Using the point-and-click interface, notes are sounded with the corresponding chord background as they are entered. Chord progressions are entered by typing the chord names or loading from an existing text file. Melody content can be entered by a point-and-click interface, typed text, or a MIDI keyboard. It provides a notation capability for lead sheets that consist of a single melody line and chord changes. Impro-Visor (“Improvisation Advisor”) is a software tool designed by musician and computer scientist Bob Keller to help jazz musicians work out, hear, and record solo ideas, including studying the work of others. Bob Keller and students at Harvey Mudd College I think the tool looks great, though it’d be interesting to hear this integrated with more traditional jazz songwriting and practice workflows. There’s actually a bit to wrap your head around as far as how this might be used, so I welcome some constructive comments. And because it’s a multi-purpose jazz tool and do-everything lead sheet utility, I could see all sorts of uses.įranz Keller, CDM reader and son of the developer Robert Keller, forwards a description from his father. But looking past the superficial quality of the sounds to the musical content, the software is pretty impressive. Rendered in low-fidelity, unaltered General MIDI soft synth sounds, I’m not sure you’ll be tossing your Bill Evans records in favor of the computer’s attempt. It continues some of the legacy of Band-in-a-Box, but it seems to be more in keeping with current-generation software, it supports more platforms, and it’s free and open source. It can be used to make lead sheets, to experiment with jazz harmonies and solos, and – by asking human students to fill in their own parts – a teaching tool. Improv-Visor is an artificially-intelligent jazz improviser tool, but it’s quite a lot more. And where the computer fails to sound like a human, you learn something, too. Modeling creative rules and intuitive algorithms as generative code is itself an eminently human activity – think of it as interactive theory. Ask a machine to emulate human creativity, and at the very least, you’re guaranteed to learn something.

Freeware band in a box