SmartMusic

[StuartV]

I searched and didn't see any good solid info on this, so here's my report.

I subscribed to SmartMusic.com yesterday. It's $36 per YEAR.

Once subscribed, I downloaded the SmartMusic program, ran the install, logged in, and got to work.

What does SmartMusic do? Well, let me describe what I did with it last night.

I searched their library (they claim to have over 30,000 titles) for "Aebersold". They have bunches. I picked Vol 2: Nothing But Blues and opened it.

The program showed me all the tracks from that volume. I picked Slow Blues in F and opened it.

It opened up with a small tool bar and a lead sheet just showing regular jazz chord notation. I selected on the menu to change from the default instrumet of Flute to Electric Bass. The sheet music on the screen changed to showing me a chart with the chords and a walking bass line (on a bass clef).

I clicked on Start and it started playing the music through my laptop speakers. It had piano, bass, and drums.

I clicked on the Accompaniment button/arrow and a drop list appeared and I turned off the Bass. I started it over and was able to play along with just the piano and drums to practice walking bass lines.

When I finished, a small window popped up with choices to Listen, Keep, MP3, or close. I clicked Listen and it played back the song with the accompaniment and the recording it just made of me using the microphone that is built into my laptop. Excellent quality recording! Bad playing. I clicked on MP3 and it let me choose a file name and folder and cranked out an MP3 of me playing with the accompaniment.

Each time I clicked on Start, it would do it over again and record it as a new Take.

There's a Tempo slider at the top so I could have it play at whatever tempo I wanted. And there's a Transposition button so I was able to change it to play the same thing in G, instead of F. When I changed it to G, the sheet music also changed to display the same notation for Bass except in G instead of F.

It also has a way to set a start and end and have it just loop whatever section you want.

Totally SWEET! I actually ran a line from the headphone out jack on my laptop to an input on my mixer so I could have the accompaniment coming through the same PA monitors that my band uses when we rehearse and I could then play my bass at a "normal" volume and still hear the accompaniment.

They have other charts where Bass is actually the solo instrument, not just part of the Accompaniment. For those, after it records a take, you can get an Assessment where it will actually show the notes you played overlayed on top of the sheet music. Where you played the correct notes, it shows your notes in green. Where you played it wrong, it shows your notes in Red. I have not actually played with this yet, though.

I'm really excited at how easy this tool is for doing something like recording demo tracks of myself. But, even without the recording capability, just the ability to play these tracks, with no bass in the mix, loop it, slow it down, and change the key is totally awesome! MAN, do I wish I had had this when I was in high school! So much better than having to go buy actual Aebersold records on vinyl and play along in the family room!

And the sheer volume of material they have on tap to use to play along with!

If any of you are trying to develop your reading ability, your technique, or your ability to playing walking jazz/blues lines, you should absolutely check it out! $36 a year is a HE11 of a lot cheaper than private lessons or buying play-a-long books. I would have bought 2 Aebersold book/CDs (looking for those is how I found this). I'm already money ahead!

http://www.smartmusic.com

[J-B'ass]

Originally Posted by StuartV

Where you played the correct notes, it shows your notes in green. Where you played it wrong, it shows your notes in Red.

That sounds awful, but apart from that it sounds pretty cool. There's a program called Transcribe which you might like if you don't have it already. It's a one off payment of about $45 and lets you manipulate a track in similar ways to SmartMusic, things like independently changing the tempo and pitch of a track, isolating certain frequencies etc. The name says it all.

[monroe55]

Originally Posted by StuartV

I searched and didn't see any good solid info on this, so here's my report.

I subscribed to SmartMusic.com yesterday. It's $36 per YEAR.

Once subscribed, I downloaded the SmartMusic program, ran the install, logged in, and got to work.

What does SmartMusic do? Well, let me describe what I did with it last night.

I searched their library (they claim to have over 30,000 titles) for "Aebersold". They have bunches. I picked Vol 2: Nothing But Blues and opened it.


The program showed me all the tracks from that volume. I picked Slow Blues in F and opened it.

It opened up with a small tool bar and a lead sheet just showing regular jazz chord notation. I selected on the menu to change from the default instrumet of Flute to Electric Bass. The sheet music on the screen changed to showing me a chart with the chords and a walking bass line (on a bass clef).

I clicked on Start and it started playing the music through my laptop speakers. It had piano, bass, and drums.

I clicked on the Accompaniment button/arrow and a drop list appeared and I turned off the Bass. I started it over and was able to play along with just the piano and drums to practice walking bass lines.

When I finished, a small window popped up with choices to Listen, Keep, MP3, or close. I clicked Listen and it played back the song with the accompaniment and the recording it just made of me using the microphone that is built into my laptop. Excellent quality recording! Bad playing. I clicked on MP3 and it let me choose a file name and folder and cranked out an MP3 of me playing with the accompaniment.

