Create Tonic EP sounds with the help of an AI

You describe the piano you want ("a soft ballad tine with a slow phaser in scene B") and get back a sound that opens in Tonic EP and plays. The AI you already use does the work. What Tonic EP gives you is the map: how a sound is built, what each control does and what each number means.

Why it works so well on a modelled piano

Tonic EP plays no recordings. Each sound is a set of numbers that tells the model how the hammer strikes, how the tine or the reed rings, where the pickup sits, what the amp does and which effects follow. Change the numbers and you change the instrument, and the kit explains every one of them in a player's terms.

And the table is not written by hand: it comes out of the app itself, from the same control list the instrument plays with, on every release. That is 168 controls, each with its range, its factory value and the text you see on screen.

Step by step

1. 1In Tonic EP, pick a sound close to what you want. In the library, touch and hold it (right-click on the Mac) and choose Copy Sound.
2. 2Download the kit from the button below. It is a text file; nothing to install.
3. 3Open the AI assistant you use, hand it the kit and paste the sound.
4. 4Ask in musical language: "darker, a softer hammer and a slow phaser in scene B". Ask it to explain what it changed, too.
5. 5Copy the whole answer (it starts with TONICEP-PRESET-v1:) and tap Paste in the library. It comes in as a NEW sound in your bank; nothing you already have is replaced.
6. 6Play it, tweak it in the app and save: your ear is still the judge.

Prefer files? Use Export Sound… instead of Copy Sound, give the .tep to the AI, save the answer with the .tep extension and open it on the device (Files, AirDrop, email).

Three things that save you a bad afternoon

Always start from a sound the app gave you, never from a blank page. A sound carries things that are not knobs, like its six scenes and the pitch-bend range, and a file built from scratch loses them in silence.

A scene is a photo of the whole sound. For a scene B that only adds a phaser, writing the phaser is enough: the rest comes from the sound itself.

The AI gets the structure right, not the taste. It puts the numbers in the right place, fast and without misspelling anything; whether it sounds good is your call, playing.

What to ask for

Concrete requests work best: "more bell", "a harder hammer when I dig in", "less low end from the amp", "a slower suitcase tremolo". Asking for variations in one go works very well too: "make three versions of this sound in scenes B, C and D: one softer, one dirtier and one more open".