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Old 07-30-2007, 12:41 PM   #1
stringyd
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Default Mods for NINJAM

Has anybody developed any good NINJAM mods. If so, do you know where to get a hold of them. Also, does anybody know if any official NINJAM updates are around the corner?
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Old 07-31-2007, 12:08 PM   #2
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What kind of Mods would you like to see?

the new ReaNinjam plugin does pretty much everything I need it to do inside of REAPER. Altough being able to record multiouts to your local mix for session mode would be awesome!
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Old 07-31-2007, 04:56 PM   #3
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My brother and I and a friend on electronic drums have been using Ninjam to work out material since the drummer lives out of town. We bounce scratch tracks to each other using an ftp server so that we can practice the songs in our own time and to get an overall feel of the song. We use Ninjam to work out specific parts such as a verse or a chorus or a change or something. Sometimes we will set the bpi (e.g. 120 bpi) so that it is a long as the part we are playing, such as the whole chorus. In essence we are looping the entire chorus. This requires the leader to play the entire chorus. The next time around everyone else joins in playing the entire chorus. You eventually get to the point that it feels like the band is playing the entire chorus live. This naturally takes patience and practice. We do get it working on occasion. But if somebody messes up you have to wait for the entire interval to start over. That means 120 beats. That is a lot of waiting around. This leads to desire no.1 I wish there was a global reset for the bpi/metronome clock. E.g. let's say the counter/metronome is at beat 10. Instead of having to wait to beat 120 for it to reset or start over, it would be nice just to press a button and have it start over immediately. We also noticed the same problem when switching to chat mode. You have to wait for the entire interval to complete itself before chat mode would work. Speaking of chat mode. It's a bummer that the message pops up every time warning you that you are about to enter chat mode (Voice Chat Mode Confirmation.) Tweak no. 2 would be the ability to switch that message off, we know that chat mode disables normal Ninjam and don't have to be told every single time. It would also be cool if the metronome would automatically shut off when you go into chat mode too. Tweak no. 3 would be the ability to save your mixer settings so you don't have to reset vol/pan for everybody every time you log in. I think it would also be cool to have a mic set up in chat mode while simultaneously jamming in normal mode with your instrument on another channel. Every time I try that I run into problems and it does not work. It would really be cool to talk to each other live while jamming normally. For example, if we have a long bpi set up to repeat an entire verse, it would be cool to be able to talk to each other immediately, while we are jamming, just in case we screw up or if we wanted to move to a change or a different part of the song in the next interval.

As I get more suggestions, I'll let you know. We've pushed the boundaries of Ninjam and therefore have stumbled upon things we wish were upgraded. In the meantime, Ninjam still kicks ass, these are just personal knit picks. I think these types of suggestions are what in the long run makes a cool program such as Ninjam even better.

If people have successfully dealt with these issues, let me know.
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Old 08-01-2007, 08:57 AM   #4
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Well, the simple solution would be to record it in Audacity with a click track or something of the like, clean it up (ie Trim it to fit the click track) then use the WAV looper effect in jesusonic on the windows version of Ninjam..... Or, you could use any number of looping tricks with Reaper, reaninjam, and ReaRoute. This way, one person's part is set in stone (drums perhaps) while everyone else can change the rest.

Of course if you are on Linux, use the JACK version of ninjam. Macs can use the AU ninjam plugin to send the loops over.
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Old 08-01-2007, 04:04 PM   #5
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We're not trying to use pre-recorded loops in Ninjam. We play live in Ninjam but with long intervals. Our issues lie with usability when performing in Ninjam with very long interval lengths. I think what you are suggesting involves using pre-recorded loops.
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Old 08-02-2007, 08:02 AM   #6
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i hate to push the competitors
i dont us em personally anymore but ejamming .com had evolved and you can jam in real time
i dont use it due to muiscian attitudes and lack of jammers that play what i play
and at the moment its free
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Old 08-02-2007, 08:26 AM   #7
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yes, but only one
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Old 08-02-2007, 05:11 PM   #8
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Even using one pre-recorded loop defeats the purpose.

