Welcome to the fourth and final part of my Jamstix
tutorial series. In this video, I'm
going to use Ableton Live as my host DAW (audio editor) for the Jamstix virtual
instrument plug-in.
Before I go any further, I made massive updates to my website in early 2024. All of my Jamstix info is available there too, and I'd recommend that you move over there, unless you like the formatting of my blog better. The info on my website is more up-to-date. Here's the link:
In this tutorial, I'm going to cover the Bar Editor in
detail. I'm also going to talk about
Restore Points, all of the items in the Options Menu, and VST Automation. Again, if you don't understand how MIDI
works, some of this info will be really confusing, but I still recommend that
you watch it because it will help you learn a bit more about MIDI and its
capabilities.
Before I go any further, I should point out two things
that I should have covered in the last video.
First, I quickly went through a bunch of Brain controls. Be aware that these controls will change
depending on the style and drummer that you're using. I don't just mean that the default values of
the knobs and sliders may be different.
I mean that the actual controls (within boxes called "elements") may vary.
Elements that are titled in white are associated with the
current style. Elements in orange are
associated with the current drummer. Go
into the drop-down menu in the upper left and try loading a different style. Some of the white elements will probably
change. Now try loading a different
player (drummer). Some of the orange
elements will probably change.
Also, I said that when you click on a label at the
top of an element (either right-click or left-click), you get a menu that allows you to disable, freeze, or hide
the element, and a bunch of other options.
But if you right-click on a specific control within the element itself,
you get a completely different menu.
This separate menu is how you map the control to your external
controller. If you know the specific
number of the control on your controller, you can pick it, but you'll probably
find it easier to just move the physical control that you want it to be
associated with, and Jamstix should figure it out and complete the assignment.
Before I get into a description of the advanced features, here's the video for this part of the tutorial series. I have to apologize in advance, it's a bit blurry in a few places. I didn't realize that the camera had been switched to auto-focus, and it sometimes went slightly blurry without me noticing the problem on the small screen. But it usually takes four or five hours to do the filming on one of these tutorials (they're a lot more involved than they probably look) and I figured that it would make more sense for me to invest the time in a different tutorial than spend an evening re-shooting this video, just to fix a few minutes of slight blurriness:
Ok, so those are a couple things that I should have
mentioned in part three. And also, I
mentioned that I'm using Ableton in the video this time around. I'll cover a couple of Ableton-related setup
items in the video. At this point, let's
get to work on the Bar Editor.
Bar Editor
So we've already touched briefly on the Bar Editor. The resolution of the editor is 16th
notes. We have six vertical rows, and
these represent the four limbs of the drummer, plus two hands of the
percussionist underneath.
All of the notes generated by the Brain are shown in this
grid, in one of the three layers.
Remember the layers: Groove,
Accent, and Fill. Even though they are
displayed separately, they play simultaneously.
If you want, you can program the kick and snare yourself (the Groove
layer) and then let the Brain handle the accents and fills.
When the Brain merges the three
layers, what happens if there are limb conflicts between the layers? Well, the Brain knows that it needs to
watch for this, and resolves them based on a priority system.
Looking at the notes and cells, if you double-click on an
occupied cell, the note is removed. If you double-click on an unoccupied cell,
a note is created. The Brain will add
the most common sound for that limb, or the last sound you selected for that
limb in the current editing session.
If you want to edit a note, there are two things you can
do. If you do a left-click, you'll see a
white line appear around the note. You
can then play with the four knobs in the upper right corner of the bar
editor. Unlike the knobs on the mixer, these
knobs specifically control the one note that you've selected. So if you change their settings and then
select a different note, you'll notice that the controls probably change instantly, to reflect the settings for the new note selected. Here's what each of the four knobs does:
- The VEL knob adjusts the velocity of the note, which is
pretty straightforward.
- PRI is the priority of the note. Although it initially seemed counter-intuitive to me,
moving the knob left will increase the priority. I'll talk about this more in a minute. Anyway, the note with the highest priority beats
out any others that are supposed to hit at the same time.
- The TIM knob moves the notes ahead of or behind the
beat by intervals of up to 47ms. This is
the heart of groove processing within Jamstix as part of the drummer
modeling.
- The HAT knob sets the opening amount of the cymbals of
the hi-hat.
