Tech reviews: jazz practice apps

I spend a lot of time talking to students about practice. Back in my secondary school days, the priority was simply to get my students into a practice room – if they managed to set a goal for their practice session, so much the better. Working in tertiary education, with the concomitant time pressures, I find myself increasingly talking to students about finding the most e˛ cient solution for their practice goals.

There is something unique about the space jazz practice occupies in music. Unlike classical and rock pedagogies, which (according to the great Wendy Hargreaves) separate creativity and realisation into discrete activities, jazz involves integrating a generative musical approach. Pressing's ground-breaking study ‘Improvisation: Methods and Models' (1988) identified three components to the way musicians evaluated their options: input, processing and decision-making. This seems a nice model for contemporary jazz education, so I was interested to see how the market for practice apps supports this approach.