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ThumbJam: Any way to play multiple instruments with audio/mic input?
I'm solely using the app for the mic inputs and am trying to figure out if there's a way to get multiple instruments in a split to be controlled simultaneously. I'm using AUM and I can see there are multiple "slots" to choose from for channel inputs, but I suspect those may be solely for MIDI output control of other apps. If I have multiple slots mapped to channels in AUM, they all output ALL of the instruments I have set up in ThumbJam's slots.
I'd eventually like to be able to play multiple string instruments with harmony (one instrument would be a 3rd lower, for example) to overcome the audio input's monophonic limitation. I tried the ZMH-1 app with poor results. If, as I suspect, I cannot do this within ThumbJam, any ideas on how to do it otherwise? I'm sticking with ThumbJam because the audio input control of it's included instruments is the most expressive experience I've ever had with controlling "synths" with a physical instrument. I using my pedal steel with a volume pedal and am impressed with how well some of the instruments track slides and how well the input reacts to volume/expression swells. If anyone knows of any comparable app with audio input control like this, I'd love to hear about it.
I also have tried "MIDI Guitar 2" with poor results when attempting both sliding smoothly and polyphony. ThumbJam's "audio to MIDI" is far superior, unless I simply didn't have MG2 set up right.
Comments
I don't have any answers but I like where this is going... sounds fun!
I wonder if you do a loop back? Send TJ MIDI Out into AUM. Then, via AUM MIDI routing, direct that MIDI back out to the other TJ slots? Not ever tried this (or tried to do it all within the app). @sonosaurus?
I'm not sure how to do that as I'm a basic AUM user. I'm just starting down the MIDI path. I believe I read that, in order to use ThumbJam as a midi controller for other apps, you would want to turn the ThumbJam instrument volume down to zero. So, the loop back would be controlling a silent instrument, no? Of course, I could be wrong about the first part. Sounds like an experiment worth trying.
Wait, I get it. The volume would be on, you'd hear the first instrument but MIDI would also be send out and come back to another slot/instrument. Not sure why I didn't get it on the first read.
Yep, that's what I'm thinking anyway. You could still turn down the first instrument.
I think the slots are set up so that Slot 1 = MIDI channel 1, Slot 2 = MIDI channel 2, etc so you'd want to set up TJ MIDI out to be something like Channel 16?
Correct. There's a specific setting for the Voice-to-MIDI output channel but now that I think about it, I don't think this will work with AUM alone. Even if you use the little AUM matrix to send the MIDI coming from TJ to other slots it will still be sending on the voice-to-midi channel. May be time for AB3 with some of the MIDIFlow tools.
If you don't need thumbjam to be the host of the other instrument sounds, the aum routing should work fine as moth synth apps default to omni (any/all channels will trigger it).
I've been playing with the settings between AUM and TJ for about an hour. I don't really get it.
I can find no documentation that tells me anything like what cahannel 16 would map to.
Have you emailed the developer through the app? What you are trying to do is pretty complex...
If I'm following the desired flow, which would be microphone>Thumbjam(set to silent)>multiple synths with harmonic steps added (like adding a third)
To me actually sounds like a job for Audiobus3 and Midiflow! In fact a quick go to test (minus the mic and using TJs keyboard) and seemed it would work.
On the Midi page added a Midiflow adapter (as TJ didn't appear as an input - hint hint), then added a MF Channel, MF transpose and a MF scale, then a synth as output. Repeated twice changing the Transpose to +3 and +5. In TJ set midi out to the MF adapter, and got an instant triad.
I presume if desired the synths would then appear as inputs to AUM if needed.
Hope that helps!
Nice. Share as AB Preset?
Close, but the "multiple-synths" would be ThumbJam instruments. So, one TJ instrument controls multiple other TJ instruments.
I wrote the dev who responded immediately and said he'd take a look at it and get back with me soon.
works with midi flow. creating custom virtual in and out.
Interesting solution. Looks like a full string section could be built that way.
I had an earlier version of Audiobus a while back but never learned to use it. When I thought I would get back into it, AUM appeared and fit my needs perfectly. I wasn't even aware of the MidiFlow apps until this morning. I don't want this to get so over-complicated I wouldn't trust it in a performance situation.
AUM has been a very convenient way to route audio for practicing by using it to set levels for BIAS FX, 'slow-downer' apps and iReal Pro. I also planned to use it "live" by using the channels as preset FX chains. That's pretty much all I wanted from it until I discovered ThumbJam's audio control capabilities (which I can't believe is not a primary selling point of that app). I had no need to really worry about midi anything outside of controlling BIAS FX and AUM with Midi Designer 2 which is dead simple.
Will AB3+MidiFlow make AUM redundant for me? How stable is it?
Also, a possible note of importance here. Wigglelights solution has not been tested with ThumbJam's audio input.
Not all features of the app work in that mode. The arpeggiater, for example.
You can transpose MIDI in AUM, as well. Sorry if this has been mentioned previously.
@syrupcore would sharing be a ifunbox/upload thing? Haven't tried that before.
@Sabicas - I haven't really worked through using TJ in multichannel mode, but the AB3 thing worked with TJ here- just sent it back to TJ via the MF adapter.
There have been many discussions and views here regarding the differences between AB and AUM, but they certainly work together. Stability rests largely with how Devs have implemented the AB sdk,
I think of AB as a behind the scenes patchbay with inserts/filters, (with one major strength being "state saving"), while AUM is more a front end mixer with inserts, it's strength being a hands on playground.
