Brent, when you did the install, which icon did you see?
or 
Apparently there was something wrong with the size of the icon dimensions that was causing some OSes to just create their own generic icons.
What’s worse, even after I got it fixed, Windows was holding on to a cached copy, making it look like it was still broken.
The “Jam Trainer” icon loaded on my home page. I did see the ‘J’ icon while in the Brave browser when I initially set it up but once installed, it displayed the Jam Trainer icon. I just reinstalled it and the correct icon displayed at each step of the process.
Fantastic! Thanks for the update!
Warning for everyone… the scope creep has caused the side bar to become a virtual junk drawer. Even I’m starting to forget where things are, so today I’m spending a lot of time doing a complete reorg of the User Interface.
UI redesigns usually upset people, but it’s better to do it now before the app goes live. Plus, based on the mock ups, I really think you’re going to like it. Best part is, it’s going to get 2 different views… 1 for a desktop and 1 for a mobile device.
Stay tuned.
That sounds wise.
This was such a big update. I’ve been at it since 5am. I THINK it’s done, but I honestly haven’t checked every little thing yet. The biggest plus is the 2 new views depending on the width of your screen.
Desktop View:
Mobile View:
The toggles for the different views are gone, replaced by actual view buttons labeled Play, Edit, Tab, and Lyrics. This brought out a bug in the previous iteration, which was that if you were on a song and went to a game or tool, there was no way to get back to the song. That’s fixed now.
Also combined the Tuner, Metronome, Chord Charts, and Scales into a single Tools area.
The side bar has been made more logical by dividing things into either items that deal with the song or items that deal with the app / your account. The idea of the App / Account section is that it’s for things that are normally “Set it and forget it.” Session is the only feature that didn’t get categorized because I couldn’t really fit it into one of those boxes.
Would really appreciate your feed back on this. It’s a huge change, and if anyone feels like it’s a regression, I need to know.
Good evenin,
I’ve done a little more trolling around in the lyrics feature, on the test server, as I last heard this is where you were developing things right now…
Some notes - pertains to desktop computer - havent done android things this time around
When you 1st go there, it goes straight to the free songs. Cool! It may be beneficial for there to be option directly on that screen to “Sign in” - this would benefit folks who already have an account so they dont have to navigate thru menus to get to sign in
Once you get signed in, there is a brief tutorial/overview - & this may be petty, but its just observations and not necessarily requests- there is no mention of the lyrics view there.
Since you’ve made so many updates, I dont know where to start bc its been a few days since some of my 1st observations, so bear w me, lol, you may have already fixed/tested some of these things out already…
+/- for text size in both edit & lyric view works great & if the songs are formated in shorter phrases “one liners” it helps keep the chords/lyrics looking good on the screen
A note abt EDITOR and adding lyrics…
If the original Word Doc is formatted in shorter lines or phrases as mentioned above, in “Courier New” font with no special formats, italics, bold, etc, triple spaces between lines of lyrics, AND the chords are in proper places above the words in the orig word doc, in this format, they WILL copy over to the EDITOR view lyrics section in the correct places ! And they WILL ALSO appear in the LYRICS & SCROLL view in the correct places as well !! Plus, bonus: the +/- text size does not mess up the chords over words in this format (shorter lyric lines are better , if use long lines I can see how it would NOT work out)
Something must have changed here within the updates or whatnot bc the last time I tried it (copy paste lyrics in same format as above) on a diff song, EDITOR showed correct, & LYRICS view was correct (on chord above word placement), but SCROLL feature had totally wrong placement. Glad to see its working good now. I will test it again w another song in case it was just a lucky strike… aka im gonna try to get it to mess up again haha. But for right now, w the song Ocean of Diamonds, it is correct using lyrics formatted as said above in Word, and using the good ole cntrl A,C,V to get it over into editor’s lyrics section. It also looks & scrolls properly in LYRICS view.
Note on LYRICS view controlling scrolling - the faster/slower control buttons need to be pinned to the top as well as a way to stop & pause AND Resume scroll bc if you accidentally hit space bar to stop it cues up music (might not want that to happen in a jam, & has to be tested on mobile devices yet though). Yes, clicking on the scroll pauses it, but clicking again wont resume it. So you cant really control it much without taking the mouse and going back to top.
In a jam setting if the user was scrolling lyrics w chords (no music playing, no charts viewing) and there were several breaks back to back and forth and back as sometimes happens pause and resume would be good so the singer could easily unpause & continue singing
Regarding Jam situation:
How would you get that to happen, I didnt get that one for whatever reason…
Pic below of scrolling button area - should have been above the quotes above. Thats what I get by switching between phone and PC for pics of the PC screen taken w the phone then posted afterwards 
Notes on LYRICS View:
Save feature - needs to not be in the […] button box (visible in pic above), too cumbersome. Should have a save icon just like the editor screen, preferably in the same general location as on editor screen. Folks will bumble around trying to save and end up kicking themselves out of the song theyre working on.
