Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[alexis]

One of my main hangups with JS3 has always been that the drummers seem to always be more lively than I'm looking for. To compensate for this I wound up using Charlie, a lot, feeling that I was missing out on the other drummers so much. Anyway, I spent some time today trying to learn what I could do to tame down the other drummers, and came up with some initial things that seem to work, yay! I thought I'd write them down here, so if anyone wanted to take a look and make suggestions, I'd be grateful, thanks!

1) I set the DYN knob. FWIW, I set it fairly high/Clockwise.
2) Next, I tame the drumming by turning the Power Knob down.The Power Knob definitely can change what drums are hit (turning it down can make soft cymbals replace a kick; a lot less crash cymbals and tom rolls, replaced by more gentle side-sticks, etc.). Note, I've only tried this with "Reduction" activated. As pointed out previously, turning the Power Knob down also seems to reduce the velocity of some hits.
[Note - the above replaces what I wrote below, reflecting what I think I've learned after about a few days more of working with JS and reading the manual. Of course it also is subject to revision potentially as I work with JS more . Previously written, somewhat outdated paragraph: This step is where my experience is different than described by the power users who have been so kind as to help out in various threads, who mention the Power Knob is essentially just a velocity controller for the drum hits. Maybe that was describing what happens if "Reduction" is not ticked on? ... I'm not sure ...

I also wonder a bit if the sensitivity of JS3 to the Power Knob maybe depends on the drummer, and/or the Style. I'll have to keep an eye on that ...

3) Finally, importing the "Simplify" slider from Charlie: it seemed to me that changing this altered the complexity of the drumming, but in a different way than altering the Power Knob did. Pushing the Simplify slider up seemed to simplify the complexity of the drum pattern, *using the same drums* - mainly, it seemed to me, by making less hits per beat. On the other hand, as I wrote above, turning the Power Knob down seemed to simplify by actually changing which drums were hit (crash cymbal vs side-stick, for example).

I did kind of get the impression that the sensitivity of JS to the Simplify slider depended on the drummer (Animal for example less willing to be simplified than a less manic drummer), and maybe how high the Power Knob was set when the Simplify Slider was changed. But I didn't look into things in that much detail to be able to know if those impressions were accurate.




I can't say if my impressions are consistent with the programming of course, but the bottom line is that at least this has helped me to figure out how to tame down the drummers, which I want to do because they all seem to be on speed when they show up for the session!

If anyone else can add their thoughts to this thread, I know I'd be grateful, and maybe someone else can benefit also.

Thank you!
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Alexis
JS 3.6.1x64; Cubase 7.5.40 64 bit; i5-4570 3.2GHz, 16GB RAM; W7 SP1 64-bit on Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB; Seagate 1TB SATA 600 Audio Drive; UR28M; Motif8; UAD-2 Solo, BCF2K; TC Helicon VoiceOne; RevoicePro3