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Post by Jerome on Jun 13, 2020 16:53:50 GMT 1
The image helped me understand the problem. JJazzLab 2.1.1 asks you only if you use the popupmenu to change timesignature (select time signature then right-click menu). It's a bug, it should ask you whatever the way you change the time signature, it will be fixed in next release.
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aum
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Post by aum on Jul 2, 2020 23:42:44 GMT 1
first of all, congrats, superb app, perfect for practice, user-friendly (drag-drop parts, love it...) and pretty intuitive = easy to use
i installed it on mint linux, works like a charm, bow !
feature request: 1) transpose complete song up/down, by half-step; ie, if song is in A major, and goes A A E A, up-arrow key would transpose complete song to A# A# E# (=F) A#, etc up the chromatic scale, down-arrow key would transpose to Ab Ab Eb Ab, etc down the chromatic scale - purpose = i have a song in one key, but would want to play/sing in another key
2) mini 'player' - hide all but 'chord leadsheet editor', and minimize this chord leadsheet (into small squares), and put it at the bottom (or top) of the screen, and indicate playhead/color the played bar (same as already is) - purpose = if i have ie. pdf with scales or lyrics, as a 'background', for a practice/learning purpose, and i also have (playing) chord progression over this scale/text pdf. (i have figured out how to closely mimic above mini player - starting with app maximized, click button between 'minimize' and 'close', then scale the app window to ie bottom of the screen, minimize mixer window group, and minimize song structure window group, and also set zoom-X to 0, and zoom-y to 100 - voila ! mini player, lol; we just need 'always-on-top' button now, though this can be achieved with workaround (select pdf app first, then jjazzlab next))
improvement suggestion: 1) dark theme; mint linux with dark theme as default, makes app menus etc dark - ok; but chord leadsheet editor's background is white/light theme; also song structure editor and mixer editor backgrounds are light; i have managed to get approximate desired result, but not all sub-window items can be set - the desired look of the app is not achieved. i used 'tools / options / editor', and set colors for available fields.
overall, i am (as others too) impressed with the app. bow !
btw, space key for play/stop works ok for me (linux mint)
thanks a ton for sharing, superb app,
have fun,
aum s love nia
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Post by Jerome on Jul 3, 2020 9:46:51 GMT 1
Thanks for your nice words aum and constructive feedback! Transpose song: Just to make sure, you can already do what you propose : select all chord symbols with ctrl-A, then transpose with ctrl-up/down key or mouse whee or righ-click menu. It's a very good idea to do sharps on transpose up and flats on transpose down, I'll add this feature! I will also add an action "Select all chord symbols" in the context menus. Mini player: I understand. In the todo-list ( here ) there is already the task to add a kind of player window like you want, with the possibility to transpose it just for reading (e.g. for instrument with different tonality like sax). I think I'll try to implement it for the next version. Dark theme: Agree, I'd like to have a dark theme for JJazzLab. Could you send me your customized color changes ? This would save me some work... To do this: - in the menu Help/About locate the "Netbeans user dir" location - Go to this <netbeans user directory>/config, and make a zip of the "preferences" directory tree - attach it to the post Thanks !
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aum
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Post by aum on Jul 4, 2020 13:41:52 GMT 1
olo,
since i am by default windows user (not proud, lol), i had some troubles locating this folder, nevertheless, i hope i got the right one, if not, let me know. it is attached.
be kindly warned, i only did a quick 'theme' modification, just to see what can i achieve. hope it helps.
best regards,
aum s love nia
Attachments:Preferences.zip (7.6 KB)
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aum
New Member
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Post by aum on Jul 4, 2020 19:00:51 GMT 1
lol, jjazzlab rules ! its got 'loop selection' option, on r-click, though, my first look was at 'loop playback' button suggestion: - similar as for 'precount' button, let ctrl-click of 'loop playback' btn toggle btw 'loop all' & 'loop selection'
cant praise jjz enough, really like it i did mentioned/recommended it on irc today, added link too, of course.
as for melody or scores, if they are in plan, didnt check, you could make jjz compatible with musescore. also intuitive and easy to use notation app. you probably know it, because musescore uses A B C etc keys for input, and, lo, i tried it in jjz, it worked, lol, out of the box ! 8) & <3
and i love hover-over-chord-name chord tones tooltip. you indeed are genious, jerome, i believe ?