On that note - if you hit an arrow key accidentally -OR - if you hit refresh button in LYRICS view, it throws you out of what you’re working on & to the next song in the MAIN library (arrow key), or main library in general (refresh button)
In Arrangement section, maybe an option for user to make their own section titles, intro, outro, break instrumental, or edit & rename section titles kind of thing. Would also be a bonus for folks that choose to use LINK TO LYRICS feature.
I said the latter bc when I tried it out, my copy/pasted lyrics had subtitles of “Chorus” and “Breaks” and L2L did not like that at all. it carried on with it’s /// and chord placements on top of those subtitles and it looked messed up. This way each section gets automatically titled what it is, and L2L isnt bothered by it and then no need to use subtitles in the lyrics portion. For folks who do not use L2L feature, and only use scrolling lyrics/chords it doesnt much matter, their subtitles will help them in that case.
Tried out the LINK TO LYRICS as touched on above, notes:
break this feature out of the […] jail 
so its easier for folks to see and use (same for the save button hidden in there as mentioned before, lol)
It’s a pretty cool feature! And, now the Nudge buttons work good in L2L.
Got a few glitches tho, if you edit any lyrics in Editor or chords in the Chord chart you will have to completely wipe out your lyrics that were previously linked and re do them. (not surprising considering what it would take for that to auto update) That feature doesnt edit/update with those kinds of changes. Doesnt allow editing as far as I can tell. Gets stuck if you go out and back in and try to edit, screen is confused, bc the process has been completed once already & looks blank like this:
If you try to refresh things in the lyrics view in hopes of it updating you’ll get kicked back to the main library and out of whatever you were doing. Not sure if a warning or caption advising folks that need to make those kinds of changes to a linked lyric song file would be good or not, or… Maybe an option is to make L2L editable?
Once the song has had L2L completed on it, as mentioned above, you’re locked in there. If you made a mistake in placing chords on words in the wizard, or want to take out the G7’s on the chart and change them to plain G’s and go back to edit the chord chart, you wouldnt have to start over from scratch. I know - a heck of alot of work for a feature not all users will be using… just pointing things out that I saw is all…
All edits made, either on EDITOR, LYRICS, or L2L should, on save, update the bottom lyrics section to be identical in all 3 areas. Im not sure if it’s doing that now, but last night it didnt. However some things that didnt are now updated & happening so I’d have to go back in and check.
IMPORT SONGS feature, located in account settings, only supports JSON files. Not sure if that was just there for development phase or if that button is going to be functional at some point. IDK anyone that’d have that format for their songs though… and .txt files or Word are not supported in that feature
Okay, thats it for this session. My notes are jumbled messes of scribbles, had a time trying to get them in somewhat of a rational order. Dont know if they help any, but hope that they do. I will try n mess around with things some more perhaps from the phone next time and see what I get over there for comments. I still have a few things I’d like to try from the desktop as well, time permitting…
New Interface is better than the prior one imo!
Would still advise sign in button directly available on the Free songs landing page
Why are we both awake at this unGodly hour? 
This is absolute GOLD, Simone. Thank you for taking so much time to write it all down. I’ll get to work it on right now.
Great idea! There’s plenty of room to do that after yesterday’s UI overhaul. I’ll get on it.
Good eye! I need to include that.
GOOD! I need people trying to break it.
I could have sworn it resumed by tapping the lyrics, but it clearly does not. I’ll get that fixed. I was trying to save vertical screen space by having the toolbar scroll with the text, but I think it’s worth pinning to the top, even on mobile phones.
Use the Arrange feature in the “…” button. Just toss in extra Verses for each break.
I’ll try. The problem I keep running in to is having a tool bar with so much stuff in it that it wraps to a second line on mobile phones. Vertical space is at a premium there. It’s not a problem on desktops.
Oh no! I need to include a “You have unsaved changes” warning like I have on the chart edit page. I never tried the arrow keys. Nice catch!
When it comes to anything regarding L2L (which includes Arrange) the chord chart is the single source of truth. There’s no reliable way to allow the app to mix and match things once you run L2L, so since we know that the chord chart is king, we have to let it make all the decisions once the lyrics are linked to it. That’s where the section titles come from (Verse, Chorus, Outro, etc.) I’ll look in to allowing those to be changed while you’re in the Lyrics view.
Yeah, L2L will put those titles in there for you, so best to clean those out before linking. I don’t think there’s a way to have the app automatically scrub unnecessary text. How would it know what’s needed and what’s not?
We’re back to that issue with mobile phones and toolboxes being too wide again. Let me see what I can do.
