I created this website in 2014 to host my personal collection of backing tracks for music practice, making them available for any musician to enjoy and help improve their playing. It has since grown to contain 160+ popular Bluegrass tunes as well as Old-Time, Gypsy Jazz and now 100+ Traditional Irish session tunes.
All of the tracks are built using samples from real musicians to sound and feel as authentic as possible.
Whether you play fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, flute, or accordion, there is no better way to learn than to play with other musicians.
The intention was always to keep this site free to use and free from ads. It has stayed online with help from the kind donations of those who find it useful and enjoy playing along with the many tracks.
At the top of this page you will find links to the Bluegrass, Old-Timey, Gypsy Jazz and Irish Trad pages. Within each page you can select or search for the tune you want to practice. When selected you will see the chord sequence used in the backing track. The buttons at the top of the page allow you to play, pause and stop the track. You can also increase or decrease the speed of the track, in 5% increments, to match your practice tempo. You can also click in the progress bar underneath to move to a specific point in the track.
I highly recommend connecting your pc/mac/phone to good speakers to get the most of the bass and volume when practicing. Don't worry about your neighbors, everyone loves to hear a musician practice the same tune on a loop for hours.
The Bluegrass and Gypsy Jazz tracks also have the option to select a simple rhythm track or include instrumental solos. The solos play over the 2nd and 4th round of verse/chorus. This allows you to practice backing other instruments, as you would in a live session or jam. It also encourages you to learn the chord changes and backing techniques, while playing the melody or taking a solo break in between.
The Irish Trad tracks have the option to include the melody as you learn to play the tune, or just a rhythm track to play along with. I have also included the melody in notation where publically available. Note to those who read music; the notation is generated directly from my own 5-string banjo arrangement, played "straight" without triplets or ornamentation.
I wrote the original FBBTs.com website entirely in Microsoft Notepad... It was fun, but has become difficult to maintain and time-consuming to edit or add tracks. This new site is built on more solid foundations. It's now easier for me to update, add tracks or expand over time. It has allowed me to improve the coding that plays the tracks and add the ability to search or filter the tunes and it functions better on different size devices.
I have added a new section for Traditional Irish session tunes, as I build on my own repertoire.
If you have any questions or find an error or broken link anywhere on this site, please use the "Contact Me" link at the bottom of the page to let me know. If there are any tunes that you would like me to add to the site, please let me know and I will do my best to create them for you.
There are literally thousands of hours of work invested in this site, from writing and generating backing tracks, mixing, mastering, not to mention the many months of work building the site itself. It also costs a fair bit to host the site and audio files. If you enjoy using the site and value its content, please consider subscribing with the button above. Any help is greatly appreciated in keeping this site alive and available for all to use.
I hope you find this site as useful as I do. If you enjoy using it, please share the site with your friends and fellow musicians. Feel free to post links to the site. If you would like to use any of the tracks outside of this site, or would like bespoke tracks for your own project, please contact me with the button below.
Simon.
