Ok, been learning for a couple of months now and it is going pretty slow since I can only practice 20 min to 30 mins a day 5 or so days a week. My guitar teacher has suggested I practice to a drum machine to work on chord changes instead of a boring old metronome. Anyone know of a free or inexpensive program for the computer that can play a rhythym(sp?) track that I can practice to that you can select the BPM and it will just go and go? It should be simple to operate, I cant even play the guitar yet, definitely not ready to program some complex beat software. Thanks for any help.
I can't think of any free ones off hand but theres plenty of freeware midi players or sequencers and midi files of drum patterns you can load up. Just have a search on google.
Lee
I quite often use powertabs of the song I'm learning with all the tracks except the drums and bass turned off, or copy a couple of bars from one into a new file and set that section to repeat...
I quite often use powertabs of the song I'm learning with all the tracks except the drums and bass turned off, or copy a couple of bars from one into a new file and set that section to repeat...
Hammer Head is free and for simple 4/4 rythems it is simple to set up. You can find it HERE.
Jim
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” - David Russell (Scottish classical Guitarist. b.1942)
Hammer Head is free and for simple 4/4 rythems it is simple to set up. You can find it HERE.
Jim
Yea, I found HammerHead last night before I posted but was unable to figure it out so removed it. Maybe i should give it another try.
Band in a Box is your best option. You can download a free version. I will share a lesson I learned about drum machines...
I wanted drum machine software thinking it would help my timing, etc. So I went out and got PC Drummer (a good choice for just drums btw) but later learned that when practicing my solo's that what sounded great over just a drum track sounded horrible over the actual chord progression. I then went out and got band in a box. WOW, I cannot say enough about this program. What's so neat about it is you can merely punch in a chord progression: G, C, G, C, D, C, G, D type thing and the software will generate not only a cool drum track, but also a walking bass line, a piano track, a guitar track, a lead, etc. And you can choose which tracks you want and which you don't want. You can easily speed up or slow down the tempo in a flash.
Ready for the kicker? This program has hundreds of "styles" so you can turn the hotel california chord progression into a reggae tune just like that! You can also transpose any song into any key in seconds. Its truly awesome.
Now the downside: Bit of a learning curve to get some of the more advanced features to shine. Cost. It isn't cheap but the free version will work for quite a while (you cannot save stuff on the trial). The drum sounds aren't as nice as PC Drummer.
Anyway, after spending $50 on PC Drummer Pro I never use it because Band in a Box rules the roost.
Edited out repeat post
