Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[hansje]

I want to use jamstix live.
So I'm trying to put together a setup (using Plogue Bidule) that allows for jamstix to follow the tempo of my band rather than the other way around.
This will involve frequent small tempo adjustments.

Now I've found some snippets of info indicating that I should disengage jamstix' tempo filter by setting the "tempo filter" parameter to "below 50%".
This immediately raises a couple of questions:

* Is the "tempo filter" parameter a simple "on/off", or is continuous?
* Assuming it's "on/off", for how long should it be off before/after a tempo change?
* What functionality am I missing with the tempo filter off?
* Would it be wise to limit the tempo adjustments to once per measure or even less frequent?
* Does it matter at which exact moment the tempo changes occur (e.g. should they occur exactly on or just before a first beat)?
* Any info on this subject would be very welcome really!

[Ralph [RZ]]

[hansje]

OK, thanks a lot.
I think I'll keep the filter off for now (btw: can I do that in the .ini?).
Any ETA on it's obsoletion?

[Ralph [RZ]]

[GreyLion]

Yay! I think...

Does this move me that big step forward to being able to record a guitar track at free tempo, perhaps add a MIDI track with, oh, say, snare hits entered from my keyboard, in time with the changing tempo of the guitar track, then having JamStix follow that MIDI guide track and therefore keep time with the guitar track? And ignoring the locked tempo of the sequencer? Yes, please? I'd pay extra for that....

[Ralph [RZ]]

[GreyLion]

Hey, Ralph,

Yeah, I understand that issue about the slippery slope -- But I was kinda hoping that Jamstix could maybe be progammed to respond to the tempo of a specified MIDI track's hits, rather than the sequencer's tempo map. I suspect that would be hard to program.

Most sequencers seem to let you manually enter tempo changes and tempo ramps, which requires endless tweaking to beatmatch to a freely-played audio track.

It seems like a simple function: tap in a bunch of quarter notes at varying tempo, to match the audio file's tempo as you play it back, and have the sequencer read the notes and create a tempo map.

If you know of a sequencer that does this gracefully, please, please let me know about it. I don't understand why it's not in every sequencer. Or maybe I'm just not smart enough to find it in the sequencer.

I use Tracktion and EnergyXT, and neither of them seem to be able to do this. I've messed a bit with Logic 5.5.4 for the PC, and it has the 'Reclock Song' function, which is exactly the function I want. It seems to be erratic, perhaps picking up tempo changes the first time you try it in any given song, perhaps not, but always ignoring retakes. Apparently, that unpredictablility is a known issue with this function in Logic, from some postings I've found. If somebody here knows how to make this function work well, I'd love to hear about it.

I've gotten Magix Music Studio Deluxe 10, which is based on Logic, and it supposedly has a function like Logic's 'Reclock Song', but the docs on it are pretty obscure. I'm gonna monkey with it some more, but this won't be my default sequencer, since its sample depth is locked at 16-bit.

ProTools has 'Beat Detective', though Digidesign itself admits that it's far from perfect. It reads the audio transients directly. It seems that you need to take short segments of audio, rather than the whole song, and it also makes mistakes that must be manually tweaked.

I think that next I need to research and load Sonar and Cubase demos, but that'll mean having to learn a complex sequencer from scratch again each time, just to see if I can figure out how to make this one feature work. And we're starting to get up into serious costs if they're the ones I need.

Sorry for the lengthy rant; I think I'm probably a little irrational on the subject at this point. But I'm sincere: If you or anybody can point me toward a sequencer that will read notes in a MIDI track and create an accurate tempo map from it, I'd be EXTREMELY grateful. Preferably one that doesn't cost five or six hundred dollars.

I keep getting the feeling that I'm just missing something simple and easy here....Makes me feel like an idiot... Whine....

Incidentally, I'm real clear that it's not your job to put much energy into my need for this. It's really an issue about sequencers, not about JamStix. Jamstix does rock!

Take care,

GreyLion

[GreyLion]

Hmph. Just because I hate a whiner....

I hit Google pretty hard last night after making the previous post. It seems that Sonar has something they call 'Fit to Improvisation', which does exactly what I described. However, there's a demo for Sonar 4 only, not Sonar 5, which is a bit strange. The ability isn't included in the low-end Sonar Home Studio, only the Studio Edition and upwards. Any thoughts from anybody on this one?

Cubase has 'HitPoints'. which also does what I want, though in a slightly different way. It IS included in Cubase 3 SE, which I can get for $95 for the academic version. No Cubase demo at all. When I search KVR about Cubase,what I seem to mostly find are multiple flamewars. Anyone here got any experience with this function in Cubase?

Take care,

GreyLion

[GregHolmes]

I see you're finding the answer to your question, but I'll mention the Roland SBX-80 Sync Box, dedicated hardware with the "tempo/beat map" capability. At one session, to add drum and sequencer tracks onto an existing analog recording, I hit a cowbell in sync with a previously recorded song, then fed the resulting click track into the SBX-80, which generated MIDI, SMPTE, and PPQ signals to match the clicks. This was in the 1980's, and it's taken quite a while for this functionality (along with many others) to appear in commonly available software.
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[GreyLion]

Ack! Don't get me started! It was ALL better in the Good Old Days!

I did a quick google, and this seems like a cool box! Thanks!

....Seriously, on this subject, the more research I do, the more it seems like the mainstream sequencers indeed do try to implement this function, but when you start hitting various forums and searching for discussions about it, the functions usually don't seem to work real well.

For instance, it looks like the recent 3.1 update to Cubase SX3 addresses all kinds of nasty problems with the hitpoint detector. But maybe not enough to make it a good choice; I can't tell from here.

Since it's all just simple MIDI we're talking about, I don't see why it's so hard to count the ticks between each hit and calculate tempo from that. But it's gotta be harder than I think it is, or everyone would have one....

[GregHolmes]