If you’ll recall my recent rant entitled “The Metronome Misconception“, I led you to the inevitable conclusion that you’ve been duped into thinking you should be doing your scales and pentatonic licks to a metronome.  So excited and happy was I, to shake sense into you, that I unwittingly left you standing there in a vacuous world filled with deep depression and confusion – because I didn’t supply you with any examples!

Well – here ya go! I made a simple loop just for you. It’s in the key of G Major (or E Minor if you’re so inclined). Try doing an ascending pentatonic scale to this backing track. NO WAIT – better yet, do a 4 four note pentatonic lick, to the beat –  starting  on the high E (smallest string), play E D B A over and over for the duration of the loop – let the chord progression change underneath you as you you continue playing only those four notes.

here’s the file if you want to down load it: 130BPM_GMAJ_PRACTICE

WHY Did You Make Me Do That, You Sad Sorry Little Man!?

Because it drives home the reason for replacing your metronome – you want to hear the chord progression move under your simple 4 notes, and change the musical context to what you’re playing. You’re not playing ANYTHING different – but the chords under you are changing the meaning of those 4 simple notes. You must train your ears to hear and react to this. A drum track does not supply this context shifting that you need – and that is, in a nutshell, why this topic should be of great interest to you.

So how does one make a backing track? Well… first off, you need to know what a good backing track consists of.

A good backing track

Contains a Simple Chord Progression 

 

It is not enough to replace your metronome with a drum machine. All that accomplishes is to subdivide your metronome… you want a chord progression. Something that changes the meaning of every note you play. It should take you over at least 2 chord changes, but I recommend three, and no more. You want to keep it simple – that is,  don’t pull out your Mozart music thinking that the more complex you make your track, the faster you’ll learn… that is just wishful thinking and will end up frustrating you to no end.  Start easy. Always, always, start slow n easy. Remember the end-goal. A simple track to practice scales and licks to.

Is Flexible – Create it Using MIDI Instruments

 

Don’t plan on practicing to an .mp3 export. Create your backing track within your DAW, set your loop markers, and play along. The  reason being, you want something you can create for yourself that you can adjust both the chord progression and tempo on so you’re not having to download / export an .mp3 every time you bump up you metronome speed. In fact, you want something that is your own so you can write a song from it some day Ideally, you should have 2 instrument tracks – a drum VST like EZ Drummer and some sort of bass or piano VST – devote each one to its own track, and set loop markers and simply loop your tracks. However, if all you have is your guitar, well then so be it.

Is Short and Made For Looping!

It is so easy to discourage yourself by getting into a mindset that says “my backing track must be perfect – it must, in fact, be an entire song in duration, and it must be professionally mastered!” You’re a musician, so naturally you’re one of those egotistical perfectionists! Oh, I want to slap you upside the head so badly right now. You’ll spend  a month creating this demon that will inevitably chew up your motivation and spit you out like sour milk.  Don’t be tempted to fall back on the metronome just because it’s easy such that you click the “on” button and you’re done. Bah! Humbug! Snap out of it man! Instead, smash that perfectionist in you to little pieces. Make it short – make it quick! I created my backing track in all of 30 minutes – AND I double tracked the mofo. Booyah. Here it is in my DAW! See how simple this sucker is?

So What’s Going On Under the Hood?

Well, open up that image – As you can see, I’m using Cubase 5sx. Nothing special and nothing you can’t do in your own DAW of choice – Reaper is free for you PC users and I think it also ports to Mac. Some Mac users might even gravitate towards Garage Band,  but I don’t want to focus so much on what a good DAW is or is not.  So read on to learn about how, conceptually, to create a quick/simple backing track for you to practice with.   First of all, notice that I’ve created 3 audio tracks. You only need two: your drums or click track, and your chord progression track.

I  had an urge to throw in a second guitar (double tracked it) to help fill out the rhythm section a bit. If you’re using MIDI instruments, you won’t need to do this – and given the fact these loops are supposed to be small, even if you chose to create one with guitars, it only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, once you get used to the process.

