I've got a Roland V3 kit collecting dust, and drum pads on my Akai MPK-61.I'm decent on the Roland, but I'm no Steve Gadd (not by a long shot), and programming beat by beat on the keyboard is laborious and adding variety and fill in's is just too much effort up front, as anything I record, I tend to write as I'm recording it. Usually, I'll wind up programming a basic rhythm and if I care enough about it, I might go back later and try to lay down a drum track with the Roland to replace it.I just bought the SSD Ex kit though, and I've been having fun with the MIDI grooves, which are recorded by people who can play much better than myself, but are still cumbersome to preview, and still need tweaking at times to make the fill in's flow, especially when the project BPM is different than the suggested BPM for the grooves (which still makes no sense to me, because it's just MIDI. It should speed up or slow down without any problems right?).I've been on the fence about Jamstix for awhile. $99 may not seem like much, but it's more than I've paid for any other piece of music software to date. I tried a demo of version 1.0 long ago with N-Track and while I thought it was cool, I wasn't blown away. But with 3.0 coming out soon, it's looking more and more attractive.
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Omnisphere 2 Keygen latest version. Moreover, There are about 8 new filter types in Omnisphere 2.6 Activation Key mac and these filters add extra features. With them, you can make good sounds. Furthermore, new Vowel is in the new version and you can reverse Sound-Sources. So, this is also a cool functions. KVR Audio News: Rayzoon has released version 2.1 of Jamstix. When saving a kit, Jamstix 2 now warns if MIDI keys are not assigned, or are.
Also, Jamstix claims that it can use a MIDI groove as a base, which appeals to me. It sounds like the best of both worlds.So, the question is. Should I purchase Jamstix, or perhaps a MIDI groove library? Or some other option I don't yet know about?I suppose there's always drum lessons.
Yeah, go for it. SSD and Jamstix is a dynamite combination. You can host SSD with Kontakt Player inside Jamstix and get all the control Jamstix offers. Only downside so far is an occasional inability to get the Kontakt GUI up if you've opened and closed the fx windows many times. Reaper restart cures this but has to be a minor bug.
My opinion, if you got bucks bucks to blow and need a zombie drum machine, do it. You'll get a lot more miles out of SSD.Download gives Kontakt 3 something.
Kontakt 4 is available. Works well with SSD hosted in Kontakt 4 player, hosted in Jamstix, hosted in Reaper.http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/kontakt-player/John.
I can't say enough nice things about Jamstix and the absolutely amazing customer service at Rayzoon.There are so many ways you can use Jamstix. Yes, you can import a midi groove and let Jamstix expand on that. You can program your own midi groove simply by clicking a 'learn' button and tapping out a bass/snare groove, and then let Jamstix expand on that. You can meticulously enter custom grooves by hand, hit-hat, toms and all, and let Jamstix take care of adding accents and fills, or you can just load a premade Jamstix groove (actually they're 'styles') and with the tweaking of a few knobs and sliders, morph it into all kinds of different grooves.
Even creating your own grooves is a hoot, as Jamstix refuses to play 'impossible' hits, keeping track of what all four limbs are doing and making sure a real drummer could play the part if tasked to do so. The biggest plus for Jamstix though, is that with a few tweaks of those knobs and sliders, you can rest assured that your drum parts are original and that nobody else with a midi-groove collection is going to be using exactly the same drum parts that you're using.Seriously, midi-groove libraries and their static data seem obsolete compared to the Jamstix output which is seemingly alive and so easily altered. The controls make it feel to me like I'm telling a real drummer what to do instead of surfing through midi data and arranging parts. Even with no drum samples included, it would be a killer deal just to have the Jamstix 'brain' to drive external drum samplers (and it can do that too), but the drums that come with Jamstix (which you can mix and match to create custom kits) are quite nice too.Jamstix is hands down the best virtual drummer you can get.much superior and much much more versatile than midi-grooves or drum loops. It's a great 'virtual drum kit' too (a large collection of kits and components actually), but the real magic is in the 'virtual drummer', aka, the Brain!Go for it! Nah man, I'm not saying that.I've never tried the demo, just bought it.
If you're talking about hosting SSD inside of Jamstix, assuming it's a VSTi, then yeah, you should be able to do that no problem and have Jamstix play the SSD drums. If you're talking about some midi from SSD, I believe you just import a midi groove or a measure or two of one (assuming SSD's has a library of midi files) into Jamstix, and it uses that as a base groove, building accents and fills around it. I imagine you must be able to see the manual on their site too, which oughta make things easier. If you're writing music that needs to sound like it has a human playing drums, get a human to play drums for you. If you don't have access to a drummer, don't write music that requires a human drummer. I've never heard a sample library that doesn't sound completely artificial to anybody with ears.
