Tumbler

What it sounds like

A fingernail on the rim of a heavy drinking glass. The strike itself is almost nothing; what you hear is a clear, glassy ring with two faint upper partials fading over a quarter of a second. It is bright, clean and a little expensive-sounding.

Good for

• Quiet, elegant interfaces and design work
• Close-mic recordings where a glass ring reads well
• People who want a click with a tail they can hear settle

How it is made

Three sine partials at roughly 2.15, 5.0 and 8.3 kHz with staggered decays, plus a two-millisecond flick of high-passed white noise for the nail. No body: the glass is in the partial ratios.

Every qliqr sound is synthesised from a small text recipe, so the version you hear here is the same one the Mac app plays, with natural variation so no two presses are identical.