Modern technology has not only changed the way consumers purchase and listen to music, it’s changed the way music is recorded. There’s a certain charm (and street cred) to analog recording, but most bands, be they playing stadiums or the bar around the corner from your apartment, record digitally. Plus, in the age of Twitter, fans are closer to their favorite bands and artists than ever before.
A new app called WholeWorldBand is bringing all these innovations together, allowing aspiring musicians to jam with each other and to (basically) record with artists such as Foo Fighters drummer and Taylor Hawkins and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. The way it works is that users purchase “tokens,” with prices ranging from $1.99 to $17.99. From there, amateur musicians can begin their own session or start a new one utilizing tracks uploaded by anyone from first-year guitar students to the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood. (According to Rolling Stone, Hawkins recorded a drum track for the app that users can build a song around, and Manzera a guitar track.) Utilizing the musical “stems” at their disposal, users can build tunes, and then brag that they wrote those tunes during a jam session with the drummer from Foo Fighters.
WholeWorldBand is a free app that’s currently available on iPhones, iPads, and Windows and MacOS computers.