Dream Theater in Jammit (also, possibly another song in Rock Band?)

[Shadow2222]

John Petrucci tweeted last night about a new music application for the iOS platform (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch), as well as Mac. It is tentatively coming to Windows as a beta on May 25. You can visit the website here - https://www.jammit.com/

Essentially, it allows you to buy individual stems of a song and "mix" the volume levels during play (such as turn up or down individually the Guitar 1, Guitar 2, Band, Click, etc. if you buy the "Guitar" track). You can also view the sheet music for that track.

The only bad thing is the price. Most "tracks" (note: you have to buy the stems individually, so just guitar, bass, vocals, drums, or keys) cost between $3.99 and $5.99, and while you still get the song to listen to as the "Band" stem, I think it would make sense if you got every stem for that price.

About 90% of the songs currently in the store for Jammit are also in Guitar Hero or Rock Band (which makes sense, considering that the stems have already been procured for the games and are easily accessible).

Of course, two of Dream Theater's songs currently on the store are Pull Me Under (from Guitar Hero: World Tour) and Panic Attack (from Rock Band 2). However, there is a third one out of nowhere: These Walls. That has never been in a music game before.

I understand I could be reading into this too much, but DT tends to only make stems available for music games. Remember how we could download the OTBOA stems just a few weeks before it came to Rock Band?

I know most of you don't care about Rock Band anymore, but I just thought it was worth posting. The Jammit thing is pretty cool, but I can't see myself devoting much time to it with the amount of money it costs.

[robwebster]

Love the stems, hate the price.

Heck, I'd still be iffy if it were 3.99 for all five stems. Each? Not even slightly tempted. Priced themselves right out of my range. Right out of the market, with any luck. Borderline offensive - that's more costly than an album. Those prices need to go down or out.

Not Dream Theater's fault, though. Jammit's, I figure. Very cool thing for DT to do - would love to hear the These Walls stems, play about with them. Ohhh, the remixes. The transcriptions! Would be ace.

My guess is TW is a Jammit exclusive - they're trialling it, and the company would probably want to sell some content that nobody can get anywhere else.

[Shadow2222]

^ Completely agree. Not to mention the fact that certain songs are "premium" songs (perhaps if they are over a certain length), as Panic Attack's stems are $5.99 each 

Just ridiculous. Could be an amazing service, but not at the current prices.

[robwebster]

Yep! Pretty much. Although, on closer inspection, it is doing something slightly more sophisticated than I first thought.

As far as I can tell, you open the file in your Jammit software, and it's got the entire song. What you're paying for, essentially, is the ability to control a certain set of sliders. So you buy These Walls for keyboard, and you can isolate the keys, or mute the keys, or just isolate left hand keys, or fade the keys in and out. It also comes with full notation and tablature for your chosen instrument

Which is a little more bang for your buck. There's a unique niche, there, and I guess some of the mark-up is to pay for software development. But when it comes to it, it's a less practical, more expensive alternative to stems, which only works in the vehicle they've made. And if you're a multi-instrumentalist, you're paying about the price of an album to control the volume of all the tracks in one song.

I'm softer on the price now, though. The tabs and extra control help. $1.99 and we might have had a deal. But it's still basically a karaoke track for the price of a fair few songs.

[Shadow2222]

I did cave and buy These Walls (just the guitar track). I probably should have gotten the keyboard track, but I really like the guitar in it.

[jcmistat]

Its way to pricey and I'm not even a musician. It should be at the least for all 5 stems.

[robwebster]

I did cave and buy These Walls (just the guitar track). I probably should have gotten the keyboard track, but I really like the guitar in it.

How are the perks? Does the software work well, useful transcriptions?

[jonny108]

Bought the vocals for Pull Me Under and Panic Attack.  James' backing vocals on the Panic Attack chorus are great.  It's only an octave higher but amazing.

[54_diplomats]

I hope they add another song on Rock Band and if it's These Walls I'll be really satisfied. Way too little DT songs on Rock band and none of them from Images and Words or Awake

[SnakeEyes]

I don't agree at all....just the transcriptions alone are worth the price.  Do you people know how much work that is?

[theseoafs]

It's a lot of work, but $5.99 per download? That's ridiculous.

[RaiseTheKnife]

Price seems reasonable to me, but the lack of song choice is an issue.  Would buy Breaking All Illusions in a second. 

I have all the DT tab books (including the Japanese versions of WDADU and Live at Marquee), but this product would still be a helpful resource.

[SnakeEyes]

It's a lot of work, but $5.99 per download? That's ridiculous.

Yes, why not?  Think of how much a transcription book costs.  I believe the Images & Words book costs around 20-25 bucks..... there are eight songs on that album.  Does it measure out perfectly?  No, but you also didn't get audio tracks and software with the TAB book.  For any other band, I'd agree, but for DT, I think it's reasonable, just for how much work it takes to transcribe that music. 

[54_diplomats]

They've finished adding all of Images and Words and now it seems like they're adding Awake songs since Lies was just included. If I had the money I'd be all over this...

