Originally Posted by: maggiorThanks for the offer for the backing track. Actually, I'm thinking I need to learn how to do this myself. My drummer's husband does very complex midi tracks to backup his singing group, so I may talk to him where a good place is to start. I'm thinking I should have some sort of midi controller too.

You mention rhythm guitar, which reminded me of something else I wanted to point out:

Don't lose focus on your rhythm playing.

As guitarists, we tend to focus more on honing our soloing skills. However, good rhythm playing is just as important and can make the difference between getting a gig or not. In my band project that just ended, my guitar was in the forefront most, if not all of the time. It wasn't because of my soloing skills, it was because of my rhythm skills. The other guys had focused too much on their lead playing and couldn't do the required rhythm parts of the songs we were doing. For each song, I offered the primary rhythm part to somebody else because I didn't want to hog all of the cool fun parts. Each time it fell back on me because I was able to play them well.

Rhythm may not seem as glamorous as face melting solos, but I have to tell you it's still fun!!

Wait... MIDI Controller? I just used the good old-fashioned Keyboard and Mouse... Ableton has a Draw mode, that just lets you do all the MIDI with your mouse. I used that almost exclusively for my backing track because it was easy and it worked :)

I agree on the part with not losing sight of Rhythm skills. I'm going to jam with a Bassist pretty soon, and if things work out, we'll be starting a band where I'll be handling both Rhythm Guitar and Lead Guitar until we find a Rhythm Guitarist (and even then, I'll be playing Rhythm on top of the other guitarist's Rhythm). So it is pretty important to be a great Rhythm Guitarist. Besides, where I live, there's a lack of talented Rhythm Guitarists, because everyone wants to play Lead. I'm going to have to work a bit on adding a better Rhythm Guitar part to my Backing Track. Just add some actual Rhythm to the Chords, so it sounds even cooler :cool: