Getting started

Padjam is a video instrument. Each note on a MIDI keyboard, pad controller or your computer keyboard plays a clip, a still, a colour, a sketch or an effect, and everything you play is drawn into one picture you can put on a projector.

What you need

• Chrome or Edge on a desktop or laptop. Padjam uses the browser's MIDI, file and video features, which only Chromium browsers have. Safari and the iPad can't run it fully (see Troubleshooting).
• Clips. MP4 or WebM video, and PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF stills.
• Optionally, a MIDI controller. Plug it in before opening Padjam. Without one, your computer keyboard plays the pads.

Your first minute

1. Open Padjam. You'll see the pad grid (one row per octave, twelve notes across), the preview on the right and the menus along the top.
2. Drag a few clips from your Finder or Explorer onto a pad. Several files fill the pads after it, in order. A dialog opens for the first; press OK.
3. Play: press the computer key shown in the corner of a pad (1, 2, 3 and so on), hit a pad on your controller, or press and hold the pad with the mouse. The clip plays in the preview while you hold it.
4. Play several at once. Notes layer: the ones you play later draw on top, unless you change their priority.
5. Go full screen: press ~ or Perform. Press Escape to black out, hold it to come back.

Where your work lives

Padjam saves as you go. Your clips are copied into the browser's own storage, so you can close the tab and come back. The browser can clear that storage if your disk fills up, so export a bundle of anything you'd hate to lose: Performance ▾ → Export bundle… (see Patches and files).

Install it

Padjam can install as an app with its own window and icon, and then works offline. In Chrome, use the install icon at the right of the address bar, or ⋮ → Cast, save and share → Install page as app.