There’s a lot of people that seem to like them and some who think they are terrible. :/ For the most part, people seem to really enjoy them and find playing over them a very beneficial way to help their playing. In fact, just 2 of the backing tracks I have uploaded to YouTube have been viewed 1 million times! That’s pretty amazing to me!

For me to create backing tracks, I decided that I wanted to be able to put them together myself anytime I without having to record an entire band. This has been pretty difficult to learn how to do but has saved me a lot of money and time. The hardest thing to do is to about how dynamics can be re-created, which a lot of backing tracks I have heard don’t really have. Learning how to adjust to dynamics will help you learn how to play better lead guitar in my opinion.

I’ve been recording music in my home studio for about 7 years now. Let me tell you that it is a very difficult thing to learn how to do really well. There is so much involved from room acoustics, software, mics, eq, compression, and a number of other things that can be quite complicated. The biggest thing to learn though is arrangement, and how to sit instruments properly so the mix sounds even. While I am no professional mixer, I try to keep learning as much as possible to continually improve my skills.

Lately I’ve been learning a lot from Pensado’s Place which is packed with awesome information from top mixers in the industry. Check it out here.

Currently, I’m getting back into learning more about mixing and recording so I can get a really professional sound. I have spent a considerable amount of time working on my chops and mixing space lately so that I can produce better sounding tracks. In the future, I do have plans to start recording my own solo album and have many songs in the works that I think are good. The problem is that it just takes so much time, and when I’m constantly working on new lessons as well, I don’t have the motivation to work on recording my own songs. I will find the time though soon.

So in this post I want to show you a little bit about how I go about recording and mixing the backing tracks I produce.

The first step for me is to find a groove that I want to use and then nailing the tempo and drum beat that will simulate the track I am trying to copy. In the backing track I have currently been working on, I turned to one of Freddie King’s funkier type tunes.

After I decided what the key and style would be, I look for drum pieces I could use to put together a cohesive drum track. In case you’re wondering, I use tracks from Beta Monkey that are real recorded drum tracks that you can cut and paste together to create a full drum composition. They are not free however, but for me they are worth it.

After the Drum track has been prepared, synced to a grid, and maybe edited using Elastic Audio in Pro Tools, I then record a bass guitar track to fit with the kick drum of the drum track. Then it’s just a matter of recording guitar parts, keyboards, and whatever else I might need to make the track sound good. Mixing the tracks with EQ, compression, and effects round out the end to make a nice cohesive track to play along to.

Here’s the gear I use to record and mix the backing tracks.

Pro Tools 8
Digi 002r
Api A2d
Blue Sky Mediadesk speakers
Shure SM 57
AEA R 84 Ribbon
M Audio Axiom 49 midi controller
URS CSP Plugins
Waves API Plug Ins
Massey Plug Ins
TL Space
Ampeg SVX

Here’s a few videos to show you the process of how I put the backing tracks together.

You can check out the finished version of the track here. Funky Blues Backing Track in C#

If you want to get more views, comments, and likes, one thing you can do is to concentrate on making the audio sound great. It is not really that hard, but will take some extra time. You’ve spent all this time practicing and learning how to play the guitar, why not learn how to make your video sound great as well as look good.

In the video below I will show you exactly how to get good audio with your video.

Hopefully that will convince you to start paying more attention to the audio when recording videos. A few items will be needed for you to achieve better audio.

