For the past 6 years I have been playing along with Jamey Aebersold. Today I saw that Grooveshark just ended (which is very sad), together with it's huge Aebersold library (which I think is good). Aebersold's also been removed from Spotify, I guess it's licensing issues or something like that. A few years ago I already deleted my downloaded Aebersold mp3's (a good 1000), but I still returned to Grooveshark/Spotify to occasionally play along. It's like crack.

Now why is this a good thing for me? Because playing along more than once with one of those tracks slowly killed my creativity. Imagine playing with a real-life band that does not interact with you in any way, and always plays the same thing. It kills your soul, but the convenience of just having such a band two clicks away is great, so each practice session you put on a couple of tracks just "to have some fun" and before you know it all you do is just that.

It beats putting on that dry metronome click, or seeing a chord chart and just having to fill in everything yourself, this is especially jarring for instruments that can't play chords (sax in my case, it's so damn empty). A great example of someone who can brilliantly play solo (i.e. on his own) is Sonny Rollins. Every damn line he plays is full, he actually speaks through his music, there's real emotion behind it. Aebersold goes against this, at the time of recording, the music might have been sincere. But change the context to some warm damp room, that recording coming out of a speaker, it's not sincere anymore, and that transfers to you playing along.

It might just be the hardest part when playing solo: making it interesting for yourself, trying new things, not just playing 8ths to keep track of time and chords and trying to tell something sincerely.

You can play safe and boring, or take risks. Aebersold does not pose any risks at all, he won't take any risks with you. You'll never lose the pulse (well, some tracks are quite freely so you might lose it there, e.g. the Jam Session album, ... ), but even if he does play freely, it's the same track over and over again, there is no surprise element. I hate it, but I keep playing along, because it's easier than anything else, and sometimes you play what you think is a pretty good solo. But it will be rehashed, predictable, ...

So I'm glad that Aebersold is not directly accessible to me, because it's a comfort zone that's now completely gone. I am now forced to do metronome work (which has improved my timing and with it my rhythmic vocabulary quite a lot in the past weeks, it's become fun!), playing along with actual records (which is a lot harder), and if I want to solo over some background track, I'll have to compete with the soloist of the record, I'll also have to keep better track of time because these guys take risks, a lot of them.

I also play piano, which fills the void of playing alone a lot better, I'd recommend any instrument incapable of chords to also play piano (or anything that can play chords, I guess), it truly adds another dimension to your playing and thinking.

I'm not saying Aebersold has no merits at all, it helps beginning improvisers greatly, it's useful to quickly learn some theme and get the chords in your hands, but it should do just that*. It should not be used to extensively train your soloing, because it will impose restrictions on your thinking and playing. I hope I will never play along with Aebersold again.

^{*I find that playing a new track on a piano also does this, so there's that.}