Guitar strum as background music for Mandolin lead on CD....

[Duane Graves]

Hard to give a more accurate title but what I would like to have is a CD that has tunes on it that I can play my mandolin too. It would be like, I suppose, jamming with a strumming guitar only the mandolin would not be on the disc only the guitar strum whereby one would then lead by playing the mandolin picking the tune, etc. I think of the singing CDs you can purchase that has the music but not the song. Kind of you own backup band and you sing to that. Trying to be clear and hope I am please forgive my redundancy. In the end does anyone know of such a CD or site that has this idea available? --dgg.

[Kevin Stevens]

My instructor has a set up where he can play guitar (or any other instrument with a pickup) into his amp and it will record and loop it. He can then make CD's out of it. Do you have any musician friends who might have recording equipment? If so check with them, or perhaps with your local music store for people to ask. They could lay down a few loops for you onto a CD.

[jaycat]

Hi Duane, there's probably a couple thousand folks on here who double on guitar who could lay down a simple strum track for you, then transfer to MP3. I'll do one if I know the tune you want.

[250sc]

There are lots of "Music Minus One" type of songs. Steve Kaufman has some.

[sgarrity]

There are tons of educational material out there that allow this. There was Band in a Box I believe and many geared toward bluegrass players. There's also a guy that runs a blog called The Flatpick Apprentice. He has rhythm tracks for a lot of fiddle tunes at various speeds.

[F-2 Dave]

I'd throw in a second for the Flatpick Apprentice. A joy to play along with if you haven't got your own personal guitar player. Just Google Flatpick Apprentice.

[lenf12]

I hate doing the "me too" thing but I will 3rd the Flatpick Apprentice site. I believe his name is Dave Warner and he has spent a considerable amount of time playing/recording many popular fiddle and BG tunes at different speeds (bpm) from practice speed (slow) to performance speed (fast) and everything in between. You can download his work to your hard drive or just go to his site and play along with the mp3's. He posts here on MC Forum as well. Highly recommended and much appreciated.

Len B.
Clearwater, FL

[Ted Eschliman]

Sounds like a great excuse to buy an iPad. The iPad Garage Band App has some great auto accompaniment Guitar sounds. You can get a refurb iPad as low as $349 and Garage Band is only $4.99. Program the chords and record to your heart's content.

Starts at about 07:05.

[Marion Rose]

http://flatpickapprentice.blogspot.com/

[Duane Graves]

Sounds like a great excuse to buy an iPad. The iPad Garage Band App has some great auto accompaniment Guitar sounds. You can get a refurb iPad as low as $349 and Garage Band is only $4.99. Program the chords and record to your heart's content.

Starts at about 07:05.

Wow....this iPad Garage Band App is just incredible. Unbelievable what is on or coming in the market these days. Thank you, Ted for this commerical....right now it looks like a great Christmas gift but that's a ways off so maybe sooner....wondering, do you have one of these? --dgg

[Ted Eschliman]

Have it and use it for lots, including performance. I've downloaded Garage Band, but I haven't done much with it yet. I use the UnReal Book and iReal B, and surf the internet, download books, and rent videos for long distance travel. Typing on it right now.

[J.Albert]

Band-In-A-Box:
http://www.pgmusic.com/bbmac.demos.htm

Go to this page and listen to some of the "bluegrass demos" (scroll down to find them).

Before too long, who's going to need studio musicians any more?

- John

[ProutyBoy]

Another vote for iPad (or iPhone or Mac) plus Garage Band. The smart instruments make it easy to record loops in any key to play along with. If your a PC then there's similar programs.