Jam Maestro Version 3.0 Live.

StormJH1

@JamMaestro - I cannot confirm that all of them are what you would call "royalty-free" or permissible for commercial use. I do not produce music commercially, nor am I an app developer. So free distribution for private use is usually sufficient for my needs. So I cannot recommend using those in your app, though you can literally Google Search for them by name and investigate the same sources, and possibly even contact them directly if there is something you would really like to use. None of them were rips of commercial products or anything like that - but I don't know the rules on if some dude has a Ludwig kit in his basement and samples it like Derek did...who then "owns" those sounds for commercial purposes?

That's great that some of Derek's drums are already in Jam Maestro, no wonder they were so good! Of course, the one I had from him had like 100 different .wav files, so you could make several different varied kits based on that.

JamMaestro

@StormJH1 - definitely. People could also still make their own kits, export them, and share them with their friends for private use too - just cant be shipped with the app.

@funjunkie27 well all samples are 6 seconds long, so basically you just want a way of choosing how long the chord sustains for? Wouldn't you just keep your finger on the note/chord to keep it held for as long as you want it?

funjunkie27

Sure...for midi input, I would just hold the note for the duration I want. I guess I'm confused about how the decay plays into creating a keyboard interface and how to work around that.

JamMaestro

Sorry Russ, still a bit confused midi input into JM or using JM as a midi controller? Decay of notes in external apps via midi is harder as how do you do it? Adjusting the master volume would affect the volume of all the notes, and not all apps support after-touch velocity. Is that what you mean?

StormJH1

@JamMaestro - I meant to ask you (since it's rare to get the opportunity to ask direct Q's of a developer), does the app allow for exporting an ENTIRE custom kit to another user? So maybe I put a full kit together with 9 .wav files and call it "Pearl Drum Kit", can I then email/send the whole thing (with pad arrangement, photos assigned, etc.) as a drum kit file to myself? I'd like to copy the kits from my iPad to an iPhone rather than doing it twice, or perhaps swap them with other users.

Also, any limitation (other than device memory) on how many can be stored in the app?

JamMaestro

@StormJH1 sure once you have your kit made, go into the Drum 'Select Soundpack' screen, scroll down to your kit and there will be and EDIT and EXPORT button next to it. Press EXPORT and it'll zip it into a neat package you can give your friends and put it in your documents directory. If you then want to put that in your dropbox hit the Import Drumpack button (this is where your friends would import the kit you gave them) select the kit you made and press the export to dropbox icon on the right hand side. You can see this in that tutorial video at 7mins 47secs here:

So yeah, just do that, save to your dropbox, and then open your iPhone version and select the dropbox tab on that import screen and you'll be able to import it exactly as it was on your iPad.

There is a current artificial limit of 40 custom drum kits applied, but if somehow you manage to hit that, you can always backup your kits using Export and just store the ones you're not using in your docments directory/dropbox if you like, then you can switch out your top 40 favourite drums kits into the rotation as you need. I can't imagine many people are going to hit that 40 limit but if it really becomes a problem I can just change a couple of numbers

EDIT: lol just noticed someone down thumbed that tutorial video. A tutorial video! People are hilarious.

SpookyZoo

@JamMaestro ...all good now. The update hadn't fully downloaded as I tried the preset. My mistake.

WOW! What an incredible implementation, and the app updates are fantastic. Much hardwork must have gone into this. Congrats, it looks awesome.

JamMaestro

@SpookyZoo said:

Much hardwork must have gone into this.

haha, yeah I'm not sad its over lol. Thanks man!

funjunkie27

Let me give this some more thought David. I'm not sure what I'm getting at, at this point. Too funny on the thumbs down! Some people!

StormJH1

@JamMaestro - Okay, that is perfect! Again, that's the type of thing an individual developer who actually USES products like this considers. I doubt I would hit 40 kits at one time, but the fact that I can assemble them, and then ship them off to DropBox for excess storage (much the same way I do with the libraries of .wav files above) is great!

This may end up being my central hub for drum sounds, at least for rock-oriented stuff. It has both the library of drum sounds and the export options you'd want to be part of the workflow!

I did also play around briefly with using other Apps through IAA, like you mentioned - that seemed to work pretty cool.

[Deleted User]

@mgmg4871 said:

I would like to hear PaulB's take on implementing the keyboard in JM.

Using the keyboard to play which instrument?

mgmg4871

@PaulB To play IAA apps I'm guessing, unless David is planning on adding other instruments. I was asking to hear your thoughts on a reasonable way to translate notes from keyboard to tab without using 88 lines. Thanks.

funjunkie27

I was referring to IAA apps when I mentioned it.

