TamTam Release Notes

B2/Trial-1 Release Notes for TamTam activities

Notes

TamTam includes four activities: miniTamTam, TamTam Edit, TamTam Jam and synthLab. The third icon is not connected. This will be TamTam Jam in future releases.

• Microphone recording is not functional in all TamTam activities.
• in TamTam Edit
  • Saving and loading files is very rudimentary. Once saved, a file can be recalled properly but becomes very difficult to modify. Fixed in Build 368 and up.
  • The properties window lacks some graphics and is experimental. Most things work but may not yield expected results.
  • The volumes sliders for individual tracks sometimes stop responding. Starting/stopping or other manipulation will usually bring them back.. Fixed in Build 368 and up.
  • The cntrl key is used to select / deselect pages for playback. This is somewhat unintuitive and will likely change. Triple-click on a page in the tuneview will select all pages.
  • Keyboard recording is not implemented yet (thus the grayed-out red button).
  • Sometimes, after manipulating notes on the screen, adding, erasing pages the "first note syndrome" will appear ie: the first notes of the page will fall silent. Rewinding to the beginning of the tune will usually fix the problem.Fixed in Build 369 and up.

General recommendations

What follows is a series of considerations and suggestions about TamTam.

• Do play around with the properties window. It allows to change individual sounds, full tracks or full pages.
• Do play with the Generation window. Its a little obscure presently but it can generate quite extraordinary music.
• Do try a lot of different instruments.
• Do experiment with synthLab. Its probably a little complicated for kids presently and needs to have complete sound design tutorials but an adult should be able to figure it out. The keyboard works the same way it does in miniTamTam.
• There is a quantizing sequence recorder in miniTamTam which works wonderfully. Left-click on the red record button will start recording on the next down beat and keep going until the drumloop has completed a full cycle. Right click allow you to record on top with another track. Note: the drum has to be playing for the sequencer to work.