Jammer+Professional+4.0

**General Information**

 * Jammer Professional 4.0 (Version [|6.0] now available)
 * Authors: David F. Castles and Richard E. Grant
 * Publisher: [|Sound Trek]
 * Copyright 1990-2006
 * Windows only
 * Sound card, floppy drive required
 * For Intermediate players, middle and high school
 * For Improvisation, Composition, Arranging, or general music class

Teacher Support

 * Exhaustive manual included
 * Program tutorial in Help menu
 * Online demos and tutorials
 * Website offers support through:
 * e-mail
 * FAQs
 * telephone contact

**Instructional Content**
Jammer Professional accomplishes what the name implies: it lets you jam. The program allows students to practice improvisation and compose simple arrangements. This type of program would be invaluable in a Jazz Improvisation class, but could be used anywhere to help students practice their improvisational skills. Students begin by picking one of about 20 styles of music and key, and can then begin jamming while Jammer Professional accompanies them using preprogrammed chords and instrumentation. If they desire students can manually edit the chords, or change the key or tempo. However, this program is so old that there aren’t a lot of options other than changing the key, instrumentation, or generic styles, such as Tex-Mex and Rock. The composition portion of this program did not work on the test machine, most likely due to the fact that this program is too old and no longer compatible with Windows XP (Windows 3.1 is the suggested operating system).

The National Standards that could be addressed with this program are:
 * 1. Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
 * 2. Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
 * 3. Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
 * 4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
 * 6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.

**Instructional Design and Pedagogical Soundness**
Although the program comes with a concise and functional tutorial to get you immediately “jamming”, the rest of the interface is substandard. The icons are large and unintuitive, and provide no explanation as to what they do prior to clicking on them. Personal favorites were the boxing glove, and the two hippies. There is so much information on the screen that text is often shortened to unintelligible abbreviations, and the menu icons that switch between functions such as mixing and comping take you to confusing places.

**Record Keeping**
Nothing is designed for direct record keeping for a teacher. There is a save feature for compositions.

**Overall Evaluation**
This is a simplistic program that creates the feeling of soloing over a live band. Although possibly quite helpful for beginning and intermediate improvisers, for advanced players it will seem at best like having their grandparents play backup. Success in the classroom will be dependent upon the population served.

Rating:++

Reviewed: Andy Boron, 4/11/2006 Updated: Daniel Heim, 3/28/2007