viva 'l jjz,
lol,
have fun,
aum s love nia
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aum
New Member
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Post by aum on Jul 4, 2020 21:52:09 GMT 1
suggestion
might add txt field for lyrics, not sure how it would turn out
s love nia
PS: from 'rhythm selection dialog' -> '... providers' = YamJJazzStandard styles (125) -> #4 UrbanFunk.S066.STY > if SubRhythm is muted, this style is usable; with SubRhythm, it sounds weird
PPS: can you dedicate space key to play/stop/pause, like globally ? currently, it needs 'chord leadsheet editor' focus to work. thx
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Post by Jerome on Jul 7, 2020 14:56:08 GMT 1
@ aumThanks for the .zip! yes, good idea. Do you have the issue when you use FluidSynth+JJazzLabSoundFont.sf2 ? (and apply the corresponding Output Synth preset, see www.jjazzlab.com/en/doc/fluidsynth)Can't reproduce: on my Windows config it works if chord leadsheet, song structure editor or mix console is active.
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riske
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Post by riske on Jul 23, 2020 10:37:43 GMT 1
My toughts on how to make JJazzLab better. JazzLab is a midi based application. So JJazzLab is a Jambuddy (who automatically generates backing tracks.)
My first question was : WHAT SHOULD MY JAMBUDDY BE ABLE TE DO ?
A questionnaire about this
As a singer song (RE)writer it gives me an interpretation of the chosen music style. It would be nice to have a printable measure based lyrics and or notation score. About styles :each style is an interpretation of the software supplier and may differ.
Changing the accompaniment instruments should be possible.
Thanks for the attention, JJazzLab is an easy and quick learning programm, congrats. Riske
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riske
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Post by riske on Jul 23, 2020 19:14:44 GMT 1
Share thoughts
Changing the accompaniment instruments should be possible.
It is already possible , just click on the instrument name and you'll see all the available instruments.
It is not specified in the manual.
Great program Thanks Jerome
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riku
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Post by riku on Aug 4, 2020 18:36:17 GMT 1
Just found this piece of software and I'm so glad that there's a free and more accessible version of a "band in a box" concept! I'm especially glad to find that there's so many jazzy/funky genres included, because they are my primary interests and too often they either tend to be a minority or completely missing. So I think that this will genuinely end up being more than just a curiosity to me! I managed to create a few files already, getting used to it. However, there are some things that come to mind based on today's experience:
1) It would be great to transpose entire song without changing the chord markings that you see. What I did was type in song structures from existing sheet music, but more often that not, I have to transpose songs to fit my voice, and I have that + or - value marked on my sheet music papers. As a workaround, I selected all the chords and hit cmd+up/down until they were right. But I don't like this method because then the chord markings will look unfamiliar as they don't match the sheet music that I'm accustomed to seeing. So I'd love to see the same chord markings in my JJazzLab file that I see in the actual sheet music, but (out of sight) transpose the entire song's playback, just like I can transpose everything that I play on my electric piano, without having to actually figure out what the transposed chords would be and play those. Most DAWs also allow you to transpose the data on playback without modifying the original MIDI data. I understand that this setting would have to specifically be smart enough to apply transposing on all the other instruments except for drums.
2) Ability to completely disable browsing chords by mouse scroll! It seems to constantly get on the way and mess things up. I imagine this probably works with a mouse that has a clearly incremental scroll wheel so you can actually browse those chords one by one and controllably land on something, and, you don't scroll accidentally. But I have an Apple Magic Mouse which scrolls by touch motion (and other brands using this same technology exist). With this mouse, scrolling things like web pages and user interfaces is fine, it scrolls at an ideal speed. But with the scroll-to-change chords, the tiniest touch of the mouse's back will easily scroll through a dozen or so chords. With the precision that a mouse like this has, it's impossible to use the chord scroll feature in a meaningful way. What's more, I constantly found my song getting all messed up, often without me noticing: When I'm scrolling the actual interface just to go up and down the view, it seems like the scroll input will be randomly directed to scroll wither the actual interface or some random poor chord. So in one movement, I might end up scrolling up the view and changing some chords, often missing the latter and just finding out later that something doesn't sound right. Be honest: Which one do you think you'll be doing more often, scrolling the song view up and down, or changing an individual chord that you have already typed in? In other words, is the chord scroll feature prioritised right? I would imagine leaving scroll for just the interface up/down scrolling, and maybe dropping the chord scroll action's priority to something less obvious; For example, chord scroll could be activated by pressing down some modifier key first, and then scrolling, so you don't do it accidentally. If that's hard to implement, meanwhile I would just be really happy to have a simple setting with a checkbox to disable chord scroll! A feature "lock chords" (prevent editing) could also do the same thing.