Each time I clicked on Start, it would do it over again and record it as a new Take.

There's a Tempo slider at the top so I could have it play at whatever tempo I wanted. And there's a Transposition button so I was able to change it to play the same thing in G, instead of F. When I changed it to G, the sheet music also changed to display the same notation for Bass except in G instead of F.

It also has a way to set a start and end and have it just loop whatever section you want.

Totally SWEET! I actually ran a line from the headphone out jack on my laptop to an input on my mixer so I could have the accompaniment coming through the same PA monitors that my band uses when we rehearse and I could then play my bass at a "normal" volume and still hear the accompaniment.

They have other charts where Bass is actually the solo instrument, not just part of the Accompaniment. For those, after it records a take, you can get an Assessment where it will actually show the notes you played overlayed on top of the sheet music. Where you played the correct notes, it shows your notes in green. Where you played it wrong, it shows your notes in Red. I have not actually played with this yet, though.

I'm really excited at how easy this tool is for doing something like recording demo tracks of myself. But, even without the recording capability, just the ability to play these tracks, with no bass in the mix, loop it, slow it down, and change the key is totally awesome! MAN, do I wish I had had this when I was in high school! So much better than having to go buy actual Aebersold records on vinyl and play along in the family room!

And the sheer volume of material they have on tap to use to play along with!

If any of you are trying to develop your reading ability, your technique, or your ability to playing walking jazz/blues lines, you should absolutely check it out! $36 a year is a HE11 of a lot cheaper than private lessons or buying play-a-long books. I would have bought 2 Aebersold book/CDs (looking for those is how I found this). I'm already money ahead!

http://www.smartmusic.com

This sounds cool. Hope someone else can chime in with some experience.
Can you create your own chord progression for the accompanying instruments to play so you can play along with that or, are you only able to choose from their 30,000 songs( which is more than sufficient) to play along with? Just curious, I think Im going to join this website anyway.
Ive been thinking of buying a simple looping device to record/practice chord progressions to play along with. SmartMusic sound like it has a lot more to offer for less money.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but what are some of the negatives. Do I need any special features on my laptop to use smartmusic?

[warnergt]

SmartMusic appears to be similar to Guitar Pro in many ways with some
differences. They both let you see and play the music while being
accompanied by the other instruments. Both have tens of thousands
of tunes available. Guitar Pro is tailored primarily to guitar with pretty
strong support for bass. Guitar Pro does not grade your performance.
Guitar Pro is a one time purchase ($60, $40 for upgrades). SmartMusic
is a subscription ($36/year).

[StuartV]

Originally Posted by monroe55

This sounds cool. Hope someone else can chime in with some experience.
Can you create your own chord progression for the accompanying instruments to play so you can play along with that

I don't know of a way to do that in SmartMusic. But, I also discovered Band-in-a-Box this week and it does exactly that - and very well, I might add. If you're just using it for exactly what you said, the most basic version of BB would work perfectly. It is $129, though.

And if you would get good use of the additional features of BB, a new version came out yesterday (BB 2011) and it's on major sale right now. Buy the Pro version for $129, then turn right around and buy the UltraPlusPAK upgrade for $139 and you get all their stuff for a total of $283 (w/shipping on a 160GB portable hard drive). A package that would normally be $469+shipping.

[dave64o]

The music departments in our school system (at least at the elementary and middle school levels) recommend SmartMusic to their students. My son has been using it since he was in 4th grade (now in 8th) and he loves it. When he's bored practicing assignments for his school and private lessons, he picks songs that sound like they have interest trumpet parts and he plays along with them. Also, the band directors usually pick songs for their concerts that are in the SmartMusic libraries, so he also works on those songs during his practices and also works on his solos until they're second nature. Seems to be pretty helpful to him and he enjoys using it.

It's funny I never thought about using it myself, but I might have to give it a try.

[aidan784]

This does look interesting, it's a shame I don't have a computer.
This might seem like a stupid question Stuart, but is it the actual tracks that are being manipulated? As in, it's not some horrible digital emulation of a bass that sounds nothing like one, like those found in guitarpro as somebody has already compared it to.
And are the tracks found on the program geared towards any particular genre? (yes I know 30,000 tracks suggests a large range but still...)
Cheers,
Aidan

[StuartV]

I'm pretty sure the track is synthesized - not a recording of actual musicians. But I don't think it sounds horrible at all. At least for me, it's plenty good enough to practice to. And I think I would even be totally comfortable using recordings of myself playing along with the SmartMusic accompaniment as demo tracks that I gave out.

The tracks in their library seem to be very much geared towards what schools would use in middle school and high school band programs. SmartMusic is definitely NOT a resource to use for learning rock covers. For a bass player, I think the best use of it is going to using the Aerbersold play-a-longs to practice any of the different things he has books on (mostly Jazz, I think).