Welcome to Impro-Visor

Jazz Improvisation Advisor

for the Improviser

Free Software from

Harvey Mudd College

Computer Science Department

Version 3.35 is now available
through the user group

Last update: Tuesday, 1 April 2008

Tutorial | Samples | Downloads | Comments | Photos

Impro-Visor (short for “Improvisation Advisor”) is a music notation program designed to help jazz musicians compose and hear solos similar to ones that might be improvised. The objective is to improve understanding of solo construction and tune chord changes. It has also been used for transcription. Because rhythm-section (e.g. piano, bass, drums) accompaniment is automatically generated from chords, Impro-Visor can be used as a play-along device. Now having a wider array of accompaniment styles, its use is not limited to jazz. Distributed with Impro-Visor is "The Imaginary Book", a chords-only fakebook with chord progressions to about 2500 tunes.

Impro-Visor Screen Shot:

Partial List of Features:

· Lead sheets and solos can be constructed through either point-and-click or using a plain text editor (one is provided, but any editor can be used).

· Optional automatic note coloration shows whether notes are consonant or dissonant with chords and scales.

· Solos or solo fragments can be played back immediately on the computer, with automatic rhythm section accompaniment.

· Can be used for self-study, classroom, or play-along. Any segment of a leadsheet can be played back in looped mode.

· Users can define new accompaniment styles. There is spreadsheet-like Style Editor, and a Style Extractor facility that helps create styles from MIDI performances. .

· Solos may be exported as MIDI files, with accompaniment if desired.

· It is not necessary that the soloist memorize the solos that are created in Impro-Visor. The act of constructing solos is intended to help one get a better understanding of the tune and of solo construction. But one can use some or all of the ideas from pre-constructed solos constructed, as many outstanding players have done for generations.

· Impro-Visor also provides a way for the user to create and save licks for later use. Lick creation is helpful in understanding how to construct interesting lines over chord changes.

· When used for transcription, Impro-Visor allows easy “mining” of selected licks from a solo for future reference.

· Impro-Visor includes a powerful lick generation capability. Licks, or entire choruses, can be generated in near-real time just by pressing a button. The generation of licks is controlled by a user-modifiable grammar, so that a range of styles and complexities is possible.

· Impro-Visor uses dynamic menus in the form shown to help one choose notes, cells, idioms, licks, and quotes for use in constructing a solo.

· Musical knowledge about chords, scales, licks, etc. are definable by the user or instructor, in the form of a vocabulary text file. These items are defined in a single key, and Impro-Visor will transpose them to any key.

· Impro-Visor saves solos and other lead sheets as free-form text. We call this leadsheet notation. Although a point-and-click interface is provided, users can optionally enter chords and/or melody in this notation with a standard text editor and have them displayed as a lead sheet in Impro-Visor. The documentation tells how to create and interpret the notation. The notation also provides slash-chords and polychords.

· Any number of leadsheet windows can be open simultaneously. The user can cut and paste melody and chords from one window to another.

· The release of Impro-Visor comes with a few leadsheets with melodies, a number of sample solos, transcriptions, and The Imaginary Book: a large set (over 2100) of chords-only lead sheets for standard, jazz, and some pop tunes.

· Impro-Visor is free and runs on any platform that supports Java 1.5 or later, including:

o Windows (Vista, XP, 2000, maybe others)

o MacOSX (with Java 1.5 installed)

o Linux

Documentation that you might find helpful:

o Tutorial

o Impro-Visor's Scale and Chord Repertoire

o How To Improvise Jazz Melodies by Bob Keller

o Guide to Leadsheet Notation (pdf, html)

o Blues for Gary: Design Abstractions for a Jazz Improvisation Assistant,
ENTCS (Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science), 193 (2007) 47-60,
by Keller, Hunt, Jones, Morrison, Wolin, and Gomez

o Paper presented at the Third Workshop on Computational Creativity,
European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2006 (ECAI '06):

A Computational Framework Enhancing Jazz Creativity

by Keller, Jones, Morrison, Thom, and Wolin.

o Paper appearing in the Fourth Sound and Music Conference, SMC ’07, Lefkada, Greece:

A Grammatical Approach to Automatic Improvisation, by Keller and Morrison.

o Early paper describing use:

An Interactive Tool for Learning Improvisation Through Composition,

by Keller, Jones, Thom, and Wolin,

Tech Rept. HMC- CS - 2005-02, Harvey Mudd College, Sept. 2005

Credits:

Concept:

Bob Keller