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Comments
Cheezburga
Basically, I just want to hold the strings I want plucked and have guitarism pluck them for me in the plucking pattern I select and/or configure. Patterns might involve different rhythms, more than one strung plucked simultaneously, and should be based on finger order, not tied to particular strings, so for a 5 string pattern, it shouldn't matter if it's strings 5,4,3,2,1, or 6,5,4,3,2, or 6,5,3,2,1, the same relative pattern should apply. A straight arpeggiator would be simpler, but in the long run it might be a more limiting starting point than a simple grid where one can configure number of strings, pattern and rhythm all in one go.
When I play I have my left arm coming in from the left, with my left hand resting on its pinky side on the table along the left edge of the iPad, and my fingers move forward and backward to touch the chord boxes. I find this to be easier on my elbow and wrist; playing with the hand coming up from below as in Rhism and Morris's pictures feels a bit cramped to me.
oops double post
How about the best of both worlds?
What does everyone think about, hypothetically: a perform mode, with maybe hot keys for typical chord groupings: intro, verse, chorus, bridge, ending; and a composition mode that uses more chords over the available real estate?
Actually, I'd like to see the custom chords come out first or at the same time as this feature. I know it had been on the plate for a while. just crave some different voicings and open chords at times (ie open D). I'm sure there was a philosophy followed with going with the full chords.
Thanks for considering!
@JMSexton Lol whut?
@syrupcore No offense taken! It's true that I have several design goals with guitarism that may not line up with everyone's playing style / scenarios, but some of the links being made between design goals and design decisions are not actually true.
The 6 chord limit is all about eyes-free playability, which has always been my primary reason for making the app and my most uncompromised design goal for it. I was traveling for work and sitting by myself in my hotel room in the evening and trying to just play GuitarStudio to pass the time, and in that moment what I craved more than anything was to be able to stop looking at the screen so I could focus on the song rather than the tool. At the heart of it, that's what guitarism has always been about. Of course that's not a great marketing tagline ("play all alone in your hotel room when you're on a boring business trip!") so it's presented more in terms of on stage, live audience etc. It does assume that you're playing a song (whether yours or someone else's) for which you know the chords upfront, which is a huge assumption that runs counter to what many (most?) of you guys want. Which actually makes it surprising that you use the app at all, but also indicates a huge gap in the market that's just waiting to be filled.
The positioning of the chords on the iPad layout is all about ergonomics, and I actually designed it just for "on the table" usage. After I was done with the layout design I realized that it supported the 'guitar' hold really well which was a bonus I hadn't anticipated but was pretty happy about. At that point the only real modification I made to support the 'guitar' hold was to extend the secondary chord triggers all the way to the top (otherwise they might just have been the bottom half of what they are now). My point being that the 'guitar' hold hasn't really influenced any major design decisions so far, so I found it odd that this was being being attributed as the cause of the layout or 6-chord limit.
That said, the 'guitar' hold is now the main reason I prefer playing guitarism on iPad vs iPhone. It leverages all the muscle memory I've built up playing real guitar over the years, and thus my strumming sound way more natural with 'guitar' hold than with the 'on the table' position or on the iPhone. From a purely 'realistic sound' perspective, it's miles better than the alternatives. So I find it odd that you guys don't like to hold it that way, and I'm curious to know why. Is it because it looks and feels silly / wannabe / inauthentic? Is it because it's more work to hold it like that than let it rest on a surface? Is it because your iPad's got lots of cables hooked up to it (for midi controllers, speakers etc) and it's just infeasible to pick it up with all of that going on? I'm genuinely curious to know, because it would be pretty useful info to inform alternate layout designs.
I do hold it that way...
@mmp Can you share a photo?
I'm finding it hard to visualize your position from your description - a photo would be awesome!
@Yendor Yep that's kinda what I'm getting at, that there are multiple ways to do "more than 6" and while the simplest may be to just throw all 18 on screen at once (6 rows, 3 columns) I suspect that wouldn't be the right way to address either of the 2 primary scenarios (song with more than 6 chords, or composition). For song with more than 6 chords I'd prefer to go with some kind of a 'song section' switch that lets you switch the chords (and perhaps the guitar tone, effects etc) when going from verse to chorus to bridge etc. For composition scenarios 18 chords is probably too little, ideally it's more like 32, or perhaps "all". Would have to think about that some more but 18 definitely feels like the wrong answer for a composition scenario...
@syrupcore BTW in Chordion how do you do the "configure all the chords based on a key and root note specified by the right hand" that you mentioned? Want to try that out but couldn't find the setting to enable that...
@PaulB Yep and it sounds like you're the only one around here who does (other than me)...
I blame their parents...
I blame my parents too! Not for this though. I mostly leave it flat because that's how I do all my other ios music making. and yeah, I suppose cables and the like contribute to that. Also, I'm a terrible guitar player so looking is handy!
@rhism, sorry I had it backwards with Chordion. It configures the right side notes based on the left side chords. Good news then: You can be first!
