ThumbJam Forum

hi jesse,
can you give us an idea of when you'll be submitting the next update?
thanks

Seen from Jesse in the bug report section this morning:

"I predict it will be sometime in February."

It looks like I will release a bugfix-only (1.3.1) version this week that solves the main backgrounding and silence bugs. The feature release (1.4) will likely come toward the end of Feb. TJ is currently featured in Staff Favorites on the front of the iTunes store and would like to get these bug fixes out before that is over with.

Great news about the staff favorites! I saw that tonight while looking at the app store front page, something I never do, and saw ThumbJam, I thought at first it was like a suggestion based on my purchasing history. But no, TJ is featured! Well deserved, congratulations.

Congratulations, Jesse!

By the way, I wonder whether ThumbJam's next update will include sequencing feature?
Korean ThumbJam fans eagerly hope so.

Thanks.

Sorry inrock, it won't. What kind of interface are you imagining? Something as complex as NanoStudio, for instance?

my 2 cents...

I love to see the sequencer built in invisibly. The current interface would look just the same except it would function as a single scrolling piano roll. There would be no piano roll edit page, just a mode switch.

The note data would scroll by as blocks in the background of the corresponding keys using the center as the 'now marker'. This could be as subtle as you like.

In addition to editing notes, this would act as a visual guide for playing. Recent notes would be visible scrolling off screen on the left, to be recalled as motifs while playing, and up coming parts could be anticipated as they approach the now line from the right... Come to think of it, something like Guitar Hero, in that respect. This would make working with thumb jam much easier overall.

If a note in a loop, created in thumbjam was out of the currently displayed scales the border lines would illuminate instead of blocks in the keys to show the progress of the note. If the note is in an off screen register, a block outline instead of a solid block would appear on the note in the closest visible octave -- so if the c7 and only c3-c5 were being displayed, C5 would hold the note; if the note was c-1 then it would be on C3.

This could be an offline process where the midi is stored when the loop is recorded, but the loop still plays back from the wav, just synced to the scrolling midi data. The data could be edited at any time and applied to any loaded instrument, the midi is just rendered.

All notes from all loops could be displayed at once or they could be turned off individually in the mixer panel. Colors could differentiate the instruments.

Muted instruments could also be displayed. This would let us lay down block chords on piano and then mute it so it acts as a visual guide of the current harmony and upcoming chords, mapped directly on the playing surface.

Jesse, I mean... not complex as NanoStudio.

For instance, loop set A is played twice, and next loop set B is played once, and loop set A is played again 3 times... etc..
It would be a great pleasure, if I can choose what loop set will be used and how many times will be played continually.
Sorry for my poor English.

Thanks.

Hi there,

Here are my two cents about a song construction tool inside ThumbJam.
First of all, I like Inrock's proposal, something very simple. I would just add a few things like the possibility of tagging loops with a number or a letter (maybe in the mixer). Having your loops tagged would make it possible to have multiple takes (variations for example) inside the same loopset.
The sequencer would be a separate page inside ThumbJam, with the mix always usable as a backing track to create variations or to simply record everything in one take with session record. In this 'sequencer' page, things would be built vertically, parts on top of each others (with the possibility of moving or copy/paste them), each part containing either the tag of the loops you'd want to hear or that would start from there (with Inrock's repetition indication each time, set to a default 1 repetition). I dream of having additional controllers linked to time there, like volume/gain and effects you could tweak time based for fade-ins fade outs, climax in reverb, compression etc... Loops would be attached to controllers by their tag again. An option to duplicate an instance of a loop would be nice so you could have the same exact loop tagged differently to use it at different places or with different controllers at the same time. From the sequencer, loops or loopsets could be recalled to the main playing screen, saved or renamed under a specific format to avoid the loss of parts used in a sequence by deleting loopsets somewhere else in the app.

That's about it. Thanks for considering a kind of song construction tool!

Even a very basic sequencer would rapidly expand the kind of songs that are possible in TJ.