By Don Clark
Tech companies keep adding aids for aspiring musicians. But few go to the lengths of Jammit.
The Los Angeles startup–founded by Scott Humphrey, a veteran record producer, mix engineer and musician–spent years in negotiations to license the master recordings of popular songs so it can deconstruct them for analysis. Jammit uses digitized versions of those recordings along with software and an online service that allows music students to download and study songs by their individual parts, like specific guitar and bass lines.
Say, for example, you want to learn the distinctive strumming of “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters. Jammit’s app comes with on-screen sliders, like those on a studio recording deck, that can fade up or down either of the major guitar lines or silence the rest of the band so you can better hear each picker.
Each track also is transcribed in traditional music notation and tablature–many musicians favor one or the other, or want both–that scrolls in synch with the recording. Tracks can be slowed down or sections can be easily looped to play over again. And users can record their own playing to compare with the originals.
Tracks typically cost $1.99 to $5.99 each. That’s well above the price of typical download of a conventional recording on a service like iTunes, and might seem expensive in view of the fact that the Web is awash with pirated music and amateur tablature for songs.
But many of those write-ups are wildly inaccurate, as is much of the commercial sheet music sold online and in stores, Humphrey complains. Improving that situation was one major motivation for Jammit.
“We try to be the most accurate notation in the world,” Humphrey says.
The company, which launched in January, has been steadily adding more music and cutting deals with artists and other partners to increase the appeal of its service. For example, it recently teamed up with Line 6–a company known for accessory devices that model the sounds of famous artists and their amplifiers–to allow a user’s sound on Jammit to sound like the guitar part on the original song.
But there was another item on users’ wish list. Many musicians use Macs or, more recently, iPads, and Jammit first developed apps that work for those devices.
Yet Humphrey says users of Windows PCs were eager to get in on the action. Jammit this week is rectifying that situation with a beta of its free app for those machines.
Humphrey, a Canadian who once took part in recordings for bands that include Motley Crue and Green Day, has tried to keep a mix of relatively recent and classic rock hits. Rush is the most popular artist on Jammit, he says, adding that he continues to be amazed at the appeal of more venerable acts among young players.
“Most of our best sellers are 30 or 40 years old,” he says.
