Creating Your Own Backing Tracks

In a recently published blog post, I spoke about using a basic home recording set-up to record your own backing tracks. Today we will be discussing this in more detail, highlighting a few key points to consider, best practices and different pathways you can take.

Please bear in mind that the technical aspect of recording and creating your own backing tracks is not up for discussion today, instead we’ll just focus on creating something cool.

Instruments

Guitar and Bass

Hopefully you will have read my previous blog post, and have amassed most, if not all, of the components we discussed. Obviously, you should have your guitar and some form of amplification, be it a physical amplifier or a digital model. Recording the guitar is the easy part, and I will not be discussing the dos and don’ts today. Let us assume that you know how to do this adequately, if not there are plenty of resources available online to assist you (check out the forums or manuals for your DAW/interface too!). 

As for the bass, you have two options. The first is to use an actual bass and find a free bass preamp plugin online - this will give you the best sound in my opinion. If you do not have a bass guitar, you can use your electric and pitch the recording down an octave. I think all good DAWs have an included plugin for pitch shifting. It is not going to be a fantastic sound, but it will suffice.

Drums

Depending on how in-depth you want to go with your creation, you may or may not want to add drums. If you are using MIDI software, you can use pre-programmed loops or a MIDI keyboard to input a groove.

You can also find or purchase drum loops as audio files, if you’d prefer that. Just be aware that you cannot really tailor them to your own needs, so will be slightly restrictive. 

Keyboards and Other Virtual Instruments 

There are so many virtual instruments available that are both free and sound great. Check out the previous blog post for my personal recommendation, but I encourage you to do some research of your own - perhaps check out some examples.

Using virtual instruments allows you to produce something with a sound you would find it difficult to include otherwise. This can be a lone violin or an entire string ensemble, synth or organ sounds and even brass instruments. 

Organizing Your Project

Everyone has their own preference here, and regardless of what order you create each track in, try to organize the tracks as follows. This is my own opinion, and I even color coordinate each family of instruments (this is entirely optional!).

• Drums,

• Percussion (if included)

• Bass (or whatever you substitute it with),

• Keyboards,

• Guitars,

• Strings,

• Everything else.

Having an organized project is helpful, as a cluttered view can be distracting and potentially demotivating. Also, if you hear something on playback that you do not like, you can find it easily. 

Types of Backing Track

We already know that you are creating backing tracks for the purposes of practice, but let us discuss different types of backing that you might come across, or need. 

Cover Songs

Some older songs, especially those recorded to tape, might be tuned slightly above or below A440Hz, meaning that even though the musicians on the record are in tune with each other, and you would be tuned correctly in their present day, combining the two can be jarring. Sometimes the difference is less than a semitone; it can be really annoying if you cannot match the song by just playing a riff one fret lower!

In this situation, it might be preferable for you to create your own backing track. If you are lucky, you may even be able to find stems of the original song, or MIDI files in the case of drums and virtual instruments, to help you along. I know many people who do this to create karaoke versions of different tunes for themselves. 

Purely for Practice

You may occasionally want to practice a specific scale, phrase or technique over a certain chord progression or tonality. If you cannot seem to find an existing example online, you will have to make your own. You can make this very simple, and just record guitar and nothing else.

In the past, I have made tracks for students that are created as if they were in a real jam session. The idea is that there is a number of bars with no lead guitar, and then an equal number of bars where there is some melody but no rhythm guitar. This allows them to practice both disciplines under one umbrella and, I must confess, I enjoyed playing with those tracks as much as they did. 

Helping Out Band Members

If you are writing original music, and you wish to provide something for the other band members to work on but tailored to their needs instead of your own, you can create an entire track and then simply render different versions whilst omitting whatever instrument you need to.

Making Your Tracks Sound Good

I am not a sound engineer, nor do I have a great deal of knowledge of what I am doing in a recording studio from a mixing and mastering perspective. Here I will give you a few tips I have picked up along the way. Firstly, I would recommend you use whatever EQ and compression presets you have available, just to polish up the sound a little bit. These are usually included in the plugin themselves.

I do, however, understand setting the levels for each instrument. This is something I have learned in a live situation when setting up for a gig, or helping engineer a live band. Start by setting the volume of every track to zero, and then set the drums to a comfortable level. After this, go through each instrument in the order listed above and set them appropriately - you may need to adjust your process if you do not have drums, but it is manageable enough. Just try to make sure that you do not clip any of the tracks (the indicators should not go permanently red, though I have been told that a little bit is ok!).

Other Skills

This whole process helps you to develop other skills that you do not really get taught in a typical guitar lesson. Here are a few skills that you will undoubtedly be improving upon.

Shaping Your Tone

As I have mentioned in other blog posts, when you play guitar by yourself it is only natural to go for the biggest, fullest tone you can achieve. You will soon find that this does not always come across when paired with other instruments, and in some cases can even differ between a live and studio environment. Having a backing track that you have created will allow you to make little adjustments to your sound to achieve the best result.

Time Management

When working at your own pace, it is not uncommon to go off on tangents and follow pathways that are not always conducive to an efficient recording session. However, if you are helping out not only yourself, but also other members of your band at the same time as discussed earlier, you are more likely to get things done in a timely manner… at least that is the hope!

The YouTuber Bradley Hall created a series of popular videos on his channel where he aimed to create a short song in the style of a pop band in only five minutes. Clearly this is a joke and not a serious song, but the result sounds pretty good and it goes to show that not everything has to take ages!

Check out his Megadeth inspired video here!

Arranging

Any of the types of backing tracks listed earlier will take some degree of arranging skill to produce. Arranging music could potentially be another income stream for a professional musician - maybe you could try to create a reggae version of a Taylor Swift song, but using the guitar to play the melody? There are endless possibilities!

Final Thoughts

Not everyone has the desire to create music in this way, even if it would help them immeasurably. I would suggest that you try it out with some friends first so that you do not need to purchase all of the equipment and software, just to be out of pocket shortly after. 

Also, think of it from a songwriting perspective. What would you do if you had a great idea for a song, melody or chord progression and wanted something better than a phone recording to catalog it? You cannot rely on your memory every time, and I personally find it easier than writing out the music.

Every teacher that works with the American Guitar Academy has some kind of experience in this area, most guitar teachers probably do in fact. Reach out, or ask your current teacher if you have any questions!