Even worse, in their earnest attempts to sound as real as possible, the things that make them sound artificial are even more glaring. Kind of like an uncanny valley for audio.My biggest problem though is that even if the sounds are completely convincing, the playing is not. Just like Foo Fighters songs sound like they were written by a drummer, sequenced drums inevitably sound like a guitar or keyboard player sitting down and plotting out their idea of what a drummer does. Jamstix appears to be aimed at solving this problem, but the samples just don't impress me. It doesn't (and can't) listen to your music, it has no concept of dynamics or phrasing, and the sounds are only as good as the samples you can bring into it. See paragraph 1. If you're writing music that needs to sound like it has a human playing drums, get a human to play drums for you.
If you don't have access to a drummer, don't write music that requires a human drummer.This may be true in the very broadest sense, because any two things that are different cannot by definition be the same, and a VSTi is not a human instrumentalist. But as a maxim for guiding the creative process, it's only function is to limit, and thus it's not very useful. Whenever one says that art has to be approached in a certain way, this is wrong, because there are always other ways. This may be true in the very broadest sense, because any two things that are different cannot by definition be the same, and a VSTi is not a human instrumentalist.
But as a maxim for guiding the creative process, it's only function is to limit, and thus it's not very useful. Whenever one says that art has to be approached in a certain way, this is wrong, because there are always other ways.It's not an artistic limitation, it's a technical limitation. Any good artist knows that the art they can create is limited by the tools available to them. If you're building something and the only tool you have is a hammer, you should get a bag of nails, no matter how much you would rather be putting things together with screws. If you insist on buying the bag of screws and pounding them in with the hammer, it's just not going to turn out very well.
This doesn't mean that screws or hammers are inferior, it just means you should use the right tools in the right situations.When you want something to sound like a real drummer, getting a sample library and painstakingly sequencing it out is not the way to do it. Either get a real drummer, or change your artistic vision to something that can be achieved with the tools available to you. This doesn't mean that a sample library can't be a good tool for certain purposes, but creating the sound of a human drummer is not one of them.
It's not an artistic limitation, it's a technical limitation. Any good artist knows that the art they can create is limited by the tools available to them.
If you're building something and the only tool you have is a hammer, you should get a bag of nails, no matter how much you would rather be putting things together with screws. If you insist on buying the bag of screws and pounding them in with the hammer, it's just not going to turn out very well. This doesn't mean that screws or hammers are inferior, it just means you should use the right tools in the right situations.When you want something to sound like a real drummer, getting a sample library and painstakingly sequencing it out is not the way to do it. Either get a real drummer, or change your artistic vision to something that can be achieved with the tools available to you.
This doesn't mean that a sample library can't be a good tool for certain purposes, but creating the sound of a human drummer is not one of them.I agree.If you are going to use samples and virtual instruments then those are the tools. Don't pretend that your tools are real drums and real guitars, etc and then try to make a realistic pop/rock music that is supposed to sound like music made with real instruments.Make music that is compatible with the abilities of the tools.However, that doesn't have much to do with whether someone should buy Jamstix or not.If you are not going to use a real drummer then you will want a substitute.So the question is what is a decent usable alternative?The answer isn't 'get a real drummer'. I don't think anyone is kidding themself that jamstix can replace a real drummer;) but it can certainly sound a lot better that trying to program a drum track in the midi editor with a mouse! I agree.If you are going to use samples and virtual instruments then those are the tools. Don't pretend that your tools are real drums and real guitars, etc and then try to make a realistic pop/rock music that is supposed to sound like music made with real instruments.Make music that is compatible with the abilities of the tools.Why?This kind of thing pops up recurringly on music forums, and I never understand it.
Anything you create will just sound the way it sounds, which in turn is ultimately a subjective experience on the part of the listener. Not only can I pretend that drum samples are real drums if I want to, I can pretend that drum samples are cellos. Maybe my fantasy that an EZD instance is the living incarnation of Pablo Casals will take me somewhere musically.
Then again, maybe it won't (LOL). But the point is that there are no rules regarding how to conceptualize the pursuit of an art or craft.If all you are saying is something along the lines of: 'If you use sampled instruments with the goal of rendering an exact sonic clone of a live human band you will likely be unable to attain your goal', then I suppose I agree. It (again) only states the axiomatic, that if two things are different then they are not the same. Is an apple more like an orange, or more like a fake, plastic apple?
It depends on whether you want the apple because you wish to eat a piece of fruit, or whether you want it to use as a stage prop. In other words, if I needed a 'John Bonham' sound, we can't say definitively that an available, living human drummer is 'better' than a sample or vice versa, because it could depend on whether I'm referring to Bonham's 'humanness' or his technical expertise and style (which a sampler might render much more faithfully than a marginally skilled drummer.)That's just my rant. Some of us just aren't in this to become rock stars.Some of us just need to get out that thing inside of us that keeps us up at night laying down guitar tracks and keyboard tracks and twiddling knobs trying to achieve that sound that's in our head to the best of our ability.For myself, I really don't want to bring somebody else into this process.
