ThumbJam Forum

Extremely impressive app; it certainly expands my imagination about what can be done with a small touch screen.
I find it to be *almost* as playable as a regular instrument. Two things that would help it get even closer:

- A sustain pedal that could optionally occupy the bottom 1/8th of the screen (in portrait mode, so the very bottom of the scale). This would make simple two or three note piano chord progressions playable.
- A little 1 or 2 pixel translucent or dotted horizontal line showing me exactly where my finger is touching, so I know exactly when I'm going to cross into the next pitch. I find it hard to play sliding run on a non-gliding instrument because the exact moment of the pitch transition is somewhat of a mystery. This could be greatly aided by a little bit of visual feedback. I understand that this could be processor intensive, especially with multitouch...But if it's possible I think it would really help performance.

Thanks for creating this! It's a huge leap forward in affordable music software, on any platform.
David

I like your visual feedback idea. I have the exact same problem when I'm trying to play with accurate timing. Which is always.

Glad to see that there's at least another person with a similar struggle. I notice that the gliding mode shows the exact touch location with a line (and quite responsively even with three or four moving touches) so it doesn't look as though it's a computationally prohibitive proposition.
In addition to a large sustain pedal, I think assignable ribbon overlays could be feasible, right? Like a 300x30px box that transmits modulation or volume data based on the x coordinate? Dreaming even further, a ribbon overlay could have set snapping positions that might correlate to chord changes -- move left index finger from the "I" to "vi" position on the ribbon, and the scale changes so the right index finger can play a lead line that adapts to the changes. I'm getting out of hand here...sorry for pun.

I really like all your suggestions, I will definitely try to fold those ideas in!