Pop and R&B Play-Alongs

[Balladeer]

The Jamey Aebersold play-along tracks are great for traditional jazz and jazz standards. Where can I find professional quality play-along tracks for more recent pop and jazz music (1970's - today) and some R&B/soul, too?

[Bill Mecca]

very good question.... let us know if you find any..;-)

I guess one option would be to create our own with somethign like BIAB or Jammer Professional, but it would be nice to have something ready made on CD just to pop in the player...espeically some rock and R&B.... could download some midi files, burn them to disc...

might be a market out there...nudge nudge, wink wink.... :wink:

[Frank D]

You got me thinkin', Bill. I have turned out a number of BIAB tracks for blues, R&B and contemporary-type practice. Maybe I'll burn a CD just for grins.

[arsenic87]

What about karaoke CD's? Somebody metioned these sometime or the other.

[Big Jim]

There is a Computer Program that removes tracks on music. CD's and Cassettes. Not sure what they call it. I think you could make your own playalongs. If someone finds out what it is, please let us know. Thanks,
Jim

[Bill Mecca]

You got me thinkin', Bill. I have turned out a number of BIAB tracks for blues, R&B and contemporary-type practice. Maybe I'll burn a CD just for grins.

Glad to be of service Frank! if you need any beta testers, let me know ;-)

[Saxhound]

Computer program is "Slow Gold". There was a thread about it on the old forum. I haven't used it, but those who had seemed pleased. I've seen it for sale at Guitar Center.

[Frank D]

OK, just off the top of my head, here are some non-Real Book tunes I have in BIAB format:

Affirmation - a Jose Feliciano tune from George Benson's Breezin' album
Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
Buffle - Richard Elliot bluesy/fusion shuffle
Comin' Home Baby - minor blues
Just The Two Of Us - Grover Washington, Jr.
Let's Stay Together - Al Green
Make Me A Memory - Grover Washington, Jr.
Mr. Magic - Grover Washington, Jr.
Next Time You See Me - 12 bar blues shuffle
Soul Serenade - King Curtis
Sugar - Stanley Turrentine
Sugar - smooth jazz hip hop style
Take 5 - smooth jazz version in 4/4
Valdez In The Country - Donnie Hathaway/G Benson
Watermelon Man - 12 bar blues w/extension
When Love Comes Around - Braxton Brothers
Who'll Stop The Rain? - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Let me know if this is the kind of stuff you're after, specifically which tunes, and I'll start cleaning them up for a test CD. No promises that I can distribute this yet, since there are copyright issues, etc. but let's see how far we can get.

[Balladeer]

Frank D:
Those are good tunes. BTW, "Take Five", "Watermelon Man" and "Sugar" are available from Aebersold.

In addition to the ones you listed, here are a few that I personally would like to have:
I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston)
When A Man Loves A Woman (Percy Sledge)
A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)
Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
Truly (Lionel Richie)
Tonight, I Celebrate My Love (Lionel Richie)
How Deep Is Your Love (Bee Gees)
Let's Stay Together (Al Green)
Just To See Her (Smokey Robinson)
Where Were You When I Needed You Last Summer (Stevie Wonder)
What's Goin' On (Marvin Gaye)
Mercy, Mercy Me (Marvin Gaye)
Tears In Heaven (Eric Clapton)
Europa (Santana)

[Frank D]

Actually, I have Tears, Europa and Let's Stay Together. When A Man Loves A Woman won't be hard, either. I'm sure the arrangements I have for Sugar and Take 5 are nothing like Aebersold's. These are in a more contemporary style, not straight ahead.

Any other opinions out there? More bluesy, rock-ish?

[Bill Mecca]

Any other opinions out there? More bluesy, rock-ish?

yes :D

I love the old honkers, Cornbread and Hot Rod by Hal Singer, Hand Clappin' by Red Prysock, Sam the Man Taylor's Big Jay McNeely's version of Flyin Home, a hot version of Harlem Nocturne would be cool, updated a bit for today... just off the top of my head.(and you can see where it's at at the moment huh?)

