Chordion : Musical Instrument & MIDI Controller

I continue to come back to this app to use as a MIDI controller and source of inspiration. When I have a question, the developer responds quickly to questions which is appreciated. I’m also happy to support an indie developer.

I was looking forward to the Suzuki company’s re-release of the popular Omnichord instrument coming later this year. I fell in love with the sound of the instrument as it was the first I had ever listened to when trying headphones for the first time as a kid. They became impossible to get a hold of easily since their explosion in popularity. With this elegant and beautiful app, there’s no need for it anymore. I’m very impressed!

nice app, but why is it iPad only? I have music apps with MUCH denser UIs than this which work fine on iPhone.

This app is wonderful, but it definitely needs some bug fixes. It’d be perfect otherwise. Some more drum types would be nice too.

Great app while it was working in iOS13.x, but not working for me on two devices running iOS14.x.

App crashing on iOS 14 on launch. Please fix.

It’s a lovely, smooth interface, but there’s no way to sync its clock with anything else. The arp and drum machine are internal only. This is a bizarre decision that really hampers the app from becoming much more useful. So disappointing.

I still love this app even though it has been out for a long time. It is one that I still find myself opening up and using after all these years. Perfect for nice ambient jams and deeper than you might think it is...

As expected based on my use of this developer’s flagship app “Patterning 2”, the app is incredibly well thought out. It is super user friendly, logical, has excellent user interface, nice graphics, simple yet powerful functionality. However, few things are making it just a tiny bit short of being perfect: ***Poor drum sound selection and on top of it very limited control of each drum instrument’s sound. ***No MIDI out for the drum machine. The user manual incorrectly states “The drum machine and arpeggiator are also disabled in MIDI mode” implying that the drum machine does send MIDI notes but it’s not the case and, unlike arpeggiator, its audio is not disabled. Of course, the drum machine in the Chordion is rather basic, especially compared to something as complex as Patterning 2, but it would be fantastic if it could have its own MIDI out. The limited sound drums of the Chordion would no longer be an issue. It would be an awesome feature if the drum sequence made in Chordion could be sent to Patterning as some kind of set for further modification. Yes, it’s not that much work to do it manually anyway considering that the sequencer has just 16 steps and 6 tracks but still it would be great. ***Only 16 steps for drum sequencer. I really don’t want the app to get any heavier and over complicated - as it is now it is great for students and people experimenting, learning about harmony, chords progression and scales, but doubling the steps count in the sequencer would allow more interesting rhythms. ***Can’t save user chords as a layout to be used in “generate layout”. You can of course save the entire state of the Chordion but being able to save / load just the chords layout as a user preset would be very useful because then it could be transposed into other keys as a whole (like in case of factory layouts). ***On that last note, a simple global transposition slider would simplify many things ***The BMP stated in the sequencer is double of what is typically stated in sequencers when in 16 steps mode (including Patterning 2) so the highest equivalent tempo is only 150. ***I wish pressing the keys on the keyboard meant for programming the scales (the horizontally displayed keyboard) was playing the given notes. Much easier to program the scales this way!

This does a lot of what I wish the Q-Chord would do, I just wish the slider ran the long side of the screen, and had 3 octaves more range. Fun with organ and synth controls.