Water instrument for Mac
Waterline
An instrument played by water. Every key drops a drop, and the bubble it traps rings at your note.
$15 until December 31, then $35
The free download is the whole plugin. Until you add a license, it dips in volume for a moment once a minute. Or play it here first.
- Platform
- macOS 11 or later · Apple silicon and Intel
- Formats
- VST3 · AU · Standalone
- Tested on
- macOS 26.5 on Apple silicon (M5)
- Version
- 0.1.1
In your browser
Play a few notes
Use your computer keys (A, S, D, F and up), a MIDI keyboard, or press Play a phrase. Each drop you see land is a note you hear, and the presets are the plugin’s own.
Watch6 short films, a minute or less each
Transcript
Waterline is an instrument played by water.
Every key drops a drop, and the bubble it traps rings at your note.
Choose how your notes fall.
Single drops.
A steady drip, in time.
A shower.
A storm.
Or one continuous stream, with glide.
Choose the pool.
Honey gloops.
Quicksilver rings like metal.
Lava hisses into steam.
Choose what falls: water, ink, hail, or glowing embers.
Shape every splash. Make it bigger, slow it down, or drop it from higher up.
Take the microphone underwater, and let a slow swell drive a chorus or a phaser.
Then set the sky: mist, wind, sleet, or a thunderhead.
Fifty eight presets. Everything you see, you hear.
Waterline, for Mac. Drop in at smileyface.studio.
Inside
The liquid, the weather, the mic
The splash is the sound
A click as the drop lands, a thump if it's heavy, then a ring from the bubble it traps, tuned to your note. The splash falls back as softer notes.
Eight liquids, and what falls in
Water, oil, honey, milk, quicksilver, seltzer, lava and glacier, each with its own click, crown and ring. And you choose what drops into it, from water and ink to hail or an ember.
Six ways to fall
One drop per note, a drip in time with your track, a shower, a drizzle, a storm, or one stream that glides from note to note.
Change the sky
Mist softens every attack and wind bends the pitch. Under a thunderhead the drops hit hot, and sleet crushes them. Each sky adds its own bed of noise.
Move the mic
Move the mic from the air, where you hear the splash, to under the water, where you hear the rings. Roll a swell through for chorus or phaser.
58 presets
Forty of them come with weather. Save one in the browser and it opens in the plugin, because they're the same files.
Made at Smiley Face Studio · San Diego
Make it rain
Waterline
$15 until December 31, then $35.
- How it arrives
- Pay with PayPal or a card. Your license and the download are on the next page, and in your inbox.
- The license
- One license covers every format, on the Macs you make music on. It works offline, with no account and no iLok. Updates are free.
- Your Mac
- macOS 11 or later, Apple silicon or Intel. There’s no Windows version yet.
- Questions?
- Write to david@smileyface.studio.
All sales are final (refund policy).
Tell us what you think
A sound you wish it made, or a liquid it should have. Tell us.
Report a bug
Say what you did and what you expected. The fix comes back to you as a free update.