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Guitar Backing Tracks -Practicing Pacing
Oct 17, 2011 Guitar Backing Tracks Leave a comment
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A good use for your guitar backing tracks is to use what is called “pacing”. When pacing you uses the play/rest technique to practicing. What you do is decide on a certain numbers of measures to play and a certain number of measures to rest. The benefit of this practice technique is that your solos will not sound like run on sentences. Sometime the young guitar player just starting out with guitar backing tracks will just keep playing up and down the scale not really saying anything musically. By practicing pacing with guitar backing tracks this will be eliminated.
The easiest groupings to do are even numbers. 2 measure of playing and 2 measures of resting or doing four of each. They are much easier to count and you won’t be thinking as hard about counting, you’ll be thinking more about playing. This technique also gives you more time to develop your own licks since you are limited to the amount of time that you are able to play.
Listening to real good blues guitar players like B B King will help you learn about pacing. Players like B B don’t play a ton of notes. He gets in there says what he need to say and then gets out.
Another complaint that students have is the “I don’t know what to play” with the guitar backing tracks issue. When you learn a new scale you may seem to not have any idea what to do with it. Pacing will help this problem by limiting the time you can play so you wont be overwhelmed with all of the notes in the new scale.
When you are jamming with another player you can have them play during your rest measures. This also gives you a chance to hear someone else’s ideas. And it turn will help you develop your ideas and give you ideas that you may not have thought of. You can push each other to come up with better and better ideas each time.
Also a lot of times when pacing players will play the same types of lick as they come back into their playing measures. This repetition makes you play the lick better and better each time. By the time you have a couple of days of practicing in on this, you will be burning on your new licks.
Take time everyday to practice pacing. There are plenty different variations of play measures and rest measures. So experiment will as many as you can come up with. And remember to not imagine the guitar backing tracks in your head, use real ones.