[Deleted User]

Well, tab only makes sense as notation for guitar. The limitations of what can be played (and thus notated) are those of the guitar, which means 6 note polyphony only. The interface doesn't matter. If it happens to be a keyboard, you should still only be able to play 6 notes at a time. I'd be tempted to take a look at how tab translates on to a keyboard (which is easy), to get insight into what kind of decisions would have to be made to recreate the initial tab in each case. Then you could work out your rules for translating up to 6 simultaneous keyboard notes to tab.

mgmg4871

Thanks @PaulB I'm thinking the biggest issue is translating 8 octaves of keyboard to tab.

funjunkie27

With 12 lines, could you just have a line for each note in an octave than add a number above the tab to indicate which octave it is in? I suppose the problem there would be chords that span across more than one octave though.

[Deleted User]

The limits are still those of a guitar. Nothing outside that range could be translated.

mgmg4871

I had an idea of having 88 tab lines vertically, like a piano roll, but scrolling upwards. David brought me back to reality, because that would require changing, or creating a new design.

JamMaestro

@PaulB You're not thinking big enough! We're not trying to translate piano notes to guitar tab per se, it doesn't have to be 6 strings with 23 frets. We just need an intelligent way to display piano notes in a sensible, intuitive and readable way without having to dramatically change the engine. @funjunkie27 's idea is a good one and one I've had before, but like he says, octaves become the problem if you do that.

Things to consider:

• How many total notes do you conceivably want to be able to played simultaneously. This would be your number of strings (aka channels, when you play a different note on that channel, whatever was playing before will be replaced).
• The perfect way to do it would obviously be to have 88 strings, each with only 1 potential note for each string, so every key would be independent. But obviously managing 88 strings on the screen is going to be entirely impractical, not to mention graphically it will rape the GPU for everything it has and leave everything going very jerky.
• As such you need a way of condensing that into a more managable set of channels.
• funjunkies dedicated string per note type idea is good as it maintains pitch hierarchal order, its just how to solve the multiple same notes across octaves issue.
• One idea is instead of fret numbers, literally have the notes (eg C, C#, D) etc. You could colour code them depending on the octave. Then just assign them to whatever channel/string is free and not playing anything at the time. Only problem with that is they wont maintain hierarchal pitch order, they'll just be assigned to the strings in a first come first serve order so it'll be jumbled and hard to read. Could have a way of retroactively jumping notes on higher strings if something lower is played etc, but that could get messy.

[Deleted User]

That's a different proposition then. If it's not tab, just using a tab layout, why restrict it to 1 note per channel?

JamMaestro

1 note per channel or 1 note per channel at a time? Not suggesting the former if thats what you mean?

[Deleted User]

I meant the second.

JamMaestro

Well.. channels is just a abstract concept in this sense really. Ultimately they're all files that get mixed together and pushed to the speaker as one sound wave. The concept of channels and strings though is so that the user can easily control the note duration (you can tell notes to stop by entering a * notation on the string or play another note). Otherwise you need to implement a music notation style concept where you have crochets, quavers etc that define how long a note is going to be from the outset. I find when you're quickly trying to sketch out ideas though that becomes very counter-productive so I'd rather stay away from that style.

[Deleted User]

I think perhaps the piano keyboard is the only thing where I understand what you're planning. I've not used your app much, although I like playing with the instruments, so I haven't come across the tab-as-sequencer feature you seem to be describing. I'll stop here, in the interests of not confusing things any further...

[Deleted User]

Ok, I think I may be up to speed on this now. You want to notate stuff entered on a keyboard in this section of the app, yes?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=647244352021104&set=gm.642058202515464&type=1&theater

JamMaestro

Correct

mmp

I think it would be a lot of trouble to go all the way with quavers etc. Might as well implement standard notation, which might be overkill and not fit the purpose of sketching ideas.

How about twelve strings, from C to G# with numbers indicating the octave and * for a sustained note. So a middle C triad chord would look like this:

C 4

C# =

D -

D# =

E 4

F -

F# =

G 4

G# =

A -

A# =

B -

The black key strings might be displayed as a thicker or double line ('=' in the example)

Edit: the formatting in this forum collapses multiple spaces, here it is again, a bit clearer without the note names:

4

=

-

=

4

-

=

4

=

-

=

-

[Deleted User]

Ok, then I'd go with the channel per semitone idea, 12 in total, with the number in the channel indicating which octave, and colour code the numbers and symbols for each octave as well so that you can see which stop mark applies to which octave's note. You won't be able to indicate any exactly superimposed octaves, but if you display them tight together, with perhaps an underscore, or an oval around them, it would get the meaning across.

mmp

Two columns close together for each time slice, one each for each hand? Pairs separated by a thin line, or alternating white and gray backgrounds?

JamMaestro

Hey guys. On phone atm so can't go into too much detail. Each 16th note in the tab can be split into 2 to make 2x 32nd notes. As such whatever notation is used it can't really be more than 2 characters. As things start getting pretty squished after then.

Perhaps a rule could be: if you're playing a C4 C5 octave, the C5 could be assigned to a bunch of ambiguous strings that can be assigned to anything. So 12 static note strings, and 5 dynamic strings or something?