I've been down that road. For better or worse, at the end of the day, whatever it is I've created, I've done it by myself, on my own terms. If that means using MIDI loops or a virtual drummer to achieve that goal, I can live with that.Other people may have different goals, and different levels of comfort with the trade-offs that often need to be made to achieve them. And that's fine.That doesn't however cheapen the enjoyment I (and others like me) get out of the process. And I don't think it cheapens the results either.
Off topic:If a song becomes popular,a hit,the buying public don't question if it's a real drummer or a synth drum etc.On topic.I could never go back to hand midi programming drum tracks now I have Jamstix.I have other things to spend my time on plus it's fun:DI couldn't agree with Shep more. It is just so damn cool to drag and drop a 4 bar drum pattern into Jamstix that i have created, set up the song (verses, choruses, etc), design the fills, turn it loose, and be amazed at how good the drums are.
But the point is that there are no rules regarding how to conceptualize the pursuit of an art or craft.In my experience, the people who go around saying 'there are no rules' tend to be the people who demonstrate exactly why there are rules, and that you should learn how and why the rules work the way they do before you start breaking them. Art has rules because breaking them in an appropriate way is difficult, and teaching the distinction to an amateur is difficult. It's easier to just teach the rule, and when the amateur becomes a master he discovers the appropriate ways to break the rules on his own. I can however, say pretty definitely that someone who has actually studied percussion and has a set of ears in his head is going to do a hell of a lot better job than a one-man-band guitarist or keyboard player who doesn't have a clue what makes a good rhythm section work, or a piece of software that can't listen to the bass player and lock in a groove.Of coarse man.
But you're way over analyzing. Jamstix is a cool TOOL that creates a drum track, pretty easily and effectively I'll add, that to me and some obvious others is easier than dropping and dragging midi grooves or creating your own by hand.Was it designed to replace drummers? Uh, no.Can any solo songwriter just call up a real drummer and work out a tune at a moments notice? Probably not.To the OP. You have to try it and see if it works for you. I have it and don't use it that much and I'm not real good at using it but it is real easy to program something pretty close to what is in your head. Also, it's cool to just let it go on it's own and jam along just to see what happens!
Of coarse man. But you're way over analyzing.No, he's not over analyzing. He's just wrong. I don't wish to be contentious, but questions of artistic integrity are very important to me, and I can't just let this slide.Yes, there is a truth about having the discipline to learn 'rules' that one may subsequently break in any art. Picasso mastered representationalism before deconstructing it.
Eliot studied ancient,classical and romantic era poetic conventions and then departed from them. Hendrix could not have created Electric Ladyland had he not previously mastered, among other things, traditional 12 bar blues. But this is not the same as making the claim that an artistic medium (such as Jamstix) is appropriate for x but inappropriate for y, asserting this as though it were some unalterable, universal truth, because it's not. It's only an opinion or a sensibility that one may either embrace or reject with equal validity. Another one going against the grain here; I really, I mean really, don't like Jamstix.First because I only get problem with it and Reaper; this thread made me try it again, all I got was access violation this and access violation that, I couldn't get anything to work.
Bleh!Then installing the software and all the kit is a pain in the behind, can't be bothered anymore.Then the interface is a frigging mess.I Never could get the software to do what I want, meaning the style of drumming.For me, it's hand painting and Groove Monkey all the way, until I can get access to a decent drummer that is. I like the idea of Jamstix and I've been checking out the demo.To me, Jamstix seems to have a slightly laid-back feel. I'm not sure whether it's the time or the velocity of the hits.I rendered stems from Jamstix, Addictive Drums, EZdrummer and Steven Slate Drums.The Jamstix bass drum lands about 5ms late compared to the others (see picture below).I've got the settings wrong, but I did try switching of the limb control.I don't know if it's significant. Or am I just being an anorak:)I'm just being honest, because I have considered buying it on a number of occasions and I like the guy behind it.Pete.
^^^ Did you check how the 'pocket' control works? Or try changing the drummer model? Just a thought.JS is a great piece of gear and does drum tracks in a totally different way to loop libraries or manual MIDI editing. It does need a lot of time spent with it to really get it working to its full potential. But it's worth it, imo. 'Powerful' doesn't even begin to do it justice, it's an incredible programming achievement.Ralph has a great business model and commitment to service, too, just like Cockos.
From the Jamstix manual'Every drummer has a feel that affects the timing and power of the composed hits. The Pocketslider determines whether the drummer is playing before, on or behind the beat.
The termusually refers to a delay (playing behind the beat) but for simplicities sake it also applies hereto playing ahead of the beat. Each drummer model applies the pocket setting differently fordifferent sounds. For instance, a drummer might alter the timing of a hihat note to a largerextent than a kick note.' From the Jamstix manual'Every drummer has a feel that affects the timing and power of the composed hits. The Pocketslider determines whether the drummer is playing before, on or behind the beat. The termusually refers to a delay (playing behind the beat) but for simplicities sake it also applies hereto playing ahead of the beat.
