Jam Tracks

by Christopher Flynn — Friday, October 30, 2009

So what is your ultimate goal in playing the harmonica? You could have a lot of reasons, but one of them is to probably play with other musicians. The harmonica is nice by itself but to really experience it's full potential, you need to play with other instruments. However, if you are a beginner or even just not sure of your abilities to play with others, you may be hesitant to seek out a band to play with. How can you get experience playing with others?

Well the first method is to just play over songs you have. This works and doesn't cost you anything because you already own the songs. If they have a harmonica part just play over it. If you look around, you can find sites that list various blues songs, what key they are in and what the recommended harmonica to play is.

However there are other ways to play with a band and they are called Jam Tracks. What are they? Well basically it's the backing track of a song. You can find a lot targeted towards guitar players trying to solo, these work well for the harmonica as well. They typically have a bass, drums and rhythm guitar. In fact right now, guitarcenter.com is having a contest for guitarists and they have jam tracks for you to download. Now their intent is for a guitarist to play over these and submit them to their contest but as a harmonica player, I don't see any reason you can't download them and use them for practice. (Note: I don't know what the legality of using these outside the contest but I'd imagine for practicing they should be fine but then again, I'm not a lawyer.) You have to figure out the key on your own but they are free quality Jam Tracks.

Another good set of Jam Tracks is Adam Gussow's Blues Harmonica Play Along Sessions or his Blues Harmonica Jam Tracks (acoustic). The first set also includes a (approx.) 1 hour lesson from Adam on how to play along. This is a great set for beginners because it gives you what key the songs are in as well as Adam's tips on how to listen to the song and what harmonica to play it in. I don't have the second set yet and it does not come with a lesson from Adam. The first set does not include vocals so you can make up your own words if you'd like. The second set does include vocals which would be good practice to learn how to play around the volcals on a song.

Another decent collection of Jam Tracks is from harmonicaacademy.com. In order to download them you have to subscribe but you can play them from the website without subscribing. First you pick the tempo (how fast the song is and the groove), then the key. According to the site, these were created with a piece of software called Band in a Box. So of course another option would be to buy Band in a Box and use it to make your own. However this is a little pricey so it is not something I've tried.

Mac users can also use GarageBand which is part of Apple's iLife suite which comes bundled with all new Macs. To do so, launch GarageBand and goto File->New, then select "Magic GarageBand" on the left. In the main window, you should now see different genres. Pick one and hit new, after it loads, you should see a stage with some instruments on it. If you want to record yourself, change your instrument to line in and optionally select an effect or "No Effects". You can also select the other instruments and change them. Play around with it and hit the play button to preview your Jam Track. You can also hit the record button to record yourself playing along with the Jam Track. You can also open the song in normal GarageBand with the "Open in GarageBand" button. Though using it is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Another source that is not currently up (though the page is still there) is the 12 Bar Blues backing tracks provided by Lawrence Fritts. Apparently someone took them and sold them as their own work so he took them down but if you look, you might find them around. The site originally said there were no restrictions on using them but I don't think it would be right to resell them. (However using them for practice would be perfectly acceptable.)

freejamming.com has a neat tool where you pick a mode and a key and it pops open a new window with a MIDI jam track. You can change the beat and it also shows you what chord it's playing. They also have a link to blues jam tracks in various keys which is more MIDI jam tracks. MIDI songs are created and played all synthesized on the computer. I believe this is also how GarageBand makes their backing tracks.

Another cool site is harmonicajam.com which is an online place for people to jam. They have two sections, Main Stage Backing Tracks and Open Mic Backing Tracks. They usually list the key, chord structure, temp, and other information. You can upload your own recordings or listen to what others put up. The different backing tracks are licensed differently but the website should tell you what they are. You should be ok to use them for your own personal practice sessions.

This should be enough to get you started, if you know of any other Jam Tracks, please let us know in the comments.