Richard Elliot's oh what was it???, when I saw him years ago he had just eaten at the Carnegie Deli, and being a vegetarian, it wreaked havoc on his system and he renamed the tune "Gastronomic Distress" for that night, now if I could only remember the real title, :oops: There are some others off that CD, but the titles escape me, something with Passion in the title, and another one about high heels...or was it silk stockings. hmmmm

well there's a few to chomp on Frank ;-)

[bennettcarl]

There is a new Aebersold Volume 103 that is a David Sanborn play-a-long. Its pretty cool. Some of his better tunes are on it.

[Frank D]

Started working on this last night. I need to clean up some of the arrangements and produce lead sheets, then I'll be ready to cut some test CDs for evaluation. Actually the lead sheets are the most time consuming part, BIAB's notation feature is pretty quirky to use.

[Shaun SS]

Please excuse my ingnorance but what is BIAB.. I found Pro Jammer..

[Helen]

Please excuse my ingnorance but what is BIAB.. ..

Band In A Box

It is a software program by PG Music.

[Frank D]

To elaborate on that a little, Band In A Box, by PG Music, is a program that lets you type in a chord progression, and pick a style e.g. Uptempo Swing, Slow Blues, etc. and then the software creates a background track consisting of drums, bass, piano and possibly other instruments, depending on the style. I've found it to be a great tool for creating practice tracks to various songs, and also accompaniment tracks that I can use for live performances. BIAB will also output the song in MIDI format, which you can then open in Cakewalk, SONAR or other sequencing software for further modifications.

Frank D.... Comin' at you with a few R&B, Rock tunes:

Flip,Flop & Fly (Blues Brothers)
Knock on Wood (Sam & Dave)
Gimme Some Lovin' (Blues Brothers)
Roll With It (Steve Winwood)
Sea of Love (The Honeydrippers)
Smooth (Santana)

[rollen]

Another route is to search the web for midis. Just remove the melody track.

[Bill Mecca]

Brain freeze is over, the Elliot CD I spoke of was On The Town, the tunes:
Midnight Passion
Stiletto Heels
and "Grastronomic Distress" :D was in fact "In Your Face."

Some other's Night Train,( Jimmy Forrest/King Curtis/James Brown) Purple Wail (Red Prysock) Cloudburst (Sam Taylor) Cleo's Mood (Jr. Walker) Walkin' With Mr. Lee ( Lee Allen) the list goes on and on and on and on....

[Balladeer]

Whoa! I now realize that you're making Band-In-A-Box synthesized practice loops. I need something that is high quality like the Aebersold stuff because I want this for live gigging as a single performer. So, I'll pay a little for a dozen cuts, but I need them to sound real.

[Steve J.]

I would argue that BIAB could be tailor made for a more musical effect in style, rhythmic peculiarities, orchestration, etc. I haven't heard strings in Aeborsold. Actually BIAB can sound pretty real. The program has a lot more creative manipulation potential then simple practice loops.
Aeborsold is more of a practice loop to me.
Balladeer - how familiar with BIAB are you? I think the suggestion is exactly what you are after.

[Frank D]

A couple of thoughts:

What I was proposing here is to create a backup track in BIAB, and burn it to CD for use primarily for practice purposes. I thought I might do that to help out some SOTW members who don't have the skills or access to the technology to do it themselves, and also for tunes that are not generally available comercially.

1. How "real" BIAB sounds is largely dependent on what synth sounds you use to cut the tracks. If you use the defaults, you're using your PC soundcard, which probably sounds pretty cheezy. If you use a soft synth or an external synth, the sounds can be pretty good. I use Roland VSC88, a software synth, which sounds pretty good to my ears.

As far as how real the styles sound, that's largely a matter of personal taste. I do use BIAB generated tracks for live performance, however I use Cakewalk to clean them up rhythmically first.

2. As rollen suggests, searching the web for MIDIs is another route (but you still have the issue of the quality of your playback equipment). I'd say 50% of my backing tracks are MIDI that I 'found" in the internet, some of which are quite good. A little work with a search engine will reap great rewards.

