Hey there, in this lesson I'm going to show you how to practice guitar chords with backing
tracks. It's not only a lot of fun and you'll get some extra practice time out of it but
it's a great way to practice your rhythm and your timing which guitar players are notorious
for actually not being too good at when they're learning. The biggest problem I've found with
students trying to play along with backing tracks is they're not quite ready. If you're
still having a hard time fingering the chord or getting from one to the other playing along
with the backing tracks will just make that even harder. I’ve created a step-by-step
process that will help you get over this hurdle. Let's do this.
The first step is to make sure you can finger the chords that you're using fairly quickly.
I know that probably sounds pretty obvious but you'd be surprised how many students,
even me, have passed that step up. Now when I say quickly I mean kind of like that. If
you're playing with a backing track you have to get to the chord in time so you want to
be able to finger it before you have to play it with rhythm at least within you know something
like that. I have students practice this way. Let them just put their hand down on their
knee and then see how quickly they can get to the chord and finger it two and count.
Let's say start with a count of 4 - 1 2 3 4 that's usually kind of how it goes. And
then keep practicing it till you can get that down to just one or two counts 1 2. Start
without strumming the chord and just practice getting your fingers in the right place. Then
when that seems to be going pretty well start placing the fingers and then strumming and
see how they sound. Make little adjustments and then try it again. Do that a little each
day. Don't try and get it all at one shot.
Now next practice changing between the chords that you're using. For example if I'm using
a G chord going to a C chord, Cadd9. I want to make sure that I can switch between these
two chords in a reasonable amount of time without fumbling too much so I'll practice
just going from G to C. First off just practicing going one chord to the other. Now if I'm using
three chords like a D I'll make sure I can go between those three chords. If I'm having
a hard time going from D to G well I'll work on just those two going from D to G until
I can kind of do that at least up to the tempo of the other chords.
Now you're ready to practice the chords in tempo or with rhythm basically. But here's
the key, practice slow and if you're anything like me you'll probably want to push it just
past where you can actually change in time cleanly. Start slow so you can do this by
just kind of keeping a pulse maybe with your foot or you know I can kind of hear the pulse
of my head 1 2 3 change 1 2 3 4. Now did you see what I did? I left that fourth beat blank
in other words I didn't strum on the fourth beat. That gave me some space to change rather
than filling up every beat with a strum and do start with this basic downstream just to
start. You're going to add a more fancy strum later then you can start doing it with a metronome.
I've got this metronome set pretty low. I think about 40 beats per minute. Can you hear
that? This is the tempo 1 2 3 I'll leave the space. Give me time to change 2 3 - I'm changing
here, space and strum.
Now once you can play reasonably well at a very slow tempo start building up the speed
little by little. And what you're after is you want to get to roughly the speed that
you'll be using with the backing track. So let's say the backing track says it's 80 beats
per minute. So let's say I've got the tempo here at 40, 'll start picking that up maybe
from 40 to 50 50 to 60 and so on up until I can play pretty much the same way at 80
beats per minute. Now I know I'm ready to tackle the backing track which not only will
be up at that speed but it has other instruments and things to make it even more interesting.
So now you've worked on the chords, you've worked on changing between the chords, you've
added some tempo so you can change fairly well. When I say fairly well up to around
80%. I used to use this as a standard. You don't have to get perfect and keep in mind
that this is not something you sit down and do all at once. This might take days or even
weeks depending on the chords and where you're at. But in any case at this point if you've
followed along you're ready to play along with a backing track. Now keep in mind that
doesn't mean it'll all of a sudden be easy. The backing track has a bunch of other stuff
going on and that's usually can be kind of distracting you have to get where each of
the beats are in the backing track it's not as clear as maybe a metronome. One trick you
can use that I do actually when I'm learning a song is I'll just first tap my foot so I
kind of get the beat before I even touch my guitar or you can tap your guitar or something
like that. But it helps to kind of get a clear idea where the beat is before you start strumming
away. Also keep in mind that it's really helpful to just start with down strums. Don't try
adding a strum right away. Get the beat with basic down strums leaving that gap at the
end. When you can do it really well with the gap at the end of each chord change go ahead
and maybe fill that in with a down strum as well. This means if you're changing chords
like every four beats you'll just play for three beats and then leave a space. But if
you're changing chords maybe every two measures eight beats play seven times that's four beats
for the first measure three for the second and then leave that space.
Another little known trick is that most software that plays these backing tracks either in
video or audio has the ability to slow down the backing track a little bit without actually
changing the pitch. When I was growing up that wasn't possible but I find that's pretty
common nowadays. I'll actually show you a little bit of how I do that on my guitar lesson
site.
Here we have one of the backing tracks on my Real Guitar Success academy membership.
Now when we start the backing track it plays that normal tempo and if that tempo seems
a little fast you can go to this little icon here which is like a gear and slow it down
that's about three quarter speed it still sounds okay. It actually keeps the proper
pitch so you can play along with it with the same chords. You can go farther, you can go
down half speed. Now as you go down the sound starts degrading it doesn't sound pretty but
it's still very usable for practice. Stay there.
So now if you've been following along you're up and playing with the backing track maybe
not perfectly but you're able to at least keep up with the chord changes somewhat. You're
doing good. Celebrate. Go buy an ice cream or something. You know you really come a long
way seriously.
Now if you want to take it up a notch it's time to add a strum to that. Start easy, go
with a simple strum and practice the strum before you go trying out with a backing track.
It's a good time to mention that even though I put this in a nice neat systematic order
it doesn't really always work out that way as a matter of fact seldom works out that
way. You probably have to go back and forth a few times at this point. Try the strum with
the backing track. Maybe it goes okay maybe not but you need to go back practice a little
more and you know that's just the nature of the beats and also I don't want you to think
that this is how you should practice all the time. You should spend a lot of time practicing
without backing tracks and even without a metronome. You want to develop your internal
sense of rhythm as well as being able to play with a metronome and with a band.
Okay enough talking for now. I'm going to show you a brief demonstration of how I would
do this with a backing track. I'll be playing the chords G D and C. I call this C, it's
Cadd technically. Now it's kind of fast and instead of slowing down the track I'm going
to show you how to adapt to a fast track even though you probably could slow this down so
watch. Here's the simplest form.
I'm just marking the chord changes. The tempo is really 1 2 3 4 - 1 2 3 4 but I'm cutting
that down just one per measure 1 2 3 4 - 1 2 3 4 - 1 2 3 4 here we go 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2
3. You gotta get the tempo first and I usually would kind of just count the tempo and tap
my foot to it at first to make sure I know where the beat is. Now I'm gonna double that
a little faster. So one here we go- 1 2 go 4 1 2 3 4 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 4 1 2 4
Now I'll double that 1 2 3 leave a space, change 1 2 3 change 1 2 3 change, change,
change. Okay, that a little strum so leave a space. Okay time to go loud. Let me get
tempo 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 . Here we go - all out 1 2 3 go. Okay that's all I've got
for right now.
I hope this video helped you out. If it did, give me a thumbs up. I've put a link at the
end of this video for the backing track that I use so you can give it a try. Bye for now.