Hi All, ThumbJam, an iOS music performance app, is on sale at 86% off its regular $6.99 price for four days (today, Friday June 15, 2012 through Monday June 18). Anyone who has or has considered Garageband on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and any educators who are exploring iPad apps for music education purposes should be interested in this app. The developer has done a fantastic job with the latest version of Thumbjam in implementing the direct touch feature that allows you to use this app to play and record music with VoiceOver turned on.
You have an extensive choice of instrument sounds that you can select from the "Sound" button in the top left corner. The app starts up with a default instrument preset of "Electric Guitar", but you can browse through an alphabetical list of all available sounds, or change the tab setting after double tapping "Change Instrument" to "Category", for example, to browse through instrument options by heading (e.g. "Acoustic", "Bass", "Brass", "Guitar", "Keyboard", "Percussion", "Strings", "Synth", or "Woodwind"). You can also download new sound/instrument samples that you can add to your app, and select from a huge range of scale types. Apart from the instrument and scale selection from the "Sound" button in the top left corner of the screen, you set your main options with buttons along the left side of the screen, starting with "Key controls" just below the "Sound" button. You can hide the sidebar buttons after you configure the app. The "Prefs" button in the bottom right corner has a switch button to turn the "Show Sidebar" to "off". On the iPad, with its large playing area that I prefer for using this app, I generally leave the sidebar buttons up, for easy access to recording button options and toggling on/off a metronome, as an alternative to using the "Loop" button in the top right corner. To hide the main corner buttons for "Sound" (top left), "Loop" (top right), "Edit (bottom left), and "Prefs" (bottom right), you can double tap the "Edit" button in the bottom left corner and then double tap "Hide Menus". The three other buttons in the top left, top right, and bottom right corners will disappear, and the "Edit" button in the bottom left will now be announced as "Menu". To bring back the corner control buttons, do a double split tap on the "Menu" button in the bottom left corner. (Touch the "Menu" button with one finger, and double tap on the screen with another finger.) This application has a staggering number of features and configurable options, but can also be used immediately in a very simple way. There's also extensive help and support information both at the developer's web site and the associated user forums, and in the help information built into the app. Access this from the "Prefs" button at the bottom right corner, double tap the "Help" entry to bring up the "ThumbJam User Guide. ThumbJam was recommended by a few users on the macvisionaries list two years ago and was subsequently discussed a few times on the viphone list. At that time, while the controls were announced, they weren't labeled as buttons, and you had to turn VoiceOver off to play music. Even then, users found the variety of sound effects that could be generated (tremolo, vibrato, pitch blends, etc.) simply by finger action, sliding touch along horizontal or vertical directions, or tilting the device, was quite impressive. Version 2 brought correct labeling of controls, but left out a few headings and labels that were previously announced (like the selected instrument and the scale and key -- these are now correctly announced since version 2.1; either do a two finger flick down or flick right from the "Loop" button in the top right corner, and you'll hear the instrument announced. For the scale and key, either do a two finger flick down or flick right twice from the "Prefs" button in the bottom right corner, and you'll hear scale and key announced.) Version 2.1 introduced direct touch. When VoiceOver announces "Play area" (when you touch the center of the screen, or the right edge of the screen between the "Loop" and "Prefs" button), you can just start "playing" your instrument by directly touching the device without any need to disable VoiceOver. There's a review of ThumbJam up at the AppleVis site. I believe that Victor Tsaran has been working with the developer, and may be able to comment on the detailed use of some of the other features, like recording. I highly recommend this app, especially at the limited time, discounted price of $0.99. HTH. Cheers, Esther -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
