I put a post up a while ago regarding transitioning from rhythm to lead, as well as being able to sing through it all. I had a lot of great responses but was also asked to post me playing something. So, I had a play around with this song. The solo is over the major pent, which is my default starting point. And I can slide nicely into that from the A shape D chord. I borrowed the backing bass and percussion from the original song (hope no-one minds) as I don’t have a convenient band.
And try as I may I just cannot seem to sing ‘there’s booze in the blender’ towards the end. It usually comes out as ‘there’s blues in the blender’. You can laugh along with me
I really enjoyed that. Margaritaville is my first song that I play with a lead break in it, a different lead break to mine, and really enjoyable. where did you get the backing track?
As you know there are lots of backing tracks on YouTube, but I use RipX occasionally to better understand a song and in this case to create a backing track. RipX basically strips out the various layers of a song so you can just play the drums and bass, or vocals, or increase the volume of the guitars. Depending on the song it has various levels of success. For this song it did a pretty good job of the bass and percussion.
I also have Pro Tools First, but creating backing in this takes a lot of effort. I would do this to ‘produce’ a song, as you can’t just rip someone else’s work. But for effectively educational purposes, as per this community, is think RipX is fine.
I use Audacity a lot as well for recording. It is simpler than Pro Tools.
Rather than mucking around with DAW and audio interfaces and the like for these sorts of things I have started to just use my Android tablet video and microphone. Does a pretty good job for these ‘demos’.
Thanks. I’ve been meaning to play my solo to Margaritaville along to the recording which is how I learn a fair few of my songs, but just haven’t got around to it yet.
Hi Keith, thank you so much for sharing your tool kit. I did find backing tracks for Margaritaville in YouTube after I posted, but not all songs have them, and creating them for practice or making videos of my performance is why I wanted to know (I’m just an amateur, in it for the fun of making music, not money).
You just save me hours/days searching around for software. I appreciate your sharing your experience, and I’ll pay it forward in kind.
Nothing I can offer to assist you in shifting from rhythm and singing to lead and back again … you seemed to handle that OK and should just keep doing what you are doing.
Thanks David. It was the great feedback from my initial cry for help post that lead me to this, and for some reason gave me the confidence to just have a go.
Hi Keith, I came back and enjoyed another listen. And to report I did buy the $89 version of RipX and have been working with it with “success” depending upon the mix of instruments. The Pro version $300+ if I recall correctly, allows you to reassign notes to the correct instrument. E.G., one would likely need the pro version of RipX if the track has two acoustic guitars to split the guitar tracks accurately.
Thanks again,
Just_Dan
