MyJazzBand
Jazz Accompaniment Generator
MyJazzBand is a brand-new MIDI jazz accompaniment
generation application that incorporates intelligent jazz
chord and scale analysis, a modern native Mac OS X Cocoa
user interface, Band-in-a-Box file format compatibility,
and much more.
Intelligent Jazz chord and Scale Analysis
MyJazzBand applies state-of-the-art, intelligent jazz
chord and scale analysis algorithms to generate realistic
accompaniments that mimic music played by a real rhythm
section.
Native Mac OS X Cocoa User Interface
Its built-in chord editor uses Mac OS X Cocoa features
like text completion and input validation for quick and
accurate chord entry.
Band-in-a-Box File Format Compatibility
MyJazzBand can import chord sequences from Band-in-a-Box
files. This lets you use BIAB files you already have
and the large number of BIAB "real-books" you can
download from the Internet.
MyJazzBand is a newly-developed Mac OS X Cocoa/CoreMIDI
application that generates and plays realistic
accompaniments for jazz tunes. It is a perfect tool for
practising improvisation, and great as a composition tool
too. MyJazzBand generates rhythm section parts consisting
of a walking bass line, and piano and drums comping. It
can then play them while you solo. It currently supports
the swing, bossa nova, and jazz waltz styles. MyJazzBand
performs chord and scale analysis specifically developed
for it to select and generate notes intelligently.
Because of this, the bass lines it generates, for example,
are far more realistic then any competing application. Listen to the sound examples
and judge for yourself!
MyJazzBand's chord editor is where you enter the chords of
a song. An optimal chord layout algorithm displays chords
legibly and lays them out beautifully in a song document
window. Intuitive cut, copy, and paste commands allow
bars in a song to be inserted, deleted, modified, and
duplicated easily. Unlimited undo and redo are supported
for all operations so any mistakes can be reversed and
canceled operations can be re-applied.
The chord editor's text completion and input validation
features let you enter chords quickly and accurately. A
full repertoire of jazz chords is supported. The chords
are chosen after analyzing thousands of jazz tunes in
"fake books" so they should include all the chords you
will use. Slash chords are also supported. The proper
Unicode symbols ♯ and ♭ are used for
displaying chord names.
MyJazzBand stores and loads songs in its own simple text
format. It can also import songs from Band-in-a-Box
files, which is a tremendously useful feature because of
the large number of BIAB format files and "real-books"
available on the Internet. When a BIAB file is imported
into MyJazzBand, its tempo, style, title, section, and
chorus information are also imported.
MyJazzBand can play the generated accompaniment on
external MIDI devices as well as CoreMIDI's internal DLS
synthesizer. Therefore, it can run on a Mac with no MIDI
devices connected and the accompaniment is played on the
Mac's speakers. For external MIDI devices, MyJazzBand has
a full-featured CoreMIDI implementation and MIDI Name
Document (".midnam files") support. MIDI devices and
patches can be selected by name as well as bank and patch
numbers.
Download a copy of MyJazzBand!
Then
take a guided tour of it.
All the features described above are fully functional in
"demo mode".