I love your app, and also Morphwiz.
Something I don't see in them that I think would be really useful is an ability to switch scales and scale roots from a preselected set during play.
There might be a table populated with the scales that the user could hit while continuing to play.
This would make it a lot easier to navigate jazz standards, for example.
Keep up the good work!
Gary
Hua Hin, Thailand
Instant Scale/Root Switching
I agree, and I will put it on
I agree, and I will put it on the list...
I vote for this too,
I vote for this too, especially to jam non-diatonically over Jazz standards.
A way it could be done is with a chordal “instrument” in one pane and a melodic one in the other. The chords could look like the “pads” in percussion instruments but it could affect the other instrument.
It might sound convoluted, at first, but I think it’d feel quite natural.
It could be like Chordion, but with at least three extra benefits: different chords could trigger different scales (Chordion either does chord tones or a single scale for all chords); ThumbJam is more expressive than Chordion; ThumbJam allows for more accurate tunings than Chordion (which relies on 12-EDO).
ThumbJam is my favourite instrument app. Been musicking with it a lot more, recently. With Audiobus and Samvada, it affords something very close to melodic improvisation in Classical Indian music. Driving synthesizer apps like Animoog and Sunrizer (through Virtual MIDI), it shows some of its strengths with expression, range, uncommon tunings, and polyphony.
As I get into Jazz improvisation (after years of trying), ThumbJam was my first choice as an instrument app (my third instrument choice, after sax and voice). For diatonic improvisation, it works quite well, especially in a narrower range, making it easier to hit disconnected notes. For non-diatonic playing, though, options are more limited. For instance, it could be done with a chromatic scale, but then it’s much harder to play. Even a scale containing all the accidentals would be much more difficult than the specific scale appropriate for a given chord. Maybe I need to practice a lot more, but it’s easy to dream up the ideal jamming instrument, based on TJ.
In fact, something I could see, is colour-coded scale degrees within the context of a chord. If I’m playing a G7, the root (G), third (B), fifth (D), and seventh (F) are different colours, with other notes in the standard colour. Switching to Dmin7, the colours switch at the same time, with the D going from fifth to root.
Again, sounds strange, but I think it’d work well.
Anyhoo… Hope this can happen at some point in the future, making ThumbJam an even more appropriate jamming instrument.
A way it could be done is with a chordal “instrument” in one pane and a melodic one in the other. The chords could look like the “pads” in percussion instruments but it could affect the other instrument.
It might sound convoluted, at first, but I think it’d feel quite natural.
It could be like Chordion, but with at least three extra benefits: different chords could trigger different scales (Chordion either does chord tones or a single scale for all chords); ThumbJam is more expressive than Chordion; ThumbJam allows for more accurate tunings than Chordion (which relies on 12-EDO).
ThumbJam is my favourite instrument app. Been musicking with it a lot more, recently. With Audiobus and Samvada, it affords something very close to melodic improvisation in Classical Indian music. Driving synthesizer apps like Animoog and Sunrizer (through Virtual MIDI), it shows some of its strengths with expression, range, uncommon tunings, and polyphony.
As I get into Jazz improvisation (after years of trying), ThumbJam was my first choice as an instrument app (my third instrument choice, after sax and voice). For diatonic improvisation, it works quite well, especially in a narrower range, making it easier to hit disconnected notes. For non-diatonic playing, though, options are more limited. For instance, it could be done with a chromatic scale, but then it’s much harder to play. Even a scale containing all the accidentals would be much more difficult than the specific scale appropriate for a given chord. Maybe I need to practice a lot more, but it’s easy to dream up the ideal jamming instrument, based on TJ.
In fact, something I could see, is colour-coded scale degrees within the context of a chord. If I’m playing a G7, the root (G), third (B), fifth (D), and seventh (F) are different colours, with other notes in the standard colour. Switching to Dmin7, the colours switch at the same time, with the D going from fifth to root.
Again, sounds strange, but I think it’d work well.
Anyhoo… Hope this can happen at some point in the future, making ThumbJam an even more appropriate jamming instrument.
Good news, this thread was 3
Good news, this thread was 3 years ago and at least the feature requested in the original post has existed for a while now 
The "quick switch" scale/key buttons are accessed by pressing the #/b button that toggles on both the key change and the quick switch buttons on iPad, and cycles through them on iPhone/iPod. To set up your key/scale buttons, first select the scale and key you want, then press the small edit button above the quickswitch buttons, and press the button you want to set, give it a name. Repeat for any others you want. Then presses (or drags between them) of the quick switch buttons will instantly switch to the ones set.
As for your other color coding requests, i think i might need a bit more explanation to understand exactly what you're looking for in the general sense (other than the one example you cited)....
The "quick switch" scale/key buttons are accessed by pressing the #/b button that toggles on both the key change and the quick switch buttons on iPad, and cycles through them on iPhone/iPod. To set up your key/scale buttons, first select the scale and key you want, then press the small edit button above the quickswitch buttons, and press the button you want to set, give it a name. Repeat for any others you want. Then presses (or drags between them) of the quick switch buttons will instantly switch to the ones set.
As for your other color coding requests, i think i might need a bit more explanation to understand exactly what you're looking for in the general sense (other than the one example you cited)....