Pro & cons
OK
So I don’t use drum loops; I use the “program each hit by hand” technique.
I’ve been considering the drum loop thing for some time. Help me think this through.
Here’ my list of Pros and Cons:
Loops
====
Pros/
Good sound/real kit
Well played (decent groove)
Less time required to put together a song
Works even if you can’t play/program drums
Cons/
Have to use exactly what is played
Can’t Vary the sound of the individual drums
Can’t vary the volume of the individual drums
May cost to get loops
Programed Drums
==============
Pros/
Can have the exact rhythm/fills etc that you want
Can change the sounds/volumes etc of individual drums
Free
Cons/
Takes time an effort
Need to be able to play/program drums
Not a real kit interacting with drums interacting
The real clinch for me is the ability to program the exact drum style I want, including fills etc. Generally, when I put a song together I know exactly what I want the drums to be doing. Using loops I can’t do this. Does this just mean I’ve not found the right loops yet?
Interested to hear what you all think and why your progam or use loops.
OK, and no smart comments about using a real drummer. That’s just not a go-er at the moment OK? 
Mark
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| Try the Jamstix demo, might be exactly what you want, might not. http://www.rayzoon.com |
Yeah. Tried it a while ago when there were still issues regarding it’s use in N-track. Anotehr try may be in order now those bugs have been dealt with.
Is anybody still using Jamstix? How close to what you want can you make it play?
Mark
Hi Mark 
I use to program my drums using a drum machine ( I tried hardware and software ) but I found that to be very tedious and time consuming. I am now using a drum unit that has pads with assignable voices. I play the parts in sync with the click track that I have set for the song. Like yourself I usually have very specific ideas about how I want the drums to be and this seems to be the quickest and easiest solution for now.
I am not a drummer so if I have a part that is more complex than I can manage to play all at once I break it up into smaller sections. I put the kick and snare on one track, the highat on another, etc…
This seems to work well and I can usually knock out the drum tracks just as fast as the guitar tracks ( which is my primary instrument ). I have been very happy with the drum unit, it has very nice drum samples ( they sound real, not canned ). It is the DD-55 digital percussion unit made by Yamaha.
Hope this helps,
Ted Roberts
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| This seems to work well and I can usually knock out the drum tracks just as fast as the guitar tracks ( which is my primary instrument ). I have been very happy with the drum unit, it has very nice drum samples ( they sound real, not canned ). It is the DD-55 digital percussion unit made by Yamaha. |
I’m thought about these a while back. No money for toys at the moment though. Glad to hear that it works for you - means if I do get some money for one it won’t be a waste of time.
Mark
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| Is anybody still using Jamstix? How close to what you want can you make it play? |
I’ve got it with ntrack 3.3, but I’m still messing with it. You can program your pattern, but it will make variations on that… I’m looking forward to having a serious crack with it.
Maybe you want to program some loops and sequence them in acid?
Hi Mark
There is another sort of in-between solution that you might want to give a try.
You could download midi drum loops instead of audio drum loops. There are hundreds of them on the net for free. This way you don’t have to spend so much time playing every single tone yourself and you can assign any drum sounds you like, edit the pattern at any time and even more important change the speed without any quality loss.
Whatya think?
Hi Mark and You guys on this topic:
I’ve been wrestling with this conudrum… well… for some time, now… I was that close to downloading Jamstix and paying for the application… Only to fine out that it wouldn’t work with a P-111 and '98SE… teej 813, and I ran into issues on each of our set-ups… He had issues that I didn’t encounter till I tried one-and-another things out… and vise-versa… I’m rebuilding this studio P-4, that I have, but I’m running into what I call cross-installations of applications that may never run on both '98SE and Xp…
So, after all-of-that, I’m at a crossroad… 
There may never be an Operating System and DAW set-up that will DO-it-All…
I’m thinking now… Along the lines of a Dual-Boot set-up… Or… even another computer… (I’m shaking my head…)
Mark:
I’m seriously, looking into two Drum Applications… One… Being JamStix and the other application being Drumagog… for all this percussion…
One app. to do the creativity of the Tubs… The other to insert the Sample Sounds that’ll satisify the flavor of the sounds, that the song looks for…
Drumagog is for mainly Kick, Snare. Toms, and the like… I’m not so sure that Hats and Cymbells are covered with Drumagog, though…
I wish I had a better understanding of these DAW’s and what they are able to do… As I look around, I’m finding more-and-more space on the tip of this needle… I’m struggeling , at trying to learn more about all this stuff… Will there ever be an end to all this??
