Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[gmon72]

Songbuilder looks awesome. Nice feature.

[acabreira]

Hi Ralph. I have some observations and suggestions based on my now long term experience with JS which could be late, but since I´m working on songs right now that have showed me exactly what I wanted to see improved in JS workflow, here they go. There are some parts that were obviously not planned initially for JS 2 release that has added great dimension to the way it works but are very unorganized as well, and the most important to me seems to be the customization of style. The 'Extract from other style' feature is the one I´m using all the time, since although not being a drummer, I have a concept of what kind of drums I want in my song that are not filled by any preset style or drummer. Let me tell you some things I would like to improved an that probably are not difficult to do since the code is probably already there:

1) About the Fill system, I thought about a preset system. I tell you that because most of the time I would like to use fills as breaks more than accents so you could set for each bar a preset like ´calm´ or ´busy´ and whenever you compose a fill in this bar, it would compose with the settings that were saved as presets. I really miss a ´save fill settings´like feature an this implementation would be even nicer than than a ´save´ only option.

2) About the Accents system:

a) Although I don´t find the actual accents system very useful at the current state, it´s because of the lack of a few parameters and actual unification of the elements. I like using ´Tom´ and ´Late Tom´, but I always have to edit their velocity later because I don´t want a full tom embellishment, but a softer tom in ballads and slow blues as a full velocity tom breaks the mood of the song to me. A simple ´power´ parameter would solve it.

b) Many brain elements that can be extracted from styles are repeated for obvious reasons, but since they were unhidden and can be extracted, they could be unified. Instead of an extraction fro other style, there could be an ´add accent element´ or something like that where you could see all available elements with their descriptions and add them. This would be great improvement to customizability of parts.

c) I believe for most of these elements, a power and a bias slider would be great. For instance, most of the times I want to use open hats in the end of the bar only and I have to remove some of the early open hats because of the lack of a bias slider. Many other elements would benefit from these sliders too.

3) The same point about the accents would be useful for the goove elements as well. I´m into a blues composition in which I´m using shuffled kicks but velocity 100 doesn´t sound best to me. A simple power slider would do a great job, as much as a bias slider for funky hats and open hats amongst others.

This is the kind of unification I would expect in Jamstix parameters. One would say it would clutter the interface with too many sliders. I say we would get used to it very soon as maybe less elements would be needed to accomplish the same variations.

There are other little improvements that could be made as well. It´s all about my own workflow, and I´m interested to hear if anyone else would benefit from these changes. They´re not conceptual changes, only additions to what´s already present. I love Jamstix, my drum tracks are much better than before, but I visualize my drum tracks in specific ways that cannot be automatically created by JS yet, mostly because of a few missing sliders. These apparently small additions would help those who are not drummers like me but have a consistent idea of what is wanted from the drum track.

4) I find myself using ´Classic Kick/Snare Controls´ because it gives me the most control of the groove, and the bias/power that I miss in other elements is essentially built-in. The groove aspect of the brain is where I work the most. In factr I reach better accents variation with elements in the groove than in the accent tab itself. ´Choked hats´ could be an accent element, but it´s not, only a groove one. ´Shuffle Kick´ also, ´Funky Hats´ too. It force me to make my parts ´x´ bars 1 repetition to use groove elements as accents. But for unification, I believe these groove elements should be added as accent elements too. This way I could compose a 4 bar x repetitions for instance and still reach the same variations, but then it would have the advantage of structuring my song better, for many times I´d want to use 2 bars as base for my parts instead of 1. And if I use the Groove Importer, I lose the ´probably´ feature of the classic controls, and these I don´t want to miss.

So what I´m proposing is leaving the embellishments for accents and using ´Groove´ for, well, the groove. Or at least having the options to choose where to set these elements. One could use ´open hats´ in groove for having hats based groove idea but all the kick embellishments in accent tab, or the opposite. That would guarantee a more versatile composition system.

5) The ´Feel´ element could be ´addable´ too. As I like to start my grooves from scratch, If I choose style/drummer ´silent´, I don´t have feel variations.

6) I believe ´Redirection´ could use ´power/bias´ sliders too. I can redirect hats to low cymbals, but I want to redirect to low ride or low tom too. And most of the times I will want to redirect only to the end of the bar. Also would be interesting if we could use more than one redirection. You see a small shift in the paradigm would substitute many elements as well.
For instance, instead of using a ´broken hats´ element, I could use a redirection of ´hihat´ to ´silence´ but biased towards the beginning of the bar. Then another redirection of ´kick´ to ´tom 5´ but only in the last beats of the bar, since substituting the first kick for a tom makes no sense at all most of the times. If an ´open hihat´ were added as a destination for redirection as well, groove elements like ´open hats´ would be redundant also.

