Jam Tracks CD
I have seen several Play Along Cds for blues. Which one would you recommend for basic blues beginner?
Thanks.
Wow that's a good list. Thanks.
I was cleaning my home and throwing out stuff and generally finding things I didn't even know I had whilst I was trying to sort everything out. And I found a 2 CD set of "Play along Jam Tracks for Saxophone" by some bloke called David Barrett! How cool is that? I can't even recall buying it. :)
Also, Dennis Gruenling has a ton of Acoustic Jam Trax, in just about every key you could ever want. These trax are just acoustic guitar, which is a really nice change from the full band thing. And the guitar playing is top notch. They can be found on Dennis' site badassharmonica.com
Stick with what you find on this site, for now. After that, the Jimi Lee set is the acknowledged gold standard of normal jam tracks. You can find some other cool stuff-- like Shoji's for specific songs-- but this site and Jimi Lee should be all you need for jamming and practicing chorus forms.
Some of the best backing tracks are the ones that David makes available here on the site! There are enough downloadable mp3 tracks available on the lession pages to keep a beginner busy until he/she is no longer a beginner!
Or you can pay for those and others from the same company at http://www.ultijamtracks.com/blues.html
If you want tracks that are for specific songs, designed specifically for blues harp, check out http://www.bluesharptracks.com/ (Shoji, the creator, gives them interesting names that clue you in to the songs they mimic).
A great, slightly more expensive (but worth it) set is Jimi Lee's GROOVETRAX- Every Groove a Bluesman Needs to Know. (a two CD set with descriptions of each groove). http://www.jimileeband.com/instant_download/groovetrax/
Steve Baker has a great series of play-along tracks as well, including this one: http://www.stevebaker.de/blues_jam_en_87.html
Youtube has a lot of individual ones you can record/download for free.
There is a complete "album" of them called "Into the Blues" at https://youtu.be/1BQLeUgbJyc The problem is that this is one long recording of 10 different tracks. If you have the right software you can record the album and then break it up into individual songs, and it's a great (free) deal. If not, you can download the songs individually or the full CD at http://quistorama.com/album/295138/into-the-blues-10-blues-jam-tracks?au...
There are free downloads by Pete Anderson, designed for Guitar Center's "King of The Blues" guitar contest at http://gc.guitarcenter.com/kingoftheblues/tracks/
Adam Gussow has a CD with some really good backing tracks for $12 at
https://www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php/4537012-blues-harmonica-play-alo... . It comes with a 58 minute video of him giving some examples of playing along with the tracks and some other tips as well.
Hal Leonard has a series of Harmonica Play-Along CDs and books (sheet music) for a lot of popular songs in different genres. The CDs have versions with ("Demo") and without ("Play-along") harmonica playing. http://www.halleonard.com/search/search.do?_c&subsiteid=1&keywords=harmo...
Hope this helps. I expect other folks on the site will have some great ideas to add.