Review Of 50 Blues: Blues Guitar Backing Tracks
Introduction And Overview
Jamming with other musicians and to backing tracks is an essential part of learning to improvise solos. This process of jamming allows you to apply what you practice in a real-life musical situation. And this helps you grow as a musician.
Although I've bought a lot of jazz backing tracks in the past, I must admit my blues backing track collection has been a bit limited. So I was pleased when I came across the 50 Blues website…
Product Overview
50 Blues is the creation of professional guitarist and instructor Zack Roberts. It comprises of the following…
- 50 blues-based backing tracks. (These are NOT cheesy midi-tracks. They are professionally recorded using a full blues band).
- Blues Guitar Essential Course. This is a 29 page e-book written by Bob Murnaham (who is the author of Pentatonic Power). This e-book covers some of the basics of playing blues guitar. (It covers both rhythm and lead guitar).
- Bonuses. At the time of writing this review, there are nine bonuses that you receive when you purchase 50 Blues. (For full details of the current bonuses offered, please visit the 50 Blues website).
Pricing Information:
There are two versions of 50 Blues…
- Download Only: This is available for immediate download after you have paid. The price for the download version is $47.00 (US Dollars). This is the version that I purchased to do this review.
- CD Version: This is a physical version that is shipped to you on two CDs. The price of the CD Version is $79.90 (US Dollars). This price includes the cost of worldwide shipping.
I feel that the pricing of 50 Blues is very fair. If you buy the download version, it works out to just 94 cents per backing track. And for professional sounding backing tracks, I feel that it represents excellent value-for-money.
[IMPORTANT: The prices quoted above are accurate at the time of writing this review. Keep in mind that prices may change. So be sure to check out the 50 Blues website for the most up-to-date prices].
Guarantee:
50 Blues comes with an eight week money-back guarantee. This is a generous guarantee that gives you plenty of time to evaluate the backing tracks.
What I Liked About 50 Blues
I bought 50 Blues just over a month ago, so have had a fair amount of time to evaluate the backing tracks. Here are some things that I liked about them…
- High Sound Quality: I thought that the backing tracks sounded great. The sound quality is far greater than any of the backing tracks that I've created for myself in the past. I found that this made jamming to them very fun and enjoyable.
- Very Musical: I thought that the arrangements of the backing tracks were very musical. I can tell that Zack has put a lot of effort to make the backing tracks sound like actual songs with proper arrangements of instruments and song-structure. This adds to the enjoyment of jamming to them.
- Wide Variety: There is a very wide variety of blues-based styles, tempos and keys. This is important because playing over many different types of backing tracks is one of the keys to becoming a more versatile blues guitarist.
- Sensible Key Choice: I was pleased to see that the backing tracks were in important blues keys. I always recommend to my students to master the common blues keys first. And the 50 Blues backing tracks will definitely help you to do that.
What I Didn't Like About 50 Blues
There were two small things that I felt could have been done a bit better…
- File Naming: I felt that the names of the backing tracks were a bit inconsistent. Some of the track names had the key and tempo included, while others didn't. This isn't a major problem though, because Zack does provide documents that tell you the track info.
- Soloing Advice: Although Zack does suggest what scales to use over each backing track, I felt that that he could have gone into a bit more detail. This would help less experienced guitar players derive the most benefit from the backing tracks. This criticism is possibly a bit harsh, because 50 Blues is primarily a backing track collection. It is not intending to be a complete how-to-play-blues course. (If you are looking for a how-to course, then you would be better off with something like Playing Through The Blues).
The Bottom-Line
I'm giving 50 Blues a rating of 4-stars. I would have given it 5-stars if the naming of the audio files was more consistent. This would have made it faster to find out the key and tempo of ALL the tracks. I'm being incredibly harsh and picky here. But hey…it's my review, and I'll do what ever I want!
With that said, 50 Blues is an excellent sounding collection of blues-based backing tracks sold at a fair price. So if you are a blues guitarist interested in improving your improvising, I can highly recommend checking it out. Just click on the link below now to learn more…
Filed under Product Reviews by Craig Bassett