Torah Tones

AUv3 MIDI effect for iPad

A melodic language your synths have never spoken.

Torah Tones plays the 25 melodic phrases of Torah chanting as MIDI: in any key, any mode, locked to your host's tempo. Put it in front of any synth or sampler and get phrases no arpeggiator will give you.

  • AUM
  • Logic Pro for iPad
  • Loopy Pro
  • Cubasis
  • Drambo
  • Any AUv3 MIDI host
Coming to the App Store
Torah Tones on iPad: a sequence of phrases playing, with the 25 phrase pads below

Why I made it

I'm a Reform rabbi, and also a bit of an electronic musician. I have many AUv3 plugins on my iPad, and a lot of music software on my computer. I thought: why not bring the two together, and make something from the musicality of the Torah?

Eric

Phrase pads

25 phrases. One pad, one key each.

Every pad fires a short melodic phrase, with its shape drawn right on the pad. Play them from the screen or from your keyboard, starting at C3, one key per phrase. Chain a few and they queue up in time, so a handful of keys plays a whole line.

  • Phrases wait their turn, or cut each other off
  • The next phrase can start right away, on the next beat, or on the next bar line
  • Hold a key to sustain the phrase's first note, then let go for the rest
  • Keep them by family, in keyboard order, or drag them into your own layout
  • 41 ready-made example lines, one tap each
The 25 phrase pads, grouped by family, with Sof pasuk playing

Any key, any mode

Change key mid-take. Every phrase follows.

Each phrase is stored as scale steps, not fixed notes, so it follows you into whatever key and mode you choose: Traditional (Torah trope as heard in synagogue), Major, Minor, Dorian, Lydian, Harmonic Minor, and two Jewish prayer modes: Ahavah Rabbah, with a flat 2nd against a major 3rd, and Mi Sheberach, minor with a raised 4th.

  • Change key live with your left hand: one note sets the root, a chord sets major or minor too
  • Add a harmony line inside the mode, on its own MIDI channel
  • A drone on the root and fifth that follows every key change
Mode and scale: the eight modes beside a wheel of the scale, Ahavah Rabbah chosen

Sequence

Build a sequence in a few taps

Tap phrases and rests to lay out a sequence, then let it loop with your host's transport, locked to its bars. It starts over the moment its last note ends, or rounds up to whole bars if you'd rather.

  • Rests from half a beat to a bar
  • Tap any slot to move it, hear it, swap it or remove it
A sequence of Mercha, Tipcha, Mercha, Sof pasuk and a rest, playing

Feel

Played, not programmed

Humanize the timing, velocity and note lengths. Add rubato that leans into the end of each phrase, and grace notes like a singer's. Flip phrases upside down or play them backwards, at half or double speed, for variations that still sound like they belong.

The Feel settings: timing, humanize and melody shape

The source

Or play the real thing: any verse of the Torah

Pick a book, chapter and verse, and Torah Tones plays the real passage as MIDI, word by word, each phrase fitted to its syllables, while the Hebrew lights up as it goes. Play the whole passage in time, step through it one word per key press, or loop it on your bar line.

  • All Five Books, by chapter and verse or by weekly portion
  • English under every verse
Genesis 1:1 to 1:3 being sent as MIDI, one word lit

New to trope?

What you're playing

Almost every word of the Hebrew Bible carries a tiny mark called a trope, and each mark stands for a short melody. Chanted in a row, they turn the text into music, and synagogues have sung them this way for well over a thousand years. Learn Trope explains it in seven short steps, with a button to hear every mark.

Want to learn to chant it yourself? Torah: Turn It, my other app, teaches it lesson by lesson.

The Learn Trope page

Where it fits

Torah Tones makes no sound itself. It sends MIDI, so it sounds like whatever you put after it: a synth, a sampler, a piano, a choir patch.

Your keyboard or the pads→Torah Tones→Any instrument

Load it as a MIDI effect in AUM, Logic Pro for iPad, Loopy Pro, Cubasis or Drambo. On its own, the app is a MIDI source called “Torah Tones” that other apps and hardware can pick. GarageBand doesn't host MIDI effects.

Give your synths something new to sing.

Coming to the App Store