Music Maker Jam

Even with the latest digital advancements, making music isn’t easy. The fact that you have so many virtual instruments, effects and plugins at your disposal can be overwhelming for some, discouraging them to ever take up music production. While I’m not going to argue with that fact, I will point out that maybe one shouldn’t engage in such a process by first approaching the most lauded music program out there.

You must remember that creating music (or any art form, for that matter) should be first and foremost about the enjoyment that comes from it. And while Music Maker Jam is nothing but professional, it’s certainly all about enjoyment.

In Music Maker Jam, you begin by selecting your preferred music styles. You automatically begin with dubstep and there’s no way to change that; while I’m tempted to give the program just one star for this, I will admit that it features some pretty cool pre-Skrillex dubstep sounds, so I’m just going to let it slide.

You can choose three more styles for free, from the likes of ambient, house, techno, drum’n’bass, metal, movie scores, hip-hop, samba, Christmas music and basically most of the genres that you can think off. If you want more than four styles, you have to pay for them or wait for 30 days, after which you can change them again for free. I normally don’t write about pricing in reviews, but here I wanted to suggest that you should just go with the free stuff at first, so that you can get better acquainted with the program.

When you access a style, Music Maker Jam will automatically start playing a few instruments. You can’t really change the way they are played, but you can adjust tempo, play with the harmony and with effects. You have eight channels where you can change instruments as you like; for example, you can start by making a hardstyle project, but add some drums from a techno pack. Also, you can add as many parts as you want to your projects, so that you can create proper intros, breakdowns, climaxes and so on.

Music Maker Jam is in no way a DAW, but it will let save your projects, record them and save them as MP3 files. Even if it’s just for fun, it’s still powerful enough inspire your future in music production.