Impro-Visor

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. There are other, secondary, things it can do, such as improvise on its own. 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.

Chord symbols are used to generate backing tracks automatically. Improvisation advice exists in the form of note coloration, database of licks, and automatic lick generation from grammars. Grammars can be learned automatically from transcriptions. Styles can be edited and created by the user. Other features include generation of roadmaps for understanding keys and idiomatic chord progressions, chord voicing keyboard, MIDI and MusicXML export. See http://www.impro-visor.com/ for general information, including tutorials. Support and additional resources are through the user group http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/impro-visor/

Features:

• Impro-Visor = Improvisation Advisor, focused on leadsheets with monophonic melody • Music notation using point-and-click, with visual harmonic hints and advice • Uniform interface on all major platforms (Windows, MacOSX, Linux) • Huge store of musical knowledge about chords, scales, licks, etc. • Music saved as text files, can be entered as text if desired • Auto-generated accompaniment from chord progressions • Roadmap generator (showing keys and chord bricks) • Automatic grammatical inference for melodic styles • Automatic lick generation from grammars • User-specifiable accompaniment styles • MusicXML import thru MuseScore • MusicXML and MIDI exports • Easy, fast chord entry • Style editor