jammr Forum

captaincancel
I figured if a constant stream of 100% accurate drumming was fed into the room, regardless of where it came from, everyone would eventually hear it, so could play along.

The interval determines how jammr stitches all the streams together. If the session interval is 8 seconds long, but your drum machine has a loop of 10 seconds, then when I start playing on your beat 1, jammr will stitch my downbeat to 2 seconds before the end of your drum loop. That may not matter if everyone is just banging away on an A minor chord.

I most definitely have experienced in time jamming coming from various drum machines, but you're right, the interval might've been out, or they were just jamming in a key of A minor, so the intervals weren't as important.

This happens all the time. When I'm drumming, I'm hearing all the musicians come back to my rhythm, and when people aren't playing in time or on the same chord, it's pretty obvious.

The problem with the room click is it gets drowned out pretty easily once a few people jump in with loud instruments and if it's not loud for me, I have a hard time following it, especially if there are other guys that are close, but not on, so now you're fighting against it. Most definitely need to practice my click-playing anyways, so why not do it with Jammr while I'm cooped up?

I keep my laptop right in front of my rack toms and I use the visual metronome as much as I use the click. I'm also on in ears, and am used to playing in bands where I keep the click low in my mix. The trick is, if you're playing in time the click should disappear, when you drift out of sync you will hear the click and can compensate. I also try to play on top of the beat or even push it so I'm a little early. I'm still not perfect and had a few epic fuck-ups yesterday .

I have a switched mic connected to my feed, if people are too loud I will ask everyone to turn down a little. I think every jam should have someone with a mic to help coordinate.

Edited eb_liveDrums (April 19, 2020 19:26:22)

eb_liveDrums
I keep my laptop right in front of my rack toms and I use the visual metronome as much as I use the click. I'm also on in ears, and am used to playing in bands where I keep the click low in my mix. The trick is, if you're playing in time the click should disappear, when you drift out of sync you will hear the click and can compensate. I also try to play on top of the beat or even push it so I'm a little early. I'm still not perfect and had a few epic fuck-ups yesterday .

I have a switched mic connected to my feed, if people are too loud I will ask everyone to turn down a little. I think every jam should have someone with a mic to help coordinate.

Dude, that was a f'n master class of perfection and it all started with your mastery of the click. Seriously man, I had no idea Jammr could be this good!

captaincancel

Thanks dude, that was a lot of fun! Appreciate the encouragement, I don't want to be overbearing so it's great when other's are willing to work towards a goal.

Thanks for the post and discussion, eb_liveDrums!

Playing together online user jammr is a little different for all musicians, but it's even more different for drummers!

The challenging part has been mentioned: the drummer hears other people's mistakes and this can throw them because you cannot correct them in real-time. When we play together in real life we can adjust to each other very quickly. In jammr you cannot adjust instantly because you're hearing what others played last time around the chord progression, and they hear what you played last time. So drummers sometimes need to grit their teeth and play to a click while everyone else is slightly off - that's how they can get everyone back onto the beat.

Some percussionists make it easier by adding a drum track for reference. For example, just hihats played by a machine so that they will always stay on beat. This helps both the drummer and the other musicians stay in time.

I have thought it may help to add a MIDI message to jammr that triggers a “mute all” function. That way a drummer who realizes people are getting out of time can hit a footswitch and quickly mute everyone. They play only to the metronome click for an interval or two, and when then unmute everyone again the others should be getting back on beat.

stefanha
So drummers sometimes need to grit their teeth and play to a click while everyone else is slightly off - that's how they can get everyone back onto the beat.

Hahah welcome to my life. In the studio I'm always on a click, and a lot of the time when I play live as well. If there are backing tracks or you're playing in a session, your job is to keep the train running and get everyone back on track if they slip.

Some percussionists make it easier by adding a drum track for reference. For example, just hihats played by a machine so that they will always stay on beat. This helps both the drummer and the other musicians stay in time.I have thought it may help to add a MIDI message to jammr that triggers a “mute all” function. That way a drummer who realizes people are getting out of time can hit a footswitch and quickly mute everyone. They play only to the metronome click for an interval or two, and when then unmute everyone again the others should be getting back on beat.

I think this would be less useful than you think. Fix the MIDI clock out and it will be much easier to add some rhythmic backing tracks, hell I will fire up my modular synth and we will burn this whole place down.

eb_liveDrums

Yes. a reliable MIDI beat clock output is mission critical in my opinion. Not just for EDM kids, but we could all run our own click tracks giving us full control over it, and we could mute the room’s click from the audio stream.

For example, my Yamaha DTX kit has a groove analyzer that shows me visually how early/late I am, not to mention a lot of click mixing options, etc.

Two-way clock would be cool too: as room admin, i would like to set the BPM from my master clock (Squarp Pyramid).

I would be fine with slaving my clock to jammr, I’m willing to bet that syncing jammr to an external clock would be much more difficult to code.

eb_liveDrums
I would be fine with slaving my clock to jammr, I’m willing to bet that syncing jammr to an external clock would be much more difficult to code.

Hi.
I was under the impression that the midi option was there for this reason in « preferences » .
Anyways, My experience was slightly different, as I have found that jammr is quite in sync with my rhythm boxes, even with this option unchecked. Maybe I wasn’t too demanding, I don’t know..

I made another diagram that might help people “visualise” what I think is happening during a Jammr jam. Or any NINJAM based jam for that matter.

Does this programming make it impossible to play a song without patterned chord changes over Jammr? If a vocalist were singing such alongside a guitarist then it seems to me that the guitarist would hear the lyrics sung at the wrong time.