Introduction

Tanghīm is an open-source plugin that accesses Arabic maqām tuning data from DiArMaqAr, the Digital Arabic Maqām Archive, and applies it to your software and hardware instruments across any DAW. All tuning data is editable: you can adjust any degree by ear and tailor the intonation to your own taste, without being bound to the archive’s values. Tuning data is stored in a local cache; internet access is only required the first time you select a particular tuning system.

The name: Tanghīm (تنغيم) is the singular of tanāghīm (the tuning-systems layer of the DiArMaqAr taxonomy), meaning both a tuning system and the act of tuning.

Two Plugins

The project ships as two complementary plugins:

• Tanghim (Transmitter): the main plugin with a full graphical interface. It broadcasts tuning via MTS-ESP and hosts a built-in reference oscillator. Load it on any instrument track in your DAW.
• Tanghim Receiver: a lightweight MIDI effect that reads the MTS-ESP tuning broadcast and converts it to MPE per-note pitch bend or monophonic 14-bit pitch bend, for instruments that don’t support MTS-ESP natively.

For Ableton Live, which does not support third-party MIDI-effect plugins in any format (VST3, AU, or CLAP), two Max for Live devices are provided instead:

• Tanghim MPE Receiver: an M4L MIDI effect for MPE-enabled instruments
• Tanghim Mono PB Receiver: an M4L MIDI effect for instruments that only respond to standard pitch bend

See Ableton Live for setup details.

Formats and Platforms

Platform	Formats
macOS	VST3, AU, CLAP
Windows	VST3, CLAP
Linux	VST3, CLAP

Tanghīm was conceived and designed by Khyam Allami as part of postdoctoral research at the Music Intelligence Lab, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, 2026.