Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[OldGeezer]

Ok, I want to use Jamstix to drive a set of drums in an external Kontakt2 track with Jamstix2 in realtime. I'm doing this through Reaper which has excellent midi routing. The reason I want to do it this way instead of hosting Kontakt2 inside of Jamstix2 (which works fine) is that I also use a bass library in Kontakt2, and I'd rather avoid having to use two separate instances of Kontakt2 (the less resources I use the better).

Now I can load my bass and drums into Kontakt, with the bass set to listen on midi channel 1 and drums set to listen on midi channel 10. I then create two separate tracks and route one of them to kontakt on midi channel 1 and the other routed to Kontakt on midi channel 10. No problems so far...the bass plays fine when the bass track is armed, and the drums play fine when the drum track is armed. However, once I insert Jamstix2 into the drum track, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get it to trigger the drums in Kontakt. I've made sure that the "midi output" is enabled in the Jamstix options, but wether I hit play or record, nothing happens. I even tried just looping a single bar in Jamstix and still nothing.

Can you think of anything I could be missing?

Edit: I should also add that I've tried this with the midi only option enable and disabled in the mixer, to no avail. The playback timing is functioning (when I hit play, Jamstix is following the hosts playback...the song is technically playing in jamstix2, but no sound, and the midi out led is not lighting up).

[OldGeezer]

I fixed it! The solution is rather strange and should probably not be necessary -possible addition to the next update patch?

Since I had "Midi Only" enabled in the mixer (no sounds get loaded), I figured I just had to create my parts and it would just output the midi.

It turns out I had to actually load one of the kits (mapex dry in this case), and even though no samples get loaded, it still says the mapex dry kit is loaded, and now it works and triggers my drums in the separate Kontakt2 track.

If the user intends to only output midi, and tells Jamstix to only output midi, should the user think to actually go through the motions of loading a kit, even though no samples get loaded? I find it odd that I should need to pretend to load a kit in order to output midi only. Strange, but at least I'm hearing my drums now!

Edit: I think what threw me for a loop was the fact that I used the "load song but not mixer and kit" option to load a song, and then cleared the song and created my own parts. In both cases it failed to output anything. I guess midi output is not enabled until a kit is loaded, even if no samples get loaded in the process.

Edit again: BTW, I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining (just suggesting that that one aspect is a tad confusing)...that's really important to me. I am still totally blown away by Jamstix2 and the many ways in which it can be used, as well as with Rayzoon in general, and I make a point of extolling its virtues any time the subject of drum plugins comes up (as do many other users I've noticed).

[Ralph [RZ]]

The way the Jamstix 2 A.I. works requires a (virtual) kit to exist in form of 'kit elements'. If you do not load a kit then you have no kit elements and the brain cannot create hits and, thus, no MIDI output.

The reason it needs kit elements is so it knows how many toms and cymbals are available, whether a snare bounce and rimshot sound exists etc. All of this affects the hits/notes that the brain generates.
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Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[OldGeezer]

Yeah I was wondering about that. I'll have to see if I can figure out how to make a custom "virtual" kit for my Studio B (from Bel D Media) drumkits as I don't think they have nearly as many elements in the kits as the Jamstix kits do.

It'd be nice if when one clicks "midi only" in the mixer, it automatically loads a virtual midi-out kit with no sounds and a simple on/off switch for each element. Maybe it is that easy...I'll have to investigate after the holidays.

Odds are that I'll probably stick with the Jamstix kits anyways, but it's always nice to have other options.

[OldGeezer]

After further exploring the huge library of kit elements in the Jamstix library, and playing around with the EQ/compression and multiple mixer outputs and finally understanding that there are almost infinite possibilities, I've pretty much scrapped any notion of using my Kontakt2 kits (I just deleted them actually)....there's enough in there to satisfy any needs I may have...though I am probably going to get the Metalpak once I get caught up on my credit card (more for the groovy "custom metal" option than for the drums).

Thanks for the info Ralph...and I'm looking very much forward to this future "midi-learn" feature you mentioned in the other forum! If I can tap bass 'n snare grooves with my keyboard directly into Jamstix without all the mouse-clicks, I'll be in heaven...a very loud thumping heaven!

Have a happy new year man!