I have been checking out a site called bluesbackingtracks.com and asked to review the site. Many of us have students that are learning scales to play with accompaniment. This site offers the accompaniment in form of a band in many different keys and styles. By emailing the author for a demo, he quickly sends you as an email attachment a five minute demo. The purchase price for a full twenty minute track is $9.95. The quality is good. I have been trying the demo out with students improvising with the pentatonic scale, and it has worked quite well. I can spend my time helping the student as he playing to the demo.
I would like your opinion and review for this site and services also.
Below is the comment sent by the author of the site:
For a long time I taught improvisation by just playing a tune and I have the student improvise using a given scale while I played the backing. This was a satisfactory way for the student to try out licks and phrases and get acquainted with scales and grooves and expressing themselves, but, it’s by no means the best way.
With one-on-one teaching, the fact that the student can SEE you, and HEAR you playing what they want to learn creates the ’social proof’ that it’s possible for them to do it too. This is a profoundly active part of the learning process and is probably the most powerful reason why people take private lessons - the see/hear do ‘principle’.
And, for any teacher, teaching your students how to improvise and express themselves freely on their instruments is often considered the acme of your teaching role!
With improvisation being such an important part of your students’ growth, creating a setting to teach improvisation skills is of paramount importance. This is why I created my Blues Backing Tracks - so I can actually improvise while the student sees and hears me (instead of playing the backing) and they can then instantaneously play as well, this way you create the optimum environment for learning how to improvise.
The Blues Backing Tracks that I’ve written come in different grooves, keys and provide the perfect setting for teaching improvisation. One of the main benefits of the tracks is that they are long, so you spend the better part of a half hour lesson just jamming away - which is awesome for both you and your students!
You can play a lick and get the student to copy it, or vice-versa. You can concentrate on ’story-telling’ and using silence in phrases to increase the impact of the solo. In short, you can basically get into a serious groove with your student as you help improve their improv!
For more info:
Backing tracks are probably the most useful thing that I employ with my electric students. There are many books in most music stores that contain full band tracks with tab sheets for usually around 9 or 10 tracks in different keys and different styles. Blues you can use, is one of them, but there are a large number of books/cd's that are available.
But I have to say that the most useful tool of all that I've come across is the Jam Station by Boss. The problem is they stopped making it. I got mine about 6 years ago. Not only do you have blues tracks, but jazz, rock, country, fusion, r&b, world, and some others that I'm forgetting. The songs can be looped. Songs can be composed and stored. Tempo's can be slowed down or sped up. It's a terrific tool, and of course it's been replaced with newer technology that seems much more complicated. You can find them on eBay for around $240 or less. Several of my students bought them off eBay and work with them all the time.
Truefire publishing also does video lessons with some well known artists such as Larry Carlton who has a 4 disc DVD with tab, and backing tracks. I was working with one of my students on that tonight.
The biggest problem I've found for students is that they play in a vacuum. Backing tracks will help improve their time ( it acts like a metronome )and give them something to relate their music to. I'm a big fan of any kind of backing tracks.
by Larry Allen Brown — Fri Jun 13, 2008 @ 8:02 pm