A minute ago I mentioned that moving the PRI knob to the
left in the current version of the software will increase the priority of a
note. This seems really odd, when 99% of
knobs are at higher levels to the right.
You should think of this as maybe a micro position adjustment on the
grid. First of all, remember that the
Brain is working in three layers. It
might find a certain position in the bar where a specific limb generates hits
on more than one layer at the same time.
As an example, on beat three, maybe a snare hit is generated on the
right hand in the groove layer, and a hi hat hit is also generated on the same
beat with the same hand in the accent layer.
The Brain knows that by playing one of the two, it has to skip the other
because of the limb rules, so it plays the one with the highest priority. I believe
that will probably always be the hit in the main layer (the groove),
although I could be wrong and there could be some random chance assigned. I'm still getting a feel for this. Anyway, by changing the priority of the
simultaneous notes, you can affect which one gets played and which gets
skipped. So going back to my comment
about conceptualizing the PRI knob as a micro position adjustment, you can
think of it this way: rotating the knob
slightly to the left will position the hit slightly to the left of (ahead of)
the downbeat. So it's like a race. The hit that happens first, ahead of competing hits on the same downbeat, prevents the other [practically
simultaneous] hit from being allowed to happen because of the limb movement
rules. The drummers arms can't move that
fast, so the Brain disallows one of the "simultaneous" hits. I'm not sure if this is the best way to
explain it, but it seems like a great explanation in my own mind.
Ok, so all the stuff that I just described applies if you
left-click on a note. If you
right-click, you'll see a context menu pop up. However, you have to have the sound selected
first before the proper context menu shows up!
Here, you can cut, copy, and delete, but you can also change the sound,
the hit style, the timing mode, or the shuffle.
Changing the sound is pretty intuitive. And the options make sense. If you're trying to change a foot item,
you're going to have options like a kick, or a hi hat close/splash. Your foot obviously won't play a ride cymbal
– even Rick "Thunder God" Allen doesn't do this (although you can
accomplish that task elsewhere by using redirection).
The Hit Style is pretty basic too. "Single" refers to a single hit. "Double" refers to a double-stroke. "Bounce" refers to three hits (a 32nd
triplet) of decreasing power, like the natural bounce of a drumstick.
The Timing modes in the context menu are a musical time
offset of a 24th, 32nd, or 48th note. This will make sense to a professional
drummer or music student.
The Shuffle option also affects the ultimate timing of
the note, by shuffling the timing on just that one note rather than that of the entire
bar.
Outside of the context menu, you'll see a Learn toggle
and a Locked toggle, each of which turns bright blue once they're turned on.
If you lock an individual note, it's the same concept as
locking a bar, but it only applies to that one note. Remember that the lock symbol icon on the
right side of the bar editor is the one that locks the whole bar. If you manually add a note in the bar
editor, the default setting is that the particular note is automatically
locked, under the assumption that if you took the effort to put it there, you
want it there. Of course, you can unlock
it if you want.
If you see a red cross on a note, it means that the Brain
attempted to generate it, but then suppressed it during the last
play-through. This was probably due to a
limb conflict or the internal limb timing rules. You can move the mouse over the note and look
at the status line to find out why. It
might say something like, "Priority override by Crash 1."
If the Learn button is turned on, the Brain will listen
to incoming MIDI performance data, interpret it, and enter it into the Bar
Editor. So if you're comfortable playing
a MIDI keyboard or eDrum kit, this can be useful. If you're doing this, Jamstix pays attention
to "quantize import" setting and locked items.
If you look closely at notes on the editor, the icons can
communicate a lot of info.
Unfortunately, this is tough to demonstrate in writing, so you might be
better off to refer to the manual for this one.
But essentially:
- There is a vertical red line on the right side of the
note. It represents velocity, and if it goes all the way to the top it means a
full velocity of 127.
- There might be a small red dot on the lower right side
(the current manual incorrectly says it's on the left side). This indicates that the hit is a Double.
- There might be a pair of two vertical red dots on the
lower right side (the current manual incorrectly says that they're on the left
side). This indicates that the hit is a
Bounce.
- If there is a black triangle on the left side, it means
that the hit is shuffled, either individually or because the whole Part is
shuffled.
- If there's a red line across the top, it means that the
event is locked.
- The hi hat icon gives you a visual representation of
the openness level of the hat on that particular note.
