Jazz is a form of music that heavily depends on improvisation where performers interact with each other and exchange musical ideas on the fly. In order to prepare themselves for this real-time interaction, jazz musicians undergo rigorous training.
Two important aspects of training, especially for beginners, include transcription and copying. Transcription involves listening to recordings of other jazz performers and writing down the notes. This allows the student to build the connection
between a note or rhythm that they hear, playing that on their instrument and writing it down. Copying is the process of playing along with or mimicking someone’s playing with the aim of internalizing the nuances of the jazz language. This
project addresses both of these aspects of the jazz learning process.
The aim is to help a user memorize or "internalize" the rhythm of small sections (2-4 bars) from a jazz improvisation solo. In this accord, users will be asked
to tap the rhythm of a solo to the backing track or metronome after listening to that section of the solo several times (users can listen to the snippet for as long as 210s). Using different forms of visual modalities (piano roll, score, or
no visual input), we will study what best helps users learn a rhythm correctly. In asking the user to just tap out the note onsets, we are in some sense simplifying the process of transcription (since pitches don’t have to be identified).