iPad Music Software: Jordan Rudess’ new iPad synth, MorphWhiz, is now available in the App Store.
MorphWiz was inspired, in part, by the success of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, a radical MIDI instrument that Jordan uses on stage and in the studio with Dream Theater. Like the Continuum, Jordan Rudess’ MorphWiz is a vertical grid-based musical instrument that allows a whole new level of expressive control.
“Our goal was to create an instrument that would allow the seamless morphing of the audio and visual domain while delivering a seamless musical experience,” explains Rudess. “I believe the iPhone/iPad multitouch platform opens up a whole new world of creation of electronic musical instruments and we’re proud MorphWiz is our first major offering. My experience and involvement with the Haken Continuum and extraordinary Bebot app brought to life an advanced pitch control system that is still uncharted territory for many in today’s music instrument world. This is the heart of MorphWiz.”
MorphWiz retails for $9.99.
MorphWiz Features:
- Assign audio waveforms as visual shapes to the grid and morph between them with your fingers on the grid or the accelerometer
- Advanced pitch control allows the player to round the pitch of the initial attack of any note. It also recognizes when your finger stops after a slide, and rounds your notes to the nearest diatonic pitch
- Rounding pitch on initial attack
- Rounding pitch after a slide
- Independent pitch and synthesis control for up to 10 simultaneous notes
- Finger Vibrato Effect (FVE) where you can achieve vibrato even when lock pitch is selected and the pitch is snapping to the grid!
- Velocity Controlled Animation (VCA) in sync with your musical performance
- Adjustable location for performance controls
- Editing never interrupts the sound and audio output.
- Trippy full-color, animated particles, fire, and ring effects visually radiate under your fingertips and contain real time pitch information
- Choose from a wide variety of scales and chords to assign to the playing surface with easy customization
- Choose to display names of notes or intervals to help guide you
- Consistent color display for pitch lines which indicate each step if the scale
- Playing surface is adjustable between 1 and 6 octaves.
- Performance controls include octave shift, pitch lock on/off, record to delay buffer on/off, infinity delay setting on/off, and multi-function slider
- Unison detuning effect with separate pan control for that classic analog thickness
- Refined and intuitive FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis can be assigned to the vertical grid or accelerometer
- Wave Sync Synthesis (WSS) can also be assigned to the vertical grid or accelerometer
- Volume separately assignable to vertical grid.
- Adjustable note attack and release time
- Infinite-Track Loop (ITL) recorder features user-selectable measures and beats.
- Record Undo and Redo
- Reverse play
- FX include digital delay, stereo chorus, and tremolo, the latter of which is assignable to the X-Axis
Reminds me of ThumbJam.
I've been playing with this off and on all morning, it's a lot of fun. I need to hook it up to my studio monitors and see how it really sounds.
Amazingly powerful =D