Originally Posted By: JohnJohnJohn
David, do you also have EZ Drummer? I am quite impressed with EZ Keys but as I mentioned I am annoyed that buying the addons is an endless money sink and I am reluctant to add another addiction. But, although I liked the idea of the JamStix Everything Ultra Plus PAK, I was unimpressed by their website and you mentioned something about the drum sounds not being as good as others. So, after you mess around with it I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. The value. Quality of sounds. Ease of use. Etc. Thanks!!

Yes, I've got EZ Drummer 2, and a bunch of EZX. So I'm not lacking in drumkits.

I rather like EZ Drummer, and have built a number of songs starting with the drum tracks. I wish that they EZXs came with a lot more MIDI, but there's some inspiring stuff in there.

I also like the ability to modify MIDI within EZD by spinning knobs to increase/decrease the number of hits a piece of kit gets during a bar. That's a pretty intuitive process for me.

The big decision was whether it would made more sense to buy JamStix, or just get a bunch of MIDI files and stick with EXD. I went with JamStix mainly because I'd put it off for so long, and this year I could actually afford it.

But I'm not yet sure it's the right choice.

With EZD, I find I do the same sort of thing that I do in BiaB - I go searching through the various styles until I find something inspiring, and then refine that.

With JamStix, it feels like I'm trying to turn fairly vanilla patterns into something more interesting. And most of the patterns are - for me - much less interesting than the ones I find in EZD.

Keep in mind I'm working backwards - I'm looking for the drum to inspire musical ideas, not fit a drum track to a song. So it's probably a bad use case for JamStix.

JamStix also seems to be more focused on straight-up rock songs, which is also less what I'm looking for.

What finally convinced me to go with JaxStix was the Neo 60 drummer - it didn't have the same generic lock-step kick and snare sound.

As for the various JamStix drumkits, I'd say that they sound more "live" and much less processed than EZD kits. The quality is less disappointing than I initially thought, and I don't think I'd have any issues adding the drums to my tracks - especially after a bit of post-processing with Neutron or EZ Mix.

At this point, it's just too early for me to form a fair opinion about JamStix. I really need to use the software as it was intended before complaining too much. I'd like to figure out how to give it a more loose feel - it's much to mechanical - and a more relaxed style, as it tends to machine-gun through the tom fills.

Last edited by dcuny; 12/10/20 12:22 PM.
-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?