Hi Pals
UJAM Silk 2 is coming, and if you buy the version 1 discounted now, you’ll have the upgrade for a little fee
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wonder if the longer use customers will also get a discounted upgrade?
Well, I think it will be the same 19 USD…
And I just bought it now for 19 USD so it is confirmed 
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yes, a lot of arpeggios for the lovers of dreamy arpeggios like me
I also have Amber and Sparkle, but Silk is #1 to me
maybe that I’ll do a mini-tutorial later tonight, because I think that using both Scaler for chords (using Phrases to have more variability, not just triads as suggested by somebody) and your hand to change patterns in a meaningful way produces booombastic sounds
just picked up my copy for $19. there are definitely some improvements over the SILK1. i find the sound overall is better, and articulation controls are much nicer. i like the NKS compatibility, it would be nice if they had AMBER2 with it.
I’m making this response because I think people should know about Silk 2, and if anyone else knows how to make it work smoothly with Scaler as a triggered instrument, please let me know. For now, I see it as a complicated plugin that may not work as you might expect in your DAW.
I was surprised and I will explain why.
I have the UJAM Silk 1 and I was kinda disappointed that it did not have an instrument mode like UJAMS Bassist series, Mellow and Rowdy that I also own. I tried to ask for a refund from UJAM because I intended to use it an an instrument that is triggered by midi in my DAW like Scaler or Audio Modern’s Riffer or Chords which I use to jam along with. They said it could have an instrument mode in a new update. So I jumped the gun and immediately bought the update. And I found out that it doesn’t have an instrument mode like the other plugins. Its instrument mode requires two hands to play it, in a nutshell, you use one hand to tell it to articulate the instrument mode, while the other one plays notes or chords. I still haven’t figured it all out yet.
I do dig the styles part of the SIlk plugins, as strummers with patterns are very neat and have many styles to mess around with, plus they sound good to me.
So my advice is to try the demo versions, so if you are like me and wanted a plugin to trigger like Scaler does with other instruments Silk or Silk 2 might not work for you.
If anyone is interested, I am currently selling my UJAM plugins Rowdy and Mellow basses. just name your price but they cost me $15 each to transfer the licence. I have them on knobcloud. Selling them because I found IK Multimedia’s MODO Bass and it is a superior modeling bass plugin for my needs. The free version is amazing too.
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UJAMs, like AAS Strum guitars, works very well with Scaler where the latter is one hand, and you hand change patterns, OR 2 Scalers act as 2 hands on
I tried the so-called Instrument option of UJAM, but I realized it is useless to me
if you want a guitar where you can play all with your hands, you have to go elsewhere indeed
My AAS Strum-GS is one option I sometimes use, because it has 2 option for that workflow (and solos), that are Keyboard and Guitar
Yes, that makes sense to use 2 Scalers on the one plugin, though I couldn’t do anything with that, too much thinking of programming when I’m mainly a hands-on player and composer. Scaler helps me with composing and figuring out what I’m playing, what key, and so forth.
I’m primarily a guitar player, and right now I don’t own a nice Nylon, I have a beater Nylon that doesn’t track well with any mic I have, even a decent condenser.
I’ll keep the Silk UJAMS for the interesting sturm pattern styles they have, but to use with Scaler, I’ve found Heavyocity has a free Nylon Guitar for The Kontakt Player that is limited in notes, yet it is free, sounds great, and does work good (for me) with Scaler.
I love the sound of Native Istruments Session Guitar: Plucked Nylon.
Reuben does a review of 6 different nylon guitar plugins here. He comments on their ability to be played as instrument only.
If I had unlimited funds, I would get the piano tech version which is a physically modelled guitar like modo bass is. I love modo bass, it’s soooo tweakable because you’re not limited by samples. Eventually most instruments will go this way IMO. A prolific youtuber did an episode on physically modelled instruments. I always forget his name but I will find it if ur interested.
Usually when an instrument demands keyswitches held down, you can feed it the keyswitches via a midi clip and then play over the top without having one hand tied up. I’ll test this with Silk 2. I just installed it.
Okay I just tried Silk 2 in instrument mode. That is the worst thing I’ve ever seen for playability in a midi instrument. So the right hand has to tell it which note to play and the left hand has to “strike” the note - timing and articulation.
I would expect that you could hold down the articulation you want without any time consideration and then actually strike the note you want with the other hand.
This is bad.
You can do other articulations by turning on the “trigger mode” but then the picking (solo notes) doesn’t work. This is retarded. I can’t believe that made it this way.
What were they thinking…
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yeah, it’s like they got it completely backwards - instead of playing the notes, you’re playing the key switches… 
hopefully they’ll fix that soon. probably mixed up the case{} statements in the software code 
LOL. Yeah they definitely got something muddled.
I dragged a phrase to the DAW and this is what it looks like…
Those three notes at the top are the chord I fed it. When you drag one of the phrase keys, it includes the last notes you fed into it. This midi will NOT be reusable with other instruments and I think that is part of the motivation to be different. But I think their sample engine works this way internally (where the bottom notes trigger samples - which are then pitched according to the top notes) so now when people demanded an instrument mode, they just bubbled their system through to the UI and this is how it came out. … which is not good. I don’t think they will every fix it for normal musicians to use.
Its the same with sparkle 2
UJam responded to me saying they could add the functionality of the other Stringed VSTis they have like Virtual Bass, to Silk 2 in a future update. After hearing more about the confused syntax in the MIDI, I hope they truly do it and fix the system to work better.
Well, I think that all axe players are biased, because they are able to play the real thing
My capability to play any instrument is poor instead, but I love jamming with a solo instrument, usually guitars or keyboards, so I need a “band” that follows me without any hassle
BTW, I was an axe player in the past, but I was only able to play chords learnt by heart to accompany my voice over a singer-songwriter repertoire, so now I find UJAM guitars very useful and a joy to use, both in the instrument mode that serves just to add variability to patterns, and in the pattern mode that can play an accompaniment automatically, driven by Scaler or other instruments
The UJAM plugins (I have all guitars, both versions 1 and 2, and a couple of basses) are like my old and loyal Broomstick Bass, and also close enough to Jamstix, with the meaning they can produce automatically interesting accompaniments even if used by a mousier like me
Yes, exactly
I think that UJAM devs never had that idea
and their current adv says exactly that: even a mousier can play an instrument like a master, and this is exactly why I (and many others) use them
In case anyone is still interested, ujam put out a more detailed video about a month ago. Here is a link to the chapter on drag’n’drop. I haven’t experimented with this yet.
