The MorphWiz is not cool On iPad instruments...

An article, posted almost 13 years ago filed in ipad, app, music, virtual, touch, physical, instruments, technoligists, solutions, mimic, real, string, dream theater & midi.

Recently someone showed me a movie of the MorphWiz, a to be released app by Dream Theater1 musician Jordan Rudess. First impression: cool. Second impression, nice. Third impression…

I browsed some of the other movies displayed in the context of that movie and found another video by the same Jordan Rudess playing the Harpejji. And suddenly the app turns out to be a boring replica of the original:

Technologists are often biased towards technological solutions. Of course the cool thing about the instrument being an app is that you can use the device for something else as well (“you know that the iPad is also a mobile recording studio!”)… but I’m sceptical towards the idea that a two dimensional touch screen with some motion controllers can ever replace a real multi string instrument.

When playing a physical instrument it matters how you place your fingers on the fingerboard (how hard, with or without slightly moving them), whether you pluck (or tap) the strings with just the tops of your finger or sharpen the sound with with your nails. A physical instrument allows you to lay your hands on a part of the string, add a piece of paper between the strings to ‘distort’ the sound, play it with small hammers. The thickness of the strings. The rust. All that musical interactivity is lost.

If I would celebrate an app that mimics, and may replace a real physical instruments, I would also celebrate a regression in human expression. Hence I won’t, the MorphWiz is not cool.

1 Note that I totally can’t stand the music by Dream Theater, much too ‘midi’ to me (too perfect, like a computer playing…

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