Genius Jamtracks
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Music | $9.99 | Antonis Tsikandilakis | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
Genius Jamtracks contains exercises built on common chord progressions varying from 4bars to longer forms as well as songs from the traditional and modern Jazz repertoire categorised by song form.
Download tracks for free directly to your device for offline use!
App features:
- View chord charts and the selected polyrhythms map (for all instruments and sections of the song) at the same time
- Transpose any track to any key
- Instrument transposition for wind instruments
- Adjust the tempo to fit your practice needs
- Mix to your liking or mute any of the instruments
- Add as many choruses as you want to the song and treat each one individually
- Treat each section of the song separately: e.g., if the song form is AABA you can choose different events for each of the 4 sections
- Edit each instrument in a section by clicking on it. For instance, you can have the bass play quarter note triplets while the drums play in double time and the piano 4 over 3
- Randomise your selections either for one section or the whole arrangement and work on your interaction skills
- Save as many versions of the tracks as you want to your library for easy access
- Share your saved tracks as well as tips to help others with their practice on the Genius Jamtracks forums
- Download tracks from the forums and get great tips to help you up your polyrhythmic game
- Follow through the changes in polyrhythms using the map showing under the chord chart
- Turn the metronome on/off, from the quick access button, when in need of a checkpoint
Polyrhythms, long part of the jazz vocabulary, were consolidated and brought to a whole new level in the early 60s by the masters of that era and are a core element of contemporary jazz improvisation and composition. Genius Jamtracks offers an easy way to get you from basic 4bar chord progressions to the most advanced of Jazz songs.
Familiarise yourself with the polyrhythm you wish to practise by setting the drums, bass and piano up to play the same rhythmic sequence. Assign each of the three to different rhythmic patterns varying from 3 over 4, 2 over 3, 4 over 3 etc. for a more adventurous session over each section of a song.
- Expand your polyrhythmic jazz vocabulary
- Improve your time feel
- Build up your confidence in polyrhythms and master using them over chord progressions
- Feel free to take risks and learn to keep the form while doing it
- Improve your interaction skills and make your drummer happy by learning to speak his language
- Expand your melodic and rhythmic ideas and experiment using them in different context
- Solo over the changes or work on your comping while the rhythmic landscape changes following the song form
- Use polyrhythms like the great Jazz improvisers for a mind-blowing solo build up
Download and enjoy!
Reviews
No sound
RythymP82
I was excited about this app because I was really looking forward to improving my chops with jazz soloing. However, not even 24 hours after I purchased it, the sound completely stopped working. I tried to contact the app developers but there is no website or contact info. I'd suggest you not waste your time or money.
Good app looking forward to update
Yakuzijahkuzzi
This app is good. I wish there were more songs availible as well the ability to create/edit tunes, looking forward to the updates.
Interesting and useful app
Windflyer3
It has a great selection of real book songs built in, and a bunch of practice sequences. It would be nice if the changes were editable and an option was provided to save song settings when going to another song. The main strength of this app is power practice on a single song, especially with polyrhythms. iReal is better for jamming when a drum and bass are lacking, or for solo combo practice.
Excellent.
brunopelbac
Fantastic app! Genius JT is a great tool that will definitely help you with your time. A practical solution to practice and master "metric modulations". Highly recommended!
No updates
Bandbox
To be fair the tunes are great sounding, however they have been promising updates for quite sometime. I’ve asked about the updates and their response has been that they would be released in the fall. For a year they have been saying that. So hold on to your $$$.
Good idea, needs more execution
Bauerhouse
This is basically abandonware. Big ideas, but they lack execution. I wish we could: Create loop points within changes Create our own changes Have prefab polyrhythms that flow together well, because most don’t flow well and it’s not that useable this way Tempo slider - going from 100 to 300 is a chore. Incremental tempos that increase or slow down by intervals automatically within a loop point to practice changes Hopefully someone will pick up the torch and make this app for real
Not worth the purchase
New runner here
I real pro does 90% for free. If you are really serious about Jazz. Like really serious - sure this will take ya there but as a play along track - this is REDUNDANT!
High Potential, but Lacking
Jdave99
Using this app is quite fun when things are working; when you find a balance of rhythmic and harmonic complexity for the accompaniment of the song you’re playing, it can be pretty electric. It’s fun, too, to crank them both up to 5 and hear how nonsensical a song can sound. It has definitely tangibly improved a few of my practice sessions now. However, there’s still a few glaring omissions that get in the way of letting me use this app primarily. 1) you can’t create new songs yourself, or at least, it’s hidden somewhere that’s unintuitive. There’s certain songs that I want to play on this app that aren’t present, and while that’s of course reasonable, it completely unreasonable that I can’t add them myself. If the process is too complex to let users do so, then that process needs to be simplified to where it can be done. iReal Pro does this really well, and even lets you download songs from others. 2) you can’t edit the chord changes for songs and exercises. This one is even worse than the last one; when you go to the edit menu, the only options you have are the time signature and the style (with accents as an option for some songs). Sometimes the chord changes for a song are different than what I’ve learnt or what I want to play; I should be able to change the chords to whatever I want. 3) you can’t set the app to transpose on repeats. If I want to practice a blues but set it so every repeat it goes up or down a certain number of steps every time the form starts over, I can’t do that. It’s a *lot* more of a headache to have to manually adjust the transposition every time, and honestly takes me out of the practice session. 4) you can’t search songs by composer. If you want to filter the “songs” page for all the compositions by, for instance, Miles Davis, you can’t do that. This shouldn’t be the case. There isn’t even composer info in the songs either, which is probably why this is the case, but honestly that’s even worse. 5) there’s only *one* option for backing instruments. This one is more of a nitpick than the others, but it’s kinda annoying that there’s only one option. At the very least I’d like to have a Rhodes, guitar, and electric bass as alternative backing instruments, but I can only have acoustic piano and bass. This one is somewhat understandable, but I do think the app is lesser for the lack of even one or two other options. All of the above options are things that iReal Pro can handle, yet this app lacks. I do get that this more than likely has a smaller team than the iReal developers, but as long as these factors remain absent (at the very least, the first 3 for sure), this app cannot replace iReal Pro for me. I really do hope that they are added, because this app is quite impressive at what limited things it can do already. It really does have a somewhat “live band” feel as it advertises, and is great when I can use it appropriately.
Much better sounding than iRealPro
DKfromHouston
To me, the sounds here are much much better than iReal, in both sound quality and feel. Would like to be able to add tunes, but otherwise is working great for me.