3) This one might be just me being new to this and not knowing how, but I have this song that ends with two bars of various chord hits. One chord hit's duration should last over a bar line, and the next hit comes on the second bar's second beat. However, I can't get this to sound right, because the 'hold' of that chord gets reset when the next bar starts, so the instruments resume the rhythmic comping from the 1st beat of the next bar instead of waiting for the next chord hit. So I suppose the actual feature is, being able to have the previous bar's chord hit continue over the bar line OR being able to start a bar with a rest instead of a chord.
4) In a way it would be great to be able to select custom VSTs for sounds, to make some of the less sophisticated sounds sound a whole lot better. But at the same time I understand that it could bloat things, including my workflow: Too much options and tweaking tends to get on the way of working, and it's a great way to procrastinate and not get actual work done! So simplicity and lack of fancy stuff that would make it more about music production is exactly what makes it so easy to create things quickly and be done with it. But perhaps, by creating just the right templates and being good at workspace management would make custom VSTs not a threat but an opportunity? This one is really just a thought, not something that I would see as essential for JJazzLab to be a good and productive piece of software.
5) You really would expect space bar to always start/stop playback no matter what, but it doesn't. This can be quite the workflow killer when you're jamming on your actual instrument and have to constantly reach out for the computer mouse in order to click a tiny button. (Instead of start/stop, it seems to feel like typing spaces into the tempo box in the top toolbar, for example)
It definitely feels like a non-native Mac app with several very Windows-like inconsistencies. I also noticed that simple scrolling of the view already makes my computer's fan speeds increase, even though it's not a heavy process in itself and I have a nice workhorse of a machine. In comparison, DAWs with actually quite complex automation and modeling don't make the fans speed up that much.
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Post by Jerome on Aug 5, 2020 10:47:58 GMT 1
@ riku Thank you for you feedback, that's really useful! You're right, I develop on Windows, I make a few tests on Linux, and even less tests on Mac (I don't have one), that's why there are often more UI problems on Mac. 1/ "Play transposed"This feature will be in the next 2.2 release, it's been asked several times. 2/ "Disabled transpose via mouse-wheel on Mac"I've heard about this issue but it was not super clear to me as I could not reproduce it on Mac. I now better understand. You guessed it right, my mouse-wheel scrolls by unitary steps, it's very convenient. As described at the bottom of this help page mouse-wheel+modifier are already used. But I can easily change that. It could become : zoom = ctrl-wheel on Windows, command-wheel on Mac (unchanged) transpose chord = shift-wheel on Windows and Mac change chord type = alt-wheel on Windows, ctrl-wheel on Mac (actually this one is more a gadget feature, could be removed...) OK ? It will be in the next 2.2 release 3/ "'hold' of that chord gets reset when the next bar starts"A "hold" should last until next chord symbol, even if it's 3 bars away. But note that NOT ALL instruments are hold until next chord, percussion or phrase-oriented channels are not hold for example. Drums holds between 1 or 2 beats depending on tempo. If you select the checkbox "Extended hold/shot" you'll have more instruments follow the "hold", maybe this is what you need on the first chord symbol. 4) Select custom VSTs for soundsI would love to add VST hosting capabilities in the future. But I would need some help from developers familiar with the VST API, it's a quite difficult task, especially in Java. In the meantime you can use a virtual midi driver (such as LoopBe1 on Windows, or snd-virmidi on Linux) to connect JJazzLab via Midi to a VST plugin running on a VST host. If you have a .ins Cakewalk instrument definition for your VST, you can directly select the VST programs via Midi from JJazzLab (see www.jjazzlab.com/en/doc/output-synth-editor/). I've already tried it (not extensively though) and it worked. 5) Space bar "caught" by tempo boxYes I'm aware of this problem, I'll try to fix this in next release. Aldo, did you experience this bug ? JJazzLab is open, then your Mac goes on sleep mode, then you wake it up, play a song and there is a huge delay between UI and audio. This is known Java JDK issue (not JJazzLab).
