Tidal provides continuous waveform functions (sine, tri, saw, square) that return smoothly varying values for use as effect parameters

TidalCycles includes built-in continuous signals: sine, tri, saw, square — all moving from 0 to 1 over one cycle. These are not events but continuous streams, so putting them on the left of # produces no sound (no events). They must be applied on the right side (# speed sine) or discretized with segment n (samples n values per cycle) or struct (samples at a boolean pattern’s events). The range lo hi signal function rescales from [0,1] to [lo,hi]. These enable smooth, LFO-style modulation of any numerical parameter.

Examples

d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 1.5 sine) — sine-modulated pitch. d1 $ speed (segment 32 $ range 0.5 2.5 sine) # sound "bd" — discretized sine.

Assessment

Explain why d1 $ speed sine # sound "bd" produces no sound. Write a pattern that applies a slow triangle wave to the reverb size over 4 cycles.