Each drummer model applies the pocket setting differently fordifferent sounds. For instance, a drummer might alter the timing of a hihat note to a largerextent than a kick note.' I probably being very thick here:(I set the timing and the pocket setting to 0ms,bass drum still lands 5ms late.Try it. Set up a simple pattern of bass drums on the on-beat.Right click on the Reaper track and select 'Render selected tracks to stems tracks (and mute originals)'. Then examine the waveform of the stem track.I'm sure there must be a good reason for this that I'm missing (it's probably just me).
Bear in mind I'm only using the demo version as well.Pete. In my experience, the people who go around saying 'there are no rules' tend to be the people who demonstrate exactly why there are rules, and that you should learn how and why the rules work the way they do before you start breaking them. Art has rules because breaking them in an appropriate way is difficult, and teaching the distinction to an amateur is difficult. It's easier to just teach the rule, and when the amateur becomes a master he discovers the appropriate ways to break the rules on his own. One thing i've got to say is that the GUI for jamstix 2 is horrible.
At least they got that better in jamstix 3 from what i can tell.but i am wondering something actually, i've never used it, but as far as i can tell, jamstix is kind of like a midi editor within itself, and that is creating drum sequences for you in that. I'm still trying to learn JS, and I haven't seen a midi 'export' function per se.
But after setting the groove, accent and fills etc., you can record the midi that Jamstix creates (set the track to record output midi in Reaper). Then you have your midi track that you can subsequently tweak all you like.Actually, you can simply drag'n'drop from the JS2 GUI to a REAPER track; you then have a plain MIDI track that you can tweak at your own leisure.Of course you lose any drummer brain tweaking capability from then on.- Mario. 5ms Delay: There's a couple of master timing and feel sliders at the top-left of Jamstix 2, up by the power knob.
Any chance either of them are giving you that 5ms.I can't say I've ever noticed anything like that on my system, but 5ms is admittedly small enough that I'd never know the difference anyway as long as all of the drums are consistently out of time.MIDI Export and Tweaking: As mentioned, you can drag/drop from Jamstix into Reaper, but it becomes just a MIDI event from that point.You can also customize styles and drummers, adding and removing different traits, to more closely mirror your personal style. If you right-click a particular element in the brain, you can remove it or disable, and the dropdown menu at the top of the brain window lets you add more. Two quick questions:1.
I've never been able to drag and drop a MIDI file from Reaper into Jamstix. As soon as I get near the 'Half-Time' box, the cursor turns into a glorified '+' sign - which I presume means Jamstix is trying to acknowledge it - but when I let go of the left mouse button, all that happens is that Reaper creates another track underneath the Jamstix GUI!:02. I created a template that automatically loads Addictive Drums and a correctly mapped empty MIDI file but I can't make a template whereby Jamstix loads with AD already sub-hosted and a correctly mapped MIDI file. Jamstix seems to overwrite the AD mapping. Any suggestions? Actually, you can simply drag'n'drop from the JS2 GUI to a REAPER track; you then have a plain MIDI track that you can tweak at your own leisure.Of course you lose any drummer brain tweaking capability from then on.- MarioRight.
In the Jamstix GUI, clock on the Song icon and drag off onto a reaper track.But. Sometimes the full MIDI track doesn't make it. Usually I have to let the song play out to the finish and then drag the MIDI to a track.Then modify, cut paste, etc. The midi item to your hearts content.:D. That's pretty interesting. Change it to 'Jam-no input' and change the drummer model to 'Machine', and see what happens then.I tried the Jam No Input setting with the Machine drummer and get the same 5ms delay.I just hosted Ers drums in Jamstix.
It was the only one I could get to work because I think my other options had too many channels for the Jamstix demo. With Ers hosted in JS, the bass drum is bang on time (see pic below).no change of settings, when I use the JS bassdrum I get the 5ms delay, as shown in the pic in my earlier post.Shouldn't the hosted VSTi also be affected by the JS brain? If so, it appears the JS bass drum sample in the demo might be slightly late. Can anyone else check this to confirm?I know 5ms isn't much. Not enough to hear an absolute delay, but I'm sure I can feel the effect on the rhythm - maybe the difference between Ringo Starr and Vinnie Colaiuta:). Am I the only one that notices this? I'm probably over obsessing about it:(Pete.
Is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about actually. The drums sound real enough, if a bit lacking in subtlety (and definitely not the snare drum sound I would pick for this song), and if I didn't know it was samples, yeah, I wouldn't think twice about it, but the playing.
It's just painful! It sounds like a third year drum student who's learned how to play the drums but hasn't learned how to play music yet. If you don't know what I'm talking about, apply it to any other instrument you can think of.
