aether, an AI co-producer that writes editable MIDI inside your DAW.

The story

Why Aether Exists

Aether is built by a producer who has spent over ten years making music almost entirely by drawing notes in the piano roll. After a while you get used to notes that sit perfectly on the grid, but you also notice how lifeless they can feel.

When language models got good enough, the process of using them to make MIDI feel less mechanical was clunky: generate somewhere else, convert, preview, paste the result back in. A small desktop tool sped up the conversion and preview steps, but still required leaving the session for a browser chat.

That made the real limitation obvious. The useful part wasn't faster conversion. It was having something that understood the intent and returned multi-track MIDI that could be kept and edited without leaving the session. Most existing tools weren't built from that workflow.

Umbral Audio exists for that reason. Aether is the first product. It is meant to live inside the session, write real layered MIDI, and leave the final creative decisions with the producer.

How it got here

From Scripts to a Plugin

  1. Summer 2025

    Scripts

    A clip went out as JSON, into a chat, and came back as MIDI. Clunky, and hit or miss.

  2. December 2025

    MIDI Toolbox

    A little desktop app to convert and preview. The chat still lived in a browser tab.

  3. February 2026

    Into the DAW

    Work starts on a plugin, so the whole conversation happens inside the session.

  4. June 2026

    Aether 1.0

    The first release: describe a part, refine it in the chat, drag it onto a track.

  5. Today

    Aether 1.7.1

    Melodic and Drums (beta) tabs, named layers, and your own AI or a local one. What's new

Then

Copied from MIDI Toolbox

{"tempo":120.0,"metadata":{"estimated_tempo_bpm":120.0,"length_seconds":12.0,"number_of_instruments":1,"note_count":42,"time_signature_changes":[{"time":0.0,"numerator":4,"denominator":4},{"time":0.0,"numerator":4,"denominator":4}],"key_signature_changes":[]},"time_sig":[4,4],"length":12.0,"notes":[[78,0.0,0.5,82],[71,0.0,0.75,97],[47,0.0,2.0,82],[50,0.0,2.0,82],[54,0.0,2.0,82],[59,0.0,2.0,82],[76,0.5,1.0,82],[74,1.0,1.5,82],[66,1.0,2.75,96],[73,1.5,2.0,82],[67,2.0,2.5,82],[74,2.0,2.5,82],[43,2.0,4.0,82],[50,2.0,4.0,82],[55,2.0,4.0,82],[59,2.0,4.0,82],[73,2.5,3.0,82],[61,3.0,3.5,96],[71,3.0,3.5,82],[64,3.5,4.0,96],[69,3.5,4.0,82],[76,4.0,4.5,82],[71,4.0,4.75,97],[40,4.0,6.0,82],[52,4.0,6.0,82],[55,4.0,6.0,82],[59,4.0,6.0,82],[74,4.5,5.0,82],[73,5.0,5.5,82],[64,5.0,7.0,96],[71,5.5,6.0,82],[73,6.0,6.5,82],[78,6.0,6.5,82],[42,6.0,8.0,82],[49,6.0,8.0,82],[54,6.0,8.0,82],[59,6.0,8.0,82],[76,6.5,7.0,82],[66,7.0,7.5,96],[74,7.0,7.5,82],[64,7.5,8.0,96],[73,7.5,8.0,82]],"pedal":[]}
A hand-drawn clip, copied out to paste into a chat. All 42 notes start exactly on a beat, at one of three velocities.

Now

Describe the part in the chat, and it lands as named layers in the piano roll, right in the session.

In practice

What Aether Holds To

Lives in the session

An AU or VST3 instrument in your DAW, or a standalone app. Drag one layer or the whole arrangement straight onto a track.

Writes layered MIDI

Editable MIDI, never audio, in named, instrument-tagged layers. Ask for another part and it lands beside the ones you have.

Leaves the calls to you

Refine by message, keep only the layer you want, and edit the notes in your DAW like any other clip. Run it on your own AI key, or on a local model offline.

Try it

Bring Aether Into Your Session

One-time $60 purchase, no subscription required. Three machines, free Aether 1.x updates, and your choice of nine AI providers (or none, fully offline).

Get Aether, $60Take the tour

Questions, ideas, or something you made with Aether? Say hello.

Contact