To be clear, I never got the impression that you gimped any features for the guitar hold. I did get the impression that the guitar hold was an important design goal and that app changes were evaluated against that goal. Apologies if I got the wrong impression.
Side niggle: I find the menu difficult to open. Usually two or three tries. I imagine it was intentionally set that way to avoid opening it by accident when rocking out but, on the ipad and on my desk anyway, that's not really an issue for me.
@syrupcore Got it. Yeah so Chordion does exactly the same thing as guitarism - pick your chord on the left and that changes the notes on the right. The main difference being 10 vs 6 "strings", and that they are sustained like piano keys not like guitar strings.
As for a way to fill up a grid of chords based on a specified key, that is what the guitarism 'key' menu does... but I guess you want a way to do that without going into the menus? And of course 'more chords' is useful here but you said this would be useful even without getting more chords...
@syrupcore Useful to know wrt 2-3 tries on the menu. Tell me more about what happens on the failed tries - does the slider move a bit and then go back, or does it not start moving at all? Each of those has a different solution.
It's a slider instead of a button cos stray palms hit buttons like that all the time. It's the same reason iFretless has its settings as a slide-out view, and the AB panel as well. E.g. when the guitarism menus are open, I often find myself inadvertently leaving the guitar screen to go to the main menu because my left palm touched the 'back' button accidentally.
But I can definitely fix the "2-3 tries" issue.
@rhism said "It does assume that you're playing a song (whether yours or someone else's) for which you know the chords upfront, which is a huge assumption that runs counter to what many (most?) of you guys want. Which actually makes it surprising that you use the app at all, but also indicates a huge gap in the market that's just waiting to be filled."
I use it because it sounds good and is damn easy to play. Maybe the gap could be filled by another IAP for folks like me (us?) that don't know what we're going to play when we pick up a guitar or load up Guitarism.
FWIW, I don't think I've tried any of the other guitar sims. Got this one, like you and your presence here, done. I have futulele (sp?) but never actually open it. I bought it because I thought the iphone/ipad connection thing was clever.
@syrupcore Yeah all of this discussion is going into a 'guitarism composer' mode design
@rhism it moves part way across. I think I don't keep my finger on it long enough. My ipad battery is dead at the moment or I'd open it and double check.
Battery is back!
Chordion: I had half the idea there. If you click the little 'flats' looking icon up top you can 'generate' a chord layout. You pick the key on the left and the scale/type on the right and a set of chords is generated. Turns out, lots and lots of songs work this way.
Would love to see something like this in Guitarism.
Guitarism Menu: Verified, I don't keep my finger on it long enough. I swipe it with the same motion used to delete things in ios lists but the menu expects a concerted hold-and-slide to the end. My swipes aren't long enough for the bar indicator to make all the way out.
@syrupcore Got it - I'll adjust it to require the same amount of horizontal movement as the iOS "slide to unlock" gesture. Right now it's about twice that length which is definitely too long.
Cheers!
I like the idea of having a "simple" mode (as at present and compatible with the iPhone) and a composer mode (iPad only?) which offers more chord choices at once, with those being configurable, and maybe the option of having a number of "modifier" buttons which allow major/minor variations, 6th, 7th, Maj 7th, etc (similar to how WI-Guitar did it if I am allowed to make the comparison).
@syrupcore Chordion: actually that only seems to let me edit one chord at a time - I pick the root note on the left and the chord type on the right... unless I'm still missing something?
@syrupcore Chordion: I was on the wrong tab - I see the 'generate layout' option now. It's like the guitarism 'key' menu with many more scale type options
@rhism Under 'generate layout'? You tap the key on the left and then select from a list (blues, dorian drone, folk, major...) on the right. It should reset all of the chords in the layout when you tap one of the items in either the key or styles list.
cross post! You got it.
Shit, I didn't realize that the key menu did all of that in Guitarism. Where the hell did this awesome 'random' button come from? Well, ask and you shall receive. In this case, I received patient tech support.
@PaulB for the smart plucking thing, is there any app or other gear (PC software, hardware etc) out there that does something like this today? It's an interesting concept but a lot of code and some of the design isn't quite predictable (i.e. user-specified plucking patterns would somehow have to smartly adapt to the number of fingers/strings active). It also runs counter to my primary direction of having everything in the app be played 'live' (no sequencing etc). So it doesn't feel like a great fit for guitarism from those angles, though I agree with your underlying point that plucking strings in a given pattern is hard to do smoothly and consistently in the app today. Wondering if adding MIDI In would enable this by driving guitarism from some external arp-like thing...
@syrupcore 'random' is new in v3.2
It only generates in-key chords while helping find exotic chord types. It also preserves a sense of 'ascending order' from left-alt to main chord to right-alt. It's my first tiny step towards making the app more composition-friendly. I plan to add more scale modifiers going forward, like 'jazz' (more 7th chords) etc.
BTW which of the Chordion scale types do you tend to use most? They all look interesting though wondering if some are more novelty than truly useful.
@Rhism I just noticed that random button also. Nice.