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riku
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Post by riku on Aug 5, 2020 12:41:51 GMT 1
(Wow, it's somehow really tricky to quote individual bits of a message on this forum so I'll just respond as a list) Thanks for the quick reply! Yeah, I understand that it's pretty much impossible to make native-like software for a system that you don't even have yourself. In such cases developers usually have a partner to take care of that part but I understand that while your software is freeware, getting a Mac dev partner to handle that side would either require finding someone incredibly passionate who's up for a hobby project, or, paying them wages which would mean that JJazzLab could no longer be free. So I understand that it's much better than nothing, but the Mac users might come off as a bit naggy sometimes! 1) That's great, I'll look forward to it! 2) Actually I noticed that it would also occasionally jumble up other aspects too, such as part tempo or the contents of the menu that contains all that stuff called "Main A1" "Intro A" and so on. So it seems like this scroll feature could be better off completely left to be used with modifier keys pressed down, and the only thing that the normal scroll without modifier keys would do, would be to scroll the actual interface, the view. That way there would be less conflicts and you wouldn't have to guess when the software is going to decide to prioritize for which. If you decide to make it a setting that people can either enable or disable, you could probably add a tooltip suggesting that people who have (scroll-capable) mice without a physical scroll wheel such as the Apple Magic Mouse (I know there's something similar by Microsoft and others but I don't know the model names), it would be recommended that those people turn off the scroll-to-change feature for a better performance because it can otherwise trigger accidental changes. I imagine that people with laptops that have the kind of track pad that has a specific scroll area would have the same problem because that scroll area on the pad doesn't have a tactile feedback of increments. I do own a more traditional mouse with an incremental scroll wheel on my other computer, but the beauty with Magic Mouse is that it can scroll both up/down as well as sideways, which is why it's a conscious choice. The sideways scroll is incredibly useful in any software that has a timeline of some sort, because then you can browse it horizontally too! But whenever I need to browse something incrementally one nudge at a time and it can't be done with a mouse like this (aren't some actual scroll wheels smooth too, and the increments are a feature?), then I result to using keys instead. If I test this now, I'm able to select a chord and cmd+up/down to change the chord root in a controlled way. Shift+up/down seems to do the same to the chord type. Note that on a Mac, you can't use ctrl+scroll because it's already reserved for a universal zoom feature which I think is there by default. We might use this zoom feature for example when using a computer from the other side of the room and we just need to quickly get a big view of some text or where to click, without walking all the way to the computer. But cmd, alt and shift combined with scroll don't have any universal use assigned to them as far as I've noticed, so they're available. Was cmd+wheel supposed to do something on a Mac now, because you mentioned unchanged ? The only things I can reproduce now is that shift+scroll changes chord type, and regular scroll changes chord root (if the cursor is in a specific place according to the logic that I don't quite understand). Alt+scroll or cmd+scroll do exactly the same things as regular scroll, i.e those modifiers are not in use, doing anything additional. Ctrl+scroll zooms in the pixels of the screen because it's a universal Mac OS shortcut that overrides any app-specific stuff. 3) So I thought... It just sounds like that one chord was behaving differently to those other held chords around it, the others got sustained but that one seemed to forget that it was supposed to be sustained over the bar line. I tried to fiddle with those settings but got no results. I'll have to look at it again. 4) Right, I see. And it also slightly worries me too because if adding VSTs would mean making the software run more sluggishly, it's obviously not a good idea. I'm on a Mac so I can't really try out those other options. And this was just a curiosity really, because some of the good old GM sounds are so harsh that despite of liking the patterns that they do, I have to mute them. (Yes, I'm aware of the channel volume and the fact that I can swap it for a different GM instrument. But you know they are still harsh by nature!) Is there any general names for this type of routing, if I might look around for a possible Mac alternative? To be honest I've never done anything MIDI-related that would've involved multiple apps to run simultaneously while talking to each other, having a VST plug-in in a DAW is as deep as I've gone. 5) Excellent, thanks! And yes in fact, now that you mentioned it, that did happen! It was weird because it wasn't only with the playback start, but it also kept playing after pressing the stop button, for the same amount of time. The moving playback cursor's position also didn't match with what was playing, those two just weren't in sync. It was fixed by simply restarting JJazzLab. Normally I would always close software like this before putting the computer to sleep so for me this isn't a big issue in practice. 6) Addition: I just noticed that it doesn't seem to be possible to enter a 5-chord. For example A5 or A(no3), as it is sometimes marked. It's just a chord that omits the 3rd, i.e has no identity of being either major or minor. It's not very common (and surely not in the genres that I play) but I'm under the impression that it's more common in rock music, a " power chord". It's not a part of my own composing vocabulary because I'm not a guitarist, but the lack of a 5-chord makes me wonder what I should substitute it with when I'm typing existing sheet music to JJazzLab and a 5-chord comes along. 