Mandala Music

Inspired by the Hang drum, Mandala Music is a new kind of musical instrument for the iPhone. The main window consists of eight keypads arranged in a circle or mandala around a central pad (corresponding to the "ding" on a Hang drum). Tapping on a keypad produces a tone. The harder one taps, the louder the tone. Tapping multiple keypads produces multiple tones.

Mandala Music 1.1 comes with 16 preset timbres ranging from pure to harmonically-rich and complex tones. Three user-controllable settings are also provided. A control bar in the main window selects the timbre and adjusts the pitch of the instrument (in octave increments).

Where a Hang drum is tuned to one and only one scale when it is made, any of the thirty-three musical scales used in first-generation Hang drums can be mapped to the mandala. Flipping over to the settings window reveals controls for selecting the scale, changing the octave, and adjusting the tuning. Sliders control the modulation, frequency, and decay of the instruments underlying FM synthesizer bank, allowing the user to modify the timbre and save it in one of three presets.