Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[conorg]

OK the basic layout of my song is like so:

The Verses are 6 and a half bars long
The Bridge is 7 bars long
The Chorus is 7 and a half bars long

Not really that complicated but a bit unusual. So my first attempt at getting Jamstix to play this was to treat each "half bar" as a separate part of one bar in length and in 2/4 time. The "feel" of the song suggests 2-bar repetitions so:

Verse = (2 bars x 3 repetitions) + (1 bar in 2/4 time)
Bridge = (2 bars x 3 repetitions) + (1 bar)
Chorus = (2 bars x 3 repetitions) + (3 bars in 2/4 time)

However using this method I'm hitting the 18 part limit before I even get 2 minutes into the song. So a few questions arise:

1) My ideal solution would be to allow fractions to be entered in the part length / part repetition fields. So I could just directly enter that I wanted a part to be 6.5 bars in length. Or 2 bars x 3.25 repetitions! Is this doable?

2) Are there any plans to increase the limit of 18 parts? This seems unneccessarily restrictive. Is the only reason for 18 because of the physical size of the song clipboard? Can we not add vertical scrolling?

3) Can anyone think of a better way to translate this song structure into Jamstix?

One solution I did come up with was to have two instances of Jamstix, each one playing half of the song. Not ideal by any means.

And yes my song already had this weird structure, I'm not just being awkward and trying to give Ralph a sore head.

[Ralph [RZ]]

We will see about increasing the 18 part limit in a future update.

Here is a potential work-around. Create your song as you outlined:

Verse = (2 bars x 3 repetitions) + (1 bar in 2/4 time)
Bridge = (2 bars x 3 repetitions) + (1 bar)
Chorus = (2 bars x 3 repetitions) + (3 bars in 2/4 time)

Now check the "Loop" icon in the song sheet and arrange the song from your host using Program Changes. PC 1 will trigger the first part, PC2 the next and so forth.

See Liveloops in the manual for more info.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[conorg]

Thanks Ralph, Liveloops sounds interesting, I'll read up on it.

[Art_Vandelay]

I would also really like to be able to have more than 18 parts. I've been working on a pretty typical project and am at the 18 part limit, being fairly conservative (for example, in a double chorus at the end, where I'd like to have the drum part differ a little on the second repetition of the chorus, I currently don't b/c I'm already at the part limit). In some of my songs with more complex structures, I can be pretty certain that 18 parts won't be enough.

The liveloops approach is an interesting suggestion, and would help in some cases, but at least for my of my songs, there isn't a lot of pure repetition -- for example, verses often differ at least subtly from one to the next, etc. For example, in song I'm working on now, the liveloops approach would only cut down the number of parts by 4. Additionally, I'm hoping to keep the Jamstix parts (in both number and in name) consistent with my markers in Sonar (which are done by part).

[Guitarfish]

I'm having some similar challenges with a song that has a few 'half-bars' i.e. using up the parts too quickly to give each half-bar it's own part.
I tried just editing the time sig in the host to force this, but then JS2 and the host are out of sync from the half bar. Am I right in thinking that you can't have time sig changes within a part?
If so, is there any prospect of allowing time sig to be defined at bar level, rather than part?

While I'm on the subject, it took me a while to get to find the 'time sig' property at all - it seems quite 'buried' in the bars / reps dialogue, but without any visual indicator on the main song sheet.

I know GUI space is limited, but in my ideal world I would like to see time sig. Intro/Normal/Ending and possibly 'starting bar #' for each part on the song sheet, even if it meant I couldn't see the brain controls at the same time. I still think there were some benefits to JS1 tabbed arrangement, which allowed a bit more space for each concept.

Would it be unreasonable to ask for both i.e. a config option for 'overview' (as now - all key components visble simultaneously) or 'tabs' (seperate views for song sheet, bar editor and brain, each with a bit more space and more features visible on the GUI)

You can only ask...

[Hewitt Huntwork]