As I've stated before, I'm not entirely sure of the legalities of distributing this kind of stuff w/o copyright clearance, so I want to steer clear of the usual Top 40 type material where that will be a problem. Ditto for the ethics of distributing MIDIs created by someone else. Go steal
'em yourself :wink:

If you really want hi-quality MIDIs that sound just like the record, there are plenty of commercial sites that sell those to people who use them in working situations.

[Balladeer]

I'm not familiar with Band-In-A-Box. I have used synthesizers, though, for live gigs. I play elec. guitar, too, and I used to have a Casio PG-380 synthesizer guitar. I had 192 sounds onboard and I had a Kurzweil rackmount synth that sounded great. I guess, it is possible to sound pretty good with the synthesized parts. I'll have to hear it first. I'm still willing to pay a reasonable amount for this stuff. I'd buy it from Aebersold, but he doesn't sell those songs.

[John Laughter]

Balladeer, can you use midi files? Do you have a midi file player?

[marc]

I would backup Rollen :
For contemporay stuff, better to search for midi files on the net, they are in general of very good quality.
The best search engine I have found is the "MIDI Database" at the following URL : http://www.mididb.com/

Then type "midi search" on the top and then the title you are looking for in "Midi Explorer".

As en example, if you search for "just the two of us" you will find 6 groups containing 66 versions of this song. Then as Rollen says :
- import this file into CUBASE or any other music editing software
- mute the melody track and
- generate a WAVE file that you can burn on a CD

and that's it, you are ready to start with the sax.

Despite I am a happy user of BIAB, I think that after a while the styles are all sounding the same and not very much appropriate for modern music. The midi files I find on the net have better bass and drums lines.

If you like the modern "cool Jazz" style of music, there is also a very good play along from Music minus one (R.Maraday on tenor sax) : http://www.musicminusone.com

Have fun !

[Zoot Horn]

What are the advantages of these high tech approaches compared to simply burning the songs onto a CD and playing along with them? For example, someone mentioned Whiter Shade of Pale. I have four versions of that song burned to a CD to play along with, including King Curtis and Doug Sahm. What do you gain by stripping tracks out of midi files and bouncing them off a satelite?

[Bill Mecca]

I don't know about bouncing them off a satellite ;-) but finding a good midi/biab file allows you to easily change keys, and play with only the rhythm section. some guys even use them in performance. I don't know if I would want to listen to myself in a duet with King Curtis anyplace besides the woodshed.

I also had this situation. Band does a tune, I get the well accepted recording, transcribe the horn line, go to rehearsal, and guess what? they play in a different key to accomodate the vocals. With a midi file I could just change the key, and practice with the electronic imitation rhythm section.


It also helps to create charts if there is a song you want the band to perform. you can give them a head start on learning their parts.

[wwwoooddd]

Anyone know where I can get a "Purple Wail" and "Slow Walk" CD Play along for the Tenor. I have a need to master those songs!

[Bill Mecca]

wwwoooddd,

haven't seen those as play-alongs anywhere. but you might try sites like www.bandtrax.com or www.midi-hits.com

[hamilton]

Hal Lenord volume #65 Smooth Jazz it has all modern tunes : Angela (Taxi theme),Feels so good, just the two of us,give me the night,morning dance,street life,this masquerade,minute by minute,songbird.

[DetroitDave]

Hal Lenord volume #65 Smooth Jazz it has all modern tunes : Angela (Taxi theme),Feels so good, just the two of us,give me the night,morning dance,street life,this masquerade,minute by minute,songbird.

More Hal Leonards:
Vol 35 "Bluesy Jazz" has: Angel Eyes, Chitlins Con Carne, Mercy Mercy Mercy, Night Train, and Sugar. Plus other jazz/blues "non-pop" tunes.

Vol 7 "10 Essential Standards" has I Remember You, There Will Never Be Another You, Easy Living, and When Sunny Gets Blue. Plus 6 other non-pop tunes

Vol 6 "Jazz Classics" has Comin' Home Baby, Stolen Moments, Moanin' plus 7 other non-pop tunes.

Vol 27 "10 Jazz Standards" has a very poppy version of Fly Me To The Moon, plus Girl Talk, I Can't Get Started With You, Tangerine, and several other less poppy tunes.