Roland releases V-Drums Friend Jam Kids

Roland is pleased to announce V-Drums Friend Jam Kids, a free software application for children to build drumming skills and compare their progress with other V-Drums users around the world. A special version of Roland’s acclaimed V-Drums Friend Jam software designed for young drummers, V-Drums Friend Jam Kids provides a fun way to practice and enjoy playing V-Drums.

As the industry leader in electronic percussion, Roland offers a wide-ranging lineup of V-Drums sets, from the flagship TD-30KV V-Pro Series to the home-friendly HD-3 V-Drums Lite. V-Drums Friend Jam Kids helps children and their families communicate with each other through practicing with any V-Drums set. By accessing a child’s “player page” with their computer or smart phone, family members can easily check practice time, scoring, and more to keep up with playing progress and encourage improvement.

Since its release two years ago, V-Drums Friend Jam has become an extremely popular social networking tool for drummers, with over 30,000 users to date in 175 countries and regions worldwide. The software allows players to share scores and interact with each other via their Twitter accounts while practicing the drums.

V-Drums Friend Jam Kids is a completely self-contained application that does not require Twitter to share scores. Its practice features and functions are similar to V-Drums Friend Jam, but are tailored more to children who are just starting to learn the drums. The software supports 13 different languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and more. 

Available for both Windows and Mac OS X, V-Drums Friend Jam Kids helps young drummers improve their skills with enjoyable songs and fun practice evaluation features. It offers a friendly and inviting user interface, plus a continuously growing library of play-along songs that can be downloaded directly within the application from the web. Included are traditional children’s tunes like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” classic pieces such as “Air on the G String,” and a variety of musical grooves in popular styles, all specially arranged for playing along on the V-Drums. Users can also add MP3 files stored on their computer to jam with their favorite songs.

By connecting their V-Drums kit to their computer via USB or MIDI, players can capture and evaluate individual performance elements such as rhythm, technique, and variation, then see how their results compare with other V-Drums Friend Jam Kids users around the world via the Internet.

New Metronome and Beat Guide functions help developing players build their basic drumming skills in an interactive way. In addition, score rankings, achievement awards, and a calendar feature that tracks playing time motivate them to reach practice goals.

The V-Drums Friend Jam Kids software application is available as a free download at http://vdru.ms/kids.