Jamstix on OSX, the final hack (ARCHIVED)

ricinro · Post by **ricinro** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:51 pm

http://www.emusician.com/news/0766/apple-logic-pro-x-%E2%80%93-an-exclusive-first-look/152186

I am not going to upgrade my OSX to get logic pro X but it seems that Apple has adopted the jamstix idea. Maybe it is jamstix?

Still looking forward to Jamstix for OSX!

Dewdman42 · Post by **Dewdman42** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:57 pm

we'll see how it turns out, but my impression is that this will be more like garageband type behavior. It looks to me like it has a lot of focus on how the produced drums sound...mic placement, etc....with perhaps a library of preset patterns to choose from, perhaps some slight variations in the way patterns are arranged or tweaked slightly.

Jamstix has orders of magnitude more intelligence in terms of modeling drummer behavior....but let's see how the reviews come out. My personal feeling is that the new Drummer instrument in Logic will end up turning out hoardes of tracks that all sound kind of vanilla.

Jamstix also has the percussion engine, etc.. Its not going to replace Jamstix.

But it DOES run on a mac!

willowhaus · Post by **willowhaus** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:23 am

Finally got it working on my Mac!

Thanks, this worked really great (although it was s-l-o-w to load all my Drum Paks...but I ain't complaining!)

One thing I can't figure out yet, though, is getting MIDI output recorded. I'd like to use JS to compose a part & fly it back into a native DAW. Tried arming the track in Reaper & setting it to record MIDI In, but it's just not doing it. Any thoughts?

Dewdman42 · Post by **Dewdman42** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 2:30 pm

The best way to get the midi back to your main DAW is to develop the midi tracks in Reaper-win32 and then export the midi tracks to file(s) and then import those midi tracks in your OSX DAW.

Consult the reaper and jamstix manuals for how to record your drum parts from jamstix onto a midi track of the host daw.

I find that the easiest way is to develop the whole song inside Jamstix. When you feel the parts are ready you can click-drag the parts from the jamstix window over to midi tracks on reaper and they will plop into place. From reaper you can export them as midi files. And this works fine under the wine environment (because the drag and drop is all within the reaper-win32 program).

Then import the midi files to your OSX daw.

There are other ways to capture the midi too, I think you can enable the midi out of Jamstix, as if you were using it to drive a seperate drum sampler or something like that. Then you should be able to record-arm a track and record it, but I like the drag and drop method better.

You can also send the midi output out of reaper-win32, over apple iAC and into your host OSX DAW and record it there in real time that way too. that's good to setup while you're writing the song so that you can hear the actual drum sounds you will use. Takes some fiddling to set that up. However you get a bit of delay that way due to the IAC process, its not noticeable, but I sleep better at night about it by just exporting tight midi files from Jamstix and reaper, then they are exactly what jamstix intended.

willowhaus · Post by **willowhaus** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 4:02 am

Dewdman42 wrote:The best way to get the midi back to your main DAW is to develop the midi tracks in Reaper-win32 and then export the midi tracks to file(s) and then import those midi tracks in your OSX DAW.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.

I find that the easiest way is to develop the whole song inside Jamstix. When you feel the parts are ready you can click-drag the parts from the jamstix window over to midi tracks on reaper and they will plop into place. From reaper you can export them as midi files. And this works fine under the wine environment (because the drag and drop is all within the reaper-win32 program).

Then import the midi files to your OSX daw.

Thanks, I'll try that.

There are other ways to capture the midi too, I think you can enable the midi out of Jamstix, as if you were using it to drive a seperate drum sampler or something like that. Then you should be able to record-arm a track and record it, but I like the drag and drop method better.

This is what I was trying to do, but for some reason it wasn't recording. I did this on a different machine running Parallels and it worked just fine. I was wondering if there was some trick to getting it to work with the wine installation. I'll revisit & see if there's something I missed.

EDIT: FOUND IT! Rather than setting the track input to MIDI (which is looking to an external source), I needed to right-click on the Record Arm button itself. Set the recording mode to Record: Output (MIDI) and it will record the output of the loaded VSTi.

I knew it was in there somewhere...!

You can also send the midi output out of reaper-win32, over apple iAC and into your host OSX DAW and record it there in real time that way too. that's good to setup while you're writing the song so that you can hear the actual drum sounds you will use. Takes some fiddling to set that up. However you get a bit of delay that way due to the IAC process, its not noticeable, but I sleep better at night about it by just exporting tight midi files from Jamstix and reaper, then they are exactly what jamstix intended.

Right. I'm not really interested in that because of the amount of fiddling, & the latency issues. It's well enough for me to create the drum part & fly it in, either as audio or MIDI. With this particular track I'm probably going to use SSD4, so I just need to trigger it.

Thanks for the responses! 8)

dx_machina · Post by **dx_machina** » Sun Aug 04, 2013 10:40 pm

Has anyone been able to get 3.5 running with this method? I can get the packaged version (3.3) to work without issue, but after updating Reaper always quits after trying to instantiate the plugin.

Robitaille20 · Post by **Robitaille20** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 8:18 am

Unfortunately not. I mentioned that it another thread and was told that it is a known issue with the 3.5 version. I thought I would be slick and tried to make my own install in Crossover and run the 3.5 version...... It runs and doesn't crash Reaper, but the Jamstix GUI is all jacked up and has about 20 random knobs across the top and is unusable. I've pretty much given up on it and have decided to continue to wait for the real deal for OSX.

dx_machina · Post by **dx_machina** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 1:49 pm

Found the same... tried to do a custom Wine install here and while the plugin would instantiate without crashing, it was graphically unusable.

Oh well... Parallels it is for a while.

Robitaille20 · Post by **Robitaille20** » Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:20 am

I should probably clarify something in this thread so people don't get the wrong idea. The work to even get Jamstix working with this Wine implementation is amazing! Don't get me wrong in thinking that I'm saying I've given up and decided to wait for the real deal has anything to do with the fact that it doesn't work.

In fact I CAN get the MIDI data from Reaper to record into both Studio One and Logic Pro.. the problem that I'm having is that I cannot for the life of me get the MTC/Timecode sync to work between Reaper and whichever software I choose. Without that working, it kind of defeats the purpose. I keep telling myself to just move on because quite frankly I've spent WAY too much time trying to overcome this issue and not getting anything creatively done- and believe me.. I don't have a lot of "free time" to sit down and use my DAW as is, but for some reason I keep giving it "one more shot" because I want it to work so bad. Now that I've played around with Jamstix in this way after having not used it for so long I'm like a junkie that needs my fix and I can't give up on trying to make it work.... sigh.

paul_c · Post by **paul_c** » Wed Aug 07, 2013 11:17 am

Hey all,

I work on a Mac (Macbook Pro, circa 2008). I use (and love) Logic. But as of now I have no plans on updating to Logic X.

I am really hoping that the Jamstix OSX version will actually be live soon. I have to admit that, reading through the many years worth of posts saying "coming soon", that I feel a little anxious, but I do hope that if it's promised then it will be delivered.

In the meantime, I'd like to offer a HUGE thank you for this workaround. With the detailed instructions I got it to work right away. At least on the surface. I've only just started playing around with it. I haven't tried getting it to communicate with Logic. I'm actually thinking that it would probably be easier in the long run to just use this method to compose the drums, then export the MIDI files into Logic. Probably save myself some headaches.

I plan on using my other drum libraries for the sounds anyways (SSD, Komplete, etc.).

Anyway, this is my first post. I'm excited to get to know the software, and the supportive users of this forum, better. Off to a great start!