Yeah, I should probably note somewhere that L2L completely changes the lyrics editor. You should still be able to make small edits (correcting typos, adding or deleting a few characters) in the text editor, though. I’ll check it out. But yeah, once L2L is engaged, that’s the new king, and it’s easy to break.
That’s not a bad idea. Let me see if that’s possible.
You should be able to go back in to “…” and choose “Edit Chord Links” to move chords around. If you wanted to change a G to a G7, that has to be done in the chord chart. Remember, it’s king of the lyrics now.
You have no idea how hard I worked on making that happen. It’s so complicated to get them all working together once L2L has been engaged. I’ll try again.
That’s for an upcoming feature… yet to be announced. Nothing to do with Lyrics.
I soooooo appreciate your time putting this all together. This is going to make the app so much better. Thank you!
OK, Simone. I think that knocks out the majority of your findings and requests. I got about half way through bug checking it, but I gotta get back to bed. I gotta do actual work in a few hours.
Will finish checking soon.
OK, these issues are now verified resolved.
If a user is not signed in, they now see Sign-In and Create an Account buttons on the free songs page if they’ve been to the site before.
Lyrics View is now in Help and the Interactive Tutorials.
scroll tool bar is now pinned to the top of the lyrics page.
Moved the Save Song feature out of the […] button and placed it on the far left of the scroll tool bar. Made it look like the Save button on the Chord Chart Edit page. This was as difficult as I thought it would be… keeping all the buttons on 1 line on my iPhone.
When working in Lyrics View, arrow keys are now disabled. If you hit refresh button you’ll remain on the same page in ANY view, not just Lyrics View. If you’re working on changes, you get a warning about unsaved work.
You can now rename the Chord Chart’s sections in either of the Arrange windows (Lyrics View or the Chord Chart Edit View.)
There’s now an option on the Lyrics page in the […] button to remove the “/” markers between the chords after you’ve linked the lyrics to the chord chart. You lose the tempo highlights in between chords, but that should take care of the app placing beat markers on text that isn’t part of the lyrics.
There’s a new button at the bottom of the L2L screen labeled “Edit words” (I might change that to Edit Text) that allows you to edit the lyrics while you’re in L2L mode. Edits made there should update the rendered lyrics screen as well as the Lyrics text field.
Did I miss anything?
By my calculations, about 5 hours of sleep.
Is there a way to have some indication when the song is moving from A part to B part (or any other variations)? I was using repeating B parts to practice. So I was doing 2x on A part and 5x on B part but I keep losing count of how many times I’ve done B part…(Was this the 4th time or the 5th time?). Could it do a little count down for the user? Or maybe just a flash of something to let you know last time. Does this make sense?
That’s a great idea!
… and it’s done. The section loop counter now doubles as a count down feature. This was one of those “easy to code, made a big difference” changes.
Now I’m going to take a nap. 
That works well!
Mark you are slipping. I made that request 2 hours ago!!
Glad it landed.
https://jam.dev… is that something that I set up? I set up so many things all around the same time I don’t even know. Could be sleep deprivation, too.
If I set it up, how did you get to it?
I saw that on another program I use for AI. They were offering credits for people that would report bugs and they said to use jam.dev to report. It looks like you can take screenshots and record little videos to do your bug report. I don’t really know that much. I just tried it this one time.
This walking bass thing ended up being WAY more work than I imagined. The final solution was to just manually define a few walking scenarios for walks for a 1/2 measure or a full measure and how long a chord would have to hold before a walk would be played. So I only have a few chord changes actually walking. Having them all walk was way too busy. This is how it looks now.
I think it turned out pretty nice, and it has more options than the previous toggle switch. You get to choose the 1 or 2 chord cells for the walking length, which is 2 or 4 notes.
Work permitting, I’ll get back on the mandolin tab implementation tomorrow.
The mandolin tab engine is firing on all cylinders. This was a fun one to build, mainly because I got to use what I learned from the banjo and guitar tabs and make a better engine this time. It’s so much better I’m probably going to go back and rebuild the banjo and guitar tab engines.
As last time, Cripple Creek is the only song with tab in it. Ben’s mando lesson was in A while his banjo and guitar lessons were in G, so I had to transpose it. I hope I got it right.
Also made it easier to identify a song with tabs. There’s now a button in the transport bar at the top that indicates when a song has tab, and lets you enable it from any screen, not just the tab screen.
Hey Mark,
I have enjoyed using your app so much that I thought I would share a quick “solo Jam” I did with it. I used my Dean Electric banjo, plugged into a Joyo Jambuddy II. The Jambuddy has blue tooth, so I ran your app thru it and used my Joyo foot pedal to start and stop the songs as I jammed. This video is me working on a loose version of Banjo Ben’s, “How Great Thou Art” lesson.