Who here knows a guitar player who has the hott lixx but has absolutely no sense of taste, restraint or subtlety? The bass player who has to show off his slap bass in the ballad? The vocalist who throws in elaborate vocal gyrations every chance they get? These things happen when people develop their technical ability faster than their musical ability. That's what I hear whenever I listen to most of these one-man-bands, a guy wielding a sampler is effectively a drummer with the technique of a 20-year master but without any of the musical experience.
But this is not the same as making the claim that an artistic medium (such as Jamstix) is appropriate for x but inappropriate for y, asserting this as though it were some unalterable, universal truth, because it's not.Yes it is. It's about the.intentions. of your art. If your.intention. is to create a realistic rendition of a sky, you don't use yellow paint, you use blue paint.
You use the yellow paint if your intention is to render the sky unrealistically. This is universally true.
At least for people with fully functioning human eyes and vision systems. If your intention is to create the sound of a human playing drums, sequencing and samples do not achieve this. They pretty consistently achieve the objective of sounding like a robot playing drums, however. If you're looking for that sound. Great!Another comparison I can make is to piano synths.
Piano synths on the market sound extremely realistic. I've got one called PianoTeq that I use.
Even if the sound is very realistic, however, a performance that sounds like it was delivered by a human requires an actual human sitting behind a MIDI controller and pressing keys. Sequencing a human-sounding piano performance takes so much time and effort that, assuming your time is not worth nothing, it is more worthwhile to hire a keyboardist to bang it out for you.the output quite often sounds as real as a 'real' drummer's outputTo you, perhaps.
To someone familiar with the instrument, not so much.Drumming isn't exactly brain-surgery.This is ignorant, and frankly, rather offensive in its ignorance. Drums get a bad rap, and it's true that most pop and rock music doesn't require that much in the way of sophisticated playing. But that's true of a lot of instruments. I wouldn't judge the instrument of guitar based on playing rhythm in a 12-bar-blues band, I wouldn't judge keyboard based on a dude whacking away on a moog in an emo band, I wouldn't judge bass from listening to Weezer, and you shouldn't judge drums based on your perception of the drummer as some caveman bashing away behind you while you make the 'real' music. Anybody who has actually studied the art knows how wrong this quote is.
Listen to some good jazz some time and get back to me. It's about the.intentions. of your art.
If your.intention. is to create a realistic rendition of a sky, you don't use yellow paint, you use blue paint. You use the yellow paint if your intention is to render the sky unrealistically. This is universally true. At least for people with fully functioning human eyes and vision systems.What about tangerine trees and marmalade skies? What's the correct paint for those?
Are they less realistic than blue skies? Possibly more realistic?But one of the redeeming aspects of this existence is that you are allowed to believe whatever you want. A duality-driven mechanistic ontology is one way to consume the space which one inhabits, and as long as it sinks your submarine, knock yourself out.I do agree with you that PianoTeq is pretty cool. I don't have it, but played with the demo a while back. Eats a lot of CPU, though, as I recall. What about tangerine trees and marmalade skies?
What's the correct paint for those? Are they less realistic than blue skies? Possibly more realistic?The more I think about it the more I realize that the yellow-vs-blue comparison was actually the wrong way for me to approach the visual metaphor. It holds up okay, but I'm going to switch gears a bit, because if you really want to create a perfectly accurate rendition of a scene, you take a photograph.
=D Now imagine Photoshop taking the place of Reaper. You load up a photo, you're not happy with some of the colors, you start tweaking them. You end up with something that is farther away from the original source, but more aesthetically appealing, and the end result is still essentially the same photograph. This is basically like making a one-mic recording, throwing some compression/EQ on it and calling it a day. Maybe you wanna get fancy and remove some zits from the subject or get rid of that annoying power line or whatever. Maybe you liked elements of two photos and wish they were in the same photo.
We're moving into territory that would get you fired from a newspaper, but for artistic and commercial purposes, as long as your execution is good we're pretty okay. As long as it still looks like a photograph that could have come out of a camera, we've pretty much accomplished our goals.Now, say you don't have a way to take a photograph of something. You don't have a camera, you don't have a subject, whatever. There are still ways to create compelling images, but without extreme technical prowess you are not going to generate anything that would fool anybody into thinking it was a photograph.
There's nothing wrong with this, in fact much of the most revolutionary art ever created is the least realistic. This is the principle that electronic music operates on, you're not trying to achieve the sound of a real life instrument, but you are creating something just as compelling, perhaps even moreso because of the unique sounds you can only accomplish electronically.However, maybe you do have a camera and something for the foreground, but don't have the background you want. And you really really want the end result to look like a photo, so you load up iStockPhoto and start finding things to fill in your background. Then you end up with something that looks like this (This is basically the visual equivalent of what most sequenced drums sound like to me. Okay, maybe the photoshopper could have done a better job comping, maybe they could have picked better source material, but in the end the best way to have created this picture would have been to get some actual animals and take a picture of a girl holding them.
