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Lessons learned from a year and a half of recording and attempting to record with JK - TWDay72 - 06-14-2021
At least in our group, we’ve used a rhythm track either created by or recorded by one of the group members to sync the group and create song cues. The JK metronome is pretty much a train wreck: 1: because its timing is different for each member (listen to the “Play cluster test” metronome option to see how bad it really is, mostly due to individual latencies) and 2: because the JK metronome can’t deal with time signatures, so there is no “1” emphasized in the metronome, which makes it pretty worthless with the usual JK connection glitches. JK can play a pre-recorded rhythm track, either recorded as a WAV file (preferably 48k/24bit) or an OGG file. BIG WARNING: Once you start to play a rhythm track during a recording, you can not stop and restart the track without terminating the recording. JK will not warn you of this or even stop the recording timer, but trust me here the recording ended when you stopped the rhythm track. This has been true for as long as I’ve used JK (since February 2020). If JK blows up on someone in the session, most likely the recording will terminate when they fell out of the session. But not always.
Your recordings are all stored in a folder and they will take up a lot of drive space over time. On a Windows machine, they are stored under Music/Jamkazam/Recordings and the recording folder names are cryptic, no matter what name you give the recording; “b7edbf3a-a7c6-43f1-85cb-d996e6b6bbb8” for example. JK does a terrible job of “managing” old recording files and if you screw up this procedure you’re stuck with the old non-existent recording data in JK’s File Manager indefinitely. Delete all recordings in JK’s File Manager first. If you use your OS’s file manager to delete those old folders, you’re stuck with ‘em. As best those session recording naming requirements are a waste of time, unless you “Export” the recording. I just create a shortcut to JK’s storage location on my Desktop, to simplify finding recordings and messing with the files.
Levels are a sketching thing in JK, at least recording-wise. Generally, you can assume if your signal is clipping at the “audio inputs” it will likely be distorted during the recording. However, even if you are not clipping the “audio inputs” the recording will sometimes still be distorted (clipped).
Likewise, the “personal mix” levels are often weird. For example, the person who loads up a rhythm track will control the volume for everyone and sometime last year JK decided that the volume control on the audio track will be practically untouchable in its sensitivity. If someone other than the person who loaded the track messes with that volume, it will likely deafen everyone else (except the person who loaded the track). You can, sometimes, individually control your “personal mix” volume of the rhythm track with the volume control of the person who loaded the track. And, sometimes, that will screw up everyone else’s mix, too.
The recorded audio isn’t great, but it is usable. It is stored as a compressed OGG file and you’ll need an editor to convert that to a WAV/AIFF file for most DAWs.
RE: Lessons learned from a year and a half of recording and attempting to record with JK - TWDay72 - 06-16-2021
Like I mentioned in the initial post, you don’t get to do restarted takes with a rhythm track. Maybe if you just restarted by moving the time slider back, but if you stop the rhythm track for any reason, JK ends the recording then. Also, when JK has let us do multiple takes (by playing through the rhythm track and starting it again after some discussion), the person who either loaded or started the track (I’m not sure which) only gets recorded once even if everyone else gets several takes on that recording.