COFFEE HOUSE - Singer-songwriters and iReal pro

[MCJazzer]

Just ran into this thread, & even though it's a year & 1/2 old, I'd like to comment:

I LOVE iReal Pro, & I really can't imagine doing w/o it. Even though I'm now a retired music teacher/church musician, I use it (& have used it) in myriad ways:

+ when writing original music, to keep track of the chord changes, form, & to try out diff. rhythm patterns & tempi.

+ to write up a background track for a song at church, when I couldn't find a background track available to purchase. I've even written up a quick track (if it was a simple song) in the morning before church & used it in that morning's service.

+ for more involved arrangements, I've used iReal to lay out the basics of the arrangement, & exported the track as a Midi file, & then imported the Midi file into Logic Pro on my Mac.

+ for one pretty involved piece I wrote (a jazz piece w/ four horn parts & rhythm section), I used iReal to create the rhythm section parts. Interestingly, the bass & piano parts sounded fine in Logic imported as Midi files (using Midi instr. sounds in Logic), but the drum parts sounded much better exported out of iReal as audio files. Prob. has something to do w/ the Midi "mapping" of the drums.

+ another fun thing I've done is that if I like the drum part in one rhythm style, but I like the keyboard part in a different style, I'll just export Midi files of a song using the two diff. rhythm styles, import them into Logic, & just keep what I like & delete what I don't want. Just gotta make sure the tempo is the same for both.

+ when my friend that I play jazz with & I use

[MCJazzer]

Sorry - posted before I was done. Btw - the edit button (small pencil on the lower right) doesn't seem to allow editing - ?

+ when my flute playing friend & I get together to jam, it's just flute & guitar (or sometimes keyboard), so we use iReal for our background tracks. The massive amount of Jazz tunes available on the iReal Forum means we can almost always find any song we want to play.

+ when I taught the 12 bar Blues form to my 5th graders (I taught K-5 music), I used some of the iReal Blues rhythm styles to play the 12 bar Blues as a background track, while the kids played the chords on ukulele. We also played the melody of C Jam Blues on xylophones & recorders. And, we also used the C Jam track to have kids try their hand at improvising (usually on xylophones).

+ when I taught individual guitar & ukulele lessons, I used iReal to create background tracks for songs my students wanted to play.

Even though I'm retired from teaching music, I still use iReal, almost every day. My latest project is working to keep up my musical ear by figuring out chord changes of songs I like using only iReal & my ears (instead of using a guitar or piano to figure out the changes). I usually post them on the Forum.

Can't thank you enough for developing & continuing to improve this app. For someone like me - an educator, aspiring arranger & sometime composer, who is somewhat limited by my modest instrumental skills (I was a voice major in college), this app has been a Godsend for me.

Thx, Bill McDade