I´m sorry for the long post. It´s a synthesis of my experience in using Jamstix since version 1 and loves it. The fact is that I´m not a preset guy, I like to create everything from scratch and then enrich the creation little by little. I fell that jamstix does a better automatic job in funky/busy styles than in slow blues/ballad ones. And I´m into slower blues/rock lately and editing almost everything JS creates by hand, mostly velocity of items and removing downbeat items, so my ideas.

To my belief, the options that were added through jamstix 2 releases like ´extract from other style´ look for this unification. I would also love to see a classic ´Toms Control´ as in Jamstix 1 the same way it was implemented in JS 2. I still find little options for creation of tom grooves or accents, the ´Tom Groove´ Element could have some more options too.

Thanks for the fantastic product, Ralph. I´m the first buyer of Jamstix 3 for sure, and have a strong belief in your efforts to make this - which is already the definitive virtual drums product - even better.

[BitFlipper]

Ralph,

Looks awesome!

One suggestion: Personally I don't like to start my songs on measure 1, in case I ever decide to increase/decrease the intro length. Sometimes in a complex song, it is not always possible to easily shift the whole song over (some plugins contain embedded sequencers etc).

So, I think it would be helpful if you also add a (S)ilence type part to the songbuilder. Then it can be added in front of the intro and its length can easily be changed to shift the whole Jamstix song.

Alternatively, maybe Jamstix can have a global "Song Start Measure" for a song.

Another suggestion... I did not read through the whole thread so maybe this was mentioned already: Jamstix needs a proper Undo/Redo mechanism. I develop plugins myself so I know that it is not always possible to intercept the Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Y keystrokes, but a pair of Undo/Redo buttons somewhere on the UI will work very well. I am aware of the restore point feature, but it is only useful if you remember to continuously click the save button.

Anyway, I can't wait to get my hands on JS 3, this looks awesome!
_________________
Intel DX48BT2, Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR3, Edirol FA-66, Studio One 2, Sonar X3e x64, JS 3.6.0, Windows 8.1 Pro x64

[Ralph [RZ]]

Acabreira: thanks for the input, I'll see what we can do.

BitFlipper: the 'Intro' is a silenced part with a transition fill. Why not just adjust the length of the intro part to fit your relative song start?
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[BitFlipper]

[bakiki_]

Hi

Just one suggestion!

It would be nice if we could import a midi file with groove importer but have a slide to control how much of the beat it is influenced by the drummer or by the the imported groove. You have this already in Jamcusion.


Could you confirm when this is likely to be released!

Thanks

[bakiki_]

Hi

Just one suggestion!

It would be nice if we could import a midi file with groove importer but have a slide to control how much of the beat it is influenced by the drummer or by the the imported groove. You have this already in Jamcusion.


Could you confirm when this is likely to be released!

Thanks

[Milt]

I must say that I am extremely excited about the song builder! I have been waiting on something like this for ages. It takes me right back to the easy and quick ways that I used to create drums parts on my old MC50 and MMT8. BRAVO RALPH!!

[gmon72]

ralph, is it or will it be possible to play a pattern in with e drums (or keyboard) into the editor?

[Susan G]

Hi gmon72-

You can do this already. See pg. 36 of the manual:

If the LEARN button is activated, Jamstix will listen to incoming MIDI data, interpret it and enter it into the bar editor. This is a great alternative to hand-placing events if you are comfortable playing your desired groove on a MIDI keyboard or e-drumkit. Note that the automatic event locking as outlined in the ‘Bar Menu’ section is considered as well as the ‘Quantize Import’ setting in the ‘Options’.

-Susan

[gmon72]

thanks susan!

[Ralph [RZ]]

[Chisel]

The best GUI I ever used for creating music is Ableton Live 8. I love it because it uses vector graphics rather than bitmaps. This means you can resize anything and it still looks great! It doesn't have flashy 3D graphics, yet it's still extremely pleasing to look at. The colors are also customizable so you can "skin" it to your liking, while still preserving the look of Live. Everything can be seen on one screen without any pop-up windows obstructing the view. I can resize individual frames or hide them completely. For example, most of the time I keep the piano roll at the bottom of the screen taking up very little space, but when I need to work closely with the piano roll, I expand it to take up the full screen. I realize that Jamstix is a VST and not a stand-alone app, but customization really helps in the overall workflow.



Peace \/
chisel316

[xx_JPRacer_xx]

I really like the way JS3 is turning and even if some people don't like the new interface I think it's much better than JS2.

Anyway, my real question is when JS3 will be release, will you start working on JS4 or JamBassist? JS is so great I can't wait about JB. Sorry, I know this is a JS thread but I just want a confirmation and after that I won't bug you anymore.

Thanks for your great work!

[Ralph [RZ]]

Our main priority is to complete the C++ conversion of our code base and the OSX version that this makes possible (JS4). Upon that new code base we will then work on JamBassist. I wish we had the capital to hire a bunch of great programmers to complete this all MUCH faster but we have to deal with economic realities.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com