Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[Ralph [RZ]]

I just had a user send me an email with a soundcloud link to some tracks that are 100% driven by Jamstix. He created various custom midi-only kits that output in various tonal ranges for some experimental generative music.

Gotta say, I'm very impressed!
https://soundcloud.com/sinisteraurals/sets/early-experiments
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Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[Sinister_Aurals]

Hi!

I admit these songs were the product of insomnia and "what if I tried this". To my surprise the results came together relatively quickly using JamStix within Reaper. While they do leave a lot to be desired, without a doubt they show that JamStix is can produce more than just beats.

A quick background of how I made these generated compositions work:

The Kit For Deimos and Phobos, as well as MakeMake:

I created a very basic MIDI-Only kit using the most used pieces, but leaving out the kick drums. I then proceeded to set each of the midi outputs for all articulations to midi notes that fit within the key of A-Minor pentatonic (A, C, E, D, G). I kept articulations from the same/similar instruments close in octave, but different instruments were in different octaves. The exception is for the pedals for high-hat were an octave lower.

The Kiit for Orbital Mechanics and In Daphnis' Wake:

Added all midi-only kit pieces for standard drums. I then grouped together similar kit pieces, and set them to their own midi channels. Then set all articulations within that channel to fit within A-minor penta but sequentially starting from A3.

Essentially, this created 9 separate midi channels that all played notes in the same octave range. Depending on which drummer and style chosen, some channels may not get used, but this is to be expected.

I used Reaper to route each of the 9 channels to different instruments. Occasionally I'd use Reaper JS plugins to transpose the MIDI octave, or filter out notes.

Instrumentation for all of them:

This varies, but layers, layers, layers of complementary sounds. I tried to treat it like an orchestra. A symphony doesn't need to be complex to sound full - it needs many complimentary instruments layered playing complementary notes and complentary rhythms. Since the MIDI produced by the kits above did not produce a very dynamic music range, it works well when you layer it. (Truly, someone more experienced could probably layer better than I did)

The challenge is finding instruments that sound good. Since Jamstix produces short MIDI notes often with many MIDI notes close together, many instruments don't produce much if any sound when fed this midi.

Plausible solutions that I used in various combinations

* Quantize note length, fixing overlaps (easy in Reaper)
* Instruments with fast attack
* Instruments with long sustain (pads)
* Reaper JS plugin to hold last note played until next note played (forced mono-legato)
* Instruments that hold/arpeggio (more complexity!)
* If using an arpeggio, turn off re-trigger to increase complexity in sound.

Instruments I used

Mostly I used presets for the various VSTs, with a little tweaking where possible

* Spitfire BT Phobos (hence Deimos and Phobos' title)
* AAS Chromophone
* Linplug Morphex and CrX4
* Native Instruments Absynth
* Some self-created sample-sets
* I forget if I used anything else (not near my DAW)

In summary

I think that covers it

It was a fun late night experiment over the last few weeks. While I don't think JamStix will be my primary tool for creating music, it will certainly show up in my tool-chain again not just for laying down rhythm, but generative music.

Sorry if this was long - wanted to make sure others could learn from my experimentation and produce even better things.

Aside

The following was a quick experiment running Jamstix into Xfer Cthulhu to pseudo-randomly choose chords based on jamstix notes played, then played the resulting chord as an arpeggio.

https://soundcloud.com/sinisteraurals/a-quick-experiment

The challenge with this is if using the multi-channel kit, as above, you need to make sure all cthulhu chord possibilities played end up in the same key. If too many instruments are playing notes that don't fall into the same scale, your piece quickly becomes atonal (which might not be bad depending on your goals)

[jimgue_77]

Wow, very cool

I listened to them after just reading Ralph's post, then re-listened to them after reading Sinister's post of how the tracks were created. Definitely a different appreciation after that.

Also loved the pictures that accompanied the tracks. I dig astronomy!


Great job and thanks for the 'how-to' piece.

[Grem_Songs]

Yes very cool indeed.

Ralph this must give you great satisfaction to hear somebody take your program and use it in a completely new direction!!

This is something I will have to try out. The last two songs sounded more 'polished' than the first two. Sounded like Sinister was getting accustomed to the new method. Refining his technique.