Most important when mixing is your ears, though sometimes a spectrum analyzer can be to some help when trying to separate instruments.  Not only is JAMin a great mastering tool but it’s also good for analysing the frequencies of your tracks.

With Ardour the fastest way of getting it to work is by connecting it to the master bus.

Connect ardour master/outs to jamin In_L/R.

Connect jamin out_L/R to system playback_1/2.

Disconnect ardour master/outs from system playback_1/2 to avoid duplicate output of the sound.

Once connected you can solo one or more tracks to see how they blend.

Often randomize and humanize functions are used to create a more living drum beat. But if you already know a song or guitar riff with a nice groove. Lets rip it and apply to the drums!

Lets start with this guitar riff.

Rhythm Ferret in Ardour (open by selecting the region -> Window -> Rhythm Ferret) let you detect the hit-points.

Adjust the sensitivity and threshold in order to get enough hit-points.

When you hit apply the region will be sliced into smaller regions that will be used for snapping the drum samples to.

First copy the regions into two new tracks (that will be your kick and snare tracks), than mute those regions.

Now pick your one-hit drum samples and start placing them on top of the muted regions.

Make sure the grid is set to region bounds in order for the samples to correctly snap to the hit-points.

Now lets have a listen to it all together.

Notice: If you would like to add hi-hat and percussion to the drum beat in the same way, you should increase the sensitivity when detecting hit-points. The down side is that more hit-points also leaves you with more choices that might cause problems finding the right ones.

Swinger is a Python coded remix tool that make use of the Echo Nest Remix API (Internet Synthesizer). It makes music swing (or un-swing) by generating time stretch and shrink. Have a listen to this sample.

Original song (mp3)

Swingered song (mp3)

Here you find Linux source/installation and  more tracks of well known artists that further demonstrates the tool.  Johan Ronström touches upon a political view of it.