Rayzoon Technologies LLC

paspallum · Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 9:02 pm Post subject: Jamstix and Alesis DM5

Ralph
Initially.... when I started out with digital drums (remember I still can't play the drums) I purchased an Alesis Dm5 module and an cheap old second hand drumkit... I fitted the kit with Pearl Mesh heads and attached piezio triggers to each drum head with double sided tape.

I had been so sick of the hours it took for a drummer to set up a kit at my house and then there was the noise factor... digital drums meant not feeling bad about what the neighbours had to put up with... I have friends who are drummers.. supposedly good drummers.. but I never had a big arsenal of mic's and quality pre-amp channels.. and my 'drummer friends' inevitably went out of time and stuffed everything up! (When do I do the change again????)

Now while I won't say that the DM5 internal sounds are total crap... they were designed in the late 80's/early nineties... and they would hardly ever pass off as real drums... not unles they were buried in a very busy and loud mix...

Anyway.. skipping on... for the past 4 years I've been using the Dm5 module as a midi control module for my 'mesh-head' drumkit linking it to Cubase in my PC and driving Battery or more recently BFD.

Since buying Jamstix 4 months ago and being so totally thrilled with it's prowess... The old 'digi-kit' has been gathering dust... but it has been on my mind.

Today I finally got around to plugging my DM5 'kit' into Jamstix....WOW!
The velocity matching of JAMSTIX with the DM5 is very good... with Battery the DM5 never played or felt right... with BFD it was better... but JAMSTIX is 25% better than BFD at this task (at least!!)

Awesome... I can set up JAMSTIX to play a basic pattern on the kick and Hihats (something I myself can NOT do) and set up a moderate varience on the hihats.. then just 'ad-lib' with the snare, toms and crashes...

So cool... I was putting off testing this method ....as so far JAMSTIX has been 99.9999999% satisfying and I didn't want to find anything that sucked about it (more woes and head-aches) but I am So happy that this set-up works...

It gives me another incredibly powerful way to intergrate JAMSTIX with my compostions and recordings! The DP#2 close snare played by the DM5 kit sounds INCREDIBLE!!!

Looking forward to the Snare Pack!!

Paspallum

Ralph [RZ] · Site Admin Joined: 02 Jan 2008 Posts: 13332

Thanks, Paspallum!
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

Phil Fee · Jamologist Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 105

Jamstix works very well with the Roland eDrum kits too - nice dynamics and the stock Roland kits match the Jamstix GM default mapping right out of the box.

Mixing Jamstix with your own fills sounds like fun too - thanks for the post.

ZapAxe · Jam Meister Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 82

Hi guy's, chiming in here...

I use a Yamaha DTXpress kit which I've greatly expanded on with the DTXpress I & III trigger modules, an Alesis DM Pro module, rack extentions & extra trigger pads up the wazoo.

I recently got Jamstix, mostly for a way to easily lay down a basic beat to begin my song projects with, & hopefully for use with my ekit.
I've been re-setting up my Cubase DAW & I've not yet got a chance to experiment with Jamstix using it with my edrums, though I plan to soon.

It's good to see others are using Jamstix with their edrums, and working in way's that are creative.
Time will tell just how well my Yamaha edrum set-up will work with Jamstix, and how much I'm combine the two. It sounds promising & I'm looking forawrd to experimenting.

Steve