I’m working heavily on ear training, using scales/modes and harmony lately. I’m looking for a good resource of free pre-recorded chord progressions and “jam tracks” I guess. Does anyone have any good suggestions? I plan to get a looper this holiday season but the one I want/can afford won’t be available until mid Novemeber.
Thank you in advance!
Type “backing tracks” into Youtube. There’s hundreds of them.
Most of those are songs, I was hoping someone had a more generic suggestion. Thanks.
It’s possible that the results you see in the search are different from the ones I see, so I thought I’d point out some of the channels that I was referring to:
YT Jam Tracks
Sebastien Zunino
Elevated
Quist
They mostly aren’t known songs. They’re just extended grooves with one or two progressions each, with provided chord changes. They do have a full rhythm section, so they aren’t totally generic because they are often associated with a specific genre. There are plenty of other channels as well, if you have a more specific genre in mind.
For example, this playlist by Benjamin Harrison focuses on specific common jazz chord progressions:
Fundamentals
His other playlists are pretty great, too.
Some of these are the YouTube equivalents of the old Aebersold tapes I used many decades ago:
Jazz Standards
Learn Jazz Standards playalongs
I believe most of these actually are Aebersolds:
Charlie Goodman
Here’s a good one for practicing changes over a more modern rhythm section:
These are intended for piano players, but music is music.
It’s possible that I’m not interpreting the words ‘songs’ and ‘generic’ in the way that you mean them, though. If by ‘generic’ you mean repeated alternating chords with no genre or style, you can sign up for this free course (I have no affiliation, though I did work through the course), which includes some downloads of chord progressions. They are synth, bass, and drums, but I wouldn’t say they have any kind of a genre association or style, in any sense of the word. They are useful for harmonic workouts, though.
Yeah, those are some of my usual sources too. Busy day here but I’ll try to come back here and post a few favorites from elsewhere as well. There’s a TON of good backing tracks out there.
Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for. I was getting different results, probably based on my viewing habits, such as it goes these days. I’m not much of a jazz guy, so the more complex ones are too much for me currently, but the basic stuff will be great.
Cool. Glad it helped. The first four links are a good bet for you then.
There’s lots of other channels besides these, though. So you should be able to find hard rock, hip hop, reggae, klezmer, or whatever your preference is. If there’s a specific genre you’re looking for and can’t find it, let us know.
Thanks again.
Basically my story goes like this, started playing in 86, played for 20+ years. Things happened, stopped playing in 2008 because reasons. Didn’t touch the guitar or music for more than 10 years. Picked it up again 3 and a half months ago. Forgot almost everything except songs I played a lot and some technique. So I’m basically learning the guitar over from scratch. My approach is different now, and I mostly working on making music instead of obsessing over technique and scales and what not. Those things are important and I work on them too, but with music as the center of my focus so doing a lot of western theory and ear training right now. Learning scales and triads and building my knowledge back up, but I needed to step back and start to actually use what I’m re-learning in a musical context so I don’t get stuck in muscle memory playing and follow what I hear etc and this is the key to that. So thank you very much again, and as I get into more complex things again like jazz and the lydian chromatic concepts and stuff I’m sure I’ll be asking again, as it’s hard to find people where I live who play anything other than country/rock/contemporary pop.
I am now off to work on my phrasing and ideas.