Welcome to Sound Ideas....a space for sharing musical resources, advice and chat about music, practice, guitar teaching, gear and gigs.
Apps For Practice
In the past several months there has been an explosion in the amount of music apps available for tablets, smartphones and computers. Some are a mere novelty designed for fun and games others provide a very flexible and powerful tools that can really improve practice for musicians.
One such app is Session Band.
Session band is an award winning app for iPad, IPhone and iPod touch, which provides pro quality backing tracks in a variety of different styles, as well as letting you edit and create your own in minutes.....
I have found this app to be a great practice tool. A great complement to both rhythm and improvastion study aswell as helping to develop stylistic understanding.
There are several different editions available which focus on particular styles such as Jazz, Rock, Country, Blues, EDM (electronic dance music) and Acoustic guitar. Some versions such as the Jazz has 3 volumes, meaning that you won't have a problem with new material to keep you inspired. Regardless of the stylistic focus, each version operates the same with a very simple interface which is easy to use.
The app gives you lots of different style inspired jams which are well organised by decades & feel that can be loaded up and edited instantly if desired. The editing is very expansive: chord pitches and types can be selected, length of chords, Drum fills can be chosen etc.. all very easy to do.
All theses same features can be used to create your own backing tracks from scratch also. For example... if there is a solo section during a song you need to rehearse for an upcoming gig, program in the chords and type of groove and away you go...
For me the real 1st class feature of this app is the mixer.
Mixer view in Jazz edition.
Each instrument each track can be muted/solo so you can listen in on exactly what is being played on the example part (All of which are played by some of the very best 1st call session players around: Ralph Salmins, Adam Goldsmith, Geoff Gascoyne etc!)
But create your own custom mix. For instance if you are a bass player, just mute out the bass and you have a huge selection of practice tracks with top class musicians accompanying you, great stuff!
Summary
Pro's
- Powerful and flexible
- Easy to use
- Great sounds and authentic jams from 1st call session players.
- Mixer which enables custom mixes of instruments depending on your needs.
- Copyright Free.
Con's
- Currently only available on Apple products.
- Pricey by most app standards at £2.49 - £5.99 for each version (but worth it!)