Is Jamstix still relevant ?

[MeanMrMustard]

I came across an advert about Jamstix, haven't heard it mentioned in years. Not totally satisfied with what's currently out there so I thought I'd ask here as to what others thought.

I checked the website and it's still active, but it's not really mentioned much these days on music forums. So I'm wondering if it's time came and went. The dev also seems to be rather inactive. So what is the deal with JS ? Is it still relevant in 2024 ?

[Dirk Diggler]

Perfectly relevant and still as useful as the day they started selling it.

No other app does what JamStix can do, it really will react like a human due to dynamics, either from audio or midi. Completely unique even still today.

Also of course you're not stuck with the sounds built in, which are not bad, but you can send midi to the VSTi drum app of your choice.

I use it to arrange and sketch songs, later I go back and learn the drum parts and play them from my Trapkat. Very useful tool.

I think Ralph still has a demo, so why not try it.

[bobbackwards]

I have had Jamstix since V1 and use it regularly. I have not used anything that matches it for creating dynamic drum parts that sound like an acutal drummer. With that said it has quirks that some folks may not like. I quite like the native drum sounds but they are all pretty much "dry" so you may need to tweak them. You can always use JS to "drive" another drum library. My biggest issue is with midi control...it's cumbersome. JS could be an amazing live tool, and you can use it as such, but it takes some tweaking and is not super flexible. In all fairness I am not a midi expert so I may just be dense, YMMV. I usually stick JS onto a track, assign a style and drummer and then just hit play, you can automate power level etc. to get a pretty great sounding track very quickly. However, anothe issue that comes up is doing stops and such is fiddly. All the tools are there it just may not be as user friendly as some others, but that might be a symptom of its complexity. I have never had any crashes with JS on reaper and it is CPU efficient. If a V5 comes out I will buy it immediately, but for now I would say that JS is a solid option particularly if you are into guitar, bass, and drums music.

[Hewitt Huntwork]

IF you want tracks that sound like a live drummer and IF you are down for a learning curve, then Jamstix could be for you.

The developer is great. For me, Jamstix felt a little too much like trying to reinvent the wheel. If you just want to create great drum arrangements, EZ Drummer 3 is hard to beat.

[sjm]

As alluded to above, what Jamstix is good at is generating realistic sounding drums from basic patterns. The selling point is the whole generative side. Different "drummers" with different styles, and you can tweak various parameters to determine how much freedom they have to do their own thing. The drum sounds are not the big selling point. They're OK, and very dry as mentioned above. Usable without being anything special.

If the generative drum pattern feature sounds like something you are interested in - I think it's very cool. The drum patterns are just as usable now as they were X years ago. Bum tak bum bum tak doesn't really get old, nor does saving yourself the time to create variations, add fills etc. You can take the generated MIDI and fine tune it yourself too. It's a great way to generate "organic" drums, where there are slight variations across patterns, auto-fills and differences between sections.

That's quite different from static MIDI files that you'll often find in drum plugins. There's no generative aspect to them, just lots of variations. Again, you can edit these yourself and use them as a starting point, and that might also be good enough for you. But you'd have to do a lot more manual editing to get something similar to what Jamstix will generate.

So maybe you want to clarify this a bit:

I came across an advert about Jamstix, haven't heard it mentioned in years. Not totally satisfied with what's currently out there so I thought I'd ask here as to what others thought.

Given that there's not really anything comparable (that I know of), are you coming at this from the perspective of "I'm looking for some drum sounds to use"? Or are you interested in something that can create drum parts with all the nuances of an actual drummer intelligently from a template?

If it's the first, I'd say "pass" as the sounds are nothing special (IMO). If it's the second, then it's very cool. If you weren't aware of this being the main attraction, maybe you want to check out some videos and/or try the demo. I typically use it to jam along to, you can quickly create a structure of verse and chorus blocks and have a basic beat going that isn't the same pattern repeated indefinitely. It's like having a drummer in the room with you, except they can keep time.

[bobbackwards]

It's like having a drummer in the room with you, except they can keep time.

