Jamstix 4?

I had been an adherent to JS 1 & 2 back in my early days. It was cool and I even upgraded to JS3. About that same time I discovered BB and quickly moved exclusively to the real drum tracks.

Recently I got the bug to get a slightly more custom drum track with more realistic sounding drums and started looking again at JS.

What I'm finding is that 4 is pretty cool.... The free version.... But, getting the rayzoon support to reply is like asking congress to move quickly.
I hesitate to move forward until I get some response from the company. Heck I'm locked out of the JS forum and the recovery function isn't sending the email. I remember that back in the early days with jamstix, Ralph, the guy who started the company, would actually email me back to work with me on solving the problem. Now.... Crickets.

It actually took me several days to get JS to work and produce sound. The free version has a very limited ability to save the project so..... Anyway... Just wondering if anyone else here is using it.

Herb, I own the full version and a few of the expansion packs, and it still works fine. But development appears to be on a hiatus of indeterminate duration. Current version is 4.4.6. The software updater still work fine, too. Beta 4.5 was released in Sep 2021. And then all went dark. The last "news" update was also Sep 2021. According to the forum, Ralph has allegedly disappeared. FWIW, Ralph also provided my personal tech support when I bought Jamstix 2(!) in 2008. There is a moderator on the forum who suggests support requests go to https://www.rayzoon.com/support.html.

So I don't know how to advise you. The software IS really cool. I always had the impression as a non-drummer that I was at a disadvantage in realizing the potential in this clearly well imagined tool. The results were very creative but also very labor intensive. So I went back to RealDrums.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do...

Thanks.... I actually got this working today. After that I opted to get the upgrade which worked and then added one of the kits mI thought would be fun.

After I loaded the new kit,. I got a reply to my email.... so it's all good for now. Now I just need to get reacquainted with how this works to edit the tracks.

Cool! Looking forward to seeing how this works for you. Good luck!

You mentioned, "Recently I got the bug to get a slightly more custom drum track with more realistic sounding drums and started looking again at JS."

I'm curious as to more info about what you feel is not realistic with RD's. Likely it's because I'm not a drummer But and FWIW I feel that using RD's via comping around with the fills and building some bits with components from the RD sample file yields some nice results. I've run some of my efforts by an excellent drummer and he felt all was good. Perhaps no trash can outros but good.

Thanks,
Bud

Please don't misunderstand ..... I have been a huge fan of the BB real drums tracks and more recently of the stems available. Way back, I found Jamstix and used it to build my drums. That was a huge step up from manually trying to mouse in, then copy and paste the drums. Jamstix was very cool and essentially built a workable drum track for me. It still had issues but saved a ton of work. I bought BB around that time and intended to use it for the instruments but soon discovered that it could do the drums just as quickly and in some ways easier and quicker than JS at the time. I've been doing that now ever since. But in my never ending quest to raise the bar on my music, I have focused on seeing what I can do to make the drums a bit better.

I've been fairly impressed with the RDs, but even so, there are things about the RDs that are, for want of a better word.... Lacking.

One of the big issues I've had with the RDs is that they are mostly full kits on one track. Stems have changed that to some degree, but you still only have what is on the tracks to work with. If you want something different, you have to figure out some way to get it done. Some, but not all of the RDs are not as crisp and real sounding as I would like them to be. Probably due to either recording techniques or file compression.

Anyway, I figured I'd have another look at JS since it's been over 12 years since I last used it on a regular basis and what I'm seeing is that it has come a long way from the early days. It's not the easiest thing to figure out because there's a lot of depth to this synth.

My next song will most likely have JS playing the drums. So keep your eye on the showcase. Sometime in January most likely.

I'm not actively using Jamstix, but it does have a neat trick that RealDrums can't do: It can listen to the dynamics of your backing track and adjust the complexity of drumming accordingly. Sort of like side chain processing for drums. It's simple in how it works, but pretty cool.

I may try it again on another song soon...

Bud,
Perhaps you'd be willing to share some of your experience and knowledge on this Real Drum topic in the tips and tricks.
Sometimes I feel Real Drums gets me to "good enough" when I really would like better.
I've been working more with Logic drummer, especially the percussionists. This extra drum track allows me to mix real drums a little lower in the mix
Doesn't fix everything but sometime it helps

Any tricks you find that you'd be willing to share would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Question not directed to me but ..
A. You can generate multiple RD tracks and then comp what you want from those to a final track, ie. 'that fill would work great right before the break'
B. You can use the 'sampled' drums to help create the illusion .. at the end of many RD tracks there are single hits of specific drums used in the recording. (the raw recording of the track, not what gets generated, usually a WMA file for most, or if using the Audiophile version they would be WAV); these single hits can be added to tracks as desired .. add a snare on the 'and' in certain measures, etc
3. <grin> these 'samples' can be used in a MIDI triggered drum machine or SF if desired to get even crazier (if you actually turn them into samples)
D. Stems, what can't they do?

I *think I put this in Tips/Tricks years ago, but that would be way down the thread list by now.

I hope J&B gives his approach also, I am always willing to learn from others
Good question mrgeeze

I know I am not Janice and Bud, I will take a whack here.

With Cakewalk I have Session Drummer and I also have some Steven Slate drums.

Most real drums tracks can be converted/exported as midi and you can run the midi through those programs or any other and get a great double track/tracks. And each of those has a separate mixing board.

I sometimes blend RDs with the drums created with the midis in the aforementioned programs.

Whatever Real Band won't do,I can do with two clicks of a mouse on the virtual drummer in Session drummer and add it in. I could go all Neil Peart if I wanted.

Or, I could edit the RB midi and add fills and such and then pull it into a synth drum.

Those work well enough for me. I don't need anything more complicated than that, FWIW and YMMV.

Jamstix, EZDrummer..etc Fitting Drum Tracks Quickly to BB Chord Sheet