If your budget doesn't allow for this, then you should change your goal from creating a realistic appearance to something within your means. The linked picture would have looked much better as line art, maybe with a real girl comped in, but without the pretense of trying to create a convincingly realistic picture.PianoTeq is pretty cool.
I don't have it, but played with the demo a while back. Eats a lot of CPU, though, as I recall.Ohhhhh yeah, shitloads of CPU. Definitely one of the first plugins you freeze. When tracking with it I generally recommend running it on a laptop and running the audio into the system just like any other instrument, recording the MIDI data as well.
There's just no way you can run PianoTeq with low enough latency to give good feedback while also recording 16 tracks of band. Unless you have way more machine than me. =( Can I have my dodectuple core processors yet?
No, wolfman, I do this in the last version of 2. I haven't approached the beta 3's yet. I create a 4 bar pattern on a midi track in the host (Reaper), and then drag that midi clip onto the part interface of JS. Ralph says you should drop it to the left or right of the 'halftime' button. Works great!I,m dammed if i can this to work:( what happens is when i grab the midi item it REAPER and try to drag it into JS, REAPER is the active window and JS is inactive so trying to drop the midi item onto JS just results it moving the midi item to another track in REAPER.I can't figure out how to make the JS window active while draging the item from REAPER?Any ideas? I'd really like to get this working.Cheers. I tried the Jam No Input setting with the Machine drummer and get the same 5ms delay.I just hosted Ers drums in Jamstix.
It was the only one I could get to work because I think my other options had too many channels for the Jamstix demo. With Ers hosted in JS, the bass drum is bang on time (see pic below).no change of settings, when I use the JS bassdrum I get the 5ms delay, as shown in the pic in my earlier post.Shouldn't the hosted VSTi also be affected by the JS brain? If so, it appears the JS bass drum sample in the demo might be slightly late. Can anyone else check this to confirm?I know 5ms isn't much. Not enough to hear an absolute delay, but I'm sure I can feel the effect on the rhythm - maybe the difference between Ringo Starr and Vinnie Colaiuta:). Am I the only one that notices this?
I'm probably over obsessing about it:(PeteConfirmed,:( I just placed a midi groove from SD2 into REAPER and rendered to audio using Jamstix 2 XL, Superior drummer & steven slate EX and the JS render kick was 5 ms behind ( in drum module mode using the Big Kit ), the snares from all three were about 1 ms behind but all the same, so there does seem to be something wierd going on with Jamstix Kick drum.:eek:Cheers. Spent over an hour yesterday programing a song in Jamstix using SSD, saved the project. Open the project today, Jamstix open completely blank, no song, no SSD, nothing.What a freakish pile of junk of a program, don't know how you folks put up with that crap.To the OP, if you really want to mess about with that pile of dung, I'll sell it to you half price(if Rayzoon allow transfer).Did you save the project while playing?If so, it is a known issue with REAPER and JS3 fixes it, according to what the dev said in support forum.- Mario. I can however, say pretty definitely that someone who has actually studied percussion and has a set of ears in his head is going to do a hell of a lot better job than a one-man-band guitarist or keyboard player who doesn't have a clue what makes a good rhythm section work, or a piece of software that can't listen to the bass player and lock in a groove.Emphasis mine. Did you save the project while playing?If so, it is a known issue with REAPER and JS3 fixes it, according to what the dev said in support forum.Thanks, but that isn't really helping me now, is it?In any case, this is the last straw out of an extremely long list of straw as far as I'm concerned, Jamstix is a nice enough idea on paper, but marred by a very poor execution.In any case I'm done with that junk, my offer to the OP still stands, half price for version 2, including all the samples set from version 1 and 2. If he doesn't take it, I'll find somebody I really, but I mean really, don't like and give it to him/her. Actually, you can simply drag'n'drop from the JS2 GUI to a REAPER track; you then have a plain MIDI track that you can tweak at your own leisure.Of course you lose any drummer brain tweaking capability from then on.- MarioYes, but you can also import MIDI clips into Jamstix and turn the Brain on again.-Susansweet maybe i'll give it a go then.Right.
In the Jamstix GUI, clock on the Song icon and drag off onto a reaper track.But. Sometimes the full MIDI track doesn't make it. Usually I have to let the song play out to the finish and then drag the MIDI to a track.Then modify, cut paste, etc. The midi item to your hearts content.:Dwell i haven't yet figured out yet how to clock with my mouse:) but thanks for the tip, that's good to know. Js is fine if you don't expect it to sound like a real drummer playing real drums and have lots of time and energy to devote to techy details. Because of some of the inflated claims about its realism and the wishful thinking of some home recordist thinkers, it is easy to wish it to be more than it is.
You can control a lot about backbeat or pocket variation, but I'm pretty sure the bass and other hits are locked into the mechanical lockstep which still differentiates the man from the machine. To get feel of a drummer it is prolly best to actually beat on something that triggers something that makes some visual representation thing that later can be fairly easily edited to reinforce or restrain the human element (i.e. Or better yet (if yr goal is indeed to have human sounding drums)somehow get a human drummer.Another negative is that it ain't as great as might be desired in maximizing yr computer/ soundcard's ability to minimize latency. It includes some built in features to help in this regard, but they are cumbersome to me anyway.
