Jam Maestro: create guitar tab Ratings and Reviews

I absolutely adore this app!

Hello my name is Tommy, I wanted to start with how much I absolutely adore this app! It is by far my favorite music writing app for writing out tabs & midi for guitar and bass and have an amazing sounding demo track right out of my phone. I noticed a small bug where the 32nd not grid often doesn’t line up on the drum tracks along with the guitars and bass, as well as sometimes will not copy and paste the 32nd notes when copying sections; which really makes it difficult when composing and arranging. I think with a fix on the 16th/32nd/triplet note gridding it would really solve the inconsistency of the timing placement between tracks. Which would really help as I love using this app to write on the go without a computer; it just has a couple of limiting bugs that think hold it back from its full potential. As well it would be nice to be able to change time signatures throughout a song, as well as tempo. All in all an incredible app and I love to use it to write out ideas when they come up. I would love to see some of these fixes as I would love to use this app more and more for writing. Thank you for all that you do,
- Tommy

Developer Response ,

Hi Tommy!
Thanks for the love. You can actually already change time signatures and tempo throughout the song. Just set different bars for the time signatures, and tempo see the automation menu. As for the bugs, feel free to email me with the details and I’ll take a look. Cheers!

Best tabber on iOS

After a small learning curve this is a great app. Very intuitive and has some great functions like adding notation for a full band mix, customizable guitar sounds and fx, and input notes from guitar string layout. Touch input on iPad blows away trying to tab on a computer. MIDI export function is great addition. Guitar sound is very usable. Export works well too. Lots to dig into and I’m still learning more cool stuff I can do with this app.
There are some hiccups here and there, but mostly with guitar fx. I did lose one session after clicking “Restore Session” when opening the app... could have been my error in saving, idk. I just cancel that every time I open the app and it works fine.
Would love to see AU implementation! Definitely worth the money, especially on iPad. iPhone version is great also... just remember to turn the layout for different modes, that was confusing at first.
4/5 overall app
5/5 in iOS tab apps

Close to perfect

There are lots of options and good sound quality. This is an effective and versatile tool for getting your ideas onto some sort of canvas.
Cons: steep learning curve, unintuitive interface, .gpx import is not supported. Seven string tabs unsupported. Lowest tuning supported is drop A#, but the app won't let you open tabs tuned lower than that. It should just automatically set the tab to drop A# if the tuning is too low rather than not display the tab at all.

To respond to dev response: it's not that I want to see lower tunings possible in your app (drop A# is low enough for me), but rather I would like to see tab files already tuned lower be automatically formatted to A# so I can actually view them. Currently, such tabs cannot be opened. I'm aware that gpx can be easily converted to gp5, but most tabs from UG for example are gpx, which means I cannot simply grab them using Safari and view them using only my iPad. These are both simple minor inconveniences which hold the app back from perfection. Thanks for the response, I love your app and I look forward to the next update!

Developer Response ,

Find me a way to understand how to import .gpx and I may consider it :) You can always export gpx files to gp5 before exporting. Criticism about importing lower than drop A# noted. (Seems no matter how low tuning I provide someone always wants lower!).

Holy grail of guitar apps

I am a novice guitarist but experienced midi instrumentalist and have tried using iOS interfaces to play music. After a few days of discovering JM’s capabilities I think it is both a great guitar learning and music producing tool on the iOS platform. I feel you do need to have some music theory to understand and effectively use it and it is a good tool for hands on learning of music theory. You can see where scale are positioned on the fret board and then hear them. Like any instrument there is a learning curve but I have gotten more results than with the others I have tried. Now I am going back to those other apps to see if I can control them with the JM interface. Don’t want to go on like a fanboy but need to add that there is best in show support by the very responsive developer. I wish I had discovered this long ago.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the kind review! You are very welcome 👍🏻

Best tab/music app available

I love this app. You can use acoustic guitars, electric guitars, bass and drums. You can play 6 or 7 string on acoustic and electric, 4 or 5 string on the bass. You can even do custom tuning too! There are several types of drums and percussion. You can also use another app called ThumbJam with jam maestro which adds tons more instruments from pianos to violins to a mega saw. This app is great. You can also use Dropbox. I love that I can email my tabs. The best part of this app is that you can play back your tabs and listen to them instantly. The instruments sound great and the support for the app is top notch. I always get emails back very quickly if I have a question. Thank you Mr. Blake for this app and appreciate your quick response when I email you with questions.

