Creating simple backing / practice tracks - is there anything new out there?

[Michael Lester]

For several years I've been using Band In A Box to try to create backing / practice tracks.

Candidly, I find BAIB frustrating in it's complexity. It takes me way too much time to build a track using BAIB.

There must be some new tech that can listen to an mp3 and create a rhythm track from what it 'hears'? I assume this because even our phones can produce 'printed' words from speech. For what it's worth, I've done some casual internet searches and see that there are many Apps that appear to do what I'm asking. But, entering into a monthly subscription seems overkill for my purposes.

I watch videos that many of you create that have almost orchestral tracks. On my best day, I couldn't create tracks that full and complex.

Your recommendations would be welcome.

[Doug Taylor]

I was looking at Suno yesterday just for making backing tracks but not clear if it will work or not. If you can tell it to give me 4 bars of c then 2 bars of F etc it might be a simple way to make backing tracks! If it will only spit out a random chord progression it won’t work.

There is a free version and a subscription so I plan to see if it will work or not.

[Peter J Birch]

There are stem separation programs that can take an MP3 and separate that into Vocal / Bass / Drums / Guitar /Piano and other. Then you can mute the lead instrument (Guitar Steel etc) and play along. You can also change keys, speed etc.
Examples are Song Master Pro - RIPX. Some Daws like the Fender studio Pro 8 has stem separation.
These programs do not take chords and orchestrate them.

[Bill McCloskey]

Actually, Band in a Box has a feature where you can load a song and it will generate all the chords for that song. In practice, I found it easier just to look up the chords.

[Doug Taylor]

I spent some time with Suno yesterday, I don’t think it will fit my needs to make custom backing tracks.

[Michael Lester]

Bill... thanks for your comment.

I've tried Band in a Box's chord finder on My Weakness Is Too Strong as an example.
It came back with roughly 20 chords. It displayed a chord for almost every melody note.

[Michael Lester]

It turns out that there is 'something new' to me at least.

This technique doesn't answer my question about creating simple backing / practice tracks.

But it does make it possible to extract backing tracks from YouTube videos and alter them to leave just the music bed - without the vocals, or, in this case without the pedal steel lead instrument

So far, it has produced very useable backing tracks for me.

Here's how it worked ...

1. Copy a YouTube video's address from the YouTube site.
2. Paste the YouTube address into an audio conversion App to create an MP3 file. I use Media Human Youtube to MP3 app.
3. Drop the MP3 file into a Stem Splitter app to 'separate' the audio components - vocal, drums, bass, guitar, other into separate tracks.
I found - https://voice.ai/tools/stem-splitter . It's free Ai. The app produces a list of the major instruments and voice on the MP3.
You'll get a list featuring each separate track. You'll pick the tracks you want to use and download them individually to a new file on the desktop.
You'll now have separate files for bass / drums / guitar / etc. To make them useable, you'll have to merge them into one track.
4. I dropped the bass, drums and piano tracks into Audacity and created a 'merged' track. Saved the file as an MP3.

It looks harder in writing here than it actually was.

Don't know if this will helpful to others...

[Dan Beller-McKenna]

Another option is to get a highly customizable track from karaoke-version.com. They don't have everything, but a pretty decent collection of well made karaoke tracks, with pinpoint separation so you can knock out the parts you don't want and keep the parts you do want. These are newly recorded copies, not the original track, but the quality is very good. And, since they are newly created tracks, there is absolute separation and a very complete set of tracks to keep or mute (separate steel part, lead vs. background vocals, individual guitars, fiddles, etc., etc.). Each track is $2.99; quite a bargain.

[Sonny Jenkins]

For several years I've been using Band In A Box to try to create backing / practice tracks.

Candidly, I find BAIB frustrating in it's complexity. It takes me way too much time to build a track using BAIB.

There must be some new tech that can listen to an mp3 and create a rhythm track from what it 'hears'? I assume this because even our phones can produce 'printed' words from speech. For what it's worth, I've done some casual internet searches and see that there are many Apps that appear to do what I'm asking. But, entering into a monthly subscription seems overkill for my purposes.

I watch videos that many of you create that have almost orchestral tracks. On my best day, I couldn't create tracks that full and complex.

Your recommendations would be welcome.

Hey man,,,I was in the same boat many years ago,,,,price kept going up,,,getting more complicated!!!
I found a super,,,or just what I needed,,,a program from a developer in Italy called ChordPulse,,,,dozens of styles,,,input chords,,,breaks, endings etc,,,super quick and easy,,,,,less than 50 bucks, one time payment,,,,up to 5 loads. Last I heard it was no longer available in USA,,,,but I think there was a work around. Might do a search and check it out,,,you won't be sorry

[Tim Toberer]

I like IrealPro and it is cheap. Best 20 dollars I spent for practicing. Pretty easy to use and once you get the hang of it is pretty quick to make a simple backing track. I mostly find what I am looking for in the forums, then tweak it a bit to fit what I am trying to do.

[Michael Lester]

Thanks Tim...I'll give irealpro a look.

[Bob Sykes]

Another ChordPulse user here. Easy to create backing tracks if you know the chords. I use it to learn songs and/or create chord charts. Songs can be exported as MIDI files which opens up a world of possibilities.

Doesn't do audio or stem splitting though.

Edited to add: Apparently not availible in U.S. anymore.

[Dennis Montgomery]

Another option I haven't seen mentioned yet is the free audio processor "Audacity". They recently released an AI plugin (called OpenVINO Music Separation, also free) that has 2 options. First it can separate vocals from the rest of the song. Second and more applicable to this thread, it can separate a song into 4 parts: vocals, bass, drums, and "other instruments". You just load up a *.wav or *.mp3 and run the plugin and it does the separation better than any other tool I've ever heard.

I just tested it on the Grateful Dead's "Dire Wolf" (my favorite Jerry pedal steel song) and it worked great, though it did include the acoustic guitar parts along with the pedal steel. Audacity would be an easy (and free) way to strip out the guitar/pedal steel parts leaving a bass/drums/vocal backing track intact. Besides a great way to create a backing track, it can also be a useful tool to isolate and learn a pedal steel part

If anyone's curious, I uploaded the Dire Wolf guitar/PSG isolated track to my YT at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SqjZLRGG10

Have fun

[Michael Lester]

Good one Dennis...

As is typical of me, a go around the block three times before I figure out that I keep passing the coffee shop.

Thanks. I'll try this today.

[Dennis Montgomery]

Great. Let us know how it goes! The thing I like about the audacity/openVINO solution is it leaves you the actual song to play along with, not a computer generated approximation of the song structure like BIAB. Don't get me wrong, BIAB can do wonderful things, but for me I'd rather learn and practice Dire Wolf with the Dead as my backing band rather than a "computer generated cover band"

[Thornton Lewis]

I second irealpro, especially if you want to play jazz and swing.