You should prolly have a pretty robust machine.What it's best at for me is a quick easy percussion tool to jam with, come up with ideas. It has some features that allow a bit of a 'reactive' 'jamming' that can be fun and inspiring in a way that loops perhaps aren't. But it's a little much to spend for that. I would also say that the learning curve is kinda steep.
The brain has some really non-intuitive and hugely frustrating quirks when you're trying to edit patterns and songs, and the interface takes some getting used to.If I had it to buy again I'd pass. I must admit however that I am not all that technically savvy, and people who like to burrow full bore into the intricacies of tediousness are apparently richly rewarded for their labors. I just did!I have EZDrummer with several expansion packs and like it a lot. However due to this thread I downloaded the Jamstix demo and messed with it as time allowed over the last couple of days. Yes I agree that the UI is less than intuitive (looks like major improvements in ver3) however the free form nature of how the grooves are created along with substantial changes with one button or the tweak of a knob lead me to me to purchase it today.To me the combination of EZD (which I know well) and Jamstix (which I will learn over time) give me everything I need when I am unable to bring in a real drummer (which I always prefer) and or to help me get ideas going quickly. For those looking at Jamstix (Original post) (or for those of us who just purchased) here is a very good tutorial that I ran across on the Jamstix site. (If this has been linked already I apologize but I didn't see it anywhere.I have only been at this a couple of days, but I have to say this is a very cool piece of software.
As noted by others it can be a bit confusing at first, hence why I pasted this link.Another neat thing to try is open a new empty song and load just the kit no style, no drummer. Highlight the first bar and manually enter a pattern. For example a simple rock ballad, kick on 1 and 3, snare 2 and 4.
BTW the light bulbs really started going off when I got it that we are talking human limbs here not just drums (RF=Kick, LH=Snare, etc). So with this basic pattern, lock it for the part, now pick a style and a drummer and see what happens with the high hat, toms and cymbals. Hit the compose button and run it again.
Add styles and drummers and see what happens. Endless possibilities.Like I have said before I love recording real drummers, but I am in an apartment at the moment (short term) so that is a problem. I also have used and will continue to use EZD, but I can really see why so many like Jamstix.
As a matter of fact, I got the Vintage, DK from Hell and the Nashville expansion packs along with some grooves from Groove Monkey mainly to get more/different groove patterns. Knowing what I know now I probably would not have gotten these 'extras' knowing what Jamstix brings me.Okay, I am headed toward fanboy status here, but wanted to share some thoughts.
Like a few other folks here, I'm going to say Jamstix is the way to create realistic drum performances, imo. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it will give you a level of realism way beyond MIDI loops. Then you can use whatever samples you want to actually make the sounds.A lot of drum software only plays what you tell it to - programmed in, or loops.
The drums may sound great, but the drumming is limited to what you tell it to do. Jamstix is a completely different piece of software in a market where lots of the stuff available is much of a muchness.Don't get me wrong, I like some of the other stuff. And loops or programming hit by hit both have their uses. But Jamstix does stuff - 'plays the drums' - in a way that other programs like EZ Drummer and Addictive Drums alone will not. A lot of the time, I use Jamstix as the drummer and SD2.0 as the kit.
Click to expand. Totally rocks (for PC, Mac, or Linux). I've downloaded about 10 different drumkits and I run it under either XP or Linux - XP crashes every now and then. There's also of you want to do the rest of the stuff. I just use Hydrogen (on my HP6325 lappie) thru a mixer with my amp DI into my headphones for practicing my bass (instead of a metronome). It's way more flexible and sounds much better than my Pandora PX5D, which has fallen into disuse since I started using Hydrogen.
I haven't taken the time to compose entire songs on the drums so it sort of amounts to glorified loops. And, of course, it's free.I haven't tried running it through my HD115 into the room - I imagine it would not sound as good as the real thing. Click to expand.Most major recordings from big bands have fake drums.
They're usually replacement tracks, where the drummer has played and a program has replaced all the tracks with fake drums. For songs recorded on a major label in the last 5 years, it's probably harder to find the real drum tracks then ones that have been replace.
However, the programs are so good that pretty much no one except for the guy who played the tracks himself could tell the difference.The program keys in on certain frequencies on each track (like about 60hz on the kick track) and replaces the real kick with a new kick that's entirely clean with no bleed from the other drums, and tries to accurately replicate (NOT replace) the nuances of the original. This works best with the snare and the hats, since they tend to have the most cross over bleed during recording.As such, it's not really 'fake,' but they are in a way.Also, as said, there's TONS of other songs that are also entirely programmed, where if the programming's good enough, no one can tell the difference except for a very few people. Surprised no-ones mentioned BFD or BFD2. Only played with BFD2 but it's a cool little program, all drums are recorded direct and also with overheads, room mics and ambient mics, really cool cos you can set the distance and width of all three of these too, so you can have a nice (direct?) direct sound, and have your other mics panned wider for a big sound that doesn't make the kit sound like it's 2 feet infront of you when your listening. Also kicks and snares are both recorded with 2 direct mics which is cool, can alter the bvleed amount and fancy stuff like that too which is cool.
