Jambl (formerly known as Polyjamer) is an app that uses algo-rhythmic intuition to help you create awesome beats. You can jam with friends, share your creations, and the founder Gad is a pretty decent rapper 😎
This is awesome! It took me roughly 3 minutes to create my first beat. This would take forever with the tools I'm used to. You can listen to it here - https://soundcloud.com/lmenus/tr.... My mind is racing with the possibilities now, really looking forward to Polyjamer's future!
One thing for Makers, the sharing at the moment is a bit of pain. I managed to save the export to my Dropbox in .mov format, but this couldn't be uploaded to YouTube, Twitter or SoundCloud. So I had to convert it to .mp4 before being able to SoundCloud.
More feedback - I find my loops get altered at some point, not sure how to reproduce it. But the loop gets cut off. Would be good to not only see when a note is played at the bottom (white flash), but also which note it is (flash the specific button too). This would help with reporting the bug above but also when composing I’d see which ones are activated.
@lmenus Thanks for the feedback! We know its a bit buggy at the moment, and you will have much improved sharing and export features during 2018 so follow us on social to keep updated!!!! Love the love.. gad
@marika_saridi@gadhinkis Hey, here's more feedback as I promised on Twitter. I didn't expect a buggy experience at first, I will take that into consideration now. Anyway, here's more. I am running iPhone 6 Plus on iOS 11.2.
Bugs:
- When I go into mixer and press '+' or '-', it mutes that channel. Not inside the app, it just goes dead silent. No way to fix this other than restart.
- Layout bug. This is my pet peeve, but you can interact with the main dashboard even if the popups are open. I'd just overlay the screen to prevent any inadvertent touches.
- Sometimes when transitioning from Spotify to Polyjamer, iOS wouldn't switch audio to Polyjamer and keep playing Spotify instead. I'd guess this is a bug on your side related to the iOS permissions?
- When you tap delete saved tracks, the layout changes to a list, but every item has also a tick icon on the right. This doesn't make sense as you can't select multiple songs, so it's rather confusing (Does it delete all my songs since they are all ticker? Turns out, no.). I'd remove that tick icon.
- As mentioned above, sometimes the channel loop gets cut off (seemingly randomly). I noticed it only on the melody channel so far. I can't give you exact steps to replicate, but I'd usually play along for a while and have quite a long beat going on. Perhaps there's an issue with having too many active 'bars'? It reminds me of a buffer overflow. Let's say you would have memory allocated only for 4 sounds. You fill the memory by having a drum on every 1/4 beat -> 4 x 1/4. So the next attempt to add a sound would throw out the other sounds. Does that make sense? Might not be the issue, but that's my first thought.
- I can tap into loop timeline, but it doesn't seem to do anything, even though it highlights that specific bar.
Feature suggestions:
- Change tempo? It is listed in mixer already, would be nice to be able to change it.
- Opening saved tracks could load them into the dashboard too, so I can keep working on them or remixing them at any point. Currently the app is "in the present," meaning what happens in Polyjamer stays in Polyjamer. I worry if I have 10% battery that I will lose my progress forever, since there is no way to save my progress (only the final track).
- There is no simple way to rename a saved track. I have to save it as a new copy and delete the old one to do this.
- I noticed you mention Ableton in your comment. I'm rather surprised the dashboard layout doesn't resemble the typical keypads more (https://goo.gl/bDJ671). Curious to find out why you chose the current zig-zag layout, but the keypad layout would be more intuitive for me personally.
- As mentioned previously, if I could see which bars are currently getting played at each note, that would be useful. I read above that if I play a sound at the same loop bar as already defined, it gets overwritten. This would be helpful to see visually. It would also help with tweaking sounds. If I need to change a note, right now I am pretty much guessing what the sequence looked like. If I could just remove one note, it would be much easier.
- What makes the app fun is that it's dead simple. But at some point, I'd like to get deeper into it. If you can figure out how to include more sounds for each channel, that'd be great (currently limited to 4 types of sound for each depending on the style). I don't know your roadmap and features like this would make you look more like FL Studio for iPhone, but it could be useful?
- On that tangent, what this app seems to be ideal for is social, where the professional tools suck. I can imagine a list of hot tracks I could load up and remix as much as I like. After all, I suck at beat making so maybe I could use others for inspiration. Think of it like GitHub for music - you could fork others' beats and post your own remixes. I am sure you have many other ideas.
- Having a single loop is very limiting. Would be great to have the option to switch between more loops somehow.
- Getting very creative here, but I realise the screen estate is a limiting factor on phones. Maybe one day you could issue commands with your voice? I just thought you could have a beat going on and say "loop off" and the current channel loop would switch off. Romantic idea.
Other:
- Can't wait for the redesign. Sorry, I am a design freak. I know MVPs lack in this aspect, still wanted to mention it. 😁
I could go on forever, but I'll stop here. I don't know you guys, but I liked the pitch and hopefully you'll get to execute your vision. Good luck!
TBH, I thought I would hate the rap pitch. I was wrong. 💕
I'm a fan of music-making apps. My favorite discovery in the past year is Pacemaker. Downloading Polyjamer now.
Thank you for the support guys! I can tell you the product is really at its baby pikachu mode right now, we have so much amazing music tech to offer down the road :D
Someone asked me how i came up with the Polyjamer technique...
So the story is i have been rapping, performing and producing music since 2001.
I was always jealous of my friends that could play guitar or drums because they could invent new music live as they were playing their instrument. I set on a journey to find a way to produce music as intuitively and fast as possible, from my head through my hands to peoples ears all in the same moment.
I have been experimenting and developing my own techniques as everything in the market was expensive and boring. I used my tools in my live shows with my Elctro-swing band @DirtyHonkers (what what!).
When i made the first prototype of the Polyjamer music Algo-Rhythm, i used the trackpad on my macbook, i think i might have played with it for 2 hours straight without noticing the time pass, my mind went into a place i love, a state of flow.
A year later i invited friends to a birthday/pizza jam session, we had 4 devices running sounds from Ableton. We played and improvised for 3 hours without stopping (except for pizza). The experience was slightly mind altering, Oxytocin levels were through the roof. That was all the validation i needed.
I want to open this door to all the people in the world, and show that musical experience is for everyone!
Thanks again <3
Gad
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