RAYZOON

I'm a keyboard/player that has never played in anything beyond garage bands ...

I got the sense from JS vids and this forum that "in the pocket" meant playing a little bit early, or a little bit late, to add something attractive to the drum part.

But when I googled it, most/all of the descriptions referred to "playing in the pocket" as either playing strictly on the beat, or playing so that the drums and bass are really tight together. I saw very little online relating playing "in the pocket" to playing early/late.

Can someone explain to me what I should be thinking about when I read the phrase "in the pocket"where it related to JS?

Thanks!

Playing in the pocket means that you are locked into the groove of the song. When you start playing ahead of the groove, it feels like your pushing the groove. Playing slower makes it feel like your dragging the groove back.

Time signature and groove are related but different. Think swing in 4/4 time. If the song's feel is swing, and the part you are playing meshes in with everyone else's part, then you're in the pocket. Drifting close to straight 1/8 notes puts you out of the pocket. Specifially, playing straight 1/8s puts you ahead since the "and" comes earlier compared to swing.

Joe_S wrote:Playing in the pocket means that you are locked into the groove of the song. When you start playing ahead of the groove, it feels like your pushing the groove. Playing slower makes it feel like your dragging the groove back.

Time signature and groove are related but different. Think swing in 4/4 time. If the song's feel is swing, and the part you are playing meshes in with everyone else's part, then you're in the pocket. Drifting close to straight 1/8 notes puts you out of the pocket. Specifially, playing straight 1/8s puts you ahead since the "and" comes earlier compared to swing.

Thanks, Joe_S! That's a good example, and one I've read on other forums as well.

The thing is there are multiple different kinds of definitions/examples of "in the pocket drumming" on line, and it's not clear to me which if any of them Jamstix has in mind when it uses that term.

To be honest, I had the impression Jamstix meant something along the lines of being slightly ahead (or is it behind?) the beat in straight time, somewhat the opposite of the example you gave.

But I'm just guessing ... I wonder where can I find out what JS specifically means when it uses that term?

Since JS can't feel the groove, any timing variation will be against the meter. In which case, you have to think backwards to tell jamstix what to do.

Joe_S wrote:Since JS can't feel the groove, any timing variation will be against the meter. In which case, you have to think backwards to tell jamstix what to do.

Would you clarify, please? I use the pocket feature extensively and am interested in learning from others their thoughts and experiences with it.

I got a little philosophical there.

Look at it this way, given how hard it is to describe what "pocket" and "groove" is between people without feeling it, its that much harder to describe it to a calculator. Which is basically what is happening when you are setting up a drum part in Jamstix: The difficulty that exists when a Musician is unable to communicate the groove to the computer in terms the computer can understand. We have no problem explaining it to another Musician though.

Some things are easy to set up using the pocket knob, for example Phil Rudd's drum part in AC/DC's "Back in Black" is just a matter of tweaking the knob to play behind the beat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAgnJDJN4VA

Other things are a bit more difficult and needs some mucking around to figure out, for example (please excuse the example, I have small children and this happen to be on when I was writing this, so I searched for the theme song on youtube. Unfortunately the melody will get stuck in your head for the rest of the day.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yee0Xq1njfg

In this children's TV theme, at around 1:20 the chorus variation has a very early bass drum on the downbeat. Something that cannot be done with a groove style or drummer style that does not allow you to edit individual beats. You won't be able to use any of the feel section settings to create this.

To us, this is all "feel", "groove", and "pocket". Totally abstract concepts. Computers cannot handle abstract concepts, so how do you describe it? It has to be described as timing offsets relative to the constant meter chosen for the part (time signature + bpm = meter is how I'm defining it). Why? because a computer is an overgrown calculator:

Musician: The groove goes like "------ -- -- -----"
Computer: How many milliseconds do I add to 4/4@100bpm per beat?
Musician+Computer: Say whaaa??

If you were able to feed or load into Jamstix an audio clip or track that has the feel recorded, and Jamstix was able to analyze the transients and amplitude within that clip, it would be alot easier to establish a groove.

