Genius Jamtracks helps jazz musicians develop their rhythm, reflexes, and improvisation skills with our GJT trio right from your smartphone so you’ll have the confidence and form necessary to take the stage whenever the call comes.

The Algorithm

We’ve designed our algorithm to think and play like an actual jazz trio – so much so, the members have actual names.

Rather than the tedium of playing along with predictable, prerecorded phrases, now you can jump in on the instrument of your choice and experience the thrill of seemingly endless variations in a jam session right from your smartphone.

The Two Sliders

Harmonic Complexity
Adjust the range of harmonic complexity from simplifying the written chart up to complex reharmonizations.

When moved all the way to the left, you get triads. As you start moving to the right, you progress into jazz harmony and your choice for the range of jazz piano voicings will increase. The further you continue to the right, the more liberties and substitutions the band will make, as well as increasing the complexity of the harmonic content in the range of chords and negative harmony.

Whether you choose to adjust the level of harmonic complexity or just press play and trust Genius Jamtracks to create your Jam Session for you, you’ll always have the same attention to voice leading from the pianist and the same effort in creating beautiful lines from the bassist to accompany you.

Rhythmic Complexity
From the traditional comping of a standard play-along and common polyrhythms of the jazz vocabulary to more complex, challenging, and sometimes superhuman rhythms, experiment with how the app transforms the rhythm according to the slider level. As you start moving to the right, each instrument begins to introduce polyrhythmic phrases, and the further you go, the more complex the rhythms get and the longer they last.

The Two Modes

Jam Session
When in Jam Session Mode, The GJT trio decides on their own what to play and when to play it, based on the style of the song and the tempo.
There are two sliders you can adjust, labeled “Rhythmic Complexity” and “Harmonic Complexity”. The more you take them to the left the simpler it gets, and as you move them to the right, more advanced Rhythmic and Harmonic concepts are introduced.
The polyrhythmic content will start from simple dotted quarter notes and progress to more complex ones like triplets in groups of 17.

Practice
If you want to focus on a specific grouping, polyrhythm, or displacement, you can ask the trio (by individual instrument or all three) to do this, so that when they choose to introduce polyrhythmic phrasing it will include only what you requested. As you won’t know when or how it will be used though, this feature also helps sharpen your ability to improvise as well as mastering that rhythm.

The Harmonic Complexity slider is still fully customizable in this mode.
The polyrhythmic content available will depend on the style of the song as well as the chosen tempo.
  • Groupings: All subdivision groupings up to 17
  • Ratios: Starting from simple ratios like 2:3 and 3:4 and increasing in complexity to 5:3, 3:7, 5:7, etc.
  • Other: Half time, double time, anticipation, quarter note triplets, dotted quarter notes, etc.

The Six Buttons

Tempo
By changing the tempo in either mode, you will also affect the choice of polyrhythms the trio will use.
The GJT trio won’t simply play faster or slower, the style will change as well, depending on the tempo.
The polyrhythmic content available depends upon where the tempo is set.
Transposition
Choose the key you want to practice each song in. Your last preference for a song in each Jam Session will be saved for the next time you return to it.
Play
Once you press play, you will hear a count off and the trio will start. Press again to stop.
Repeats
Select the number of choruses you want to play with the trio in your Jam Session.
Mixer
Customize the instrument levels and metronome volume.
Head
Choose Yes/No to decide whether to play the first chorus as a head. When “Yes” is selected, the GJT trio will play in a more conservative way through the head of the song before letting loose in the solo section.

Instrument Transpose

Here you can transpose the chord chart for any of the songs in the app to the pitch that corresponds with your instrument and save this as the default way to display the chords on your device so you won’t need to adjust it every time.

Let us know if you have any more questions.

Drop us an email at support@geniusjamtracks.com