Sounds fairly realistic and has a nice mixer where you can group and sidechain stuff, also has some cool usable effects too, nothing silly just a couple of compressors a decent EQ and a few others, if you wanna be more experimental you can always do that kinda thing in your recording program. Has really decent dynamics too, I think each kit piece has around 128 dynamic layers or something, you can install less to take up less space if you want too.It's pretty expensive at $200ish dollars though, I seem to recall that being around about what it costs over there.
Surprised no-ones mentioned BFD or BFD2. Only played with BFD2 but it's a cool little program, all drums are recorded direct and also with overheads, room mics and ambient mics, really cool cos you can set the distance and width of all three of these too, so you can have a nice (direct?) direct sound, and have your other mics panned wider for a big sound that doesn't make the kit sound like it's 2 feet infront of you when your listening. Also kicks and snares are both recorded with 2 direct mics which is cool, can alter the bvleed amount and fancy stuff like that too which is cool. Sounds fairly realistic and has a nice mixer where you can group and sidechain stuff, also has some cool usable effects too, nothing silly just a couple of compressors a decent EQ and a few others, if you wanna be more experimental you can always do that kinda thing in your recording program. Has really decent dynamics too, I think each kit piece has around 128 dynamic layers or something, you can install less to take up less space if you want too. When the OP says 'noticably fake' is he talking about the sounds or the performance? For the performance, look for a user Korg PadKontrol.
They're about $100 or less, typically. A good interface for tapping in drum parts.For the sounds, find a SoundFont player and start looking around for free SoundFonts. There are a lot of them out there. SoundFonts are a sample standard that Creative Labs created for it's Sound Blaster Live cards. The hardware was crappy, but the standard took on a life of its own.It's funny. I'm a drummer and I often like to start things with sounds that are truly synthesized (softsynths) instead of samples.
From there I'll add percussion (shakers, etc.) and drums as necessary. For some reason I get a kick from using sounds not found in nature.Here is the text of a post I put on The Bottom Line. It's for Band in a Box, but a lot of the links might give you a good starting point for SoundFont softsynhs and SoundFonts.I was asked off list to help a guy get BiaB to do what Nigel Stanleyoutlined earlier. It took me a lot longer to work through the stepsthan I thought it would and I'll be damned if I'm going through all ofthat effort for just one guy, so here is the expanded instructions forNigel's post. Thanks Nigel!Note that these instructions are for the version of BiaB that I have,which is 2007.Download 'VSTSynthFont'.(it doesn't take long).VST is an interface for audio application to use effects and softwaresynthesizers. Another common interface for Windows audio programs isDX.
VSTi and DXi refer to soft synthesizers ('i' is for 'Instrument')that use the VST and DX interfaces, respectively.SynthFont is a VSTi that plays back 'Sound Fonts'. Sound Fonts are aformat of sets of samples. The format was created by Creative Labs forits sound cards (e.g. Sound Blaster Live).
It became something of astandard.So, BiaB talks to 'SynthFont' using the VSTi interface. SynthFont isused to play back Sound Fonts.Now you need a Sound Font. One article I read suggested Fluid 3:To save download size, Sound Fonts are often stored in SFArk format,which is like a ZIP file. To extract them, use SFArkXTc.exe, which ispart of the SFArk 'suite'. That can be found here. When youdecompress it will create a self-extracting EXE file, which you run toget the SF2 file that is our goal. Yes it is a pain in the butt.
Agood site about SoundFonts, etc. That I found while working through thisis here:You want to extract the file that has 'GM' in the name.
GM stands for'General MIDI'. General MIDI is a convention where certain sounds willcome from given MIDI channels and note numbers, so a MIDI file can havea rough chance of the correct tones coming out when it sends a MIDIcommand to play a note.OK, you have everything you need.In BiaB, go to the 'Opt.' Menu and select 'MIDI/Audio Driver Setup.' In that dialog select 'Use DXi Synth'. The next dialog that will comeup is also available via the 'DXi Synth' button. On my 2007 version,it's just below the keyboards, 3rd button from the right.Go to the 'Synth Track' tab. In the top drop down, click on 'Add VSTiPlugin.'
Point it to VSTSynthFont.dll, which you should haveinstalled at some point. VSTSynthFont will prompt you for a soundfont. Point it to 'FluidR3 GM.SF2', which you extracted earlier.OK out of the dialogs.Open a song in BiaB and playback to test.
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