The complete MaqAmir handbook.

Welcome to Piano Studio — MaqAmir's premier screen-based music instrument. Rather than treating a glass screen as a passive surface, Piano Studio transforms it into a responsive acoustic-digital sensor. Every touch responds with immediate physical nuance: contact width dynamically scales hammer impact (gentle fingertip for pianissimo, broader finger contact for bold fortissimo strikes), vertical sliding along a key sweeps filter brightness in real time, and holding any key for 300ms engages polyphonic aftertouch for per-voice vibrato, volume, cutoff, and drive modulation.

Exploring the world's musical heritage is instantaneous. With a single tap on the Scale Bar, the entire instrument retunes across 135+ musicologically authentic world scales. Arabic Maqamat (such as Rast, Bayati, Hijaz, and Saba), Turkish Makams, Persian Dastgah, and Indian 22-Shruti Ragas place genuine quarter-tones and microtonal neutral intervals directly under your fingers with cent-accurate intonation, allowing effortless melodic improvisation without manual pitch bending.

Piano Studio is both a multi-octave acoustic ensemble and a versatile sampler. You can glide across 8 octaves and assign independent instruments to each register — pairing a resonant grand piano or deep Arabic oud in the bass with a bowed cello, Turkish saz, or soaring wooden flute in the treble. Furthermore, cultural percussion hits (Darbuka, Tabla, Riq, Bendir) and atmospheric textures can be mapped directly to individual keys, backed by an intelligent zero-crossing loop engine that sustains ambient beds seamlessly without clicks or transient pops.

Electronic sound design is natively integrated via the built-in analog synthesizer engine. Featuring dual oscillators (Saw, Square, Sine, Triangle), dual ADSR envelopes, resonant ladder filters, and LFO modulation, you can dial in punchy basslines or lush pads directly on screen, or create custom patches in Synth Lab and export them into Piano Studio octaves with one tap.

Rhythmic groove and arrangement live right in the studio transport. Build drum patterns on the 16-step Rhythm Studio sequencer using vintage analog and acoustic percussion kits, locked to a shared True-BPM timebase with humanizing swing. Simultaneously, layer multitrack performances with the Loop Machine: record synchronized audio layers, perform non-destructive clip trimming on waveform lanes, apply per-layer biquad filters, and use Focus & Bake to bounce your loop progression into a master backing track or a new playable sampler instrument.

Performances are sculpted in real time using the 2D X/Y Gesture Pad, allowing dual-parameter modulation sweeps with one hand while playing chords with the other. When inspiration strikes, capture high-fidelity audio with one touch, or rescue unrecorded spontaneous brilliance with the 30-second Retrospective buffer. For external performance, plug in any USB or Bluetooth MIDI controller to enjoy sub-10ms DAW-grade scheduling and true MPE polyphonic expression across the keys and 12+ tactile 3D Visualizer Realms.

AI Studio turns every musical performance into a branching tree of creative possibilities. When you record an improvisation in Piano Studio, that recording becomes a foundation. From that single seed, you can explore dozens of creative directions — transforming a gentle piano solo into an epic orchestral soundtrack, a chilled lo-fi groove, or a mystical ambient soundscape.

Transformations are guided by Amir, your intelligent musical assistant. You can select curated style presets (such as Ambient, Cinematic, Lo-Fi, Orchestral, or Jazz Fusion) or type your own vision in natural language. If you are not sure how to describe what you want, tap the "AI Enhance" button — Amir will refine a simple prompt like "make it energetic" into a vivid, musically nuanced prompt before generating.

The Transformation Strength slider gives you fine control over how far the AI departs from your original take. At subtle settings (20–40%), your original performance remains clearly recognizable while gaining fresh textural color and accompaniment. At higher settings (70–100%), your recording serves as an inspiring seed for a bold, reimagined composition.

Experimentation is always safe thanks to non-destructive editing. When you crop a favorite phrase or generate an AI transformation, AI Studio always creates a new child track. Your original recording is never overwritten or lost. You can view the creative lineage tree in the track inspector to trace any transformed masterpiece back to its original live performance.

Privacy is completely in your hands. All recordings, uploads, and transformations remain strictly private in your personal library. Whenever you want to share a specific track, you can generate an explicit public listening link with a single click, which you can revoke at any time.

Synth Lab invites you to become a sound designer without needing years of audio engineering training. At its foundation, it provides two complementary ways to work: Sound Shaper mode for fast, intuitive, musical adjustments, and Expert mode for full control over every wave, filter, and modulation routing.

In Sound Shaper mode, six expressive macro knobs — Brightness, Warmth, Attack Shape, Space, Movement, and Character — let you reshape your tone with effortless sweeps. Each macro intelligently balances multiple underlying sound parameters behind the scenes, so turning up "Space" adds lush reverb and wide stereo depth, while "Warmth" introduces gentle saturation and vintage analog richness.

For deeper exploration, Expert mode reveals the full architecture: dual oscillators (sine, square, sawtooth, triangle, noise) with unison voice detuning, multimode filters (lowpass, highpass, bandpass, notch) for sculpting harmonic brightness, dual ADSR envelopes for controlling how notes swell and fade, and an LFO for rhythmic motion and vibrato.

The built-in mini keyboard lets you test your sound immediately with every turn of a knob, while visual waveform and envelope displays show how your sound is evolving. If you ever want a burst of fresh ideas, the Randomize button (the dice icon) generates exciting new sonic textures at the touch of a button, with full Undo/Redo (Ctrl/Cmd+Z) so you can explore fearlessly.

The best part of Synth Lab is how seamlessly it connects back to Piano Studio. Once you save a patch, it instantly appears in your Piano Studio Instruments drawer. Drag it onto any octave, and your custom synthesizer will play authentic Arabic quarter-tones, Turkish makams, and expressive touch dynamics just like any acoustic instrument!

For centuries, acoustic pianos have been limited to Western equal temperament. If a pianist wanted to play an authentic Arabic Maqam with true quarter-tones on an acoustic grand piano, the only option was to permanently retune strings or avoid acoustic pianos altogether.

MaqAmir physical adapters change everything. Designed with a non-destructive clip-on mechanism, they attach effortlessly to piano keys to alter the vibration mechanics, retuning specific notes to the precise quarter-tone offsets required by world scales (such as the E half-flat in Maqam Bayati or Rast). When your performance is finished, simply clip them off — your acoustic piano returns immediately to standard tuning with zero damage, drilling, or glue.

The recommended path is digital-first. Because Piano Studio uses the exact same cent offsets as the physical adapters, you can compose, practice, and polish your microtonal repertoire in the browser first. Once you know exactly how your piece should sound, you can sit down at a real acoustic piano with adapters installed and perform with total acoustic authenticity.