Jamhub video

Lyric writing machine!

Jamhub is definitely our new song writing tool! Besides the obvious of being able to jam with the band in my condo another bonus just popped up. We recorded every writing session straight to pro tools. I was having some difficulty writing lyrics for one of the songs we start recording Monday so I referred back to some of the recordings that we made while working the songs out. From there I was able to find a bunch of great lines I had improv’d during the jam and the flame was lit! Beats the hell out of the old pen and paper start and stop technique hahahaha

Dissecting the new tracks!

So over the last few months we have come up with tonnes of new song ideas, whole tunes, riffs, improv lyrics etc. Last night we sat down and began to wade through hours and hours of audio we recorded from the record out on the JamHub into my mbox2. The sound quality is great! Having the ability to just jam away and not have to stop to write down ideas has been awesome. We can just work on a vibe make up some lyrics as we go add parts and move on to the next jam. I was surprised at how many great ideas that were recorded we never would have even heard if we had been songwriting the old fashioned way! Some of the takes are actually good enough to be considered demo tracks to take into the studio with us. I am more and more impressed with this machine everytime we use it. It has quickly integrated itself into our band and is now just as important a tool to us as the rest of our gear. In a 2 and half month span we have come up with over 30 solid song ideas and with the help of the record out we easily narrowed that down to 15 songs that we cant wait to get into the studio with.

even my 19 month old Daughter is lovin' The Jamhub!!!

Killer Jam this week!

So the last few weeks we either havent been able to Jam, someone was missing or we just couldn’t find much inspiration (We hosted a big fundraising event March 6th which was eating up most of our time and brain space, the Fundraiser went off awesome, more on that in next post) Anyways this week we were writing songs while getting ready to write other songs! haahah music was just pouring out. One thing that I find really helps is that we have the Jamhub all dialed in and we are lucky enough to have the space and gear to leave everything set up 24-7. We just walk in sit down hit the power switch and we are live. Most musicains will find that when the monitor/headphone mixes are great its really easy to sing and be inspired by the great sound. I think we wrote five songs we are excited about in this 3 hour jam and we are really excited to get into the studio and get this album happening. One of the songs even has a line and mention inspired by the Jamhub hahah without even thinking about it, it has worked its way into our bands consciousness. We have gotten the hang of the record out channel on the unit as well which we had trouble the first two weeks getting a good mix. What we did is we took the headphone out on my Mbox2 and fed it back into the jamhub rear input so we can have a quick listen of the record levels in each payers headphone before we start. I am really suprised to II like to drive around and listen to all the rough ideas of songs and the sound quality is dynamite! Ill have a friend in the van and they will turn to me and ask who we are listenin to as they are groovin out in their seat.

Babysitter cancelled!!

So the babysitter has cancelled this week so I am gonna try something out. My daughter usually sleeps through the night but being seperated by two floors and wearing headphones I want to be sure I can hear her if she wakes up. I am going to attempt to patch the baby monitor into the jamhub as well hahahah. I’ll letcha know how it goes!!

Practice #1 setting up the Jamhub

So we pull the Jam hub Bedroom out of the box set up the electronic drum kit, get everything plugged in and start messing around. The first issue we ran into which we could have solved by reading the instructions properly is that regular guitar cables don’t work! All of our instruments are only on one side of the headphone mix, the machine comes with one stereo jack adapter so we get one guitar in stereo. Know we know for our next jam to bring the proper cables. After a few minutes of tweaking and setting up our mixes we start to get things sounding good, and run an output from the hub to my Mbox2 so we can record our jams and not have to stop and write down our ideas. We have a few problems getting the right amount of level to pro tools but again with a little work we managed to get everything dialed in. All in all with a little more preparation and reading on our part the set up would have been much smoother. All that is left to do now is start Jamming! Thats the easy part.. Everything sounds great in our headphones and each musician is able to set their own mix! Within a few minutes we are ripping out a new song and it really doesnt feel uncomfortable at all being plugged into headphones instead of being live. Its nice to be able to sit down in a close circle and work things out while hearing your instruments just as you want in your headphones. We have also found that using electronic drums for the first time has inspired some different style music due to the ability to have hundreds of different sounding kits and sound effects. All in all our first experience in with the Jamhub was a great success we wrote 2 new songs and worked out our set up in a few hours, all the while my 18month old baby was sound asleep upstairs and I never hear a worked from the neighbours! Can’t wait for next week now that everything is set up we can get right to work as soon as the band shows up!

Who we are and why the Jam Hub

So heres the scoop! We are the Killin’ Time Band, four guys from Canada who are lucky enough to do what we love for a living with a little help from a day job hahah. We average over 250 shows a year while working jobs, running business’s and raising families! Besides the band I run my own web & graphic design company, Koop is a sound tech & he runs the PA dept at a large Music retailer (where I work part time as well), Johnny is a successful photographer and Pauly builds and owns UDRUM custom drums. Since our last original release we have done over 700 shows killed a few drummers, some of us got married, had kids, bought houses all that creepy grown up stuff. So we are really excited to get to work on our next CD but I dont live in the dirty old party house with the allnight jam space in the basement anymore. Now I live in a two bedroom condo with my wife and my 18 month old daughter. So one day Koop and I are at work and this new Jam Hub product comes in and it seemed our solution was here, we rented an electronic drum kit and the next week we had my basement all set up to see if we can write an album Jamming with headphones on in silence instead of the way we have always done it with screaming amps and pounding drums. Stay Tuned cause we will be updating this page as often as we can with our experiences, opinions, and pro’s and cons about writing in silence with the Jam Hub.