I just need to rant and rave.
I HATE sequencing drums and I hate the word sequencing, makes things sound so gay. I HATE it.
You soon realize how piss poor your timing is when you start dinking around with this crap.
I give up. Enough for tonite.
One word… Jamstix…
Makes doing drums so much easier and quicker with better results than I could ever program myself using either a midi editor, keyboard or drum pad, or loops.
Really Rich.
Have you used FL Studio at all. If so how does Jam compare??? I’ve been using FL Studio 6 and the screenshots of Jamsticks looks similar.
2 completely different tools.
FL requires you to either use loops or samples triggered by your programmed midi drums. You pretty much have to tell it everything you wnat it to play.
With Jamstix you map out the basic rhythms you want it to use for each bar (and also things like velocity (ie. how hard/busy you want it to play) and set how much you want it to improvise and then it plays the rhythms you’ve set but adds accents and variations based on the settings you have.
You can set it to do no accents or variations and it will play the rhtyhms just as they are programmed (maybe good if you want that programmed drum machine type of consistency).
Listen to some of the demos on the Jamstix site. You will hear that it sounds very human like.
Download the demo and try it out.
Thanks for that info Rich. I’m pretty impressed by the price.
I’m using FL a little differently though.
I use a basic click track in nTrack. All my rythm guitar or keyboards next. When the rythm is done. I that mix out as a wave and load it in FL and step sequence the drums. Not using midi at all. The bouncing to and fro is a pain in the ass but I don’t llike the added cpu load using FL as a rewire or VST. The Jamstick screenshot loooked very similar to FL’s setup. I can set which drum hits I want in each channel. I can step sequence a variety of different patterns, then sequence those patterns in a mix (block sequencer looked alot like Jamsticks), then a channel mixer to add insert or send return effects to the hits (channels) That looks similar to Jamsticks too.
I’ll definitely be checking that Jamsticks out though. Looks like additional drum sounds are a good price.
| Quote (StuH @ May 07 2006,02:03) |
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I HATE sequencing drums and I hate the word sequencing, makes things sound so gay. I HATE it. |
I always thought that sequenced drums sounded a bit…straight.
Fruity Loops and sequence, now that enough to make you where your hockey cup backwards.
Two words… Hire Bubba. 
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| I use a basic click track in nTrack. All my rythm guitar or keyboards next. When the rythm is done. I that mix out as a wave and load it in FL and step sequence the drums. Not using midi at all. The bouncing to and fro is a pain in the ass but I don’t llike the added cpu load using FL as a rewire or VST. |
Don’t do it that way round…
Make a click track in Fruity (or better still a boom-spalt, boom-boom-splat). Export that as a wav and import in n-track.
Record the rest of your tracks.
Then all you need to do is go back into Fruity and make the changes you want, re-export the file (to the same filename as the original track), go back into n-track and your modified drum track will be there.
IMO, it’s much easier to record to a basic beat than a click, especially rhythmic tracks like bass that have to work with the drums.
Mark
…or hire Bubba…
or try loops.
The Beta Monkey ones are good. Get an old copy of Acid from Ebay and away you go…
I’m going to make a pitch for some software called Jammer Pro. This is like Band-in-a-Box, but basically you can pick a music style and enter guitar chords (or a number of measures) and the software “composes” drum tracks and other accompaniment (which might be useful for you too). Once you put a song together, you can export the song as a midi file and use it to trigger a drum machine or internal samples such as soundfonts or you can import it to FL and apply individual samples (like the Tom Hicks samples). Jammer Pro is fairly versatile and the drums beats sound pretty realistic IMO. You can change the tempo and time signature within a song, as well as change parameters for drum patterns, fills, intros and outros. It’s not a freebie, but I think it’s worth the asking price.
Jammer Professional
So Mark,
Do you think I should be going in a different direction or do you think FL is good enough for this (with smome added loops of course). I was thinking about Guru from FXpansion, the raw dums sound better to me.
Stu
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Are you aware that you can load your own samples in Fruity?
I currently use a mixture of the infamous Tom Hicks samples, and the single shot hits that come with the Beta Monkey loops.
I think Fruity is an excellent tool for programming up drum tracks if you have the knowledge (ie some basic drumming understanding) and the patience. I think you can probably fool 99% of your listeners with a well programmed track in FL.
Using loops is easier and possibly sound more authentic but you are limited to finding a pattern that fits your song (I’m very specific about my drum tracks).
Don’t write-off Jamsitx. It’s incredibly powerful. Basically you give it an arrangement to work to and it jams around the patterns that you’ve selected. Takes time to learn like any tool…
Or learn to play the drums…
Jamstix is a completely different tool to any other drum VSTi.
It is not just an “instrument” it is a drummer too…
It is probably not suited to someone that likes complete control over the drum parts… they would be better off programming exactly what they want using midi and/or loops.
But if either couldn’t be bothered programming every little variation to make the drums sound real or like the uncertainty/spontanaeity that Jamstix provides then its good.
If you don’t like what JS plays, you can just reset the brain (but keep the same patterns mapped out in the arranger) and play through again and it will come up with different drums.
I lock the bars I like and then just keep playinjg back the others until it plays something I like. If I find it’s doing too many accents or fills I just reduce the complexity and funkiness and let it play some more basic beats over the bars I still need to get to how I like them (or increase the complexity and funkiness if tha’s what I want.
The locked bars always play back the same though.
It is like having a drummer and you can say to them "Yes keep play those bars the same, but these bars do something more/less complicated"
Rich