Bill…
Mark,
I use much the same technique as Ted, playing the drum parts on either a keyboard or on the drum machine pads. However, I record my playing as MIDI. I also put down a rhythm guitar track (and sometimes bass) played with the click track before recording the drums, so that I have something musical to play the drums with. I record kick and snare first, going through the whole song, then high hat and other cymbals on a separate track, and finally toms and fills on a 3rd track. I quantify as needed, and assign snare and bass sounds appropriate to the song and style. Sometimes I’ll adjust velocities.
It actually works pretty well, and doesn’t take all that long. I find it’s quicker to just play the song through rather than worry about stringing patterns together (although I do that sometimes, especially if I’ve got some bad spots in the track).
HTH!!
Don
This is all interesting stuff. Thanks for the replies.
I think a quick investigation into loops and Jamstix is in order.
I’m still unsure of how much “control” I’ll have over the individual grooves though.
Mark
Hi everybody,
I found some nice (FREE!!) drum samples on the naturalstudio.co.uk site. nskit7free. Check it out, they come in wave format and soundfont. You can also use the sfz free vst sample player from rcaudio.com to play them through. Very nice sounding samples.
cheers
Hey, Mark,
I purchased Jamstix about a month ago, and I’ve been learning to use it as time permits, but here’s my general assessment so far:
* It’s aimed at being autonomous and fairly unpredictable, like a real drummer, i.e., adding random fills and accents, etc. It even disallows things which a normally-equipped human (i.e., two hands and two feet) most likely cannot play; not sure if this feature can be disabled or not(?). The randomness can be adjusted via the JS interface, even down to zero. As a tool, I’d say JS is probably overkill for styles which don’t require any of this, e.g. for monotonous electronic beats, etc.
* The sample set is nice and quite usable, but rather smallish; JS is widely used to subhost Drumkit From Hll (DFH) and fxpansion’s BFD.
It can receive MIDI input and mix it with the current looping rhythm; for example, you can use the Piano Roll to throw a single cymbal splash in a certain measure, and JS will hit it while playing whatever rhythm it’s set to at the time (remember the “only what’s humanly possible” caveat, though). You can also turn off the JS “brain” and just have it run off nothing but MIDI input.
* Creating your own Fills (i.e., ones that can be thrown in randomly on-the-fly by the JS “brain”) is fairly difficult. The Fills are actually just stored in text files, but the format is somewhat cryptic. Ralph put out a document which describes most of the format, though. Other than that, I think the most that is being considered is an SDK; I haven’t heard anything about a graphical Fill-creation tool being integrated into JS. Another option may be to program “static” fills using MIDI.
There’s also a whole separate aspect of JS dealing with “live” jamming, i.e., varying the way it plays in real-time according to what you’re playing live (based on volume level or MIDI notes/chords played on the keyboard, etc.), but it didn’t sound like you were interested in this kind of thing, so I’m only mentioning it briefly here.
Hope some of this is blabber is useful! Of course, the demo will give you the best “description” of all…
Tony
Tony,
Thanks for posting all the info on Jamstix.
A question… is it determinate? ie will it play the same thing every time through a song (given the same “trigger”), our is there a random factor always?
Did I imagine it, or did someome recently post a description of how to get Jamstix and N-track to work together?
Mark
| Quote (Mark A @ June 20 2005,12:05) |
| A question… is it determinate? ie will it play the same thing every time through a song (given the same “trigger”), our is there a random factor always? |
You can turn the various randomness sliders (e.g., fills, accents, timing, etc.) all the way down to make it play straight rhythms. Jamstix’s randomness is still one of those hazy areas for me, but I’m pretty sure that even if you do add random fills etc., it doesn’t randomize every time you start playback. In my experience, it sounded like it would randomize one time, then play that exactly the same every time, but I’m not sure when/if it would randomize again. I think you can also “lock” it to keep it in the same state, but like I said, I’m hazy on that feature–still much to learn. If you don’t get a real answer here, you should definitely try asking over at the Jamstix forum (here), where you’ll likely get a quick answer.
