Jordantron features and review– an amazing iOS app for keyboardists
In this article, I am going to take you through a journey of an amazing instrument, especially for keyboardists, which can take your live performance to the next level. The greatest thing about this app is that it contains a complete set of exclusive sounds that Jordan Rudess uses for his band Dream Theater. Read on to know more about Jordantron.
Introduction
There are many apps out there for Android as well as iOS which is designed with the mechanics of a piano which can play different basic sounds of a keyboard. But I have never seen any instrument app with the sounds that Jordantron can provide you with. The most important face about this app is that you get to access all the sounds that is used by Jordan Rudess, a world famous keyboard player, in his live concerts with his band Dream Theater. There are many other features besides just the playing surface of the keyboard in this app. This app is designed only for the iOS.
So, now let's take a look at the main screen of the app.Main Screen
There are different sections in the main screen of this app. Let's take a look at each one of them.
Control Panel: This panel consists of some of the controls of the sounds patches that you select. On the top left area, there is a Volume button which can be used to increase or decrease the volume of the instrument. Then there's a Pitch button which can be used like a pitch bend wheel on a keyboard. There is also a button called Tone which can make the sound brighter or duller. At the right end of the panel, there is a button which can transition your sound from A, B, and C in any order. The transition feels really blended and you don't feel like jumping from one sound to another sound quickly.
Below there are 4 sliders. Voice D Level can be used to control the volume of the D voice in the instrument. Reverb Tone can be used to make the reverb effect stronger or lighter. Then there are Reverb Send and Reverb Space which can be used to adjust the different parameters of reverb.
Sounds Panel: This is the section where you can select the voices that you want to play. There are 4 voices called A, B, C, and D. You can select a different sound for each of these voices from the sounds included in Jordantron. There is also a Voicebank where you can store the combination that you find useful. In this way, you don't have to set every voice every time. You can just save it as a voicebank and when you select the voicebank all the voice combinations will be available as you saved. There are different voicebanks saved already by default which is also really cool and used by Jordan Rudess himself.
Chord pads Panel: Below, there is a panel where there are 12 buttons. Each of these buttons can be assigned a chord. This can really bring more life to your performance. The effect that these chord pads can have is simply amazing. You can record a chord to one of the pads by touching the Record button on the right corner. There is also an octave button which can change the octave of the instrument. Using this, you can create huge chords which can reach different octaves. You can also use this button when playing live.
Playing section: This is the section where you actually play your music. There are a bunch of keys here which can be really comfortable for you if you play on an iPad. When you play you can even change the octave by touching the octave buttons. There is also a button called Speed which can be used to bring the intensity (speed) of the voice down a little bit. Using all these features you can really make a huge difference in your live show.Features
Now, let's look at some of the features of Jordantron. The bottom line
If you are a keyboard player and is interested in doing some innovative stuff, this is the app just for you. Jordantron has so many amazing features. But the most important thing is that the sounds in the instrument are awesome. This is the first time that Jordan Rudess has decided to bring his exclusive collection of sounds out to the other musicians. You can take the full benefit of it. You can use other keyboards with Jordantron via MIDI. You can also assign controls on your keyboard to access the chord pads as well as the voicebanks of Jordantron which can help you play the whole music without ever touching the iPad. That's the power of this amazing app.
This app is available only for the iOS. It is a paid app and you can buy it from the App Store. Hope this article was helpful. Happy musical life.