[seasonsinthesky]

Cyber Monday sale! just picked up all of "Metropolis pt. 1," "Learning to Live" and "Wait for Sleep" for $32. considering all of I&W and Awake are on it, idk why anyone wouldn't go for this

[black_biff_stadler]

I think the full album price per single track angle could be a hard pill to swallow for some.

[seasonsinthesky]

^ definitely.

i bought every track for "The Mirror" — interestingly, all the samples from the middle of the song are included on the backing vocal track. cool to hear the buried ones, finally.

[wasteland]

I think the full album price per single track angle could be a hard pill to swallow for some.

We are DT fans. Many of us have unlimited money when it comes to the band. 

[black_biff_stadler]

I agree. But I think "some" would probably be more accurate word than "many."

[jonnybaxy]

Yeah its handy because for my music A level i would like to do these walls on drums but you'd probably get penalised for having a drum track on, but a set back is that it would cost around £20 to play a song for an examiner....

[seasonsinthesky]

Yeah its handy because for my music A level i would like to do these walls on drums but you'd probably get penalised for having a drum track on, but a set back is that it would cost around £20 to play a song for an examiner....

sorry if i misunderstand, but: if you just want the Jammit drum track for "These Walls," all you need to spend is the $4.99 (or whatever) because it gives you a track of drums, a track of the rest of the band without the drums, a click track, and an audio input if you have mics set up or whatever. you don't need to buy all the rest of the tracks for the song.

[morkie]

Every Thursday they release tracks for DT. They said a while ago they would be doing Scenes From a Memory but so far last 4 or 5 weeks it's been Octavarium. Not complaining =)

Today they tweeted that todays track was delayed because of licensing issues, wonder what track it'll be and what that means.

Noticing that they have only Never Enough, Sacrificed Sons and Octavarium itself from that album left so one of those. The price often reflects the complexity of the piece or length of the track, with the most being 5.99 and 9.99(!) for some Yes tracks. I hope Octavarium isn't 9.99, eesh.

In other news jammit seem to rate the guitar track for Slayer's Raining Blood at the same difficulty as More Than A Feeling by Boston, heh.

Tempted also to get the Line6 device for iPhone and iPad but nowhere could I find if it'll work on the new iPhone5 connector/iPad4 lightning connector using the $30 adaptor Apple has.

[robwebster]

I imagine it's Never Enough, and they had to settle a new royalties agreement with Muse's management.

[Zook]

lawl

[morkie]

Jammit tweeted to me what you already know, expect a new track today or tomorrow.

Line6 tweeted to me the their device will work with an adaptor and an iPhone5/iPad4

[jonnybaxy]

Yeah its handy because for my music A level i would like to do these walls on drums but you'd probably get penalised for having a drum track on, but a set back is that it would cost around £20 to play a song for an examiner....

sorry if i misunderstand, but: if you just want the Jammit drum track for "These Walls," all you need to spend is the $4.99 (or whatever) because it gives you a track of drums, a track of the rest of the band without the drums, a click track, and an audio input if you have mics set up or whatever. you don't need to buy all the rest of the tracks for the song.

Nope you're bang on, I didn't know that though, thanks for the info, now i just need to.decide if i should do it...

[morkie]

So they seemed to have done all tracks from Octavarium except the title track which I figured was either because

1. It's too long and pushes the limits of what they can do
2. It'd be too expensive.

Although they have a $9.99 yes song that is over 18 minutes long so...

They now started with SFAM stuff, which is great! Although I tend to listen to the Live Scenes album way more than the studio album - it's still a welcome thing.

And they jacked up the prices too for DT stuff alone it appears. They tweeted a 'licensing issues' delay and then the prices went up. I can't help feeling someone somewhere got greedy (Record company!) and figured they could make more money from these. Looks like each track went up 1 or 2 bucks. Glad I got a bunch of them on Black Friday =)

Anyways, wonder what they'll release today. Hoping for Strange Deja Vu or Fatal Tragedy! Shocked no one is putting up the stems on youtube (illegally mind you).

[morkie]

I forgot about Never Enough

[soulburner]

The price is high, yes, but since it contains much more than just raw audio files, I can understand it's not cheap. I just wish non-musicians could get a cheaper edition

[Cedar redaC]

Looks like Octavarium is on Jammit

https://jammit.com/artist/dream-theater

[Shadow2222]

Looks like Octavarium is on Jammit

https://jammit.com/artist/dream-theater

Well, they have "Dream Theater Thursdays" now and add a new song every week (on Thursday, surprise!), so I figured it was just a matter of time. Ouch at the price though.

[El JoNNo]

Buy all for a total of $756.61! What a deal..

[Cedar redaC]

Buy all for a total of $756.61! What a deal..

Hey, if you bought all of the equipment, the keyboards, the guitars, bass, drums, and so on would probably run you so much that the other $756.61 wouldn't matter.

[El JoNNo]

Buy all for a total of $756.61! What a deal..

Hey, if you bought all of the equipment, the keyboards, the guitars, bass, drums, and so on would probably run you so much that the other $756.61 wouldn't matter.

Hey yeah! Don't forget lessons!

[Aythesryche]

Buy all for a total of $756.61! What a deal..

Seems fine to me.