Jazz Drums and Bass are too complicated

[reggoboy]

Hello folks.

Quite often lately, I've been trying to solo over a song, or even play the head, and I simply cannot follow iReal's bass and drum line. The drums and bass and trying to be too clever. It's almost impossible at times to find the down beat. And when you find it for one measure, it's somewhere else in a different measure. This is all fine when you have a pro jazz line and everyone is an expert at keeping their own internal clock. But that describes few of us, which is why we are using iReal Pro as a rehearsal tool.

I have tried almost every variant of Jazz. I just want something simple. "Even 8ths" and all the other ones that sound simple are not simple. I could revert to just using a metronome, but that's not why I bought iReal Pro. I bought it to help me rehearse. Instead, I'm spending all my time just trying to follow the rhythm section and figure out where to come in.

Sometimes when I play with real drummers and bassists, they get a little too clever, and I (and others) lose our place and the song goes off the rails. In those cases, I usually instruct my drummer to be a little less flashy, maybe make sure to always hit the kick on the 1, or the snare on the 4, or hi-hat on all the 1/4 notes, or something to provide a form of an anchor. But in iReal, I'm lost. You know how there's an "embellished chords" feature for the piano? Well, I feel like I want to turn OFF the "embellished drums and bass", but I don't have an option to do that. It's debilitating. I'm now constantly fighting with the tool that's supposed to be helping me.

Is it possible to get some simpler rhythm sections added? Or to simplify some of the existing rhythm sections?

For now, I'm getting by with "Rock" and "Smooth" under the Pop section. But everything I'm playing is Jazz.

Thanks for the consideration.