7) Addition: I noticed that it would be great if the user could pick which one of the available aliases of a given chord they prefer to see in the interface. For example for Major7 chords, especially when the song contains a lot of extended chords and includes all, m7, 7 and Major7, the current symbol M7 isn't the fastest to read and distinguish. Personally I either use Δ7 or Maj7 just to make it look distinctly different. Same, I find a dim chord fastest to read when it uses the ° symbol because that symbol can only ever mean one thing and it looks so distinctly different from anything else. I believe the preferred way of marking one and the same chord is highly dependent on where a person is from, and what genre they play. 8) Addition: Apparently, m9add13 is not a valid chord. The closest is m13, but in m9add13 the difference would be the omission of the 11th, pretty important if a rhythm style is trying to "think" of what sounds to prioritize for. Blame Stevie Wonder for these subtleties! 9) Addition: I was trying to type Gm2 or Gmadd9, (which are the same thing): a minor chord with a note added on the second degree. It differs from a Gm9 by the fact that there is no 7th involved. If I type "Gm2", it accepts it but when I attempt playback, I get an error message "Chord symbol m2 could not be converted into Yamaha chord symbol". If I try typing "Gmadd9", it reverts it to Gm2 (which seems like it recognizes it in principle?) but upon attempting playback, I get the same error message. Oddly enough, it works just fine with the major chord equivalent, i.e if I type "G2" or "Gadd9". What's up with the minor chord, I wonder? 10) Addition: After going through all the styles, I've added my favorite ones to the favorites list. Now that I no longer need to actively browse the actual master list, it would be helpful if the rhythm section dialog always opened in "Favorite rhythms" view by default. But that defaulting would've been annoying if it had been there at the time of browsing the styles for the first time (and you never know if some people don't even use the favorites at all) so that would only make sense if the default view of a rhythm collection was user-definable.
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Post by cornetbob on Aug 5, 2020 20:04:52 GMT 1
I have been meaning to point out a few other UI issues I notice as a Mac user. Curiously, JJaaLab won't launch today. It shows as not responding. Now I have to sort that out, perhaps reinstall.
Anyway, one UI issue does come to mind and is common in several place, although I can't check to list them at the moment. In the Insert Bars dialog box, nothing is highlighted. I have to use my track pad to first, either double-click to enter how many bars, or use the up and down arrows, then I would have to click the OK (I can't remember if that's what it is called) button. What Mac users are used to, and I can't speak for Windows, when a dialog box opens, the most common field for entry is highlighted and the OK button is also highlighted. Thus, I could hit 8 for number of bars and Return (Enter) for OK. All done from the keyboard. If there are other fields of entry, tab moves down through them, Shift-Tab to go backwards, every time the field of entry get highlighted, at any point, Return accepts what is entered in all fields. Moving back and forth between mouse/trackpad is not necessary. In the case of pop-up lists, typing the first few characters auto-selects items. Some settings might not get highlighted if they are usually left and not changed often. This reduces the number of steps. I think I recall another place where extra steps are required is the Open dialog box.
Once I get JJL running again I might post some other issues.
Thank you for all the changes you have been making.
I just thought of an idea that would be useful. I find what is time consuming is testing various rhythms in a few places to see how they sound. It would be nice to be able to preview rhythms during playback. Could there be way of accessing the Favorites list, or a pre-selected list of possible candidates, and access them during playback? Currently, to test the various combinations involves going back and forth into the dialog box to change the rhythms and then use Play From Here to go to various parts and hear how they sound.
I'm reminded of one more little thing. I have been caught when changing a rhythm to find that it also changed the tempo. Could this option be unchecked by default, since I usually want to keep the tempo I originally set and usually forget to uncheck this.
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Post by Jerome on Aug 6, 2020 9:39:00 GMT 1
@ riku and cornetbob
So this is what I propose for the trackpad/touch-motion mouse issue:
1/ a general setting to enable/disable "change value using mouse-wheel (with no modifier such as shift or ctrl)" This would have effect on chord symbols, rhythm parameter values, mix console slider & knobs
2/ mouse-wheel change will always be possible using shift+wheel
I guess you have the same issue with spinner controls ? (e.g. tempo). On spinners using ctrl-wheel (win, command for mac) make change faster.
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Post by Jerome on Aug 6, 2020 9:50:46 GMT 1
@ riku and cornetbob
- Using chord symbol alias: I'll check this, should be possible - Missing chord symbols: I'll add them - Show favorites first: possible, if current rhythm (when opening dialog) is in the Favorites then show the Favorites - Using keyboard for dialog: it should work the way you describe it whatever the OS. I'll check the dialogs.
Yes, the rhythm preview directly in the rhyhtm selection dialog is ready for next 2.2 release !
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