Jabara: Accordion & Concertina

Open it. Close it. Play it. A concertina that breathes with your hands: on a folding iPhone the hinge is the bellows; on any other iPhone, drag the bellows on screen.

Jabara turns the fold of a folding phone into the bellows of a concertina. Hold the open phone like a book, press the note and chord buttons with your thumbs, and close and open it: the faster you move, the louder and brighter the reeds sound. Stop, and the note fades like a real bellows losing its air.

HOW IT PLAYS • Right hand: ten melody buttons (C major, from C up to the E an octave above) on two thumb-reach arcs. • Left hand: chord buttons in circle-of-fifths order; each one plays a bass note and a close-voiced chord. • The bellows: open = draw, close = push. Speed sets the volume; reversing the direction dips the sound exactly like a real concertina. • Air button: hold it to move the bellows silently and reset them to the middle. • Guided songs: follow the lit buttons to play Twinkle Twinkle, Ode to Joy and When the Saints Go Marching In in your first minute. • Record what you play (no microphone needed) and listen back.

ON ANY IPHONE Jabara is built for iPhone Duo, where the hinge angle drives the bellows. On other iPhones and on iPad the same instrument plays with an on-screen bellows strip you drag up and down, with bellows assist on by default so every button simply sounds.

THE SOUND Every note is synthesised in real time as a free-reed instrument: the pressure of the bellows shapes the attack, the brightness and the breath noise. Nothing is sampled, so it never loops or cuts off.

JABARA PRO (one-time purchase) • All ten chords, 7th chords, and the # shift to reach every semitone • Three more timbres: dry accordion, musette and bandoneon • All eight guided songs and transposition to any of the twelve keys • Share your recordings

No account, no ads, no tracking, no microphone, and it works entirely offline.