I don't see them as an either/or thing , more as complimenting each other. Even though there's overlap in their capabilities they are both indispensable tools on iOS.
@wigglelights Much simpler than that. In the AB Presets panel, hit the Share icon (box with an upwards arrow). One of the options that comes up is 'Copy'. The preset gets automagically stored up on the audiob.us server; choosing 'Copy' puts the link/URL to the preset in your clipboard. Just reply to this thread and paste it in.
Audiobus preset 'TJ Triad': http://preset.audiob.us/lita2QTSP9JG4Ks
In TJ, the midi ins and outs need to point toward the MF Adapter.
I knocked this out as a test, and I haven't used the MF Scale and Transpose much. I had TJ set to chromatic and got some slightly unexpected results but perhaps this can be refined by smarter people than I!
Sorry for the delay on this one, folks. For the current version of ThumbJam I think I found the simplest way to do what the original poster wanted, using only the standalone MidiFlow (no audiobus or aum required).
First, in TJ's Prefs->MIDI Control, use the following settings:
In Output Options, set both Channel Start and Voice Channel Start to 1 (it doesn't really matter). Turn Channel Per Touch Off. In Input Options, set In Channel Start to 1, turn MPE mode Off.
In MidiFlow create a new empty preset (song). Add the first route, setting the input source to ThumbJam and the destination to ThumbJam as well. In the route settings (gear in the middle), set the Remap Channel to be 2, and also set the Note shift to be transposed how you want. Then duplicate that routing (at the bottom of the settings) and edit the new one to change the remap channel to be 3, and also set the Note shift to be transposed how you want.
Or here is the preset I made you can load into MidiFlow as an example (plays major chords from a single root input):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g0wj6lw6bwwttvd/TJChordsMidiflow.mflw?dl=0
In ThumbJam, you will want to load up instruments into the first 3 slots (they can be the same instrument if you want). The way we set it up above, the first slot will be played with channel 1 input, the 2nd channel 2, etc. Open the splits/slots popup from the sidebar and select the slots to load them up as desired. You don't need to have any splits, they are independent from the instrument slots. Once loaded up, select the 1st slot and that will be played directly when using the pitch->midi or the touchscreen. You'll hear the others also being played with the transposes you set up in MidiFlow.
If you didn't want to hear the direct ThumbJam playing the normal selected slot, you can create a silent patch and load it up (this is handy if you weren't planning on using TJ's sounds at all and were sending the midi to other synths). To create a silent patch, the best way is actually to create a new instrument (Sound->Create Instrument), record a single silent sample, name it Silent (or something) and Done, then you can set it up with performance controls that you might like (which include the settings for the pitch->midi) and save the preset.
In the near feature I will release an Audiobus 3 compatible TJ which will present other ways to do this kind of setup, but for now I think this will do what you want.
This level of support makes me feel good about owning three of your apps. Thanks for the info and effort on this one. I'll be trying this as soon as I can get off work.
Well, I've followed your instructions and can't get any sound but the one I'm playing (slot 1). I've even loaded your preset, reset TJ to default settings and started over with the settings you mentioned. Not sure what I'm missing.
@sonosaurus Outstanding service, TJ was my intro to mobile music making on an iPod Touch many moons ago, it's still the first thing I install on a new device.
Good to hear there are updates planned.
Ok, I could not get the standalone midi flow app to do anything at all. I ended up getting AB3 and the midiflow apps for that. I have it working now with wigglelights preset. The last step was going into TJ's midi settings and activating note in/out buttons for midiflow adapter.
Now the problem is that I can't get it to work with the mic input on ThumbJam. One of these apps is completely killing audio in. AUM is not picking up a signal.
Update: figured how to route mic input to thumbjam. Needed a third lane. I'm learning.
so are you happy with the results?
I was, for a few minutes. I started getting what seemed like a feedback loop. I'd trigger a note and the other TJ slots would just take off and sustain a note until I hit the "all notes off" button. Then, when starting over, I found that state-saving screws up ThumbJam in strange ways. My slots were not remotely how I left them in ways that I've never set up.....like having a banjo in all slots. Another issue is that I suddenly would be able to hear my raw audio, the pedal steel, coming through. There was no way to stop that other than starting completely over by killing all apps.
From what I can gather, once you get everything working correctly, the problems are introduced when switching applications. For example, I would switch from AB3 to TJ to arrange my slots differently and immediately would have some one of the problems mentioned above. Then switching back to AB3, I might see all of my nodes sleeping for a few seconds.
The last thing I tried was loading up all 8 TJ slots with instruments and then using AUM to mix/mute/solo what I wanted to use so I wouldn't have to keep switching back to TJ. I still got the feedback loop issue.
Some of these issues will go away with the next release of TJ that properly supports AB3.
Still not sure why the standalone midiflow setup didn't work over there. I feel like some small thing must have been preventing it.
I'm sure it was user error on my part. I'll try again tonight to get the standalone working. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the standalone version of Midiflow doesn't have a function like the "MidiFlow Scales" app that allows for 'intelligent' harmonization. I could see there was the ability to transpose a note, but not lock it to a scale. If I have one of the secondary instruments in Thumbjam set to a scale, have the standalone MidiFlow app set to transpose to '-3', and have the transposed TJ instrument set up to "snap to note" will it accomplish the same thing?
No it doesn't have that feature, and I doubt trying to do it in conjunction with TJ's scale lock will result in anything reliably playable, unfortunately. I'll try make sure the next update works in a usable way with AB3 trying to what you want to do.