What You Will Need

• Audio Recording Software - If you’re on a Mac then use Garageband. If your on Windows, then Audacity or any other recording program. You can download Audacity for Free here. Many audio interfaces come with some kind of software to record with as well.
• Audio Interface - There are many to choose from, and in this Blog Post Tutorial I explain how to use a mixer and a usb device. There are also many other usb interfaces to choose from as well. I haven’t tried this one yet, but it looks very promising. It also comes with a Free copy of Pro Tools Lite. I’m a huge Pro Tools fan. M-Audio Fast Track Pro
• Video Editing Software – If you’re on a Mac, then you can use iMovie. If you’re on a PC then I recommend using Adobe Premiere Elements 9. You can even try it for Free for 30 days. Retail on this software is $79.99. Not a bad price I think. Here’s where you can check it out. Adobe Premiere Elements
• Video Camera – If you don’t have one already, then I would recommend the Kodak Zi8. It costs around a $100 and is HD. Check it out here. Kodak Zi8

There will be a slight learning curve, but the difference in sound from your videos will be dramatically better if you do this.
Have a question or an opinion? Leave a comment below.

Back when I started doing this, the tools were very primitive and sounded horrible. Today, you can get near studio quality results for about $120. If you are not already recording yourself playing, then I want to ask you why not? It will benefit you more than you think. You will only realize some things that you need to work on, only after you have recorded yourself and listened back to the track. This is very revealing!

In this tutorial I’m going to show you a fairly inexpensive way to record over backing tracks to see what your playing really sounds like. I have chosen the equipment below based on price, ease of use, and reliability. There are many other ways to record yourself which don’t involve a mic or a guitar amp, but some of those solutions can be more complicated, and frankly using an amp is so much more fun!

This is the equipment you will need assuming you have a guitar, a guitar amp, guitar cable, and a computer.

Microphone – $30

On the example track I used a Shure 57 which many people just have one laying around. If you don’t have a mic, then you can find a cheap dynamic mic like this one for about $30 with a mic cable.

Shure Dynamic mic – Link to Product.   You could use a USB mic as well, but I find them a little harder to setup and to control the volume with.  Again, this solution was created for ease and stability in mind for about $120.

Mixer – $59.99

Many people are probably going to tell you that you don’t need a mixer, and you should just get a USB soundcard with mic inputs. While these work good, they can be very confusing and unstable. With a mixer that has no USB or Firewire, you are pretty much guaranteed the thing will work for a long time and won’t be replaced by another technology. Plus, you will find tons of uses for a small mixer.

The mixer I recommend is the Behringer Xenyx 802. It has 2 XLR ins and enough connections to do many different things. I’ve used this for live video sound, Skype Guitar Lessons, and as a talkback mixer for recording bands.

You can even use this as a mic input for your video camera if you have one. If not, then you’ll already have this if you decide to get one. Don’t ever use the mic that’s inside the video camera. The quality is horrible! I have a pretty expensive video camera and the mic on that one is bad too.

Behringer Xenyx 802 – Link to Product.  $59.99 at this time of writing.

Soundcard – $30

Now that you have a microphone, and a mixer, you will need to connect the mixer to a soundcard. The cheapest, easiest, and most stable device I have used is the Behringer (yes I like Behringer!)

UCA 202U USB Control Audio Interface. – Link to Product.

This little thing works awesome! There is nothing to install and works immediatley when you just plug it in tho your computer by USB. You will need to connect using rca to 1/4″ cable. Just like this one here.

Warning! When you connect to your computer, your computer may use the USB device as your default listening driver. You just need to change your Sounds playback device in windows to change this. Easy!

So now we have a total of about $130 depending on what brands and model cables you get. If you already have a microphone then it’s about $100. If you don’t have a mic stand, just drape the mic over the amp. It’s done all the time in some live situations.

Software

So now that you have all the gear set up, you will need some software to mix and record your audio. Guess what? It’s FREE!

Audacity is a fantastic program that is both easy to use and easy to install. It does not take much computer power and can export mp3s if you download the special file needed.
Download Audacity for FREE right here.

In the video below, I go through the process of recording over one of my backing tracks. The quality I get is really good, and I’m using everything listed above except for the mic I’m using a Shure 57.

Check out the video Below

Listen to what I recorded and exported to mp3 below.

If you have any questions, please add a comment below. Remember if you’re not recording yourself and hearing what you should be practicing, you not going to understand if you’re getting any better.