New Release: Tonara, The iPad App that Listens to Musicians and Automatically Flips Pages

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Tonara, the mobile music-playing app that listens, today released a new version of the iPad application that listens to musicians, shows their location in the score and automatically turns the pages of interactive sheet music. All Tonara users can now download interactive scores for free in the new Tonara Free Zone and review their music with an interactive playback system.

"Whether they are practicing at home, playing at a lesson or performing in the concert hall, Tonara was designed to help students, teachers, amateurs and professionals improve quickly and play beautifully,” said Guy Bauman, CEO of Tonara. “With this update to the app, we have improved the graphical interface and engineered features that will revolutionize the practice and learning experience.”

In the new Tonara Free Zone, users can now download hundreds of free, fully interactive scores, mainly for the piano. This primarily classical collection for all experience levels complements thousands of affordable music scores from every genre, all available in the Tonara Store.

In addition, the Tonara recording system now synchronizes music to the notes and uses a marker to designate the location of the playback within the score. By simply touching any location on the score, musicians can jump to any part of their recording for efficient review. The feature is particular useful for music instructors who can record themselves playing practice assignments and share them with students for review and comparison to their own playing.

Tonara not only serves as a comprehensive mobile music binder and recording system, but also provides significant advantages for musicians striving to improve their craft. Whereas musicians used to write annotations on physical scores, often making the page messy and worn, Tonara's “Scribbles” enable users to annotate their music in multiple layers. This allows students, for example, to create separate layers of annotations for each teacher they work with – each of which can be shown or hidden. Drag-and-drop music symbols make it easy to create effective Scribbles with minimal time and effort.

Musicians can also share their recordings via a variety of channels and import non-interactive scores in PDF form via a web browser, email or any cloud storage system, making Tonara a complete digital music binder.

“Tonara is a Swiss-army knife for performing musicians of all levels,” said Ron Regev, Chief Music Officer at Tonara, a critically acclaimed pianist and chairman of the Keyboard Department at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. “After Tonara, it’s difficult going back to paper sheet music—you forget to flip.”