FAQ

• Can’t find the traditional Major/Minor scales? You can find these as the Ionian and Aeolian modes in the Diatonic scale, respectively
• Tapping the ‘CHUG’ button quickly on the guitar screen will toggle palm muting on/off, as opposed to having it only enabled when it is held down.
• With the green ‘bend’ button selected on the tab screen, you can pull and bend the frets and JM will record exactly how you did it. You can also add vibrato by shaking the device.
• When you have a slide ‘/’ between two notes, JM will use the second note to determine where to end the slide. It wont however play that second note once it is reached. If you want to do this, simply add a strum up or down to that fret and that note will be played/struck at the completion of the slide.
• You can design your own drum kits, importing your own samples, and arranging the entire interface. You can also specify which midi notes each pad responds to, and invoke up this from an external sequencer/hardware. You can load up to 16 of these custom drum kits simultaneously and do this. Any custom drum kits can then be easily exported and shared with anyone else, and can also be embedded into any .jam file you save so anyone that opens the.jam file wont have to worry about missing samples. See the tutorial video here.
• Each instrument can be transmitted separately through its own channel to a DAW using Audiobus. Example video here
• Tired of entering Stop ‘*’ signals everywhere in the tab? Just double tap the tab screen and select the notes you want, then hit the Stop/Sweep button and it will apply these automatically.
• Don’t forget you can triple tap the tab to affect all instruments simultaneously. Eg pressing DUP BAR with triple tap selected with duplicate all bars across all instruments.
• Try the ‘toggle’ fret release mode with the midi/IAA instrument selected. If you do it with a continuous patch (say violin) its quite fun.

Chances are you had previously enabled ‘Pre-decompress Samples’ under Main Menu, Options, Performance. When you restored the backup it didn’t save the samples that you have pre-decompressed, so they are missing. To fix this simply disable and re-enable the soundpacks that you have pre-decompressed.
(Note however, no one should be using pre-decompressed sound files any more… it was for devices iPhone 4 and older! Yes Jam Maestro is that old)

In the tab screen touch the +4/4 button at the top of the side bar, and then swipe your finger off to the left. This pops out a menu where you can select different time signatures to add to your tab.

Jam Maestro can open the following formats:

Jam Maestro files:

• .jam: Standard file format
• .jamzip: Standard file format with any used custom drum kits bundled inside
• .jmdmidi: Custom Midi Drum Kit layout
• .jmdzip: Custom User-made Drum Kit (with bundled samples inside)

Other:

• .mid: Midi files
• .gp3, .gp4, .gp5: Guitar Pro files (version 3 to 5)

You can do this quite easily using the midi or inter-app audio instruments. Easiest way is to add an inter-app audio instrument and select a 3rd party app (for example, Thumbjam works great) with the sounds that you want to use. This way you can play and sequence the sounds from the background app using Jam Maestro.

This is an unlikely implementation at this stage. It would be no easy task, and would require some rethinking on how the sound engine works. Hardest of all however would be working out how to represent this graphically in the tab.

Answers on a postcard?

There are 4 IAA Effects slots which you can assign to different effects apps. These slots are shared across all instruments. As such before an effect will be applied to each instrument you have to select that instrument and the IAA Effects panel and then drag that app icon down to enable it for that particular instrument.

When in the tab mode swipe the middle bar left until you get to the green buttons with bend/slide/hammer on/pull-off.

To use, toggle a button and then use the strings on the strum bar to choose which string you want to assign it to. Generally you should place one of these note effects between two other notes for it to have an effect. You can also assign it directly to a note if you’re short on space.

When bend is selected you can also physically bend a fret (or shake the device for vibrato) and Jam Maestro will record exactly how you did it.

When you have a slide ‘/’ between two notes, JM will use the second note to determine where to end the slide. It wont however play that second note once it is reached. If you want to do this, simply add a strum up or down to that fret and that note will be played/struck at the completion of the slide.

Older versions of Jam Maestro used to have IAP for additional soundpacks, however all soundpacks are now included as standard with Jam Maestro, so you already have them.

The only IAP left is one for the Mod Effects on the effects screen, which you can choose to unlock via IAP or by writing an AppStore review.

Yep, just go into the tuning settings and select 7 string guitar.

You can also set a custom tuning for a particular instrument if you don’t want to make all insturments 7 string guitar / 5 string bass. Just press the little ‘edit’ button in the bottom fright corner of your instrument when looking at the main menu launch screen. From here scroll down to Tuning and select ‘Use Custom Tuning’. This will often give you more extended tuning options than updating the global tuning setting.

As of version 3.5 this is now possible. You can also use an 8 string guitar / 6 string bass with the midi or inter-app audio instruments. To do this simply go to the instrument edit screen and edit the tuning for that specific instrument.

Sigh! You people always want more strings and lower tunings!

Not to worry, I have added in the ability to do 8 string guitars. However you will have to supply your own sound as the samples I originally recorded everything with don’t go low enough to support 8 string guitar.

To add an 8 string guitar (or 6 string bass), go

• Add Instrument
• Select either the Inter-App Audio instrument or Midi Instrument (like I said, you will have to supply your own sound by connecting it to a 3rd party background audio app that has a guitar sound that goes that low)
• On the right hand side select Custom tuning
• Select 8 string along the top

You can set this already yourself in the app. When selecting tuning just press the ‘Custom’ button in the bottom right and define the tuning yourself.

Possible custom tuning now ranges down to
A2 D G C F A (6-7 semitones lower than standard)
all the way up to:
A3 D G B E G (3-5 semitones higher than standard).

Go to the tab screen and press the blue MAIN button at the top. Then press ‘Export to Tab’.

Yes! Go to the tab screen, then press the blue MAIN button at the top. From here press Export Selection or Export Track (depending on what you want to do), and select the file type as MIDI.

Yes! You can import Guitar Pro 3-5 files (gp3, gp4, gp5)

Maybe, but if I do it I would like to couple velocity control on the interface with the ability to control velocity in the tab, which is a much greater task.

No. I would love to do that but it would only happen if I decided to rewrite the whole app and build this in from the ground up. The way JM is designed is really incompatible with such a model/interface.

You can still add piano sounds though, just connect your Inter-App Audio or Midi ‘instrument’ to a background piano app!

Yes! To enable go to Options, Midi, scroll down to ‘Dedicated Midi Hardware Controller’ and set the channel to ‘Midi Guitar’. This will unlock a new Midi Guitar menu on the tab screen (bottom of the right hand bar), which will allow you to set how far you want to step through the tab (eg. 8th, 16th etc) as you record each note.

Android has come a long way with its audio ability in the last 10 years but its still not quite as reliable as iOS in regards to audio playback.

Writing an Android version would be basically like writing a whole new app from scratch thogh. If I ever made an Android version it would be part of a total rewrite that included a desktop version I guess.