Custom iPhone text tones

It’s probably one of the most recognizable pieces of recorded sound. But I wanted something a bit more personal. Something close enough to the default to be recognizable, but distinct enough to feel like it’s mine.

I like that this one is subtle enough that it might go unnoticed by some, and most people will probably be able to tell that something is off about it even if they can’t put their finger on it.

I recorded this from a simple patch that I put together on my modular synth. I didn’t take a picture of the patch before changing it, but I think it was a couple oscillators tuned to a high C running through a low-pass filter with an envelope on the filter’s cutoff frequency.

After that, I tried to read up on the history of the default sound. I couldn’t find much information on the current default, but did find plenty of articles on the previous default text tone, the “tri-tone” a.k.a. Kelly Jackson’s Marimba 158:

I misunderstood the first of these that I read, thinking that it was referring to the current default sound, and that the current “Note (Default)” sound was a triad rather than a single note, so I tried to re-create that triad:

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