Play along Jazz

In module 7 @JoshFossgreen mentions that when he wants to learn a new scale he plays along with some jazz. I think that’s a great idea. Anyone know where one could find some jazz (with the key noted) to play along with?

6 Likes

Hi Helix, welcome on board! (you would like to introduce yourself here, so the community can welcome you)

About tabs, I like this site, it seems to be quite accurate.

3 Likes

If you google around you can usually find sheet music for just about anything, unfortunately, much of it is in tab, but there is some with musical notation as well (and key signature). It’s nearly impossible to find any sheet music with bass clef, so you just have to convert the treble clef to bass clef.

2 Likes

One nice thing about tabs versus random sheet music is you don’t need to worry about this :slight_smile:

Tabs don’t have that issue. Then again, tabs don’t have note duration, so they have other issues.

3 Likes

Musescore 3 is open source and you can set it up to show both staffs and tabs to allow for ease transposing. it’s not hard and is a good skill to learn. Plus, most of those types of software have the music theory rules built in, so if you are not familiar with them, it manages it for you.

3 Likes

Some do!

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ is my goto when I need a tab. Pro and Official tabs have note durations.

Examples:

4 Likes

This is my favorite source for bass backing tracks, Quist – Funk Bass Backing Track (Gm) - YouTube

He has jam tracks for a bunch of different styles, including jazz. He mostly does guitar jam tracks but the playlist linked above should have a bunch of his stuff for bass. Chord progressions/scales to use are included in the descriptions.

There is also an app called iReal Pro for both PC and Mac that has thousands of jazz standards with chord charts and backing tracks to jam along to. It’s only like $10 and I’ve already gotten that much value out of it since I bought it recently. You can even create your own custom backing tracks pretty easily. They also have a cheaper app for iphone/android. Great for jamming on scales.

6 Likes

@bjams I’ve used some of his too…definitely good stuff

3 Likes

Hey @Helix, welcome to the forum! I’d have to watch back to be sure, but I don’t think that’s what I said exactly. Jazz isn’t easy to just jump into without a bunch of study. Some non-jazz backing tracks would probably be better for introductory scale exploring!

I second the iReal Pro recommendation though, if you need flexible jazz backing tracks, very useful tool!

5 Likes

I have an account at ultimate guitar tabs too, but it’s time consuming to have to convert the tab to notation so I can play it.
I had cancelled my account a few months ago, and gave that reason for my cancellation. They told me they’re looking into adding notation in the future, and extended my membership for a year at no charge.

4 Likes

Looks like MuseScore will convert tabs to notation (not sure, it may just be the other direction). Of course this relies on the tab having enough info.

https://musescore.org/en/guitar

3 Likes

Thanks for the recommendation, that looks nice!

Reaper will also do this for MIDI - you can view MIDI as a score. But obviously not for tabs.

3 Likes

Oh nice! And excellent customer care!

3 Likes