Terma Heritage Foundation · iPhone
Dranyen
སྒྲ་སྙན་ · Free · Offline
A free iPhone companion for the dranyen, the Tibetan lute — a tuner, a playable instrument, and a library about the tradition it belongs to. Built so that an instrument passed down by ear has a standard anyone can tune to.
Made with
Built in collaboration with Tenzin Norbu (Tenor), with guidance from Jhola Techung, Phurbu T. Namgyal, and Karma Drukya.
The dranyen has never had an agreed standard tuning — it was set by ear, by teacher, by region. The tuning in this app was confirmed with master musicians so that players scattered across exile can tune to the same thing.
Three tools
01
A tuner, in your pocket
Real-time pitch detection listens through the microphone and shows at a glance whether a string is sharp or flat. The gauge names the note in both solfège and numbers, and confirms when you land in tune.
02
A dranyen you can play
Strum the three open courses and the fretted notes to hear how the instrument sounds — voiced from recordings of a real dranyen, with a fretless So drone, so it rings the way the instrument actually does.
03
A library you can read offline
A built-in guide drawn from cited scholarship: the instrument's history and origins, how it is built, its notation, and the genres it carries — from courtly Gharlu to the classical Nangma-Toeshey.
The standard tuning
The seven voices
What it carries
The instrument sits at the centre of several repertoires, some courtly and some ordinary.
Gharlu
Courtly music — said to comprise 74 compositions performed for the Dalai Lamas and at the banquets of the Lhasa nobility.
Nangma
The elegant, leisurely classical song-form that rose to prominence under the Fifth Dalai Lama in the 17th century.
Toeshey
Named for the Toe region of western Tibet — the brisker circle-dances of harvests, weddings, and gatherings.
Folk & street songs
The songs of farming and herding, and the Lhasa street songs that once served as public satire for ordinary citizens.
A program of the Terma Heritage Foundation. Related work: Dramnyen Notation.