LumaFretsGuitar Backing Tracks: Where to Find Them and How to Make Your Own
Published 30 October 2026.
A guitar backing track gives you a band to play with instead of a metronome. There are two kinds. A jam track is made for improvising over a groove. A real song with its guitar part taken out lets you play the original part with the rest of the band around you.
Which one you want depends on the job. If you want an open-ended groove to try ideas over, use a jam track. If you want to play a particular song, use the song itself with the guitar muted.
Two Kinds of Guitar Backing Tracks
A jam track is accompaniment made for playing along. It might repeat a blues progression or move through a set of chords in one style. You can try a phrase, leave some space, and try something different on the next pass. It suits practice where the exercise matters more than copying a recording.
A song with its guitar part muted keeps the original arrangement. You hear the drums, bass, vocals and other parts while you play the guitar part yourself. Choose this when you want to practise a riff at the right moment, follow a verse into a chorus, or play through a song without the recorded guitar covering yours.
Soloing the guitar is useful too, for listening before you play. Hear the part on its own, then mute it when you are ready to take its place. Separated parts can still carry some sound from other instruments, so expect a usable mix rather than a perfectly clean one.
Where to Find a Jam Track
Search the video or music platform you already use. Include the style, key and tempo you need, for example "slow blues backing track in A" or "medium tempo rock jam track in E". If you are working on a chord progression, add it to the search.
Before settling on a track, listen through the chord changes and check there is room for your guitar. A track with a loud lead part is fun to hear but gets in the way when you want to practise your own lead lines.
A jam track in the same key as a song will not follow that song's chords or structure. To learn the original arrangement, use the song.
Choose a Backing Track for the Job
Check three things before you start:
- Key and chords. If you are practising a scale or chord shapes, pick a track that lets you use them. Listen through the changes, because the key name does not tell you everything.
- Tempo. Pick a pace where you can hear the beat and place each note on purpose. Move to a faster track once the part feels comfortable.
- Style. A sparse groove leaves room to experiment. A busy arrangement makes you listen for gaps and decide when not to play.
Give each run one small goal. Keep a rhythm part steady through every change, start each phrase on a chord change, or play one section of a song without losing your place.
Practise a Short Section Before the Whole Song
Starting from the top every time hides the passage that needs work. Find the few bars where you hesitate and repeat those first. Start slowly enough to stay with the beat, and raise the speed when you can play the section the same way several times in a row. Then go back to the full track to hear how the passage connects to what comes before and after. Our guide on how to slow down a song walks through this step by step.
A count-in gives you time to get ready for the first note. A click makes the beat easier to check when the arrangement is sparse or the rhythm is tricky. It also helps to listen to a phrase once before you play it, paying attention to when notes start and stop, not just which notes they are.
Make Your Own Guitar Backing Track From a Song
In LumaFrets Pro, open your own audio file of the song and open Mix. Pro separates the file into vocals, guitar, bass, drums, piano and the rest, on your computer. Nothing is uploaded. Solo the guitar to listen to it, or mute it to play over the rest of the song. There is more detail in how to remove the guitar from a song.
The audio source matters. LumaFrets can play a tab in time with a YouTube video, but it cannot separate YouTube audio into parts. To solo or mute the guitar, use your own audio file with Pro.
If you are learning from a tab, LumaFrets plays Guitar Pro (3 to 7), MusicXML and TuxGuitar files in time with your audio file or a YouTube video. You can follow the tab as a page or watch the notes come down a 3D highway. Playback runs from 25% to 100% speed with the pitch kept, and you can loop a passage or use the speed trainer to raise the pace over repeated loops.
Get Started
The free LumaFrets app includes those practice tools, plus a tuner, count-in, click, scoring, and a built-in amp with cabinets and pedals. It runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Splitting your own audio files into parts is a Pro feature. Pro also lets you play through your own VST3 and Audio Unit plugins, and it costs $39 once, with no subscription. Download LumaFrets.
For open-ended improvising, find a jam track that fits your key, tempo and style. To play a specific song with the original band, use your own audio file with Pro, listen to the guitar if you need to, then mute it and take its place.