[hotmitts]

Jamstix is my favourite generator for drums, it generates MIDi for an entire drum track (doesn't use static MIDI loops or random like most others)...the results are very natural sounding. You can set it up easily, let it do its thing, or have detailed and complete control if you want.
It's quite educational too I found.
It's great and has not been surpassed for that in all these years.
That's its strength and what it excels at.

The only drawback is that it hasn't seen any updates recently, so I don't know if it's being continued, which would be a shame, but it's still pefectly stable

[bobbackwards]

The only drawback is that it hasn't seen any updates recently, so I don't know if it's being continued, which would be a shame, but it's still pefectly stable

There was a beta update in October of 2023, Ralph is still around and he is top notch and can be trusted to support his work. I think it's probably a "JS works so no need to fiddle with it" situation. As far as future versions, I have not kept up with the forum but there are some threads that discuss it, not sure what Ralph has said though.

edit: 23 is when I updated, looks like the actual update was earlier. Still, all of the above applies.

[hotmitts]

The only drawback is that it hasn't seen any updates recently, so I don't know if it's being continued, which would be a shame, but it's still pefectly stable

There was a beta update in October of 2023, Ralph is still around and he is top notch and can be trusted to support his work. I think it's probably a "JS works so no need to fiddle with it" situation. As far as future versions, I have not kept up with the forum but there are some threads that discuss it, not sure what Ralph has said though.

edit: 23 is when I updated, looks like the actual update was earlier. Still, all of the above applies.

There's a lot too it if you dig in, I guess it would be nice to see it get more recognition and success as it's so unique and fully featured

[SirkusPi]

It looks terrific and I wish it were relevant for me, but as a mac user, it's been pretty much unusable all along. (I accept my partial blame for buying it years ago without demoing it more thoroughly.)

At least the Mac version now appears to be withdrawn altogether, and there's big banner warning saying "Please DO NOT purchase a license if you are only using macOS." I commend them for at least now acknowledging that the mac version was basically nonworking and not selling it any more.

[guitarzan]

Jamstix was always great, I’ll have to look into upgrading to the current version.

Is there anything like it for bass parts? I seem to recall some talk of a JamBass type thing in works from rayzoon at one time? The only thing I remember actually being available was Bornemark Broomstick Bass, which was pretty cool (though not nearly as comprehensive as Jamstix is for drums), but it doesn’t seem to have been even so much as mentioned in years.

[hotmitts]

It looks terrific and I wish it were relevant for me, but as a mac user, it's been pretty much unusable all along. (I accept my partial blame for buying it years ago without demoing it more thoroughly.)

At least the Mac version now appears to be withdrawn altogether, and there's big banner warning saying "Please DO NOT purchase a license if you are only using macOS." I commend them for at least now acknowledging that the mac version was basically nonworking and not selling it any more.

Are there any wrapper devices which might run it ?

Like Kushview Elements
https://kushview.net/element/

[bobbackwards]

Unify should?
https://www.pluginguru.com/products/unify-standard/
Unify is pretty awesome on its own...

[Brando]

The only drawback is that it hasn't seen any updates recently, so I don't know if it's being continued, which would be a shame, but it's still pefectly stable

There was a beta update in October of 2023, Ralph is still around and he is top notch and can be trusted to support his work. I think it's probably a "JS works so no need to fiddle with it" situation. As far as future versions, I have not kept up with the forum but there are some threads that discuss it, not sure what Ralph has said though.

edit: 23 is when I updated, looks like the actual update was earlier. Still, all of the above applies.

May 2021 I believe IIRC. That said I use Jamstix mostly with AD2, but also XO, Microtonic, Impact and a bunch of other samplers and drum synths every day in Win 11, Studio One 7. I think I've used it (incl. earlier versions) in Vista/W7/W8.1/W10 and now W11. Super stable and just works. VST2 only though. I own the whole shebang. Current sale is 60% off I believe. But yes, no clue about the future. On EDIT - Last beta was OCT 2021

[gnu23]

Unify should?
https://www.pluginguru.com/products/unify-standard/
Unify is pretty awesome on its own...

Unify loads Jamstix.