PE5_uJam

To further explore uJam's creative potential, today, I gave it a run for its money by creating a few different versions of a melody inspired by Kanye West's All of the Lights, and remixing them in Logic Pro.  The final result turned out almost comic, but the ability to so simply make the melody sound like anything from an adventure movie theme, to some kind of 80's electro-funk, and all the way back to a pseudo-romantic sonata demonstrates uJam's versatility and and ability to manipulate music.

To start off, I created the piano and french horn sequences heard in the second part of the podcast in Logic Pro as sample tracks to test the abilities of uJam's pitch detection.  I used a very clean and straightforward piano synthesizer to make sure that it would be easy for uJam to process the melody.  The horn parts were created to see if uJam was able to process polyphony, but when the mix was recorded including both the horn and the piano, uJam was only able to display the notes from the piano part in the melody editor.  It did detect the melody correctly with some minor rhythmic variation, but that's still not bad for a free online recording tool.

uJam's custom style menu

After cleaning up the chord progression and rhythm, I started to experiment with uJam's numerous preset song styles.  As I got toward the bottom of the list, I was impressed by the wide variety of styles and the number of synthesized instruments included.  The custom style editor also proved to be simple and useful, as you can combine individual tracks from the preset styles to create new styles, for example laying a pop synthesizer over a jazz beat.

Exporting the mp3's for the tracks I created took only two clicks, and from there it was just a matter of mixing the styles together in Logic Pro.  Although uJam isn't as powerful or flexible as more advanced music creation software like Logic and GarageBand, what it lacks in power it makes up for in simplicity and ease of use.  As I will be implementing the upcoming Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario with elementary school students, I needed a Web 2.0 tool that was simple and quick to use, and uJam turned out to be just simple enough to employ, but versatile enough to create a variety of quality products.