Geo Synthesizer

Category

Description of App

Geo Synthesizer is a musical instrument and MIDI controller. A collaboration of Wizdom Music's Jordan Rudess and Kevin Chartier (MorphWiz, SampleWiz) and Rob Fielding (Mugician), Geo Synthesizer is an incredibly expressive musical instrument specifically created for a multitouch surface.

A comprehensive Geo Synthesizer manual is available at: http://www.wizdommusic.com/GeoSynth/manual.html

Jordan says: "Since touching a preliminary piano keyboard on an iPhone screen and realizing the amazing potential for musical expression on a multitouch device, I have been inspired to create next-generation musical instruments for iOS. Geo Synthesizer is a dream come true in many ways. It is the fastest truly playable iOS instrument that I have put my hands on to date. I can fly through the range of an instrument while expanding on the kind of advanced pitch control we introduced in MorphWiz. As someone who grew up with synthesizers, I can tell you that pitch bending has never been this good!

"Geo features many of my custom sounds and in addition, Geo is also a MIDI controller, so you can use it with any external midi instrument or virtual MIDI.  Virtual MIDI allows you to control an app running in the background on the same device! A great feature of Geo is that internally and externally we send independent voices on each note played, so as an example, you can pitch bend one note and not the other, or add unique expression on every note! I can't wait to see the YouTube videos of all of you guys rocking out with Geo Synthesizer!!!"

Features:

  • ability to load waveforms from SampleWiz presets
  • octave rounding for effortless soloing over large ranges
  • whammy slider with absolute and relative modes
  • 12ET, 24ET, 53ET, and 665ET temperament options
  • mono, string, and full-polyphony modes
  • tuning and transposition controls
  • snap speed control to affect how quickly the instrument pulls notes in tune
  • playing surface options for number of rows and columns on screen
  • octave and fifth harmonics synthesis options to rich, organ-like sound
  • gain control to add distortion to the sound
  • FM and touch FM controls for timbal variation
  • mono out for use with guitar amps
  • sine, sawtooth, square, and custom (SampleWiz) wave options
  • attack and release controls
  • synthesis body control
  • lowpass filter with resonance
  • stereo delay
  • reverb
  • MIDI output with polyphonic note bending and multiple configuration options to allow compatibility with a wide range of hardware and software synthesizers
  • performance menu lets you make your own custom menu so all the controls you need are always right at your fingertips
  • 40 presets carefully selected by Jordan Rudess, including patches from Jordan's personal sound library

Version

1.0

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Accessibility Comments

As with Bebot and Tachyon, other apps promoted by Jordan Rudess, VoiceOver reads none of the controls on the main screen. The app is too complex and dynamic to be able to memorize the location of all screen elements. It is not at all similar to Wizdom's other musical flagship app MorphWiz.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads no page elements.

Button Labeling

No buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is totally inaccessible.

Other Comments

The default preset can be played when VoiceOver is turned off, but the price of the app is too high for doing only that.

Options

Comments

By RWolf on Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - 17:55

When I learnt about this app I was hoping it would be somewhat accessible as it sounded amazing. To avoid spending money needlessly I asked my sighted fiancée, whom also showed an interest in this app to give it a try and, alongside her own experimenting, test what happened when VoiceOver got switched on. Nothing. The controls are completely non-standard to make response of the app as smooth as possible. This I learnt when I contacted Wizdom music. The developer told me that it should be fairly simple to add a standard control to change some, but not all of the options available. My consequent emails never got a reply, so I gave up on this app and forgot about it till now. ThumbJam gave me a very good alternative, though I wish it could do Geo's arpeggios over multiple octaves.