Jordan Rudess Brings MorphWiz Play To Android

MorphWiz, the brain child of Dream Theater keyboardist, Jordan Rudess, and developer, Kevin Chartier, has been brought to Android as a preset synth, MorphWiz Play.

MorphWiz-Play takes the deep synthesis and immersive visuals of MorphWiz and packages it into 30 presets, programmed by Jordan Rudess.

“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 multitouch platform opens up a whole new world of creation for electronic musical instruments. MorphWiz features a totally unique pitch control system that is still uncharted territory in today’s musical instrument world. This is the heart of MorphWiz.”

MorphWiz play is priced at $1.99.

16 thoughts on “Jordan Rudess Brings MorphWiz Play To Android

  1. So, what’s the story about Android having inherent disadvantages for music or instrument type software, relating to excessive lag or delay in processing audio? This app doesn’t sound like it needs fast attack like when playing a percussion instrument for example. Are the lag problems on Android for real, and is instrument just not dependent on fast audio processing?

    1. Not all Android devices are the same, and some devices are going to be better than others. I’d like to see which devices it’s best on.

      The major issue with Android is buffer sizes, which imposes a limit on the control rate for music apps. If you put your finger down on the glass, it’s nearly a third of a second delay until the audio can change to reflect it on some devices. Those devices make a preposterous platform for making a music instrument of any kind.

    2. I would add that because all the Android devices are different, there is the potential for an Android device that is actually better than iOS (just because devices are basically identical under iOS).

      If you had an infinitely fast processor, then the lag time is the maximum of the delay in time for the finger touch to be recognized versus the buffer size. ie: 512 44.1khz samples is where the average person can’t tell that it isn’t perfect. Cutting this in half once or twice can make a tremendous difference. In any case, you are right that if you have patches that have a long ramp up time, then the experience would feel instantaneous.

  2. Fantastic news!!! Any one tried yet? I have been pushing back my iPad purchase, especially now as the new iPad was shit update. Could this open the flood gates for Android synths, or is there some catch? Midi?

    1. How is the new iPad a ‘shit’ update as you say when you don’t have an iPad to judge it against ???. As for this opening the flood gates to Android synths, well that would be great, but unlikely. Not only do you have to deal with the technical issues, you have the OS fragmentation, hardware differentiation, a poor market penetration, and possibly the worse problem a user base who the majority feel apps should be free.

      1. New iPad is shit, because the retina is everything it got and its mostly invisible. It creates sharper image alright, but not as significantly sharper in practise as in theory, and it does so at horrible cost. With that money and battery used into something else it would have been AWESOME update!! Now game developers have to downgrade their graphics, if they wish to achieve smooth game play, or reduce the resolution, which makes this update only good for reading text, and even there the old one was already quite sharp enough. Even to the point of luxury. Very unexciting addition. I would have appreciated richer graphics more, than empty and sterile looking super sharp images. The retina is vain waste of battery, processing power and money, and does nothing good for us here in Synth forum.

        I have retina on iPhone 4S, and I don’t appreciate it either, and I would change it to better batterylife any day. I said provocatively shit, because I hate it when the competition happens in vain aspects of the devices. Especially when the vainest features are in the devices, that have all the software.

        I don’t think the music software will flood in Android market either, but who ever gets the most powerfull one gets my money(I think the iPad will lead safely at least couple of years in quality and quantity, but SunVox is already ported to Android. Its knocking the door already). Of course theres the midi…I mean there isn’t midi? Does Android have to use more processing power to make synth things happen, than iPad?

        Also, even if the market is fragmented, it still have quite big chunks and their emptyness WILL lure developers.

        1. I can unequivocally say that the new iPad screen is a massive improvement over the previous version. It has made using the iPad much more enjoyable and far less eye straining for long periods of use. Battery life hasn’t been an issue, and I use my iPad for hours everyday to help manage my business. So the new iPad is most definitely NOT shit.

          1. Yeah, I was exacerbating a bit, and iPad is already nice, but the new iPad was not much of an improvement for musician or gamer, especially as the processing power was not improved at same pace(or more as would be usual). I know that the Battery life is not a problem, but despite its having almost twice bigger battery, the battery life has not improved. It was never a problem, but twice the battery life would have been more meaningful improvement for me, than 4 times more resolution, where it already was about as sharp as my TV.

            I don’t like Android, I have an impression that its fat and requires more processing power, but the improvements in Android devices appears more meaningful to me, as the processing power in tablets is not plentiful yet, the resolution was plentiful already.

            I was sure, that I was going to buy iPad and most probably during this year, but now I’m not sure anymore. Now I have to think about it a bit more. The processing power lead and styluses in some Androids are far more exciting for me. If next Samsungs Note or similar device had synths or at least one really powerful synth(and midi), it would be better device for me.

  3. The new iPad screen is overrated. I have to agree with Toby. I would of rather had more processing power, ram, and a better OS update. That big ass battery could have been put to use on the things i mentioned rather than wasted on a yellow resolutionary screen on a 9.7″ device.

  4. Why its name is MorphWiz Play? Does it really read like MorphWiz Lite? How is the latency? Is there Midi? Can you make your own sounds? Is it a synth or rompler -> aliasing? What Android devices it is compatible with? Why there is so little discussion about it, is it bad or not good?

  5. C’mon guys, give it a chance! This is only version 1.0, and it’s only been out for 8 days! Sure it doesn’t do quite as much as the ipad version, but that one has had a lot of development and updates (and costs 5 times as much!). This is actually loads of fun, and very usable as an instrument. Latency can be an issue with some Android devices, but as more programmers use openSL, it’s getting to be less so. It looks like the patches chosen are the ones where high latency won’t eally be much of a problem.
    I’ve talked to quite a few developers, and the biggest bar to good Android music apps seems to be lack of support from users and stupid comments in the market. There’s even one thee at the moment that complains that the ‘clickable advert’ gets in the way! (?)
    So why not do everyone a favour, buy the thing (it’s stupidly cheap), and say nice proactive things to the developers, and it will almost certainly get better 🙂

  6. I hate Apple. Unix is the better system its just iFags are willing to pay more and so devs make better apps. Apple has focused on music due to iPod. Try running iOS on a non Apple device… that means that one day they will try to destroy the competition and realse upgrades that arent really much of an upgrade every 4 months… oh wait… thats what they are doing. Funny how MS got vilified for monopolising the market and yet that is what Apple stand for. The app itself is good. I have no latency. That is on an s3. On HTC one m8 it is amazing. It is watered down to test the market, idiots. There will no doubt a full version in the works if it sells enough.

    Stop with this silly debate. Neither is better. i Shite products are good because they control everything but they are money hungry and arent very innovative. Also restricted by cocoa. Android has issues with strength of apps and having to make a broad OS. It is based on Unix so is more powerful and has more powerful devices because of the competition within Android devices. Which will push the OS. But people will always want free apps.

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