RAYZOON

Any tips or tricks for getting fills with the right feel?

Having worked with Jamstix in my home recordings for going on a year off and on, I feel like I have a fairly solid understanding of how to build drum tracks that sound the way I want them to.

The exception is the fills. I tend to like minimalist fills that move the song along without being too intrusive or disrupting the groove. I find it difficult to get this, no matter how I set the various dials and options. The results when I press "compose" are hard to predict and rarely what I am looking for. Most often I wind up deleting them and composing the fills by hand, which defeats the purpose.

I'd love to hear suggestions from others.

If I could make a suggestion for Jamstix 4, apart from an improved interface, the thing I would most love to see would be a more intuitive fill feature. Perhaps some presets for different styles and levels of complexity? And maybe a "chill pill" button to tone it down like the "restrained" option in the song window?

I have this kind of problem with fills too. It simply takes too long to get it right. Don't have a solution until now.

ukm wrote:I have this kind of problem with fills too. It simply takes too long to get it right. Don't have a solution until now.

The fills are generally way too busy for me too. What I do is hit compose until something simple and nice sounding comes up, then edit it by hand (which usually involves at least thinning it out).

Same here, the fills are usually way out there for me...

I've even stopped using Jamstix for my main beats, well, the beats I can actually play anyway...I bought an e-kit, & it's made things much faster, except for the fills, that's where JS comes in....

I mean no disrespect toward Ralph or Jamstix at all, it's a great drum program, but it's very, very deep/complicated, & I wanted/needed something a little faster when inspiration hits, but, I do still use Jamstix for lots of stuff...

JS is light years more attractive to me than a loop-based VSTi. And the ability to have fills is worth its weight in gold.

But I do wish there were a way to easily choose how complex the drums will be. I would be very happy with a simple 1-2- 3-star "complexity level" option, even if that meant giving up some significant programmability at the simpler levels. Something like, "Here's Stuart Level 1, playing your style, sparsely"...

... "but still responsive to the intensity and nuances of the song".

As it is I wind up using Charlie more often than I want to, simply because I know how to tame him!

But back to fills - easily the best part of the program imo, even as they are now, because no one else has them!

I don't see any mention off the "Simple" slider... This seems to do a good job of taming the fills. Also, unchecking "No Groove" keeps the fill from getting too far off the beaten path.

jas_lan wrote:I don't see any mention off the "Simple" slider... This seems to do a good job of taming the fills. Also, unchecking "No Groove" keeps the fill from getting too far off the beaten path.

Thanks, will work with those.

I managed to reduce the length of the fill by turning down or off the RF And TF dials in the fill tabs, use the amount or focus dials to get more or less snare or toms Hope that helps.
P.S. it might have been the groove tab. Anyhow wherever the RF or TF dials are, turning them down seems to shorten the fill..

If you are using any swing factor in the main beat, the current version of Jamstix does not seem to apply this factor to the fills. If you want the fills to reflect the swing, you'll need to edit them manually. Simplest and best way to do this is to record the Jamstix MIDI output into your DAW where you can edit notes more easily.

andy_camb wrote:I managed to reduce the length of the fill by turning down or off the RF And TF dials in the fill tabs, use the amount or focus dials to get more or less snare or toms Hope that helps.
P.S. it might have been the groove tab. Anyhow wherever the RF or TF dials are, turning them down seems to shorten the fill..

Thanks for that!

I just spent a bunch of time, and found that in the Fill brain, the white box control called "Length" is the magic one for controlling fills. It alone can reallly effectively cut down the overcomplexity (Page 38 of the Jamstix 3.6 menu). I may be wrong in what I wrote below, and hope someone will come along and correct me if I am, but to my current understanding ...

1) The "[u:09685bb36b]T-Fill[/u:09685bb36b]" and "[u:09685bb36b]R-Fill[/u:09685bb36b]" (transition/repeat) knobs can shorten how long the fill is, turn it all the way CCW, and (as long as the Vary knob is also CCW) ... there is no fill at all! Start turning them clockwise bit by bit to lengthen how many quarter notes of the bar that the fill will take up.

2) As mentioned above, the "[u:09685bb36b]Vary[/u:09685bb36b]" knob is how much exception you want to give to the strict rules you set about the fill length via the "T-Fill" and R-Fill" knobs.

3) "[u:09685bb36b]Simplify[/u:09685bb36b] knob" - self explanatory I think - once you have told the brain how *long* you want the fill to be via the above two steps, this tells it how *simple* you want it to be ... CCW is very complicated, clockwise is simpler.

I think that's it, please come along and correct someone if not!

Thanks!