The Dijilele Story:
Connecting Generations Through Music
Music often begins with something familiar: a melody we grew up hearing, a song someone taught us, or an instrument that feels connected to our culture and identity.
But the tools we use to make music have changed dramatically. Today, composers can use digital instruments and MIDI controllers to move between sounds, record ideas, build arrangements, and experiment with music in ways that were once much harder to access.
For Ali Tehrani, that contrast became personal.
In 2011, Ali was living in Waterloo, Canada, working as an educator and digital systems designer while continuing to play the setar, the Persian instrument he had grown up with.
He watched composers create music using MIDI keyboards and digital pianos. With a keyboard connected to a computer, they could trigger different sounds, record directly into a digital audio workstation, rearrange ideas, and use one familiar playing interface for many different kinds of musical expression.
Ali wanted that same creative freedom.
But piano was not his instrument. Setar was.
As he has described it, there was even a little jealousy in that realization: keyboard players had access to an entire digital ecosystem through the instrument they already knew how to play, while musicians like him had far fewer tools designed around the instruments and musical traditions they knew best.
So he began asking a different question:
What if a familiar fretted instrument could become a digital creation tool too?
Drawing on his background in digital systems, music, and education, Ali began developing an electronic instrument inspired by the playing experience of the setar. The goal was not to digitally imitate a traditional instrument or replace it. It was to give a musician who was comfortable with that form access to possibilities more commonly associated with MIDI keyboards: digital sounds, flexible tuning systems, composition tools, recording workflows, and connection to music software.
That early instrument eventually became Dijilele M.
From there, Ali saw that the idea could extend beyond Persian music.
The ukulele had become an especially familiar instrument in Western schools, homes, and music communities. In some ways, Ali saw a parallel between the two instruments: the setar held a familiar place within Persian musical culture, while the ukulele had become an approachable and widely recognized instrument for many Western players.
That led to the development of Dijilele S.
Over time, musicians, educators, designers, and engineers joined the project, helping turn the original idea into a broader family of digital instruments.
Today, Dijilele brings the familiar form of a small fretted instrument into a digital environment. Players can explore different sounds and musical systems, work with major and minor chords, transpose music to suit a voice or composition, experiment with sustained and non-sustained sounds and different dynamic responses, and connect to digital tools through MIDI.
For a songwriter, that might mean quickly trying an idea in a different key. For a home producer, it might mean recording directly into a DAW using an instrument that feels more natural than a keyboard. For an educator or learner, it can open up new ways to explore harmony, sound, and composition. And for musicians working with Persian and other microtonal traditions, Dijilele M can provide direct access to notes and tunings that conventional Western MIDI controllers were not designed around.
This is also where Dijilele’s story connects generations.
Musical traditions are rarely preserved by keeping them unchanged. They survive because people continue to play them, teach them, reinterpret them, and bring them into new contexts.
A melody learned from a parent or grandparent can become part of a contemporary digital arrangement. A traditional Persian musical idea can enter a modern production workflow. Someone who first learned a few chords on a ukulele at school can later use that familiar form to begin composing their own music.
Different generations may use different technologies, listen to different genres, and approach instruments differently. But music gives them something they can continue to share.
Dijilele sits between these worlds: between traditional instruments and digital creation, between Eastern and Western musical systems, between learning and composing, and between the music we inherit and the music we create next.
We are not trying to replace acoustic instruments or remove the value of musical technique. Developing musicianship still takes practice, listening, curiosity, and time.
We simply believe that the creative possibilities of digital music should not belong only to people who happen to play the piano keyboard.
Dijilele gives more musicians a familiar way into the digital world; so they can play with the music they know, explore the music they imagine, and carry it forward in their own way.