Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess and noise.io developer Amidio have made a crazy-looking hexagonal sequencer for the iPhone. It comes with plenty of samples and factory sessions if you just want to play around, but I imagine the greatest draw for CDM readers is that it allows exporting your own files via a WiFi server application.

(Ahem… cough… Google Android and others don’t require any special app just to get files onto your mobile device. Sorry, something got stuck in my throat. Cough… ahem… can we have a real, live audio system in Android now, please? Whoops, throat thing happened again.)

This application also works with Beatmaker, so you now have a pretty nice studio of mobile apps on the iPhone and iPod touch. If your arms have been cramped whipping out your laptop on the Chinatown bus to Boston (now with 6″ of legroom), this could be a huge help.

More features:

• Stutter, chorus, and bit-distortion effects
• Seamless loop creation you can use with Beatmaker or your own favorite audio production tool
• Cell randomization

JR Hexatone Pro is US$9.99.

JR Hexatone Pro Site @ Amidio
Via the ever-up-to-date, ever green-on-black Matrixsynth

Now, this isn’t the only way to get your hexagon on with music sequencing. See previously:
Hexagonal Sequencer with vvvv, MIDI, Ableton, and Soon Wii, Camera Input
Music on the Game Grid: Interactive Arpeggiators Al-Jazari, reacTogon
Code Your Own Sequencer? Archaeopteryx Generates MIDI with Ruby

Here are the developer’s videos:

…including some preset examples:

Lastly, from Jordan himself, here’s a tutorial on sound programming with the tool:

Noise.io became available on the iTunes App Store this week, with a “pro” app US$9.99.

I’m not going to say too much about it, instead focusing on getting a review done over the weekend. (I still wish there were an easy way to capture video output from the iPod touch / iPhone, but I gather most apps can’t support that. Any tips, anyone?) But this looks like a real soft synth, and not simply a toy with an oscillator:

• 3 generators + 2 filters + 3 LFO
• 3 onboard sequencers (with an interesting-looking interface)
• 6 onboard effects
• Unlimited presets, plus 9 factory preset banks (81 presets in all)

Lots of hype in the above video, but it sounds great, so here’s my suggestion: just close your eyes and listen.

Noise.io site

Looks fantastic to me. Now, I’d just like a really rich Pd-based set of synths and I’m a happy man.

Incidentally, I haven’t chatted much about the Google Android — largely because, at this point, it still seems a bit early to say much. But while the Android platform does have a Java-based sound engine, to me some of the technical appeal of the Apple tools — developer restrictions and closed nature aside — is that it really is an environment in which you can do serious synthesis. That’s been true of the Sony PSP, too, but only after you hurdle the even-worse anti-piracy restrictions of a game platform.

More soon. If you’ve got it and are making presets, we may set up a place for you to share here.