Rosh Hashanah is under a week away, so this week's pasuk comes from Tehillim — one of the ten verses we say in the Shofros section of Musaf.

Tiku va'chodesh shofar, ba'keseh l'yom chagenu (תקעו בחדש שופר בכסה ליום חגנו) — "blow the horn on the new moon, on the full moon for our feast day."

I'll be honest: this one surprised me. Some words map into something interesting. This one mapped into something genuinely beautiful, and I didn't see it coming.

Tiku (תקעו) — to blast, to blow. It comes out sharp and wide open. In musical terms those are open fourths, and they have a spacious, powerful quality that fits the word almost too well.

Va'chodesh (בחדש) — on the new moon.

Shofar (שופר) — and those three together already make a complete musical statement, built on nothing but the spacing of the letters.

Ba'keseh (בכסה), l'yom (ליום), chagenu (חגנו) — and the rest of the line fills in from there.

This week I also get into something I haven't explained on the show before: what happens after the mapping. Twenty-two letters across 22 notes is an enormous span — much wider than anything a person could sing. So part of the work is bringing those notes closer together, into a range a human voice could actually hold. That's where a map starts turning into music.

Then it's improvised, live, into the Rosh Hashanah energy: renewal, discovery, crowning Hashem as king, and opening up to a new kind of life.

Ksiva v'chasima tova to everyone listening.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why I map the letters at all — the short version, for first-time listeners
• A verse from Musaf that turned out far more musical than I expected
• Open fourths, and why Tiku sounds the way it does
• What happens after the mapping: bringing 22 notes into singing range
• The piece: Rosh Hashanah energy, improvised live

HEAR A WORD YOURSELF

Put in your own name, someone else's, or any word you're sitting with, and hear what's inside it. Free.

danberrymusic.com/alephonics

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ABOUT ME

I'm Dan Berry — a jazz pianist and composer, a Lubavitcher chossid, and a Princeton-trained musician (music theory and composition) with 18 years in Torah and Hebrew study. I built the Alephonic Mapping Method to learn Torah in the only language I've ever been fluent in.

danberrymusic.com/alephonics

Shana tova u'mesuka.