JamStix 3 anyone?

Spent some hours this week w/ it. Completely awesome software IMO. The learning curve is quite steep, but what isn’t that is of value is what I tell myself.

Anyone here use it or have strong feelings one way or another about it?

Re: sonic quality of the drum hits - I’m not going to buy another product since they sound fine to me for the kind of work I do (major studio film scoring, rescue mastering services … NOT!), but just out of interest, is there a large difference in drum sound quality, and if so how do JS3 sounds measure up?

Thanks for any thoughts!

Been a huge JS fan for years. I use JS3.5 (64bit) in conjunction with Steve Slate Drums 4. You’ll hear the combo on the vast majority of my pop/rock tunes :sunglasses:

I’m not sure on the sounds, but I use JS3 mostly to practice guitar styles with. It’s cool to set a rhythm and practice chops against a more natural feel of that rhythm instead of “fixed” MIDI version of the same style. But, I never use it for music, I’m a BFD user.

Same here…

Why post here and not the VST forum? :confused:

Why trolling here and not elswhere ?

I liked Jamstix too, but left it behind when I went to Mac land.

Ralph at Jamstix has been saying on his forum that an OSX version is in the works,for so long that people have gone to extraordinary lengths, with Parallels and Vine and goodness knows what to kludge a version that will work on OSX, but to me it is way too much faff. I just want to make music.

Personally I can’t see there ever being an OSX native solution, so I have moved on.

My Go-to solutions are now, for demos Steven Slate Drums, and for final recordings, a drummer :slight_smile:

I love the concept - reality is a different story. In reality, a drummer is not going to have as much variation during the verses and choruses as the AI generated drumlines have. However, the fills are very good as are the implementation of various other sections (middle 8, etc.) so as long as you recognize this as a limitation then you should be okay.

The way I’ve started using it (3.5 64-bit) is to set it to use the Battery 3 mappings (Tight Kit, specifically). That way, I can run Jamstix through the song a few times and cull the best snippets of verses and choruses which I then repeat and introduce very subtle variations into manually using the MIDI editor in Cubase. This works well, but it’s a bit of a shame since Jamstix supports 8 outputs in various configurations which would make generations of audio tracks for separate EQ and insert treatment an absolute breeze.

I understand that it is possible for Jamstix to use MIDI drumlines as “grooves” (which would enable multi-track output) but I haven’t played with it enough to understand how this is done.

Hey foolomon -I heard that the “simplify” brain function from Charlie can be extracted and then applied to the methdrummers to tone them down. I hope to check this out soon, I’d be extremely pleased if that turned out to be true!

Well since Jamstix operates on the Drummer + Kit + Song Style = drumline I wonder why this is any different from simply using Charlie along with the appropriate song style.

But yes, I tend to use Charlie for the more “straight ahead” parts while switching to another drummer for other parts.

I tried a little of the “Simplify” slider on some of the other drummers this weekend. I think the concept is that since the drummers are not just busier versions of Charlie (but have their own drum personalities), simplifying them doesn’t necessarily reduce them to Charlie.

But … I have to say I was more interested in moving forward than experimenting to a great degree, so I can’t say that for sure. I have a feeling it would have been a good investment in time to check things out a bit more, but I was more into short term gains this weekend.

I do wind up doing a lot of programming by hand. I can’t see any way around that, as no matter how good the drummer is out of the box, they can’t be expected to know that somebody is whispering the key phrase of the song on the 3rd beat of bar 32 - NOT the right place for a cowbell solo! (… for those that don’t know Jamstix well - that’s just an exaggeration!)

You probably know this, but the song builder allows you to measure by measure use the style + drummer yet change the content using the drummer performance dials + the power knob. That way, no cow bells during the cool down section :laughing:
Unless Christopher Walken is your producer of course.

Does CW do Croatian Waltzes?? :slight_smile:

Yes, the key is definitely in the performance dialers and the power knob. The dialers will take some time to learn. But for me, the automatically generated fills are worth the (very low) price of admission!

You don’t remember his classic cover album? Here’s just a quick sample.
http://snd.sc/WZUKM0

Quik on the draw, I’ll give you that JMCecil. Actually sounds like the soundtrack to “Borat - the Movie”, if you ask me. :smiley:

BTW - in terms of quality of recorded drum sounds - is anyone in a position to comment on a comparison among Jamstix, and others (BFD, Addictive, etc.)?

Thanks!

Actually I was too quick, I realized while it was rendering that the CB is in 4 … as Homer would say “DOUGH”. I also kept it purposefully short so some forum copyright monitor won’t have a conniption. Otherwise, I could have had some fun, until I find out that whatever waltz I used is owned by a Sheik in Far Eastern Elbonia.

Anyhow,
I prefer BFD2 over JS, although JS has some interesting/good percussion.

Hard to beat the Zyldian Vault cymbals though. And I’m a sucker for the Maple Custom Absolute with the the snare pack add-ons.

BFD2 samples are hard to beat, I like the whole darn thing. BFD3 is taking a long time though.

Are you familiar with how BFD has historically set their price structures after a new release … do you think BFD2 will drop in price when BFD3 is released, or do you think BFD2 will not be available for purchase at that time?

Thanks -

alexis - I don’t know what FXpansion pricing policy is - I started with BFD and just followed the upgrade/paid update path. I’m hoping that they will include some sensible percussion sounds in BFD3 - BFD2 has the worst tambourine sound :confused:

BFD2 drums sound really cool. I like the way on their site they let you hear each piece of the kit at different velocities. I wish others would do that, cause sometimes their audio demos freak me out and all the snare hits sound like rimshots, which I never use.

I too like to use EZDrummer cause it’s ez, not alot of tweaking and so on. But the whole EZ line expansions and all are very genre specific; it would be awkward to use most of their kits in more than a couple genres. Superior Drummer and the majority of the SDX’s sound capable of being in multiple genres.