Mandolin Trainer Jam

Jam along with a backing band

The band plays the chords and you chop along in time. Nobody grades you. A recorded bass and guitar go around a chart at whatever tempo you set, and the chart loops until you stop it. That looping is the part of a jam you cannot practice alone.

Build your own chart in the app: pick a key, lay out the bars, tap a chord into each, and the band plays it back. The whole chart lives in the link, so you can send one to a friend and they can play it without an account. Sign in if you want it kept under your name.

Build your own chart

Runs in your browser. Free while it is in beta.

Jam chords and charts

Chord charts with no tune of their own: the two sets of eight bars a circle plays while somebody works out what to call next, and a tune whose notes are not written out here yet.

Tunes with a chart

65 of the tunes written out here carry a chart the band plays. The chords sit on the tune's own page, under the notation, grouped below by the key a jam calls them in. Why a jam keeps landing on those few keys is the circle of fifths, which the mandolin is tuned to.