Developer Response ,

My pleasure! Thanks for the great review!

Best Songwriting Tool I’ve Ever Used

I’ve been writing metal and acoustic music for over 10 years now, and having been in many different projects and seeing my material scattered to the wind, this app has allowed me to consolidate my creative process and I’ve finished more songs in the last year than in the rest of my career, combined.

Now I have a full length’s worth of material, guitar, bass, drums, all finished and ready for any future bandmates to practice in-app. The addition of the 7-string was a HUGE game changer and the best thing they could have done.

If y’all aren’t already working on it, an eight string addition would be incredible, but if not, I will still use this app until the day I die. Congratulations, guys, this is the best money I’ve ever spent!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the kind review! Actually, 8 string guitar is already possible inside the app! It is only available for 'inter-app audio' or 'midi' instruments as Jam Maestro does not have the samples to cover a tuning range that far, a limitation not present for midi notes. To access 8 string guitar you need to add a new IAA or Midi instrument (pointing at a background app that has guitar sounds, for example Thumbjam is pretty good). If you click 'edit' on the instrument on the main screen you can scroll down and set a custom tuning for that instrument, here you will have the option to set it to an 8 string guitar. Hope this helps!

I like this app a lot

The interface is a bit clunky; it could be less busy and basically a bit cooler looking. As such, it is a bit intimidating to use. You look at the screen and its kind of overwhelming. But, its pretty easy to use once you get started and its definitely the kind of app that the more you spend time with it the better. I wish it was a bit easier to see how to Print and Share. The export function is a bit hard to figure out. Like what if I want to email the text or the PDF to someone? But I am glad I got it, and it is going to help me a lot in working on a song with a friend. Once the tab is in for the song we can play around with you we want the notes to be played. I tried to hand write out the tab and it was a nightmare so I am very glad I found this app.

Will Keep You Up All Night!

This and GeoShred are the top dogs when it comes to guitar fun on the iPad. Been a great tool for testing out ideas for songs and composing new music on the go.

My only issue so far is not being able to see the rhythm notated out above the tabs and a few other small things, but I’m sure most of them are hidden somewhere.

Note- If you are new to music theory or don’t quite have the hang of writing out rhythmic patterns, this may be a bit on the advanced side. This app was clearly made by not only a guitarist but a dedicated musician.

Feature rich. Wish UI was more intuitive.

Pretty good so far...except I haven’t yet learned how to vary the speed of the notes when I want to play certain notes as 1/4 notes and some as whole or half notes, for example. I also haven’t figured out how to play certain notes sticcato vs letting them ring.

My notes above are not a hard knock on the app because I’m pretty sure there’s a way to do those things or folks would give the app a low rating. However, for as much instructions as they’ve provided, I still wish the learning curve was less steep and the user interface more intuitive.

So far, I’ve found nothing else in the app store that compares well to this. Looking forward to learning more about how to use it.

Developer Response ,

Hello! Have you tried going through the tutorial? The answers you seek are in there! I tried to animate the tutorial as much as possible because I know people see text and just go next next next, so hopefully its not a complete wall of text at least.

In answer to your question, you need to toggle the 'stop' button in the middle bar of the tab screen (this bar initially says 'copy' 'paste' etc, but you can swipe left on this to reveal further pages of options), then touch the fretboard strum layer to insert a stop signal (*) in the tab on the string you want. Same goes for 'fade' if you want it to fade out rather than stop abruptly. I recommend you watch the video in the videos section called 'advanced tab tips'. It will show you how to do this and more.

Any suggestions on how to make the user interface more intuitive welcome :)

I've found my rhythm guitarist

I'm not exclusively using this app for the guitars but I've found so many sounds that this app will accomplish that are not in other guitar apps. The chug feature is awesome and I really am working on creating guitar tracks that sound like a real guitarist playing my music. The only guitars I've found so far that have the same high quality are loops playing somewhat generic patterns, I can't and won't use them for anything other than figuring out chord progressions.