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 😎
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.
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.
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@lmenus agreed. Can't wait to exit directly as a sound file
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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
@lmenus We are on it, in the next updates we will have the sharing fixed. Thanks for the feedback!
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@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!
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It is a great app for anyone who loves music.
Pros:
It is very much fun and you don't need to be a professional musician
Great Fun and inspirational for everybody, Finally an app you don't mind your kids play.They actually do use their creativity and its not just a simultation from the app. Easy handling so also my smaller nieces could join, and they actually made a banging hiphopbeat. Totally in love with this app, excited to see where this goes!
Pros:
It's so fun to make some dope beats together, even with small kids
Cons:
sometimes a bit chaos to delete the loops while playing to make a new loop
Lika, thanks for the comments! Actually, you don't always need to delete the loop. You can just start playing on top of the created loop, and new sounds will overwrite previous ones (only if sounds overlap in the same loop bar)
Just spend an hour on this fantastic stuff even though never got over even the most basic music-making apps. Love your sharing templates! Small bug report: more often than not "clear loop" button freezes dark but the loop keeps playing.
@jane_palash Hey could it be that you were not on the right channel? Quick tip! Press and hold on the "clear loop" button to delete all loops at the same time :D
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This is pretty neat. I love seeing new perspectives on music creation. Modern DAWs provide complexity ad infinitum, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but seeing new ways to introduce people to music creation is always exciting.
One thing I might recommend is improving the music in the demo. “Produce hit songs” is a bold claim and should be backed up with some proof showing something close to a hit song could be made with this. It doesn’t need to be as complicated, but simple beat making is a far cry from the complexity of a fully realized piece of music.
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Jambl
Jambl
Jambl
It is a great app for anyone who loves music.
Pros:It is very much fun and you don't need to be a professional musician
Cons:Perhaps early bugs?
Jambl
Great Fun and inspirational for everybody, Finally an app you don't mind your kids play.They actually do use their creativity and its not just a simultation from the app. Easy handling so also my smaller nieces could join, and they actually made a banging hiphopbeat. Totally in love with this app, excited to see where this goes!
Pros:It's so fun to make some dope beats together, even with small kids
Cons:sometimes a bit chaos to delete the loops while playing to make a new loop
Jambl
Setapp
Jambl
Jambl
Hustle Crew Academy
Every music fan has dreamed of producing / composing a track, love how this makes it easy for everyone to try.
Pros:Super intuitive, within a minute had a hip hop track on the go.
Cons:Would be great to have an easy undo button for when you make a track change you don't want anymore. Maybe I just haven't found it yet.
Jambl