Jam Station
Your instant backing band: pick a key, a style, and a tempo, and Jam Station loops synchronized drums, a real generated bass line, and a chord pad for you to play over. Mute any track to take its place — kill the bass and walk it yourself, or keep just the drums. One click exports the whole arrangement as a MIDI file.
Set up your band
Ten jam styles, each pairing a drum groove with an idiomatic bass line and progression. The interactive station replaces this list when JavaScript loads.
- Rock — Straight 8s drums under the I–V–vi–IV progression with a driving root-and-fifth bass.
- Pop — Backbeat groove around I–vi–IV–V, the doo-wop turnaround that still powers the charts.
- 12-Bar Blues — The full twelve bars of dominant-7th blues over a shuffle, with a walking boogie bass.
- Funk — Swung sixteenth-note groove, syncopated bass, and tight chord stabs on a dominant vamp.
- Bossa Nova — Clave-pattern drums under a ii–V–I with a smooth jazz walking bass.
- Reggae — One-drop drums, minor-key i–VII–VI movement, and offbeat skank chords.
- Metal — Gallop kick pattern over power-chord i–VI–VII riffing.
- Country — Train-beat brushes with an alternating root-fifth country bass on I–IV–I–V.
- Jazz — Swing ride pattern over rhythm-changes-style Imaj7–vi7–ii7–V7 with a walking bass.
- Hip-Hop — Boom-bap drums and a laid-back minor-7th vamp to write hooks over.
Tip: mute the chords and comp them yourself, or mute the bass and practise walking your own lines against the drums. Need just percussion? The drum machine gives you the full step-sequencer; the bass line generator shows every generated line as tab you can learn.
About practice backing tracks
Practising with a band behind you changes what you hear: suddenly your timing has to sit in a pocket, your note choices ring against real chords, and stopping mid-bar feels wrong. Jam Station generates that band on the spot — the same synthesized drum grooves as the drum machine, the same deterministic bass-line engine as the generator tool, and a chord pad voiced from the site's chord formulas — all locked to one clock, in any key, at any tempo you can keep up with.
- What should I practise over a backing track?
- Start with the pentatonic or major scale of the track's key, playing short phrases that end on chord tones. Then try comping: mute the chord track and strum the progression yourself in time with the drums.
- Can I use the exported MIDI in my DAW?
- Yes — the export is a standard .mid file at your chosen tempo, with drums on General MIDI percussion notes, so it drops straight into GarageBand, Reaper, Ableton, or any DAW for editing and re-voicing.
- Why does the bass line change when I press "New bass line"?
- Each style's bass engine ships several authored pattern variants. The button cycles them deterministically — no randomness — so a variant you like will sound identical every time you return to it.
Every key and style
120 backing tracks — every key crossed with every style — each opening Jam Station pre-loaded and ready to play.