I've already touched on the Bar Menu in a previous video,
and it's really self-explanatory, so I'll skip that.
If you click on one of the limb labels on the left side
of the bar editor (two capital letters), you'll see a small limb menu. Again, it's pretty self-explanatory.
Along the top of the bar editor, you can do a normal
left-click on any of the sixteen beat divisions, to see a small menu. This lets you play with the groove
weights. You'll want to play with this
to understand it more, because different styles put emphasis on different
beats. Controlling the groove weights
can be especially useful if a song has an unusual time signature. There are three choices for groove
weights: heavy, neutral, and
syncopated.
There are several more options to the right of the large
Compose button:
- You can click "Compose" if you don't want to
change any Brain settings but want to audit an alternative performance.
- If AUTO is turned on, changing Brain controls can lead
to immediate recomposition.
- If BAR is highlighted, a recomposition only
recomposes the current bar. Otherwise,
the entire Part is generated again.
- The disk icon saves a Restore Point of your song. It's like the System Restore option in
Windows. If you want to recover to a
saved restore point, go over to the song menu drop-down in the Song Sheet.
- The trash can clears the current aspect (layer) of the
bar and marks it as composed. When this
happens, the Brain won't replace the deleted events unless a re-compose
happens.
Style and
Drummer Models
I've talked several times earlier about the style and
drummer affecting the performance. I
also mentioned the priority system, whereby the Brain will block out certain
notes if they are lower priority than conflicting notes. You're probably wondering why the Brain has
to do that. I did. Why even have the conflicts in the first
place?
It's because the Brain doesn't really do all the
composition as a unified whole. It's
split up into two separate models, then it reviews what happened and decides
what gets played. The two separate
models, of course, are the Style model and the Drummer model.
The style model goes first. It focuses on the groove, and also
contributes to the accent and fills. The
drummer goes next, and mostly focuses on the accents and fills. This is how some overlapping hits can be
created that conflict with the style model.
Some drummer models will add notes to the groove, but
many do not. After both models have
finished composing, the Brain does its limb and priority checks, and creates a
realistic performance.
If you have a saved MIDI file from any source, in GM
format (the General MIDI standard), you can use it by going to "import
style." The Jamstix drummer will
personalize it by adding accents, fills, power level, etc.
If you want to use the Jamstix bar editor to create a
MIDI part, instead of doing it in your host DAW, you can. Just use the Silent style and the Silent
drummer, and go into the Bar Menu to "Lock Manually Created
Events." If you want, after you've
made a hand-crafted groove, you could switch to a different drummer model to
have that drummer interpret it. You
might want to export your performance or create a restore point first though,
in case you don't like the new results.
Options
A number of these are very obvious, so I won't list them
all, but a few are worth clarifying.
- The Debug Log should be left off.
- You can turn off Limb Controls if you want to have a
drummer with more than four limbs.
- Auto Edit Sounds means that a drum will play when you
mouse over it in the Bar Editor.
- Usually, for hi hats, if the pedal pressure MIDI
controller value is 127, it triggers a closed hat, and 0 triggers a fully
open hat. If you activate Reverse High Hat
Controller, it sets 127 to open and 0 to closed.
- Never Mix Down overrides the downmix switch in the
mixer, which I mentioned earlier.
- Enable Song Looping is an option that allows you to
keep a song from ending, by looping back to a specific part when it finishes
the last part. I find that this is
useful when you're just practicing a song with a guitar or something, and don't
want to keep moving back to the start and hitting play every time the song ends.
- The LoD, or Load On Demand system, reduces memory
consumption of the drum kits. I wouldn't
disable this unless you're having technical problems with an underpowered
system.
- Voice Reduction is also related to the CPU loading, so
look this up in the manual if you're having problems.
- This is the number of stereo audio outputs sent to the
host. The default is eight, and it
ranges from one to seventeen, although Pro Tools is currently limited to
one. If you change this, you have to
restart Jamstix and possibly your entire host.
- Bar Offset (Visual or Actual) options are useful if the
Jamstix Transport bar and beat numbers are not matching the ones in your host.
- Auto Save is expressed in minutes. You have the option to turn it off. The default is to save on exit.