And by the way, I've tried eJamming and found that the sound quality was bad and would get static and noise artifacts. It killed the idea for me very quick. I think the solution until a higher bandwidth Internet comes out is Ninjam, which again I thank the developer for dreaming up the concept and making it happen. But more functionality would be appreciated. The biggest one would be the ability to start and stop the metronome clock, and I don't mean merely muting the metronome. If you set bpi to something long, like 200 bpi, then it would be nice to be able to stop the clock, in case you screw up, and start over immediately, rather than wait until beat 200 for it to start over. For most Ninjam users, this is not a problem because you are using short interval lengths.
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Old 08-16-2007, 09:08 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NIGHTCHILD View Post
i hate to push the competitors
i dont us em personally anymore but ejamming .com had evolved and you can jam in real time
i dont use it due to muiscian attitudes and lack of jammers that play what i play
and at the moment its free
Funny but everytime I look in here I seem to see a new post where you are pushing a Ninjam competitor and from what I have seen they all come up woefully lacking. Ninjam is close to allowing musicians to actually see this dream realized and its open source! If we spent as much time giving the developers ideas on what we need and how it could be accomplished as we do trying to find another way, maybe they can get passed the current limitations and get us what we desire here. I feel strongly that with some work on the server to recombine files transmitted back to the server from the artists in session mode and then transmit from the server to the listeners (not artists) although the lag would still exists for all involved it wouldnt be perceptible to anyone from there point of reference and could be called live. This would also free us from the looping problems and allow for time, key, chord change, and other limitations currently a part of Ninjam. This is something that could possibly be done in future versions of Ninjam and might already be there if we were showing them more support. Look how quickly Reaper has progressed in the past year! Beleve me I am not knocking your contributions here and have tried every suggestion in these threads but after having done so I feel we should try to put more effort into the Ninjam approach and realize that it can be more than what it currently is.
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Old 08-16-2007, 01:14 PM   #10
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I agree with you Edman.

I tell everyone I know of ninjam, write about it on forums for musicians and generally spend a lot of time with it.

I think that the first step to support ninjam is to letting the world know it exist. I hope some bigger software company won't steal the concept before it's too late.

My father use HD-recorders. He knows little about computers, and ASIO could be a city in Neverland to him. He concetrates on where to plug in the mic'ed up guitar-amp, and not on how to make the software work. As for new features, I wish setting up music software/hardware could be done easier, but I guess it's not a realistic feature-request in ninjam :-)
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Old 08-16-2007, 01:56 PM   #11
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at some point bandwidth will improve and everyone will talk about the good old days when we used latency as an improvisational tool.

with NINJAM incorporating latency into the process produces interesting *collaborations*.

it is also an opportunity to exercise cooperative listening and that's got to be good for improving communication skills.
(don't tell anyone about that though).

synth

Last edited by synthany; 08-16-2007 at 02:02 PM.
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Old 08-16-2007, 11:52 PM   #12
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at some point bandwidth will improve and everyone will talk about the good old days when we used latency as an improvisational tool.

synth
Love it! Yea I have watched starttrek too and I know we will be regarded as the pre-warp civilization at some point in the future but until we are bending spacetime as we pass our binary signals thru the quantum ether instantly wouldn't it be nice to actually record and Jam online in time? It may be a while before we can warp these signals thru space-time and then there is that whole Klingon mess to deal with LOL. Not that I am not convinced Justin can't and wont handle it all eventually but 'Till then lets give reaper some LOVE!!!!

Last edited by Guitar Edman; 08-17-2007 at 12:07 AM.
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Old 08-17-2007, 07:19 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by Guitar Edman View Post
If we spent as much time giving the developers ideas on what we need and how it could be accomplished as we do trying to find another way, maybe they can get passed the current limitations and get us what we desire here.
This hits the nail on the head.

Reaper is currently my favorite multi-track software. I use Adobe Audition as an external editor. It's awesome that you can get such a multi-featured piece of software for so cheap.

Ninjam is currently my online jamming software of choice when used with Reaper. The real time synced aspect totally works and the sound quality is totally there and I like the fact you use your own server so it can be private if you want. And it's free. And I've successfully worked out parts of songs with it with my distant band mates. In this sense I have been using Ninjam as a rehearsal tool for songs rather than simply to improvise. In the process of using it successfully and contently as a rehearsal tool, we experience things that slow us down when we are connected. These "things" are simply "knit picks" and do not take away from the fact that I think Ninjam is a very cool program. These items I hope become future upgrades to Ninjam, which I know will happen one day because I can see that the Administrators completely know what they are doing. Among these items would be:

1: The ability to restart the Interval in the case
the band is using Long Intervals to rehearse entire
complex verses and choruses. This would save
time so that in case you screw up, you don't have
to wait for the entire interval to come back around.

2: When one member switches to voice chat mode, it
automatically switches the entire band to chat mode
and automatically shuts off or mutes the metronome.
(And get rid of the warning message that states you
are about to enter chat mode. This message gets
annoying after awhile.)

3: The ability to save mixer settings. I know DarkG3m
developed a mod for this but it would be cool to see it
in the Reaper version of Ninjam.

