David's Tip of the Day: Quadrupedal your Jam Track Options

If you like to work with jam tracks, but find that you're lacking in some keys, or find that a particular jam track is perfect for a song you're working on, but a little bit too fast and not in the correct key, there's a simple solution. Place the jam track into a program like the Amazing Slow Downer (www.ronimusic.com), change the key (and tempo if you want) and then save the file. Done, you now have another version of the jam track.

Keep in mind that if you change the key more than three half steps (three semitones) it gets a little gobbledygook, so there's limits to this technique. I did this last night with a student wanting to jam on the chromatic. I needed a jam in D and found that I didn't have one I liked for our purpose. I did find one in C that worked and moved it up to half steps and away we went.