DrawtoneThe page is the score
Left to right is time, top to bottom is pitch. High is bright, low is deep. The loop starts the moment your first line lands, so you hear the shape while your finger is still moving.
Instrument · iOS
Draw a line.
Hear one long note.
Drawtone is a visual instrument for iPhone. Time runs left to right, pitch runs top to bottom, and a line you draw across the page is a single continuous sound — not a row of steps triggering over and over. Everything else in the app exists to protect that one sentence.
No ads
No account
Nothing leaves your device
Untitled Study
96 BPM
Coming soon to the App Store
How it works
Draw it, tune it, keep it.
There is no track list, no step grid and no export dialog to negotiate with. You touch the paper and it already sounds.
Colour chooses the instrument
Six inks: warm colours strike and fade, cool colours hold for exactly as long as the line. Key, scale, range and echo sit one tap away, and tempo, rhythm and swing live in the pulse up in the header.
Out as sound or as notes
Export the loop as a WAV — the sound itself, exactly as you heard it — or as MIDI to open in another program. Both go straight into the iOS share sheet, where they are yours to do anything with.
The sound
Built like an instrument, not like an app.
A handful of decisions that are not up for negotiation, because they are the difference between a toy you open twice and something you keep coming back to.
One line, one note
At every step boundary the engine asks whether a sound is new or the same sound continuing. Without that question a long stroke becomes a stutter of re-attacks — a drum machine wearing a drawing app. Sustained voices are never retriggered; only their pitch slides.
Six voices, six bands
String, bell, wood, breath, bow and root. Their filters climb 900 · 1500 · 1900 · 2600 · 3400 · 4200 Hz and their stereo spread widens with brightness, so ten lines stacked on the same page stay legible instead of piling into mud.
Makams, not a submenu
Hicaz, Uşşak, Nihavend, Hüzzam and Saba sit in the same list as major, minor, Dorian, Lydian, blues, whole tone and the pentatonics — not filed away under "advanced". They are twelve-tone approximations today; the core takes frequencies, not note numbers, so comma intervals can arrive without touching it.
Native where it counts
Synthesis runs in a C++ core on the real-time audio thread, with a lock-free hand-off from the interface. Nothing in the drawing layer can stall a buffer, which is why the sound does not gap when the canvas is busy.
A rhythm that stays behind you
The backing beat is synthesised, not sampled: a falling sine for the kick, a short tone plus filtered noise for the snare, high-passed noise for the hat. Three densities, straight or triplet, mixed after the level rider so your drawing can swell while the floor stays put. Off by default — the first thing you hear should be your own line.
Warm paper, one pane of glass
The canvas is a real sheet with an edge and a shadow, not a grey background. Controls float above it as a single piece of glass; the grid appears while your finger is down and fades when you lift it. Every icon is a genuine SF Symbol drawn by the system.
6Instruments
13Scales & makams
18Languages
iOS 17+Requires
Get inspired
Fifty little tunes from nature.
Open one, listen, then add your own line to it — every example is an ordinary drawing, not a recording. Undo brings your own work back, with its key, scale and tempo intact.
Water 10
Tide, River Bend, Waterfall, Ripples, Whirlpool, Morning Mist…
Sky 10
Warm Breeze, First Light, Kite, Lightning, Flock, Sunset, Snow…
Earth 10
Olive Branch, Country Path, Sleeping Hills, Fern, Roots, Canyon…
Creatures 10
A Butterfly, Hummingbird, Whale, Snail, Fireflies, Dragonfly…
Night 5
Star Trails, Crescent, Comet, Campfire, Owl.
Handmade 5
Heartbeat, Footprints, Knitting, Wish Lanterns, Caravan.
Each one sounds the way it looks: a vertical marimba line falls like a waterfall, a closed ring is a two-note chord, a spiral is a chord closing in, single taps are single strikes. Tempos run 50–132 BPM, and the makam pieces — Crane in Nihavend, Caravan in Hicaz — are single-line on purpose.
Scope
What the first version does, and what it deliberately doesn't.
We would rather ship a small instrument that feels finished than a large one that feels like a settings screen. Here is exactly where the line sits today.
In v1
- The canvas, six inks, pen and eraser, undo with press-and-hold to bring a line back
- Key, scale and makam, range, octave and echo; tempo, tap tempo, rhythm and swing in the pulse
- Quantise at 1/8, 1/8 triplet, 1/16 or free glide — triplet by default, because it turns a scribble into music
- A synthesised backing beat with three densities, fifty example drawings, and WAV and MIDI export
Not yet
- Video recording of a performance
- Sharing a drawing as a link
- In-app purchase
- Comma intervals for the makams, and the "rhythmic pen" — a stroke drawn gapped in a chosen pattern
Support
Something sounded wrong?
Tell us. On an instrument, a note that arrives late or a loop that goes quiet halfway matters more than any feature we could add that week.
Email supportOr write to loopiosoftware@gmail.com
Is Drawtone out yet?
It is in active development. Use the "Notify me" button and we will tell you the moment it is on the App Store — that address is used to send you that one message and nothing else.
Do I need to know music?
No. Pick a key and a scale and every line you draw lands on a note that belongs there; the pentatonic default has no semitones at all, so even lines drawn over each other stay in tune. If you want the raw slide instead, turn quantising off.
Is this a step sequencer?
No, and that is the whole point. A sequencer retriggers a sound on every step. Drawtone asks at each step whether the sound is new or the same one continuing, so a long line is one long note that bends with the curve you drew.
Can I get my work out of the app?
Yes. WAV gives you the sound itself, MIDI gives you the notes to open in another program. Both are handed to the iOS share sheet, so where the file goes afterwards is entirely your choice.
How real are the makams?
Hicaz, Uşşak, Nihavend, Hüzzam and Saba ship as twelve-tone approximations, and we say so inside the app. The engine is driven by frequencies rather than note numbers, so comma intervals can be added later without rewriting the sound core.
Which devices, and which languages?
iPhones running iOS 17 or newer. The interface is translated into eighteen languages and follows your system language, falling back to English for anything not yet translated.
Is there an Android version?
Drawtone is iOS-first. The synthesis core is portable C++ and would build against AAudio on Android — only the host layer changes — but nothing is announced. Tell us if that is what you are waiting for.
Privacy
Your drawings are not our material.
Drawtone has no account, no login and no server of ours. Your lines are drawn, played and exported on your iPhone; nothing about what you make is uploaded, analysed for advertising, or used to train anything.
- Nothing is uploaded.Drawing, synthesis and export all happen on your device. The app has no backend service behind it and makes no network calls of its own.
- No account, no profile.You never sign in. There is no identity for a drawing, a setting or a habit to be attached to.
- No analytics, no ads.There is no advertising SDK and no third-party analytics SDK in the app. Nothing is counted, scored or sent anywhere.
- No permissions to grant.Drawtone asks for no camera, no microphone, no photo library, no location and no contacts. It only plays sound.
StorageYour drawing and settings stay in the app's own storage on your iPhone. No app account, no sign-in, no server-side copy.
ExportsWAV and MIDI files are written on device and handed to the iOS share sheet. You choose where they go.
Third partiesNone inside the app. Ratings and any future purchase run through Apple's own App Store systems.
This websiteStatic pages on Firebase Hosting. No cookies, no analytics, no trackers.
Privacy question? Email loopiosoftware@gmail.com.