Comments on: Great Guitar Jam Tracks… I’ll Show You Mine If You’ll Show Me Yours

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:26:56 +0000

Funny story, I was going to do tech support for band in a box when I lived in Victoria BC. Apparently they are based out of there. I ended up taking a job with Shaw Cable instead.

I sometimes jam with Guitar Pro 5. Although it’s just glorified MIDI, it sounds decent enough for me to jam along. This is usually when I am learning songs though, it’s good for playing songs that have 2 guitar parts because you can play the lead and have the full band playing the rest of the song.

I don’t have any backing tracks but I really really want to get myself a decent looping pedal. That way I can jam with myself! I’ll lay down a few tracks and save them to the memory for later. If you get a good enough pedal you can even usb them to your computer.

By: Stratoblogster

Stratoblogster — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:57:08 +0000

I have a Dish receiver and stereo in the garage, where I dial up the Sirius and Dish Blues channels and Motown stuff, whatever. Keep the remote handy, there’s always stuff to jam to. Sirius Spectrum #18 is good too. I even learned Soul Meets Body by Death Cab– my 16 year old sons buddies now think I’m pretty cool!

By: Cary

Cary — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:26:24 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation, Rick — I just perused their site and it looks like a fun program… glad to see they’ve got a Mac version as well :) Will definitely check it out.

By: Rick

Rick — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:25:45 +0000

Hey Cary,

I don’t use pre-recorded jam tracks….instead I use PGMusic’s Band-in-a-Box ( http://www.pgmusic.com ). Although the user interface is a bit clunky (perhaps for good reason), this is simply one of the coolest computer programs I have ever used. What it will do is “generate” backing tracks in a plethora of styles (included heaps of blues styles (4/4, 6/8, etc.)…jazz, rock, funk, you name it…and you can design your own styles). It will even generate solos based on the chords you type in, in the style of a particular artist….wanna jam with BB King, Pat Metheny, Eddie Van Halen, or Charlie Parker?… it’s there (I don’t know how they do it…it’s some kind of artificial intelligence). The newer versions have “real-er” sounding drums. It can even export MIDI if you want to import parts into ProTools or Sonar, and lets you really go to town…

Check it out. If you are studying jazz, it’s essential…. but for other styles, it does a good job as well. It’s actually a phenomenal songwriting and arranging tool as well (it will even generated lead sheets)…..and for the price, it’s an incredible value. People have websites with all kinds of cover songs arranged in BIAB for free download….just do a Google search.