Couple questions relating to pauses, MetalPak and blast beat

[Fama_]

etalPak and blast beat', 'Hello!

I'm a new-ish Jamstix user since the holiday sale where I got the ultimate pack, and for the most part I've been very happy with Jamstix! It has improved my workflow tons by allowing me to quickly throw together drums for demo tracks which improves my productivity a lot since I don't get bogged down by hand editing them as much.

However, I have encountered a few issues (apart from the minor technical problem I reported in the Reaper thread):

1.) Sometimes I get pauses in the groove for an unknown reason. Here is one example: https://soundcloud.com/user-913671490/j ... P4z2y88xR2

The part is 8th rock with drummer Neil and default/default. I'm pretty sure I didn't tweak the settings much, except fiddling with accents (turning it down so it couldn't be that - I've seen stops with some drummers/styles there I believe, or was it in fills?).

Here's an image of the groove settings: https://imgur.com/a/hDa62b2

Recomposing the bar helps but it's annoying that I occasionally have to do this. Is there some setting I'm missing? Or should I just insert samples of a drumstick slipping and hitting random drums for added realism

2.) In the MetalPak manual it mentions that there should be a "Complexity"-slider in the "Dial-a-metal" style, and now that I'm writing this post I noticed that the "Groove" element has a "Busy" parameter that seems to be what Complexity should be. Has this just been renamed?

3.) I believe there's no simple way to create blast beats (eg. some of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4KNXi-SWWc) apart from inputting it by hand. So it sounds like I need to maybe create a style for that myself? Or is there some better way?

Probably I would select one of the metal styles, then either program in a blast beat manually, use the groove importer or midi learn? Groove importer seems ok from a quick try, is there some easy way to control the snare drum velocity for that one part, for example? I think I need to disable the kick and snare elements if those come from the Groove importer? And if I manage to dial in a nice sound blast beat, what would be better, "Save style preset" or "Turn groove into style"?

4.) I notice at times that if the groove is in halftime, the fills might still not be. Is there something I need to do to enable that, or do I just turn up the "Simple" parameter in the fills section? That seems to sort of do the trick.

Thanks!

[Azimuth (Archive)]

1) The random stoppage: Is there a reason you don't have "FULL" enabled, only AUTO and BAR? Try enabling it to see if it resolves the issue.

2) I believe that was a slider back in earlier versions and has been replaced by the Busy knob as you noted.

3) Blast Beats: Hand program 1 to 4 bars then Turn Groove into Style. Your saved style will now be available for selection in the Song Builder. Little hint for blast beats with Dial-a-Metal: Busy =80-100%, select random groups of Kick drum beats and click "Double" on the left side of the Bar Editor. You'll see what I mean.

4) I always treat Fills as a separate item from the Groove and Accents. I always get the main Groove the way I want it first and then lock all bars. I then go back and unlock single bars where I want to modify the Fills. A lot of times I will just keep recomposing the Fill bar until something I like pops up and then I'll lock it and move on to the next one.

[Fama_]

1) The random stoppage: Is there a reason you don't have "FULL" enabled, only AUTO and BAR? Try enabling it to see if it resolves the issue.

If I recompose it it's fixed, and I haven't managed to reproduce it intentionally, but I think it's possibly related to that indeed.

When I create a new part and Auto and Bar are selected, the part is composed on the fly, and it feels to me like this could sometimes cause random stoppages in the playing.

I had Bar there because I wanted to easily recompose just certain bars if I didn't like the groove, plus for fixing those holes. I guess I should try keeping it on Full always when I don't need to specifically work on single bars, and see if it keeps happening.

In any case it does feel like a bug to me that the stoppages happen in the first place, but if this fixes it it's just a minor annoying issue.

2) I believe that was a slider back in earlier versions and has been replaced by the Busy knob as you noted.

3) Blast Beats: Hand program 1 to 4 bars then Turn Groove into Style. Your saved style will now be available for selection in the Song Builder. Little hint for blast beats with Dial-a-Metal: Busy =80-100%, select random groups of Kick drum beats and click "Double" on the left side of the Bar Editor. You'll see what I mean.

4) I always treat Fills as a separate item from the Groove and Accents. I always get the main Groove the way I want it first and then lock all bars. I then go back and unlock single bars where I want to modify the Fills. A lot of times I will just keep recomposing the Fill bar until something I like pops up and then I'll lock it and move on to the next one.

Thanks you! I'll give that Turn groove into Style a try then. Also sounds like a good workflow for fills, I'll give that a try too. I've been doing bunch of quite basic dirty rock songs lately so the fills are often bang on with very little tweaking.