As a lead guitarist, I'm always on the lookout for guitar jam-tracks. However the online sites appear to be a piecemeal collection, ranging from hard-sell sites pushing complete packages on you, decent sites that are swamped in flashing advertising banners to hobby sites set up as blogs with a handful of oddly named tracks
After getting lost and frustrated in the morass, I decided to systematically compare the sites in order to answer a simple question:
Guitar jam tracks - which single site offers the most features?
After poring over Google searches I had come up with the following - alphabetically ordered - 16 sites as potential contenders:
- bluesblast[dot]
- datamusic[dot]org
- easyleadguitar[dot]com
- freejamtracks[dot]com
- guitarbackingtrack[dot]com
- guitarjamtracks[dot]com
- guitarjamtrackshq[dot]com
- guitarlessons[dot]com
- guitarplayback[dot]com
- guitarteacher[dot]com
- guitarvoice[dot]com
- heartwoodguitar[dot]com
- jamcenter[dot]com
- jamtrackcentral[dot]com
- jamtracksforguitar[dot]com
- practicesoloing[dot]com
The above sites were examined for the following features. These features are purely subjective in that they are important to me. Others users might have similar or different criteria. Also, the features are not weighted, meaning they are, to me, all roughly as important as each other:
(1) Users can submit guitar jam-tracks
(2) The tracks are ordered by key
(3) The tracks are ordered by date
(4) The tracks are ordered by genre
(5) There are tracks for every single key
(6) There is a mailing list
(7) Users can post comments in a discussion area
(8) There are scale charts available for each key
(9) There is a video instruction area
(10) The tracks can be previewed
(11) The tracks can be streamed
(12) The tracks are downloadable
(13) The tracks are accurately and precisely named
(14) The tracks are studio production quality
(15) The track names contain the chord progression information
(16) The tracks are free
After systematically comparing the 16 sites, the highest ranking site turned out to be www.practicesoloing.com which fulfilled 13 of the 16 criteria. The three criteria it missed out on were (4), (11) and (16).
(4) 'The jam tracks are ordered by genre'. At this site the tracks are not ordered by genre. The site is navigated by first knowing the key and tempo one is after, and then looking for a guitar jam track in that genre.
(11) 'The jam tracks can be streamed'. At this site the tracks cannot be streamed in their entirety. However, users can hear a 20 to 30 second clip and decide, based upon that, whether to download the track or not.
(16) 'Jam tracks are free'. At this site the tracks are not free. At the time of writing they all appear to be a uniform price of 99 United States cents, payable securely through PayPal.
In conclusion, http://www.practicesoloing.com/ is, for me, the most useful guitar jam track site as it has over 80% of the 16 features which are important to me as a lead guitarist.
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