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How to Practice Guitar with Backing tracks
I recently began meeting with a student who had been studying with a couple of other teachers, but wasn’t getting what he wanted out of lessons. He’s got real passion for blues and rock guitar, along with dedication and strong musical instincts, including a natural sense of rhythm and phrasing. But despite being introduced to a lot of scales and riffs, he wasn’t able to improvise with songs.
This problem is common among students learning lead guitar. My new student simply hadn’t been practicing in a musical context. Practicing scales up and down the guitar, or repeating a riff, or experimenting with making your own melodies is going to produce limited results unless you do these in the context of real-time music. The pitch of each note you play gains meaning from its relation to the chords and key centers you are playing with. And the rhythm of your melodies has to lock in with the rhythm of the music.
One way to practice this is with a partner. You can take turns as rhythm guitarists, supporting one another practicing leads. But what about when you are practicing alone? The solution is to practice with loops or backing tracks.
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Several looping pedals are available on the market. Generally, a loop pedal goes in line between your guitar and amp, and works as follows. Suppose you want to practice with a repeating 4-bar section of music. You begin playing the rhythm guitar part, and on the first beat of the first bar you press the record button on your pedal. When you get to the first beat of the first repeat of those four bars, you press another button which ends the recording and turns the 4 bars you have recorded into a continuously playing loop. Voila, now while you practice your scales, or riffs, or improvised melodies along with the loop, you are working on your timing, rhythm, and feel as you play.
One of the simplest and most affordable loop pedals is the Boss Loop Station. For a comprehensive list of looping devices available, as well as a wealth of looping tips and tricks, check out the website Looper’s Delight.
Looping can also be done on your computer with Ableton Live, Garageband on your Mac, and other audio recording & editing programs. One advantage to hard-drive based looping is that you can store more loops and compile them in a practice library.
You can also loop sections of songs on your hard drive, and many programs and apps such as Capo and The Amazing Slowdowner will allow you to slow down your music files without changing pitch.If you’re having trouble figuring out that Charlie Parker solo and playing it up to speed, use your loop to isolate and repeat sections of the solos and slow them down for transcription and practice.
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How to Practice Guitar with Backing tracks
Download 48 FREE backing tracks from Brenna Method
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