Like a Reggae one-drop knocked up a Grateful Dead shuffle...

[Coises_foiled_again]

I’m experimenting with the Jamstix 3 demo in Reaper. I have a composition that really needs a rhythm track, which I thought might work as a test to see if Jamstix would be a good addition to my toolkit.

Here are [url=http://www.coises.com/lji/ctwol1.mp3]an audio clip[/url] and [url=http://www.coises.com/lji/ctwol1.png]the corresponding score[/url] for part of the song. I’ve overbalanced the drums in the mix to make it easy to hear what’s going on there.

That’s with the Jamstix 3 demo playing a MIDI export of the drum line in drum machine mode. What I [i:5d87c19187]wanted[/i:5d87c19187] was to figure out what to set in Jamstix to convey that rhythmic sense, but let it devise, hopefully, a much better drum part than I, knowing nothing about drums, can write.

But nothing I’ve tried has worked. I’ve tried setting 12/8 time, applying the 12-8th groovemap, and selecting various styles. I’ve tried that plus forcing with classic kick and snare. I've tried freezing the MIDI tracks, changing Reaper’s time signature from 12/8 @ qtr=180 bpm to 4/4 @ qtr=120 bpm and setting 100% swing in Jamstix. (That was clumsy, but at first it seemed to make sense, since I couldn’t get any of the styles in Jamstix to adapt well to 12/8 time... but in 4/4 time, how do I tell it to stick with a triplet sub-division [i:5d87c19187]always[/i:5d87c19187]? The swing worked somewhat, but it sounded wrong... I [i:5d87c19187]think[/i:5d87c19187] it was that the brain was throwing in accents and fills on 8ths or 16ths rather than on triplets.)

Am I expecting too much, or am I missing something? I have four beats to the measure, sub-divided in three. Two and four function as a backbeat, three has a heavy punch, but the downbeat is light — kind of like a Reggae one-drop knocked up a Grateful Dead shuffle.

So what would I do to get the Jamstix 3 brain to think like that?

[Ralph @ Rayzoon]

Your song is definitely a 4/4 8th-shuffle. I loaded the 'Reggae (One Drop)' style from 'Caribbean' and got this:

www.rayzoontech.com/demos/reggae.mp3

[Coises_foiled_again]

Your song is definitely a 4/4 8th-shuffle. I loaded the 'Reggae (One Drop)' style from 'Caribbean' and got this:

www.rayzoontech.com/demos/reggae.mp3

Forgive me... I’m new to this.

I notated the song in 12/8, metronome marking quarter-dot = 120. I put it into MIDI that way; but while I can tell Reaper that the time signature is 12/8, Reaper still counts tempo in quarters, so I had to set BPM to 180.

How do I tell Jamstix that the beat is a [i:2a33189003]dotted[/i:2a33189003] quarter note?

Or do I have to re-time everything in the host so that the (real) beat is a quarter note? In that case, how do I tell Jamstix that the beat is sub-divided in triplets, not 16ths?

[Ralph @ Rayzoon]

The MP3 you posted is definitely slower than 180BPM. A one drop reggae is 4/4 with a kick on the third beat of every bar. If you are using 12/8 things will get messed up.

If you are checking 8th shuffle in Jamstix, everything goes to 8th triplets. Didn't the MP3 I posted sound like what you are looking for?

Correct me if I'm overlooking something here, I'm just going by your MP3.

[Coises_foiled_again]

Correct me if I'm overlooking something here, I'm just going by your MP3.

First, Ralph, thank you so much for your interest and assistance.

I’m quite possibly overlooking (or, more precisely, ignorant of) the way a drummer would think about this.

As seen in [url=http://www.coises.com/lji/ctwol1.png]the score[/url], from which I derived the MIDI files to use as a starting point, I wrote in 12/8, quarter-dot=120, since that’s [i:9d8c89bacb]much[/i:9d8c89bacb] easier to notate and to read than to have 4/4, but with the whole score awash in triplets. But maybe a real, living drummer would always think of this as 4/4 with shuffle rather than as 12/8 taken in 4.

I tried removing and re-adding Jamstix, creating a new part and deleting the original part. That created a 12/8 time signature and the groove map looked right: Heavy beats on 1, 4, 7 and 10. Then I loaded a drum kit and loaded the Reggae One-drop style. It came up with this:

[img:9d8c89bacb]http://www.coises.com/lji/ctwol2.png[/img:9d8c89bacb]

which obviously is not what I wanted at all. Apparently the style doesn’t understand the groove map?

Based on your last message, I’ll try re-timing all the MIDI to 4/4 (not as difficult as it sounds in Reaper), then see what happens with Reggae One-drop plus 8th note shuffle.

[Ralph @ Rayzoon]

A drummer would definitely think of it as 4/4. Triplets may be a pain score-wise but that is what is happening rhythmically and JS demands it when using the one drop style. Some styles fully rely on groove weights but most do only partially and some not at all.

[Coises_foiled_again]

Well, that was it. I could have sworn I tried re-timing to 4/4 before, but I must not have done it right. Doing that, setting 100% shuffle and selecting Reggae one-drop is definitely giving me the right starting point.

I’ll be playing around with it a bit more; but for what it’s worth, Ralph, you should know that your attention (and the general appreciation of your work I see in these forums) has probably convinced me to make a purchase I most likely would have passed up otherwise.