My Back Pages (fab, but can Jamstix do complex arrangements)

[mikeon_b4c]

Hey Mike,

Every once in a while, I catch up on the Jamstix forum to learn something new and stumbled across this thread.

I first played your "My Back Pages" and then other covers you put up on SoundCloud. Then I found your originals. I really like your song "In My Own Age". "Strange Sounds" is great also.

I know how much work goes into recording covers, ones at the quality level you're achieving boggles my mind.

If you're ever interested in sharing how you build tracks I would be all ears (and probably many others). I also have EZ Drummer and do some "paint by numbers" drum editing but some of my best tracks have been drummed by "Charlie S."

It took me a good while to teach Jamstix restraint and groove but it's doing a good job for me now. One of my favorite uses is playing B3 in a duo with Jamstix.

Great to read your post and to know you like the music. It's bedtime here in UK and I've got a lot on at present but you raise interesting points and I'll try and reply properly when I get a moment. Had a listen to your Daytripper instrumental and liked it. If you have a listen to my take on Dr Robert, I used Daytripper riff for a solo in that. Hey, why not ha ha 👍

[mikeon_b4c]

Hey Mike,

Every once in a while, I catch up on the Jamstix forum to learn something new and stumbled across this thread.

I first played your "My Back Pages" and then other covers you put up on SoundCloud. Then I found your originals. I really like your song "In My Own Age". "Strange Sounds" is great also.

I know how much work goes into recording covers, ones at the quality level you're achieving boggles my mind.

If you're ever interested in sharing how you build tracks I would be all ears (and probably many others). I also have EZ Drummer and do some "paint by numbers" drum editing but some of my best tracks have been drummed by "Charlie S."

It took me a good while to teach Jamstix restraint and groove but it's doing a good job for me now. One of my favorite uses is playing B3 in a duo with Jamstix.

Hi again. Well looking back at my earlier posts I think you can gather the ways in which I have been working. I'm still only using Jamstix at a pretty elementary level - learning the nuances of Jamstix could suck me right in at the expense of all the other stuff I have to do to put a good recording together (not least, being a musician and keeping in touch with the creative muse that is ultimately what makes any performance any good - and I've got to try and do that across all the instruments except bass where I usually have a great bassist and freind who enjoys doing those parts). And then there's the vocal performance, usually the centrepiece although often the least difficult to both perform and to mix well. And then there's the whole huge tearing-hair-out work of getting the mix/master right (and here I've still a lot to learn) . So I often defer substantially to what Jamstix comes up with as a content creator, and then I clean up the silly inappropriate breaks it sometimes does (I think it could be 'taught' to do more of what I want but again its the time and lack of tutorials that go against me with Jamstix). It's always good to have a musician who just gets on with it ha ha.

So in summary, I'd say just ask away with questions that arise after listening to my stuff and I'll do my best to answer them. Bear in mind that a lot of it uses hand created drum parts done in Manda Powerdrum - I only moved over to Jamstix maybe 12-18 months ago. Infuriating though it can be, I love it and the idea of being surprised (pleasantly, hopefully) by what it creates rather than have to find patterns and paste them into a sequence (like with EZDrummer?), which puts a creative pressure on me up front. Hope that makes sense

[d_steinschneider]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the more detailed reply, it gives me the overview I was wondering about. I know what you mean about not getting into the weeds drum wise. I'm going to re-read your threads to see what kind of suggestions you got for creating parts for covers.

I got tips from Ralph and Azimuth that were very different from what I expected such as this one from Ralph that helped me get a hammond trio swing beat:

----------------
STYLE: Jazz Swing
- set 'Swing Ride' to 100%
- set 'Kick' to 0% Amount
- set 'Snare' to 0% Funk, 0% Power Range and 50% Amount
- BRAIN->Extract From Other Player: get 'Main Kick' from 'Custom Rock' style
PLAYER: Roger with preset 'Restrained'

In the accent tab, use 'Early One' to control the frequency of jazzy early downbeats (4+) and you probably will want to turn the tom accents down.
----------------------

That got me into playing with the "Brain" and Power Range to tone down the fills.

[d_steinschneider]

BTW, I use this YouTube video to be able to adjust Reaper's tempo map to recordings we did without a click. It requires installing SWS extensions which wasn't too difficult:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ryz7BfQnzg

[mikeon_b4c]

Good stuff. Will check that out. Currently taking a break from music making to indulge in my other hobby of model aircraft!

[mikeon_b4c]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the more detailed reply, it gives me the overview I was wondering about. I know what you mean about not getting into the weeds drum wise. I'm going to re-read your threads to see what kind of suggestions you got for creating parts for covers.

I got tips from Ralph and Azimuth that were very different from what I expected such as this one from Ralph that helped me get a hammond trio swing beat:

----------------
STYLE: Jazz Swing
- set 'Swing Ride' to 100%
- set 'Kick' to 0% Amount
- set 'Snare' to 0% Funk, 0% Power Range and 50% Amount
- BRAIN->Extract From Other Player: get 'Main Kick' from 'Custom Rock' style
PLAYER: Roger with preset 'Restrained'

In the accent tab, use 'Early One' to control the frequency of jazzy early downbeats (4+) and you probably will want to turn the tom accents down.
----------------------

That got me into playing with the "Brain" and Power Range to tone down the fills.

