Thanks for your opinion Mac. I will make the suggestion but I could imagine that the company would prefer to unload the soloist tracks seeing as how they (hopefully) paid the musicans to make them. I'm afraid I can't agree that any student would benefit from a study of the soloist real tracks. Concentrating on a lick-based solo ESPECIALLY on one randomly generated by computer is focusing on "Jazz" at its most perverse. At first listening some of the real track solo creations almost seem to make sense but its the kind of sense one hears from badly put together Musak. Students deserve the best models, not hash served up by butchering the meanderings of some studio hack.

That said (admittedly a bit harshly but there you go) I can imagine the real track * rhythm backgrounds * would make a nice tool for my students. I myself practiced many years ago with Music Minus One play-alongs which featured entire performances from some of the great mainstream players (Hank Jones, Osie Johnson, Barry Gilbraith, Milt Hinton etc.). However with the advent of real tracks BIAB has evolved into a very acceptable comping tool which can accommodate different keys, tempos and rhythms. Unfortunately Hank, Osie and company were unable to record every song ever written in every key. If they had, I think its self evident that playing with those recordings would be far superior to practicing with music generated by a machine, no matter how closely that machine approximates human performance.

Last edited by bonecall; 12/01/09 06:08 AM.