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What do you do when there's nobody to jam with? These great practice tools will give you all the benefits of a band (and none of the drama).
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Software: Boot Up Your Band
You probably already have a computer, right? With software, things can get really interesting. The granddaddy of jam-along software, the easy-to-use Band in a Box ($119 list/$99 street, www.band-in-a-box.com) enables you to build a song by assigning chords to measures and selecting any one of hundreds of styles, from bossa nova to Brit pop. Band in a Box then builds a whole backing track for you to play with, which you can alter and customize by changing tempo or adding bridges with rhythmic shifts. A great tool for songwriting, Band-in-a-Box opens up creative frontiers where you can explore Frankenstein compositions that unite, say, elements of Gypsy jazz and power pop.
Preinstalled on all new Macs, Apple’s GarageBand (www.apple.com) is exceptionally flexible, capable, and easy to use. You can use it for recording tracks and overdubbing, but it’s also packed with a fantastic library of instrumental loops. Building a tune to play is as easy as selecting a rhythm loop to build on. Once that’s in place, you can lay any number of loops on top to create simple or intricate backing tracks that can inspire playing and tunes you may not have even known you’re capable of creating.
Loopers: Move to Your Own Groove
Not only is looping one of the easiest and most intuitive ways to jam along with yourself, it’s also one of the most expressive. The basic principle is simple: hit the pedal to record a solo passage, chord sequence, melody, or bass line. Hit the pedal again to save it and once more to start playing it back.
Loopers take on your personality, using your playing and ideas as raw material. In five seconds you can have material for a half-hour practice session laid out. They’re fantastic tools for composing songs—enabling you to try any number of melodies, one right after another, over the same set of chord changes, until you find that magic mix you’re looking for. Have your teacher record a lesson into your looper so that, at home, you can play along at whatever tempo works for you.
Boss’s RC-2 ($ 284 list/$179 street) has 16 minutes of loop time and a simple rhythm machine to help you play along in time. If you come up with a song or chord sequence you just have to keep (and you most likely will), you can save it to one of ten memory locations—and you can even change the tempo without changing the pitch.
Digitech’s JamMan ($424 list/$299 street, www.digitech.com) has a few extra features that are worth considering. It saves loops to CompactFlash cards (a 2-GB card will give you over five hours of loop time). You can also use the built-in USB port to transfer WAV files of your loops to or from your computer, effectively turning your JamMan into a portable music library full of lessons and jam sessions.
Multitrack Recorders
Multitrack recorders might seem like the kind of device you graduate to after achieving some level of proficiency as a player or songwriter. But they can inspire creativity at the most basic level and work as jam tools, just like software or loopers. In recent years, multitrack recorders have gotten smaller, less expensive, and much more sophisticated. Handheld field recorders like Boss’s Micro BR ($319 list/$229 street, www.bossus.com) and Zoom’s H4 ($499 list/$299 street, www.samsontech.com) record in stereo and have extra tracks that you can use as building blocks and add parts to.
Many recorders have built-in mics, inputs for bigger and better mics, and even effects. They’re all quite simple to use, and many will fit in your guitar case. Like looping, these multitrack recorders offer ready feedback on your creations, allowing you to hear what you actually played rather than what you thought you played and enabling you to experiment with parts and sounds that complement your style and the sounds you’ve already laid down.
Go Forth and Jam
The beauty of these devices is that they have the capacity to grow with you as a player. Tracking software and loopers will remain useful compositional, tutorial, and performance tools, no matter what your skill level. Practice amps and CD trainers allow you to monitor your progress against performers you admire and study their methods more closely. Drum machines will prove invaluable companions for writing, help you work on your timing, or just inspire new grooves. But however you apply them, all these tools can turn an otherwise ordinary bedroom jam into an adventure.
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