ThumbJam Forum

Hello.
I have looked into the MIDI Control section of the used guide but all this is a little too cryptic for me, I'm really not familiar with this and don't manage to understand the logic.
is there a tutorial on how to set-up both Thumbjam and Ableton Live to get TJ to control a software instrument?
Sorry if this has been discussed before.

Thank you for any help.

First question before we proceed, are you on Mac or Windows?

I'm on Mac. Thank you.

OK here are the steps you should take:

In ThumbJam:
- Go to Prefs->MIDI Control
- Set the following parameters to ON:
- Use CoreMidi
- Enable Network Session
- Send Pitchbend
- (In Midi Output Connections) Network Session

On your Mac:
- Open the Audio MIDI Setup application (in /Applications/Utilities)
- Double-click on the Network Item
- There should be a default session in the My Sessions section, if not add one with the +
- Select the session, then you should see your device in the list below in the Directory section
- Select your device and click the Connect button beneath that section, you should see it show up in the Participants list on the right

- Open Live
- In Live's Preferences, go to the MIDI section. In the section at the bottom you should see a list of MIDI devices, one the Input items will have a name starting with Network, enable that in the Track column
- Now playing in TJ should cause the MIDI activity lights to flash in Live.
- Drag an instrument plugin onto a midi track, choose the input as All Ins, or the specific Network MIDI if you want, then set the Monitor parameter to IN on that track. You should be hearing something now!

Things to watch out for:
- Be sure the pitch bend range in TJ's MIDI Controls settings matches the instrument you are controlling
- You can experiment with turning on some of the other output options in TJ's prefs (volume, pan, etc)

- The controls of the loaded TJ preset can affect how midi is sent, for instance the Glide mode, vs retrigger, vs continuum settings especially.
- Electric Guitar is generally a good preset to start from
- If you want to mute TJ's internal instrument, you can go to Sound->Volume/iPod, and turn the Instrument Mute switch ON

Let me know if you run into any trouble. The steps with Audio MIDI Setup need to be redone whenever you reboot your computer or device. Your wifi setup can greatly affect how responsive the wifi MIDI reacts. I find that the best solution is either to have you computer directly wired to the wifi router via ethernet, or to set up an Adhoc wifi network directly between your computer and your device, which takes the router out of the equation entirely. I can go into that if you need me to.

Thank you so much, this was very clear and helpful.
Is there a way so that ThumbJam prevents the device to go to sleep, I lose the connexion and I suppose it's because of that.
Is there a way also to avoid setting the Mac midi preferences every time, like maybe a script or something?
Is there a way to setup this Adhoc wifi network directly between my computer and my device without losing the regular internet connexion?

To prevent losing functionality when the device goes to sleep, go to ThumbJam's Prefs->MIDI Control and turn on Active In Background option.

There may be a way to better automate the mac midi connection thing.... will have to look into that.

If your network connection is only via wifi, then no you can't use both adhoc and your normal wifi router at the same time. However, if you can directly wire your computer to your router via ethernet cable, then that frees up your wireless to use for an adhoc connection.

Thank you for all that !!!