About
Detune is an iPhone app that teaches sound design and music theory in short interactive lessons. There are no videos: every lesson runs on the app's own wavetable synth, so you learn each idea by hearing it and playing it.
Most people learn synthesis by watching someone else turn knobs on YouTube. Detune puts the knobs in your hands.
The app is built around its own wavetable synth engine, and every lesson, challenge and free-play session happens on it. You turn the filter and hear what changes, then build the patch yourself.
There are two learning paths:
Sound Synthesis: 29 modules that go from basic waveforms, envelopes and filters through LFOs, effects and the modulation matrix to FM, ring modulation and hard sync. Each of the seven acts ends with a patch you build from scratch and keep.
Music Theory: 10 modules on scales, chords, progressions, melody, keys and rhythm, all taught by ear. You don't need to read notation.
Challenges train your ears. You pick the brighter of two sounds, match a target patch, or place the notes. A daily patch gives you one new sound-design problem each day.
The synth has two wavetable oscillators, a sub oscillator and noise, a multimode filter, two envelopes, an LFO, a mod matrix and five effects. It is also yours to play with outside the lessons.
Detune is free to download. Pro unlocks every module in both paths for $59.99 a year with a 7-day free trial, or $12.99 a month.