| Quote (Mark A @ June 20 2005,12:05) |
| Did I imagine it, or did someome recently post a description of how to get Jamstix and N-track to work together? |
Hmmm…the one that comes to mind immediately for me is this thread from March-April, which has detailed writeups by RichLum on how to get n-Track and Jamstix to play together, starting on about pg. 12. I think that’s the last time anyone has done that here, unless I missed something more recent…
HTH…
Tony
| Quote (Ted Roberts @ June 18 2005,11:01) |
| Hi Mark I use to program my drums using a drum machine ( I tried hardware and software ) but I found that to be very tedious and time consuming. I am now using a drum unit that has pads with assignable voices. I play the parts in sync with the click track that I have set for the song. Like yourself I usually have very specific ideas about how I want the drums to be and this seems to be the quickest and easiest solution for now. I am not a drummer so if I have a part that is more complex than I can manage to play all at once I break it up into smaller sections. I put the kick and snare on one track, the highat on another, etc.. This seems to work well and I can usually knock out the drum tracks just as fast as the guitar tracks ( which is my primary instrument ). I have been very happy with the drum unit, it has very nice drum samples ( they sound real, not canned ). It is the DD-55 digital percussion unit made by Yamaha. Hope this helps, Ted Roberts |
Hey Ted,
I picked up one of the DD-55's today. CHEAP!! I am excited about it. Guitar is my primary instrument too and drum programming is not very easy for me. This looks pretty good IMO. I intend to play in my parts and record the MIDI so I can assign voices with VSTi's. I've only listened to the first kit and the built-in sounds are pretty good. At least they sounded good in the cans.
I'm stoked! Very seldom do I run up on a good deal. This thing appears to be brand new and has all the accessories included. 150 clams. Not too shabby.
TG
gtr4him,
Hi Bud ! Glad your stoked. Hey , the unit works great ! I have been real happy with it. What I did was I listened to alot of the different drum kits on the DD-55 and picked out a kick here, a rimshot there, a crash cymbal, a floor tom here, etc. until I created a custom kit that i liked. You can create one custom kit. I now use that kit for my tunes I am recording.
Their are alot of already created kits that are nice also. I have had no trouble with the unit and I have definitely pounded on it a few times, hehe.
Sounds like an awesome price u got bud.
I have been very happy with the samples, they sound great recorded and thru cans, they don’t sound as great loud thru the onboard speakers on the unit, because, well, they are little speakers. When people use the unit live they just run it thru an amp, so I am told. Anyway I am real tickled with it.
Hope you enjoy it Bud, Rock On !
Ted Roberts
I have Yamaha DD-5, an antediluvial precedessor to DD-55. Although is more or less a toy, it has midi out. Much better than keyboards for drum programming.
Considering drum loops… I have tried to use them. I even bought a nice double cd of loops - “Delta Grooves”. The loops are great, groovy, sound good and everything. But. I don’t seem to get anything done with them after getting used for so long to the greater flexibility of midi drum tracks.
(Although I record the midi tracks to audio as soon as I get into the “recording real instruments” phase of recording.)
(So, if somebody is interested in buying a GigaStudio format double-cd “New Orleans - The Delta Grooves” bu Numerical Sounds, PM me )
Mwah
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| Considering drum loops… I have tried to use them. I even bought a nice double cd of loops - “Delta Grooves”. The loops are great, groovy, sound good and everything. But. I don’t seem to get anything done with them after getting used for so long to the greater flexibility of midi drum tracks. |
I know what you mean.
I’ve been playing with some free loops from BetaMonkey and the demo of Jamstix. I think the small number of free loops may be stiffling my ability to put a drum track together but I’ll keep going.
Jamstix is fun. Eventually got it going. At the moment it seems a bit “overplayed” even with the sliders turned down. Again, I’ll keep going.
Thanks for the input.
Mark
OK, I played with loops, I played with Jamstix. Both great but just not quite flexible enough for what I wanted (I am very particular about my drum tracks!).
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| I picked up one of the DD-55’s today. CHEAP!! I am excited about it. Guitar is my primary instrument too and drum programming is not very easy for me. This looks pretty good IMO. I intend to play in my parts and record the MIDI so I can assign voices with VSTi’s. I’ve only listened to the first kit and the built-in sounds are pretty good. At least they sounded good in the cans. I’m stoked! Very seldom do I run up on a good deal. This thing appears to be brand new and has all the accessories included. 150 clams. Not too shabby. |
So I got a DD-55. Haven’t taken delivery yet. Wouldn’t take clams in payment though; infact no seafish at all, so I had to pay english pounds.
gtr4him, Ted, any tips?
Will let you know how I get on with it.
Mark