ThumbJam Forum

Hi Jesse,

I wanted to begin by thanking you for realising such a wonderful instrument for us IOS musicians. I will be using it extensivly on my upcoming album, I will be sure to post some samples of it once it is finished.

In the meantime I have two requests that relate to how I will be using it. neither will be "deal-breakers" for me, I can record without them, but I see them both as adding some exciting functionality to thumbjam.

1. Rotate menus : this is a simple one, when I dock my Ipad in the Alesis I/O dock I am using it in a landscape setting, this is almost perfect for me as I will be playing it very similarly to a standard synth or keyboard, the only annoying thing is I have to try to read at 90 degrees if I want to change instrument or scale, this can be a bit of a bind as i need to do this and play live.


2. Use the much underused Alesis I/O Dock footpedal to begin and end loop recording: I believe there is an exsisting API available from Alesis to help intergrate the footpedal of the Alesis I/O dock into anyones apps, it would be amazing to be able to keep both hands on the keyboard and playing whilst recording as at the moment I find it hard in landscape mode to get down to the bottom right corner in a timely manner.


other than that you have created something that outstrips almost all of the other hardware in my musical arsenal. thanks so much for your work and vision

Phill MyOneManBand

www.myonemanband.co.uk

#1 (landscape mode) is already done here... it will be in the next update.

#2 Will have to check on that... I don't have an ioDock for testing, so it might be a little tricky.

Wow, thats great to hear.

I've had two days solid play with it now and I STILL keep finding new things to facinate me.

Great news on point #1

as for two, I have done a little more research and came across some further explaination;

Even though the IO Dock only has one footswitch female TRS connector, it actually allows for use of both a toggle footswich (called Footswitch 1) and a momentary (called Footswitch 2) simultaneously.

Footswitch 1 is (documented as) for use with a push-on/push-off (or toggle) footswitch. The IO Dock sends a MIDI Start when the footswitch is toggled on, and a MIDI Stop when the footswitch is toggled off. (So probably no real use for TJ as it would mean giving up midi sync)

Footswitch 2 however, is for an on-off (or momentary) footswitch. The IO Dock sends a MIDI CC#64 with data of 127 on first momentary pulse from the footswitch and MIDI CC#64 with data of 0 for the second momentary pulse from the footswitch. (Incidentally, the documentation in the IO Dock Quickstart Guide indicates that it's a CC#63 but this is a rarely implemented MIDI CC#. Loopy, however, is seeing a CC#64, which corresponds to the "Damper Pedal" which is probably correct. I speculate that Alesis's documentation may be wrong.)

so, I was wrong, no new API is needed, just the ability to bind CC#64 to "record" on a toggle on/off basis...we could then use a push to make/push to break switch instead of the prescribed momentary sustain pedal type and TJ could read the first push as "Start" and the second as "Stop recording/begin rounding off"

Hope that helps.

By the way, I am currently having a LOT of success with predefining the loop legnth and using the "wait for first note to begin recording" option....this would be an almost prefairable solution within itself if the "define looplegnth" could be presented as a simplified left hand menu (or top in landscape),if we could predefine maybe 4 options (similar to the key/scale quick recall options).

all I need is to be able to loop a 1 bar phrase, then a 4 bar riff, then an eight bar solo etc without having to create each of those legnths in a secondry menu with lots of +/- tapping .... can you see what I'm meaning? I know you cant have EVERYTHING as a top level menu, but could this be something the user can choose between (I'd personally gladly sacrifice some of the Left hand/ top menu options that I dont use during live performance.

thanks in advance for taking the time to read this.

Phill