In addition, is Jamstix would present that information relative to the chosen meter, so we can then set brain parameters around them, it may make it a bit easier, if that type of workflow makes sense.

Note there is also a groove weight file that can be loaded in Jamstix but I haven't tried this as I do not fully understand what goes into the file.

Thanks, interesting.

That children's song you linked sounds to me like there is an underlying eighth note shuffle feel. It's subtle because the hats and kicks are on the quarter notes for the most part. So you don't hear that constant da da-da da-da da-da eighth note pattern that tells you right away that you are listening to a shuffle. But when I count: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, that's how I feel it. You may agree or disagree.

With drum patterns, concepts like "feel" and "pocket" should be quantifiable. Ultimately we are talking about note choice, timing and velocity. I do think a computer program should be able to do them. Not saying it's easy to program. What a computer can't do (so far) is communicate musical ideas with a human player on the fly. Once you have programmed the computer to play the patterns, it's up to you to lock up with it, because it can't lock up with you.

There are ways within Jamstix to control individual note placements. You can use styles like the ones in the Toolbox menu that allow you to specify kick and snare patterns. You can program a MIDI groove and then load it into Jamstix (make sure you disable "quantize on load" or else Jamstix will override your timing choices). I've used this feature a little but not a lot. I'm going to experiment more with it.

Another and simpler way is this: Use Jamstix to rough out the groove, then record the MIDI output and use the MIDI editor in your DAW to make fine adjustments to timing.

Having struggled with the song editor in Jamstix, and having spent umpteen hours adjusting note placements only to see them over-ridden as soon as I make some change in the brain editor (or worse, seeing everything erased when I inadvertently hit that "preset" space at the top of the window--with no "are your sure?" dialog and no undo), I have concluded that this is the most efficient way to use Jamstix: Set up your basic groove in Jamstix, immediately record the MIDI output to a track in the DAW, then do all further editing there.

Yes that is how I feel the groove in that children's song as well. Like a gentile sway.

Loading up midi clips is what I do as well, its the easiest way to get started. I sometimes just load up a clip with the kick or kick and snare, then use the brain to add the remaining limbs. Though I have used just the brain and got pretty good results, with basic rhythms though of course.

I rarely use the bar editor, though I found that locking hits does keep the brain from changing them, but it doesn't keep it from erasing them in certain cases (that preset oopsie is an issue).

I didn't mean that the computer can't be programed to handle grooves, just that it was not as simple as it should be. Micromanage the output, or fiddling with timing offsets, on every measure is very time consuming and gets in the way of the creative process. It would be easier if I could set up a figure which can be interpreted. Harmony Navigator from Cognitone works in that way. I can record a midi figure which it analyzes and interprets to the harmony I laid out in its song editor. Unfortunately, getting instruments set up in that application is a nightmare.

So back to Jamstix, I work similarly the way you do:

I extract the "import groove" to the style and drummer I picked, load up the rudimentary midi clip, then remove some brain parameters and/or extract from other drummers and styles to get the direction I want.

For example, I loaded in a clip with a kick and snare, and I want a prog metal style hi-hat, I would extract the hi-hat groove from the prog metal style, into the currently loaded style and edit from there (assuming my starting point was something else).

Since the pocket parameter applies a timing offset to the basic groove, and shifts the notes the brain selects time-wise but it does not affect note selection, the only use I get out of it is getting the drums to push or drag against the groove as a whole.

I'm going to start working more with the "import groove" feature. I used it somewhat when I was first becoming acquainted with Jamstix. I could probably get more out of it now that I'm more comfortably with the program and have found a workflow that's effective for what I do.

It would be interesting to hear how others are using Jamstix, especially those who have been using it for a while and use it often.

Hi, OP here ... after listening to AC/DC and the kiddie tune, one with the kick late, and the other early ... which one is the "in the pocket" that the JS videos talk about?

Also ... can the micro-timing controls (the +/- 1/32, +/- 1/16, etc) in the bar editor be used for that? Or is that what you are saying is too easily erased with the preset to use?

Thx -