#HOW TO USE IREAL PRO INSTALL#
#HOW TO USE IREAL PRO PRO#
#HOW TO USE IREAL PRO SOFTWARE#

#HOW TO USE IREAL PRO PRO#

If you’re new to the jazz world or haven’t encountered this app yet, you might wonder, “What is iReal Pro?” The iReal Pro app is an easy-to-use tool designed to help musicians of all levels in the practice room and on the bandstand. Don’t Use iReal Pro To Listen To Different Styles of Music You Should Prioritize Playing With Musicians, Not With Midi Backing Tracks When You Are Too Dependent on Chord Charts To Actively Engage With Music When You Want To Perform an Analysis of Jazz Standards or Pop Songs When You Need To Play Someone’s Original Music When You Need Help Learning or Hearing the Harmony of Songs

When You Need Clarification on the “Standard Version” of a Song When You Don’t Know a Song at a Gig or Jam Session

5 Situations Where Using iReal Pro is a Good Idea.

5 Ways iReal Pro Will Help You Learn To Play Jazz (And 4 Ways It Won’t).

The accompaniment to the jazz charts are passable, but some of the arrangements that accompany the pop charts sound like they were churned out by a cut-rate wedding band. The styles offered by iReal Pro are just as limited. For instance, for the piano track you can choose an acoustic piano, electric piano, or vibraphone. And within each instrument, you have just a few variations. Regrettably, you don’t have the option to choose better-quality instrument sounds that you may have added to your Mac-via GarageBand or Logic Pro X, for example.

#HOW TO USE IREAL PRO SOFTWARE#

Background tracks use the Mac’s built-in software instrument sounds, which are only okay.

Instrumentally, iReal Pro is pretty limited. You can additionally export tracks as audio or MIDI files or email charts as HTML files that other users can import into their own libraries. While arranging a tune, you can change time signatures, enter repeats, create sections, and mark sections as an intro or verse. Just pull up the editor and enter in the chart area the chords you like. While the forums provide you with plenty of material, iReal Pro also includes an editor so that you can create tunes of your own. With iReal Pro’s editor, you can edit existing charts or create new ones from scratch. No melody lines or lyrics are included, which I suspect is how the app’s developers get around any copyright issues-after all, if you could copyright chord progressions, the Blues bin at the local record store would hold exactly one album. Click one of these links and the charts are automatically added to iReal Pro and gathered in a playlist. For example, choose the Jazz forum, and you’ll find links to a load of jazz standards. And you should, because it’s within those forums that you’ll find links to the tunes you really want to play.

#HOW TO USE IREAL PRO INSTALL#

However, when you first install the app, you’re cleverly asked if you’d like to visit the iReal Pro forums. This isn’t much to start with, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the content of the real Real Book. Pick a tune on the left, and you can read the chart for that track on the right.īy default, you’re supplied with 50 exercise charts.

When you press the Play button you hear clicks (the count-off) that indicates the song’s tempo the highlight moves through the chart as the song plays, so you know which chords to accompany. By default, the currently playing measure is highlighted in yellow (though you can change the highlight color as well as the color of the background “paper”). And on the far right are the chords and arrangement for the selected song. Just to the right of that is a list of songs in the selected library or playlist. Along the left side of the window is a Library pane where you choose from among libraries and playlists of tunes.

How to use ireal pro