Song Rhythm Tracks iOS App Launched
“Rhythm Tracks for your songs” – Musician’s Mobile App for production-ready rhythmic backing that’s now available on the Apple iOS App Store
Alive Drumming has brought production quality rhythmic backing to the world, in its most convenient form – a mobile App with a simple interface to select, download and play Song Rhythm Tracks.
Song Rhythm Tracks are a new type of backing track composed entirely of rhythmic backing (no melody or harmony) and arranged to the musical form of the song a.k.a. it’s “SongForm”.
These tracks are complete performances similar to what we expect from a professional drummer. They have a count-in, introduction section, multiple choruses and characteristic endings, all framed with the fills to delineate the start and end of musical sections. The mobile product design emphasizes providing this level of arrangement without a typical arranger’s interface thereby keeping the interface simple. One can select a track in under 30 seconds, and under 15 seconds once you get the hang of it.
The App includes a player with some precise tempo variation and a basic setlist facility to sequence the tracks for your gig or jam session. Its targeted to musicians of all abilities. For new musicians, the App easily provides an accompaniment to songs they learn with a rhythm that’s sympathetic to the song so that they learn to keep time right from the start and benefit from engaging and inspiring rhythms. Gigging musicians can catalogue and play these rhythmic backing tracks in a performance context. Having quality rhythmic backing with a setlist facility and a musician’s player, all in the one App is so convenient one finds oneself using it more and more.
A “Musician’s Player”: What’s that? One that automatically dims the screen, will play in the background, has good-sized buttons and allows you to change the volume with the physical buttons. Yes, all of that, but this player also spells out on the screen the musical form of the track such as “4 choruses of 32 bars of std. AABA form (8|8/8|8) with no intro’ and 4-Bar ending”, and provides visual tracking as it plays it. This is just the information musicians want right before they play a song. So, if you start to lose your place a bit a quick glance at the display will likely get you back “on track” again.
There’s a huge number of rhythms to select from (in the thousands) and endless musical forms for your songs. Once requested, the download can take a few minutes to arrive before it’s on your device for playing. Alive Drumming grants the user rights to remix the track so one can transfer it to a computer using iTunes file sharing and then include it into one’s own compositions and album releases.
The choice of selecting the SongForm by name, or alternatively by using stick notation, over providing a sequencing interface is an innovation that hasn’t been seen before and one that gives this App its character. It does mean that the musician will need to know the musical form of the song they are going to play, but one could argue how could they not know it? The musician might not be familiar with the naming scheme being used, but the App, when using a SongForm name, also provide a description with the stick-notation, so when one selects, “32-bar AABA”, it gets displayed as “32 bars of std. AABA form (8|8/8|8)”. Inf fact SongForm names do not have to be used at all, one can also select “8|8/8|8” and get the same description displayed, “32 bars of std. AABA form (8|8/8|8)”. The App also provides a flexible facility for musicians to define their own SongForm using “stick notation“, allowing for highly complex user-defined forms. Additionally, the App also includes a “Song name –> SongForm” sharing engine, so if your song has had its SongForm shared before you will be able to use that instead by pressing the magnifying glass search button after entering its name.
Two other aspects that make this App stand out from other drumming Apps are (i) the server-based, no-compromise, finest quality audio backing, and (ii) a performing musician-friendly setlist and player interface. This makes it dead easy for musicians to prepare, practice and perform their setlist.
To check out samples of the audio take a look at Alive Drumming’s Samples page at http://alivedrumming.com/sample-audio-files/
For an interesting backstory of Song Rhythm Track check out the post, “The Primacy of Rhythm in popular music and practice” at http://alivedrumming.com/the-primacy-of-rhythm-in-popular-music/
Download the App from the Apple App Store at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/songform-rhythm-tracks/id1254346877?ls=1&mt=8