Rhythm Backing Tracks (RBTs) 

🥁 Audio tracks of professional drum grooves, in video format

🥁 Designed to clearly show a rhythmic concept or pattern

🥁 With video graphics to look at for reference

🥁 Played and programmed by pros, with musical authenticity

🥁 In multiple versions at different speeds

 

Rhythm is natural. It’s easy. It’s a part of everyday life from breathing to walking to reading a clock.

 

Musical rhythm is just as natural and easily felt. However when we begin to work with it on an instrument (and I always include the voice as an instrument), we have some details to control that just don’t apply to anything else.

 

Learning rhythm is easiest when you can hear it and feel it. That makes it simple to understand and also simple to entrain yourself to, to groove along with it, to play along with it. This is why I created Rhythm Backing Tracks and I use them daily in my teaching.

 

Rhythm just feels good. Here it is. Please join in.

 

 

Scroll down past the links for a discussion of the what, why, how of these tracks. 

STEADY BEAT RBTs - in all three meters
The consistent beat and accent pattern of a meter is played in its simplest form, on a drum kit. 

This page has tracks for all three meters: duple, triple, quadruple.
Each steady beat track is given at seven different tempos.  

 

Clear drum patterns you can play along with.

WHY

Here is what you get out of using these tools. RBTs are drum tracks designed specifically for music learners. They help you to:

  • Clearly hear a song’s meter (musical time), tempo (speed), and groove (the beat pattern of the drums)
  • Confidently count along with the music
  • Build a mental image or map of the rhythm
  • Commit the pattern and the music to memory 
  • Flow
  • Play along, on any instrument, with any stuff you want to practice with, such as:
    • Riffs
    • Scales
    • Strums
    • Chord changes
    • Lyrics
    • Improvisation
    • Whole songs
    • Sections of songs
    • A song you’re trying to write
    • . . . . . what else you got?

 

 

WHAT

Drums are literally the heartbeat of music, and they have very specific patterns that they use over and over. RBTs use these patterns so that you not only learn how rhythm works, you learn the music.

 

Simplified drum patterns are much easier to hear/learn/follow than the super-great drum parts of (insert drum hero here). The essence is here, but it’s clear and easy to hear (OMG, such a poet!).

 

Flexibility. There’s no nasty chords and melodies - - so you can play whichever ones you choose yourself.

 

They Sound GOOD. This is important. Did you take up playing music to be bored? Annoyed? No. You took up music to have fun. 
Sounds Good = Have Fun.

 

Every RBT is given in at least three different tempos (speed of the beat). Music just feels different at different speeds; you get to practice feeling that.

 

 

HOW

Firstly, just listen and count along. I give clear directions in every video about how to count. (Hint: you count to either 2, or 3, or 4, over and over again. Math phobia? I think you got this.)

 

Or just listen, period. Soak up and sink in to the grooves; it’s a great way to get comfortable with the new sounds. Also you have probably not thought about drums at all, ever. Worthwhile, becuase despite that you have definitely always felt them.

 

Play along. Use an RBT to practice anything. Like I said above. Heck I’ll put the list here again:

  • Play along, on any instrument, with any stuff you want to practice with
    • Riffs
    • Scales
    • Strums
    • Chord changes
    • Lyrics
    • Improvisation
    • Whole songs
    • Sections of songs
    • A song you’re trying to write
    • . . . . . what else you got?

 

 

 

PS> One last thing: you may have seen some music ‘education’ sites, and videos, and apps that have really cool-looking scrolling features. Kind of like the old ‘follow the bouncing ball’ thing that Lawrence Welk did a millenium ago. These are impressive feats of computer coding. They have no application to how human beings perceive and do music.

Proof: Do you read the English language that way, a moving scroll? No you don’t. Same with music. Meh.