Miscellaneous
When it comes to VST automation, there are actually only
three things that you can currently automate in Jamstix 3: the Power Level, Reduction, and Global Timing
Slider. This is because of a limitation
with the VST standard. However, not to
worry. You've already seen that just
about every control can be individually mapped to a controller, and most hosts
allow complete automation this way, by automating the envelopes for the MIDI
controls. It's odd, but it's an
effective workaround.
There are several status lights at the bottom right. MIDI In and Out are obvious, and they flash
when MIDI is being sent or received. The
Audio-In LED only lights up when data is coming into Jamstix from AudioM8. And finally, if you ever start to hear
clicking noises in the audio (I haven't), look to see if the LoD% is bright
red. If so, go into the Options and
either increase Voice Reduction or increase the LoD pre-buffer.
If your song uses time signature changes, I said earlier
that it wasn't a problem because you're slaved to the host. But unfortunately, it's not that simple, so I need to clarify. The VST standard isn't good with time
signature changes, so you should set each part manually to be certain, if they
aren't grey'd out. First, go into
Options and make sure Time Sig Changes is enabled. That ensures that the controls aren't grey'd out. Then, go into each individual part and select
the time signature for that part. If you
have a time signature change in the middle of a part, you may need to get
creative and call it two separate parts.
Where this gets to be odd is that when using Pro Tools, you're using
AAX plug-ins rather than the VST standard, so I had assumed it would be
different. But apparently it's not. You can change the time signature in all hosts
(including Pro Tools) so that Jamstix is not following the same rhythm structure
as the host. Jamstix IS still forced to
slave to the host's tempo, but you can have an inconsistency with the time
signature if you aren't careful.
If you're trying to jam with audio, obviously you start
by setting up Jamstix in a project as a VSTi, and click the Audio Jam
button. Make sure you add AudioM8 as an
insert effect on the audio track being monitored. You may have to enable "Input
Monitoring" or "Input Echo," depending on your host. You should now see the Audio-In LED
flickering as you play. The MIDI Jam
works the same way.
Up to ten restore points are allowed. After that, new restore points erase older
points. If Jamstix is auto-saving restore
points because you've turned this on in the Options menu, Jamstix won't save a point
while the host is playing, so you don't have to worry about it interfering with
your ongoing work when a performance is happening, or when you're recording.
And finally, the rotary knob in the upper right controls the brightness of the Brain controls and Song Sheet.
Conclusions
Ok, that's it. By
this point, hopefully you're quite comfortable with most of the capabilities of
the Jamstix software. And by now, you
should realize just how powerful it is, especially for beginning and intermediate
producers, because it really can avoid the very tedious tasks of hand entering
complex MIDI data on a timeline. It avoids the static and boring feel that
usually results from patterns that were hand-coded by non-experts.
So at this point, what should you do next? Well, I'd recommend getting a couple books on
drumming, even if you don't want to become a real drummer, to get you into the
proper headspace of what drumming is all about.
Next, I'd experiment a lot by setting up drum tracks
for various songs, so you get really comfortable with Jamstix.
Finally, I'd recommend that you study the art and science
behind mixing a kit in a DAW. Rather
than just sending the output to a single stereo channel and playing with the
volume, you can take things to a whole new level if you learn to split the
pieces of the kit into their own separate tracks so you have a lot more
flexibility over relative volumes within the kit. You can then learn to process individual
pieces of the kit separately in terms of EQ'ing, compression, reverb, and so
on. You'll truly be able to get some
professional sounding results.
In the near future, I'm going to put together a couple of
full tracks, and document the entire process from start to finish. I'll do a video or series of videos about
each. My current guess is that I'll do
an indie folk/rock style track with Pro Tools, and a Deep House track with
Ableton. When I'm done, I'll put links
under these videos and on my videos page on my website, and also directly down below within this blog post, and I'll also include
all the session and project files as free downloads. If you have Pro Tools or Ableton, you'll be
able to open up my exact projects, play with the settings, remix the tracks, or
whatever you want.
Thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing to me on
YouTube or following me on Twitter or SoundCloud, and thanks especially for
sharing these videos with your friends.
Good luck with your music making!
By the way, I've created a clickable index for the whole series, so if you've watched everything but you want to review a certain section, this might come in useful.
CLICK HERE to go to that index.
I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia. Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production? If so, visit:
If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:
Thanks so much for visit, and for your support! I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.
Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:
