Hey everyone, I’m starting to jam with other people and I’ve realized that my biggest struggle is improvising bass lines on the fly. I’d love to know how you people approach practicing this with backing tracks. Do you create your own from scratch (if so, what’s your process)? Do you use an online library with bassless tracks for different styles, or do you just search on youtube?
I’ve also thought some AI tools might be pretty usefull if you could tell it something like “give me a bassless backing track with this progression in this key, in funk style with this rhythmic pattern”, but all of them look useless for this.
So, how do you usually practice this? I’ve tried some websites that let you build progressions, but they feel very limited rhythmically. Any tips or resources would be greatly appreciated!
YouTube: lots, and lots of backing track in many different styles (and over one or more chords); many of these are very good, meaning they sound musical, have a good “rhythm” section and are well produced; or, you can find backing tracks for specific (existing) songs as well
apps that let you tune out/mix out individual instruments. Examples are iRealPro and TheFeelBook; often, however, these are for mostly for jazz standards
if you want to jam to specific songs (or record covers), most people nowadays use stem splitters to prepare their own background tracks (minus bass, in most cases). Examples are Moises or natively in Logic Pro
You can use Audacity + OpenVINO plugin that comes with stem separation, open your favorite mp3 song and then remove or silence the bass stem. It’s completely free, open source and works pretty well for practice purposes. It’s not a jam track generator though.
I second what @joergkutter wrote about YouTube. I find backing tracks on YT for 12-bar blues or i just type the chord progression in Nashville Numbering with “backing track” and “no bass” and sort through the options. Also, just finding a cool/simple drum track on YT at the bpm you want to practice over is helpful to come up with your own bass lines.
was just going to start my own thread on this so thought id add to this instead…..
i was sure id have access to some backing tracks through doing the course, ive also paid for talking bass ‘creative bassist’ and thought thered be some tracks in resources or whatever but cant find any anywhere. same with a ‘becomeabassist’ course i did. i guess the answer is theres none included in these courses and as suggested in #1 we need to go search for them on youtube?
i too am looking to mimic a jam, just 3 or 4 minutes each of different chord progressions with drums etc, and we have to come up with our own lines using pentatonics, neighbour notes and the like.
Scroll that page a little and you will find the Jam tracks. The ones from Module 15 (Jam with the band) might be what you are looking for. You can find audio tracks for all songs from the course.
In TalkingBass, you can find backing tracks inside your course, and also in the Resources. When you’re logged in, click Resources in the top menu (by the side of My courses), and the last item on that page is Drum Tracks.
For Creative bassist, I bet the tracks are at the same place I see on the course I’m going through there (Groove Trainer). Click My Courses, click your course’s name, and at the first page of the course there is some text and the Course Materials. It has links to backing tracks, PDFs, etc. You can download the backing tracks or open them from a Dropbox link. If you can’t see it, contact Mark, I’m sure he can help you.