confusing JS tutos : request for a synthetic/simple diagram

[Ralph @ Rayzoon]

I don't see how the statements are contradictory. I said I was 'assuming' your audio track didn't have drums since, as BoxOfSnoo pointed out, that's how most people use Jamstix.

This is how most people use Jamstix: they have a track without drums or are creating a song in their host using audio tracks and/or MIDI instruments and wish to add drums to it. They add Jamstix, select the desired style/drummer etc. and that's how they get the desired drum tracks.

A diagram of what Jamstix does would likely overwhelm you as the possibilities and workflows are many.

It may be best to get back to exactly what you want Jamstix to do. Based on your latest posts it appears to me that you have a single audio track with a complete song, including drums, and you wish to replace those drums with a Jamstix drum track. Is that correct?

[BoxOfSnoo]

Aha... the third possibility is this: you have a track WITHOUT drums, but WITH all other instruments, probably played to a metronome.

Is this true? I could explain how to do this, but I want to know if it will help, first.

[don_don]

To Ralph,

To the question raised by Ralph : “Based on your latest posts it appears to me that you have a single audio track with a complete song, including drums, and you wish to replace those drums with a Jamstix drum track. Is that correct?”

My answer : YES, it’s what I want to do. I want to evalue how JS can play its drum part while "hearing" an existing audio file (complete mp3 song in my case).

Merci

[Ralph @ Rayzoon]

My answer : YES, it’s what I want to do. I want to evalue how JS can play its drum part while "hearing" an existing audio file (complete mp3 song in my case).

AFAIK, there is no plugin on the market that can detect the drum track of a (single) composite audio file. Even drum replacers like Drumagog (which do not compose but simple trigger samples based on audio thesholds) require single audio files for each drum instrument (snare, kick etc.)

Jamstix uses audio input to determine the dynamics of the performance, adjust the drum dynamics and engage dynamic-dependent play rules, such as cross-sticking and hat/ride transitions.

[don_don]

Ralph,

OK, but in my case there is no drum track into my audio file. There is just a couple of guitars.........

Anyway, what do I have to do to evaluate your product ? Is my request realistic (or not) ?

BTW, I do not see any difference between a sound coming from a file and a sound of a music instrument plugged into a PC.

Can you please, enlighten my understanding ?

Thanks

[Ralph @ Rayzoon]

Your request is not realistic because you want Jamstix to magically 'understand' the guitars in your audio file and produce a fitting drum track. There is no product on the market today that can do that. We are working towards that but it is still not possible.

Here is what you can do wiyth Jamstix today:

- load your guitar audio track into your host
- set tempo and time signature of your host to match your audio track
- add Jamstix and select style/drummer that fit your audio track

[heyjohn]

Your request is not realistic because you want Jamstix to magically 'understand' the guitars in your audio file and produce a fitting drum track. There is no product on the market today that can do that.

Agreed -- but note that there are some interesting products being promised now. The "DNA Technology" that the folks at celemony.com have announced/demo'd is supposed to be able to identify the pitches in a polyphonic track, and enable it to be edited in a fashion similar to MIDI files. Their current products claim to be able to do this for monophonic tracks (and some of them export MIDI if desired). (I've not yet checked out their demo software, but I plan to.)

So if the "Jam with MIDI" Jamstix feature grows even more brains (and I like what it does now), combining it with Melodyne might produce magic.

But that's all just an intriguing future possibility right now.

FWIW, when faced with a similar problem -- a song written 20 years ago, but without drums -- I wound up re-recording it, since there were some variations in the original tempo. Using the 'Charlie' drummer in my re-recording worked out pretty well, but I might still revisit the project once I get better working with all the software I can bring to bear on it.

[sonicviz]

Ralph,

Can you please, enlighten my understanding ?

Thanks

Try Songsmith, it seems to have all that you want to automagikally compose beats for you -> http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E
The tunes are just, um, ...er....hmmmmmmmm


Jamstix is the Bees Knees...but you need to RTFM to get the most value from it;-)

[docatlas]

It can take a little time to learn your way around Jamstix, but it's well worth the effort. Now I can usually get the results I need with a few mouse clicks, but at first I was constantly referring to the manual.

If your audio track doesn't have a constant tempo that you can set your host to, one trick I've found that works is to split the audio file up into 1 measure fragments, figure out the tempo of each clip (if your host can time/pitch stretch loops, it should be able to tell you the tempo of the clip), then manually put tempo changes into the project to match the tempi of the clips. It's a bit time-consuming, but I've had good results using it to create a tempo map for older stuff I did 25 years ago. That way, Jamstix will follow the tempo of your recording.

[Sherz]

To Ralph,

To the question raised by Ralph : “Based on your latest posts it appears to me that you have a single audio track with a complete song, [color=red:bf1967ec21]including drums[/color:bf1967ec21], and you wish to replace those drums with a Jamstix drum track. Is that correct?”

My answer : [color=red:bf1967ec21]YES[/color:bf1967ec21], it’s what I want to do. I want to evalue how JS can play its drum part while "hearing" an existing audio file ([color=red:bf1967ec21]complete mp3 song[/color:bf1967ec21] in my case).

Merci

in my case [color=red:bf1967ec21]there is no drum track into my audio file[/color:bf1967ec21]. There is just a couple of guitars

That's somewhat confusing and contradictory and I think has made it difficult for some to get a handle on what exactly it is that you to achieve. You've implied that your audio (MP3) is complete WITH drums, but later say it is in fact just a couple of guitars.

If I understand you correctly I think what you want is to use the [i:bf1967ec21]"Jam with Audio"[/i:bf1967ec21] feature, using your guitar track as input to Jamstix's [i:bf1967ec21]AudioM8[/i:bf1967ec21] plugin.

Prerequisites would include:

- load your guitar audio track into your host
- set tempo and time signature of your host to match your audio track
- add Jamstix and select style/drummer that fit your audio track

[i:bf1967ec21]The assumption is of course that your guitar track was recorded to a click-track with a constant tempo. [/i:bf1967ec21] Ideally you'll also want to create parts within Jamstix to match the song structure, i.e so Jamstix knows where verses, chorus's, bridges etc occur and how many bars long each section is.

The 'busy' and 'chaotic' characteristic you mention could be a result of JS composing and performing fills in the wrong places because it simply doesn't know the song structure. Also the accents default maybe set higher than it needs to be resulting in too many throw ins, snare buzzing etc. You may also have other parameters which by default are set higher than you want them to be - controls to do with 'business', and 'funkiness' etc etc. The availablity and extent of some of these controls depends on your choice of drummer and/or style.

The reality is JS is a very clever and sophisticated drum plugin and you probably really do need to do a bit of homework in preparation before you can expect to get the results you desire. And, if you do take the time and learn some basics first your effort will almost certainly be rewarded.

8)