So the first track, labeled Drums, began as an EZ Drummer pattern – it filled exactly 1 bar with a simple drum beat. I repeated this pattern for about 1 minutes worth of track, then I decided to do a simple 3 bar progression. Ideally I would have used a piano VST, or some synth, but I had my guitar fired up already and it was just easier to strum out some notes. The disadvantage for me having done this is that now my track (the one in the audio player above) is locked into 130 BPM because the guitars are in .wav form, not MIDI. If I try to change the Tempo of my project, the guitar audio I recorded will not be in-time with the altered drums. So don’t do as I did.

Lay out a SIMPLE  chord progression. I did G C D for a few bars, then I moved to an E – G as a bridge. The reason I did an E-G bridge is because my ultimate goal is to lead myself back into the opening G-C-D chord progression so I can loop it – and that was an easy choice. My focus is not on building the perfect backing track – but giving myself something other than a metronome to play to – that should be your focus too. Your perfection should be focused on your playing, not your backing track – remember that – REMEMBER THAT!   Once you have your chord progression laid out – it’s a good idea to revisit your drums – there shouldn’t be more than say  16 bars of drum track, so it should go quick with some clever copy-pasting. Your goal is to create indicators that you’re changing from one chord progression to another.

In the picture above, I have drawn out 1 – 6 below the bars/tracks. At the end of each progression, I added a little drum nuance so that when I’m listening to my loop, I can hear approximately where I’m at in the loop to help me predict the the upcoming chord changes by ear. You could color-code your tracks like I did if you prefer looking at it, but I highly recommend that you wean yourself from visual indicators and rely solely on hearing and reacting to what you hear.

How To Practice To Your Track

Now that you have your backing track – trim it! wack off the beginning, and anything that comes after that doesn’t tie directly back into your beginning. You saw in my example that I purposefully created a bridge consisting of 2 chords – E and G. Well I wacked off the end of my track right there so that I could set my loop markers to end on the last beat of the last chord in that progression. In that way, I can set my DAW to loop that sucker til I’m gray – er, I’m already turning gray, so you um… dang, you know what I mean.

With your DAW now skilfully looping, start off by doing a simple lick that focuses on the root note of your backing track. After you can play that lick comfortably to the beat, move that lick in key, which means adapting the pattern to remain in key, to another location on the neck.

If you do this consistently, and learn the feel and sound of that musical context shift well enough, then you’ve learned a very important lesson indeed! You’ve learned where a good location on your guitar is to go when playing in the key of GMaj, EMinor! Now who could ask for anything more? Well now- excited? You should be! Create the same backing track chord progression, but transposed to the most common key signatures. If you’ve recorded your chord progression in MIDI, that should be EZ!!! Go for a DMajor, AM, E Major, etc. – Try those same licks you learned for G, and get to learn where to go to get those sounds whenever you play in those keys. I’m gonna make musicians outta you yet!

That’s basically it. Nothing to it really. Keep it Simple. Keep it Stupid. Um, yah… something like that.

You should come away from this article understanding that

1. Creating your own backing track is an essential part of learning. The best artists in the world craft their own tools because they know what their tools need to meet their unique needs and  fit their personal style of craftsmanship. The same with backing tracks. As you learn to create backing tracks,  you will learn what areas you need to focus on to improve your own progress. As you get better at creating these backing tracks, you’ll find yourself ready to compose ans sketch out entire songs using a this technique as a foundation.

2. Keeping it simple is key to learning. If you spend all your time making a backing track, you’ll discourage yourself into not making one, and possible regressing to relying on a metronome again. But metronomes are void of musical context – so you’ll end up naive about adapting to chord progressions – so keep it simple. You don’t have to make a masterpiece. You just need to make a few chords to back you.

3. Using MIDI instruments will make your backing tracks flexible. Despite the fact I used a guitar in creating my backing track – you should use MIDI. Why? So your one-backing track can be modified simply by changing the project tempo – you now have essentially 300 backing tracks for the effort of one – one for every BPM that is. To change your backing track tempo, just change your DAW’s project tempo and hit play – whala!

In my next articles, I plan to explore ways of practicing to backing tracks, then a divergence into other home recording topics such as double-tracking guitars to get that professional sound. These and many more topics to come.

I hope you found this article valuable. As always, if you have questions – sign up in the forum and ask away.

Cheers!