About This Tool
Watch the video below for a quick tour! It explains what this tool is, what I intend for it to grow into, and a few of the ways you can use it starting right now.
Features I want to add
- Audio Downloads of each track - in case you want to practice any of these offline.
- Single Chord Jam Tracks - I'd love a way to let folks quickly play a play-along track over a single chord, ideally in every possible key. This would make for a great way to practice scales or riffs without worrying about chord changes.
- Filtering by "Type" of Jam Track - 12 bar blues, song-inspired, single-chord tracks, etc. I want to make it easy for folks to find these types of tracks.
- Improved Browse UX - currently, the approach of showing a video for all tracks doesn't make it easy to browse. I'd rather folks have more of a scrollable "playlist" sort of interface, where folks can more quickly assess what's available. From there, folks could hear audio previews, or jump to the video of any given track if they want.
- Members-only functionality - currently all these tracks are free for anyone to view. Eventually I want to make them, or some of them, members-only — as that's the way I treat the tracks on my individual lesson pages.
Version History
July 21, 2025
- Added several new tracks (#447, #594, #588). I also added a Sloop John B (Beach Boys-inspired) track, a lesson for which is coming soon
March 28, 2025
- Added three new tracks (#72, #151, #433)
Nov 1, 2024
- Added a track for my newest lesson (#569)
- Added existing tracks for older lessons: Uncle John's Band (#491), When the Stars Come Out (#498), alternate picking over G-Am-C-D (#379), St James Infirmary (#217), Please Come Home for Christmas (#199), and Tennessee Whiskey (#195).
Sep 4, 2024
- Added this changelog section, as well as the intro video above.
- Changed tool theme color to make it unique vs. all other tools. Color and tool name still TBD.
Sep 3, 2024
- Launched MVP version of this tool! It includes all video backing tracks I've made so far, in one place. Each track links to the lesson it originated from.
- Plenty to-do next. Make the videos members-only, change the data schema setup so each track can have its own stand-alone page (e.g. for sharing via URL), add audio version of each track, etc.
- I also want to work out the landing page experience, for both logged-in and logged-out users. It should be very easy to browse things without seeing dozens of rendered videos on the page. I want to think about the slight UX differences of jumping into single chord backing tracks vs. song-based backing tracks vs. drum-only tracks. A lot of this isn't necessary to solve out of the gate, but noting it here.