I was reflecting on this and on the value of it. The trouble I find is that you could fiddle around a lot to make a discovery like that (and having made it, it can be useful for re-use on other similar projects). However, there might come a point where the time and frustration spent trying to get Jamstix to play what you have in mind might be significantly more that just 'hand painting' in midi notes what your own imagination is telling you. Just one example of this in my collection is 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'. In this song I'm trying to capture Levon Helm's personality but to make my own decisions about what I want to play / drop in at various points. I really don't want any kind of AI patterning and I want to drop in random hits as I see them fitting with the vocal delivery etc. And would Jamstix every think to do the drum rolls where I've 'played' them. It could all be done in Jamstix I suppose, but I found 'hand painting' midi notes to be a lot more fruitful than I would have if using the Jamstix editing tools. So to me, its hard to beat 'hand painting' but it is very taxing and labour intensive. Where I love Jamstix is that if I want to get a job done quicker and am prepared to compromise a bit over giving up the lead on creating, it can knock out something 'unique' and not entirely simple pattern based quickly, so that I can be cracking on with the other musical parts. If I have the patience, I still have the option to create midi from Jamstix and then go in and manually edit the notes before then using Jamstix kit in midi player mode. Problem is of course by tht stage I'm getting weary and am likely not to go back and do that ha ha.

Meant to say also that 'In My Old age' (not my 'Own' age, and really its real title is just 'My Old Age' but the distributor got it wrong) was recorded in a proper recording studio (Monochrome Studios) and produced by Tom Gittins (who has worked with Robert Plant and Tom also plays the lead guitar part in the song). It was recorded by a band called Rothko, which I was in c1974 and which got together again c2014 and went back in the studio to redo songs from 40+ years ago (if you search Spotify etc for 'Rothko and Mark Pritchett' you can find lots of stuff). Mark was a neighbour and songwriting collaborator of David Bowie at the time he shot to fame as Ziggy, and he later joined the short lived Mick Ronson Band when the Spiders split up. We nearly got the gig of supporting Bowies first big US tour at that time, but he got too big for little old us to get the support gig.

Mike

P.S. link to Dixie is here if interested

https://soundcloud.com/mobbing_it_up/th ... sonthe-mob

[Azimuth (Archive)]

BTW, I use this YouTube video to be able to adjust Reaper's tempo map to recordings we did without a click. It requires installing SWS extensions which wasn't too difficult:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ryz7BfQnzg

I use LCipher's tempo mapping method demonstrated in the post:

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php?p ... stcount=18

Granted it requires you to install Python and Sonic Visualizer but it is unbelievably fast once you get it up and running. It generates a MIDI tempo map which you then import into Reaper. Time signature changes can also be a bit of a pain in the a** sometimes too but I've found that to be the case with every tempo mapping method I've tried.
I did make one small change to LCipher's script because it generated crazy first bar tempos sometimes. If you want to know what I changed just ask and I'll look what it was and let you know if you'd like to try this method out.

[mikeon_b4c]

BTW, I use this YouTube video to be able to adjust Reaper's tempo map to recordings we did without a click. It requires installing SWS extensions which wasn't too difficult:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ryz7BfQnzg

I use LCipher's tempo mapping method demonstrated in the post:

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php?p ... stcount=18

Granted it requires you to install Python and Sonic Visualizer but it is unbelievably fast once you get it up and running. It generates a MIDI tempo map which you then import into Reaper. Time signature changes can also be a bit of a pain in the a** sometimes too but I've found that to be the case with every tempo mapping method I've tried.
I did make one small change to LCipher's script because it generated crazy first bar tempos sometimes. If you want to know what I changed just ask and I'll look what it was and let you know if you'd like to try this method out.

To quote Chuck Berry, and speaking as a musician who has to try not to get sidelined too much by trying to master DAW technical stuff:

That's why I go for that rock and roll music
Any old way you choose it
It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it
Any old time you use it

The only tempo change usually/maybe is going to half-time for some bits, which Jamstix handles just fine

[d_steinschneider]

Everytime I watch YouTube Jamstix tutorials I pick up something I missed. I just spent a morning re-watching them and testing a few things.

I've done this about every six months. When you're back to it we should have a discussion here about how to get Jamstix to best drum for a particular song's style.

[mikeon_b4c]

Everytime I watch YouTube Jamstix tutorials I pick up something I missed. I just spent a morning re-watching them and testing a few things.

I've done this about every six months. When you're back to it we should have a discussion here about how to get Jamstix to best drum for a particular song's style.

Jamstix is such an interesting phenomenon that it's a shame it doesn't have a YouTuber doing for it what Reapermania does for Reaper. For this old musu though, the words of David Bowie come to mind. From memory

My head hurt like a warehouse, I had no time to stare. I had to try so hard to cram so many things in there

😬😆