Tonefarer

Tonefarer is a listening tool for anyone curious about how a melody changes when you move it into a different musical mode. One short original melody, the Wayfarer's Tune, is the constant. Everything else shifts. Swipe through ten modes drawn from ten musical traditions, and hear the same phrase reshaped by each one: the notes it is allowed to use, the instrument that carries it, and the rhythm underneath. WHAT YOU CAN DO - Swipe a full-screen card for each of the ten modes and play its scale from the bottom up and back down. - Play the melody in that mode, with a full arrangement behind it, then swipe to the next and hear the difference immediately. - Tap the scale ring to sound any single degree yourself, in any order, at your own pace. - Put two modes side by side and hear the same phrase twice in a row, back to back. - Take an ear quiz: listen to eight beats of the melody and pick which mode it came from, ten rounds at a time, with a running streak. - Keep an atlas of all ten, mark the ones you have heard, and heart the ones you want to come back to. THE TEN MODES Gong Pentatonic (zither), In Scale (bamboo flute), Hijaz (oud voice), Bhairav (sitar), Dorian (fiddle), Blues Hexatonic (harmonica), Hungarian Minor (button accordion), Mixolydian (tin whistle voice), Pelog (metallophone voice) and Andean Pentatonic (pan flute). Each card names the region it comes from and says in plain language what gives the mode its character. Modes that sit outside twelve-tone tuning are labeled as approximations, so you always know what you are hearing. HOW IT BEHAVES - Every mode, the melody and all of the samples are bundled in the app, so the music itself plays whether or not you have a connection. - No account, no sign-in, no email required. - No in-app purchases. One full-screen ad from our advertising partner appears when an ear quiz round ends. - Your volume, haptics setting, listening progress and favorites stay on your device and go away when you delete the app. Our advertising partner uses a device identifier to choose ads and measure how they perform; iOS asks for your permission before that happens. - Instrument samples come from the FluidR3_GM soundfont by Frank Wen, used under CC BY 3.0 and credited in the app. Written for the curious listener rather than the trained musician. No notation to read, no exercises to pass, nothing to unlock. Press play and listen.