iPads make fantastic digital musical instruments, and we use them a lot in OrchLab sessions thanks to their adaptability and accessibility. In this guide we’ll show you ThumbJam, one of the music apps that we use. There is another guide available for Garageband which you can explore.
ThumbJam is available to download from the Apple App Store for £8.99. This app can turn your iPad into a cello or a trombone, or any other instrument you can think of! It has lots of useful settings, and we’ll show you the basics here.
Getting started
- You will need a charged iPad, that has the ThumbJam app
- You may also want to use an external speaker to enhance the sound from the iPad
Choosing an instrument in ThumbJam
Thumbjam is full of excellent quality instrument sounds. You can watch a mini-tutorial below about how to choose an instrument in Thumbjam, made by Bea and Cassie at Drake Music, or follow the written steps underneath.
- Open the ThumbJam app on your iPad
- Click ‘Sound’ in the top left corner of the screen
- Choose ‘Change Instrument’
- Select an instrument from the pop-out menu (e.g. Trumpet). The name of the selected instrument will display in the centre of the screen
Choosing a scale in ThumbJam
In OrchLab sessions we play and create lots of different musical pieces and styles, from Classical to Blues. ThumbJam allows you to quickly change the scale of the instrument you’re playing, which allows for a diversity of musical styles. In a lot of our OrchLab web activities we will suggest a scale that might work well for the piece of music featured in the activity.
You can watch a mini-tutorial below about how to choose an instrument in Thumbjam, made by Bea and Cassie at Drake Music, or follow the written steps underneath.
- Open ThumbJam
- Click ‘Sound’ in the top left corner of the screen
- Then, select ‘Scale’ and choose one from the pop out menu. The scale will display at the bottom of the screen.
Changing the span on ThumbJam
A useful function for increasing accessibility in ThumbJam is the option to change the ‘span’. Changing the span changes how many notes appear on the screen for the player.
This means that the difficulty level of playing can be increased (by making more notes appear on the screen) or decreased (by making fewer notes appear on the screen) to suit the player. It also means that the notes can be made larger or smaller to suit the dexterity and control of the player.
- Open ThumbJam
- Find ‘Span’ in the menu at the top (towards the middle)
- Click ‘–’ to display fewer notes on screen
- Click ‘+’ to display more notes on screen
General tips for using iPads for music
- Ensure the iPad is positioned comfortably for the player
- If using a speaker, make sure it’s close to the player so they can hear what they are playing
- Be open to a variety of forms of playing. Someone might prefer to play with their elbow, chin or nose!
Explore more:
Using iPads for music – GarageBand
Play and Sing – Lovely Day
This resource was written by Dav Shiel, Drake Music