Jamstudio is a flash based ‘online music factory’ (according to the homepage). In fact it feels a bit like a cross between ejay and ‘band in a box’. Several recent articles havehighlighted the benefits of these technologies and their usefulness in classroom situations (For e-jay see Dillon 2004; 2007; Gall & Breeze, 2008). So I’m quite excited about the fact that this is web based and as such holds opportunities for collaborative work online in future versions. I think this is a positive step towards such platforms being free and accessible over the internet so students can access their work wherever and whenever they feel inspired (although it doesn’t work on my Phone – arrrrrrrgh!).

Overview

There are four main sections to the screen (that you can position on the screen where you choose): ‘score’, ‘chords’, ‘mixer’ and ‘sounds’.

The score displays the structure of the song along with your choice of chords that are placed above a 5 line staff. This is an intriguing choice as the bars only dispay strum notation; no notes are used. As a result there is a lot of space in this section doing very little. Still, son you will be able to choose 3 or 4 beats in a bar and there are 5 pages of 16 bars in each piece.

The chords section is simple enough. You can choose any chord from the list and as you click it places in in the next free bar. If you change key it transposes the whole piece – this can be helpful (or not). Basic variations are also available (maj, m, m7, maj7, sus) but no diminished or other such exciting phenomena! It would have been nice to see a chord builder at this point. Also you are limited to root positions. An easy addition here would be to add a set of boxes to the score screen for the bass note/s.

The mixer window has a tempo option; 62 – 151 (bpm I assume), basic transport panel (no ff or rew) and options to choose instruments and volume. The volume is set for the whole piece with no option to specify in a greater level of detail. As you click on an instrument ‘groove’ it displays your options in the ‘sounds’ panel.

The sounds panel has a list of ‘Rock’, ‘Alt Rock’, ‘Techno’ or ‘Country’, which is a clear indication of the target audience. Nevertheless, some of the ‘sounds’ (what I would call ‘grooves’ – they are more than just a timbre) while eccentric in name are recorded at a good quality. Why are there no guitar grooves under ‘Rock’ or ‘Techno’?

Other features:

There is a users forum and an opportunuty for sharing via email but no combination of the two. This is a real shame beause a lot of the benefits of such web technologies (which Dave hints at in his interview) require some kind of sharing platform. See, for example, the forum at noteflight.com. There are some good tutorial videos that are embedded into the flash screens andyou can export the song to mp3. In addition, there is a ‘jamrecorder download that allows you to record ideas over the exported mp3.

Classroom thoughts:

I could see this program being used well as a template or starting point for basic ‘groove’ and structure to import into a computer based sequencer. Students could then record their own ideas over the top and maybe even get rid of the mp3 once they have recorded all their ideas in. All the functions work from mouse clicks so I found myself instinctively using the computer keypad to enter the chord names – to no avail! This single input option is rather limiting and may introduce access issues for some students.

My major gripe is that you can’t download your song as an mp3 until you get a paid subscription. This may really reduce the success of the system as I think such a basic feature shouldn’t require a subscription. While there are free accounts avilable to teachers ands students, these are only in the US (one might think there are some places in the world that would benefit more from this ind of offer). Also – why not offer the option to upload grooves? This woud save the authors a lot of work and increase both the flexibility and usefulness of the system…do they trust us to get it ‘right’?

There’s a nice interview with Dave Edwards that provides an insight into the stimulus for the project. Good intentions – so why isn’t is completely free?

In summary: good ideas…more work needed!

Thanks to Alan Levine and Stephen Downes for bringing Jamstudio.com to my attention.

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