Quartet Play-Along Seminar Suggestion

Hi @Hayden

What do you think about a seminar where you would play a handful of beginner jazz standards using the Quartet app? It seems like most standards are expected to be played in mid-tempo swing style. Perhaps you could show us examples of playing a couple of our beginner standards in low-tempo ballad style as well?

Thanks!
Nivaldo

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Hi @Nivaldo :wave:

I think that’s a great idea. I have scheduled the seminar for next Wednesday:

I’ll choose 2 or 3 ballad jazz standards and make sure they are tunes that we have covered in the beginner section.

Looking forward to it!

Cheers,
Hayden

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Hi,
The Quartet app sounds interesting. I hope to be at the live event and suggest Georgia on My Mind.
Greeting
Orlando

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Hi @orlandoceccarelli :wave:

Thanks for suggesting Georgia On My Mind… we will cover that tune in the session.

I haven’t used Quartet with that tune before but I just checked and it is included in the “Vol 1” jazz standards bundle.


To learn more about Quartet, you can check out this forum post:

As I mention above there are different Quartet App ‘volumes’ - 6 in total. The 1st volume contains 150 jazz standard backing tracks and I have found this selection of tunes to be perfect for my practice needs.

If you search “Quartet” in the Apple/Android Store, you will see the different versions, and I’m sure that the tune library in Version 1 is perfectly adequate for you.


We used the Quartet app in some of my recent seminars on medium tempo improvisation, here’s an example:

and also in the following course:

See you in the seminar next week!

Cheers,
Hayden

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Hi @Nivaldo and @orlandoceccarelli :wave:

The seminar chapters have been added, and I also cleaned up the section towards the end where my microphone was accidentally muted.

Here is the archived seminar page:


Rootless Voicings PDF

I have created a PDF with rootless voicing examples for “Georgia On My Mind”.

Please note that this is not a transcription, but rather rootless voicing options (different inversions and variations etc…) and added some variety to the rootless voicing choices in each A section in the PDF.

One of the key points from the seminar was that learning and internalising the rootless voicings shapes is a very important step to ‘free up our mental bandwidth’ for right hand melodic embellishment and improvisation.

I recommend to cycle around and around the song using Quartet App. Set the repeats to 10 or 20 and just cycle around until these voicing shapes become comfortable and intuitive.

The main benefit of rootless voicings is that there is very little movement between them. Usually the notes move by half or whole steps.

If you play through these progressions, you will see that the hand movement is kept to a minimum:

3625 & 1625

36251

3625 & 1625

You will see slightly different variations for the dominant chords, such as natural 9th, b9th, #9th, and #5#9 - which provide a slight difference in color/tension but remember that the underlying chord quality and guide tones (3rds and 7ths) are the same throughout all of these examples.


Recordings & Suggested Listening

Here is the trio recording that we were analysing in the seminar:

This can be found in the Spotify Playlist for “Georgia On My Mind”.


Seminar Feedback & Suggestions

If you have any feedback on this seminar format - specifically pulling in the Quartet chord visualisation - please let me know.

I hope it was useful and easy to follow along compared with looking at the regular score/chord chart.

Any ideas for future seminars don’t hesitate to let me know!

Hayden

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Is Quartet not on Android, or am I just overlooking it?

This is from Grok:
"Yes. The Quartet jazz standards play-along app is currently only for Apple devices: iPhone, iPad, and Apple silicon (M-series) Macs.Its official site (quartetapp.com) describes it as the live jazz standards play-along app for iPhone and iPad, and states that a purchase lets you run it on all your iOS devices and compatible Macs with the same Apple ID. App Store listings match that (for example Quartet 1).

There is no current full version on Google Play.They did release limited “Lite” Android versions of volumes 1 and 2 in January 2025 (same audio and mixes, but without real-time key/tempo changes and with static chord sheets). Those were pulled in April 2025 after complaints that they lacked the main iOS features and risked poor reviews.

Developers have said they want a full Android version but that device fragmentation makes the intensive audio features hard to support reliably; as of late 2025–2026 comments and site updates, it was still being reworked and not available. Official updates in September 2026 still refer only to the App Store."

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Hi @rodrigom and @Nivaldo :wave:

Thanks for letting me know that Quartet is not available on Android.

As a workaround for Android users, I have uploaded the videos that I created for the seminar to this Google Drive folder:

These videos have the backing track and a blue overlay that follows the chord symbols… so it’s essentially the same layout as Quartet.

There are limitations compared to the app in that the number of chorus repeats cannot be changed, and also the tempo/instruments cannot be changed.

Let’s hope Quartet relaunches their Android version in the near future!


Backing Track Audio Files

I have also added the audio files below, although I imagine that the videos above will be a little more useful for beginners, as they show the chord symbols too.

If you click the ‘3-dot’ icon on the audio player below, you can download the backing track audio:

“Georgia” - 70bmp - 3 choruses:

“Misty” - 60bmp - 3 choruses w/ Sax on final chorus:


When hosting this style of seminar, I need to create the backing track videos manually so that the visual will neatly fit inside the white area in the seminar layout.

Therefore, I will always share the videos afterwards to ensure Android users have something to practice with. I have labelled the backing track video files with the tempo in BPM, and also the number of repeats.

I hope that helps, and any issues with the files just let me know.

Thanks for your responses!
Just wanted to let you know that I contacted UK Music Apps and they mentioned they are committed to producing the very latest version of Quartet (v3.2) on Android, but there is no date right now.