PS I hate repeating myself, but some things are worth repeating.
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Old 08-17-2007, 04:39 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stringyd View Post
This hits the nail on the head.

Reaper is currently my favorite multi-track software. I use Adobe Audition as an external editor. It's awesome that you can get such a multi-featured piece of software for so cheap.

Ninjam is currently my online jamming software of choice when used with Reaper. The real time synced aspect totally works and the sound quality is totally there and I like the fact you use your own server so it can be private if you want. And it's free. And I've successfully worked out parts of songs with it with my distant band mates. In this sense I have been using Ninjam as a rehearsal tool for songs rather than simply to improvise. In the process of using it successfully and contently as a rehearsal tool, we experience things that slow us down when we are connected. These "things" are simply "knit picks" and do not take away from the fact that I think Ninjam is a very cool program. These items I hope become future upgrades to Ninjam, which I know will happen one day because I can see that the Administrators completely know what they are doing. Among these items would be:

1: The ability to restart the Interval in the case
the band is using Long Intervals to rehearse entire
complex verses and choruses. This would save
time so that in case you screw up, you don't have
to wait for the entire interval to come back around.

2: When one member switches to voice chat mode, it
automatically switches the entire band to chat mode
and automatically shuts off or mutes the metronome.
(And get rid of the warning message that states you
are about to enter chat mode. This message gets
annoying after awhile.)

3: The ability to save mixer settings. I know DarkG3m
developed a mod for this but it would be cool to see it
in the Reaper version of Ninjam.

PS I hate repeating myself, but some things are worth repeating.
All of the above DEFINTLY!!!! And I can tell you have had some sucess with long intervals can you post what and how you have been doing that and why they work better for you?
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Old 08-20-2007, 01:20 PM   #15
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Wood block tick instead of an annoying metronome squeak + ability to click the server link directly from ninjam farm or that other famous server list and have the application take you there, say no to copy pasting. No! I am SSS, btw.
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Old 08-20-2007, 03:59 PM   #16
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Warply guy!
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Old 10-04-2007, 02:19 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stringyd View Post
1: The ability to restart the Interval in the case the band is using Long Intervals to rehearse entire complex verses and choruses.
It's taken me a while to understand why you'd do this but I think I get it now... Anyway, would you want a "count in" on the reset? (When I'm playing with a BPI of 16, I sometimes wish I could have a count in... Maybe not an issue if you're working with huge values.)

Anyway, I guess a custom server command, "!vote restart [[-]nn]" could be added, with an optional count in ("-") or skip of "nn" beats.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stringyd View Post
2: When one member switches to voice chat mode, it automatically switches the entire band to chat mode and automatically shuts off or mutes the metronome.
I've not used chat mode, so I can't imagine what would be required... It could just be a server thing, I guess...

Quote:
Originally Posted by stringyd View Post
3: The ability to save mixer settings.
Yep, client-side issue.

I'm responding as I was thinking about trying to run a server on my linux box to toy around with... An excuse to hack the source gives me even more incentive
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Old 10-05-2007, 05:54 PM   #18
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Yeah I would love to see an option to change met sound. It really can hurt my head sometimes, a softer wood block would be nice or adjustable pitch on current metronome.

I don't know the name of it or even sure if its up there yet but they are putting up a satellite that connects other satellites up but connects them in space. So the hops to earth are eradicated meaning much much lower pings over the seas. But even with some of these methods they still don't manage under 20ms.
To play proper with no artificial play to compensate latency its still not proper jamming as if sat in a room together.
But with NINJAM you are able to play direct on the beat with others.

I see people say that it sucks because its too repetitive so I will put the bpi up to 64 which is more than enough for most music, then people complain the bpi is too long.

Listen to most songs and u will normally here a main, chorus and a bridge but a lot of songs now only have a main and chorus and sometimes the chorus is same keys or harmony of them keys, so that all fits in a 16 to 32 bpi.

I find with some music its pre learned, so people are playing a script and find it hard to deviate from that script.
When I play in a server and get something going I keep it simple then I will extend that just a little every time, then I will try harmonizing and so on. Others do too but some hear the music sounding fast and think it means play something 5000 notes per minute when it only needs a funky 1/8 strum.

Thats my opinion on it and thats why I think NINJAM still rocks.

Tbh some of the best jams I been in people will come in and just tap a rhythm on there pickups or mic until they feel it and that can sound great in itself.

Anyway I'm gonna shut up now :P
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Old 10-11-2007, 04:45 PM   #19
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Quote:
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Tbh some of the best jams I been in people will come in and just tap a rhythm on there pickups or mic until they feel it and that can sound great in itself.
Rhythm is always a good start!
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