Looking for a treasure trove of high-quality, free guitar jam tracks to practice your scales and improvisational skills? Well, you’ve found it!
In this article, you’ll find a list of over 20 amazing sources of free guitar backing tracks, featuring literally thousands of incredible tracks spanning almost every musical genre that you could wish for.
Free Guitar Jam Tracks and Backing Tracks
I have split this list up into 3 different sections, sorting the tracks by source.
Firstly, I have provided a variety of excellent backing track artists that you can follow on Spotify. Next up, we’ll look at some of the biggest and best YouTube channels that you can subscribe to. And finally, I have also listed some excellent jam-track websites and search engines.
Let’s start off with Spotify…
Spotify is an excellent source of premium tracks, especially if you are a member of their Premium service, which offers 320kbps and higher sound quality.
The only downside is that I am not aware of an easy way to search for a specific style or genre from any one artist. A good practice is to favorite songs or create your own playlist once you find the tracks that work for you.
On the plus side, having to really dig into an artist’s discography will probably expose you to some killer tracks that you would not have otherwise come across.
Here are a handful of my favorite artists for jam-along tracks.
Tom Bailey Backing Tracks
Tom Bailey has been producing high-quality guitar backing tracks since 2018, with a whopping 80 albums released at the time of writing. That’s almost 1000 jam tracks to delve into!
The key of every song is in the title, and almost every genre you could hope for is here.
You’ll find everything from emotional piano ballads to rap beats to heavy metal tracks.
Andertons TV
Andertons have their fingers in many pies these days, so it’s awesome to see that Captain Lee and friends are also helping out the guitar community with a series of premium backing track albums!
They release on average one album of tracks per year, and are at volume 7 at the time of writing.
So, you’ve got 70 high-quality songs spanning various genres and styles to explore.
Superior Jam Tracks
Superior Jam Tracks is another prolific backing track artist on Spotify, with 22 albums released currently. The channel releases new music every week, so there should always be some fresh tunes to jam along to.
The majority of songs here are definitely more chilled out in nature; for example, you’ll find a lot of ballads, relaxing grooves, and soulful jams.
Jam’in Backing Tracks
Jam’in is a relatively new channel, having only launched in 2020. This is a great page to follow as they release new tracks every week, giving you a constant source of fresh inspiration.
The quality of the tracks from Jam’in is super-high, and there are a ton of different genres to explore, including some very cool drumless backing tracks and a lot of epic, cinematic-style tunes.
Quist Backing Jam Tracks
Although he’s not quite as prolific as the other artists in this list, Quist has been going since 2012, so he does have a fair few albums to his name!
Like Superior Jam Tracks above, he does seem to focus on more laid-back grooves and bluesy-style songs.
There is even a ‘sexy series’ of romantic backing tracks which would be ideal for Valentine’s Day jams.
YouTube is probably the most popular source for jam-along tracks, so as you’d expect, this section is the biggest!
A great advantage to these video-based tracks is that the content creators can cram a lot of useful additional information into each song.
For example, many of these videos will overlay the chords being played in real-time, and also display several suggestions for which scales you might like to make use of.
There are thousands of incredible tracks in this section alone, so take the best of what you find below and make your own playlists for easy reference!
Elevated Jam Tracks
Elevated Jam Tracks is one of the biggest guitar backing track channels on YouTube, with over 400,000 subscribers at the time of writing.
A ton of effort is put into every track in terms of sound quality and video content. The chords used are displayed in real-time, and we are also treated to diagrams showing suggested scales to use.
Expect 2 to 3 new tracks every week!
YT Jam Tracks
YT Jam Tracks is run by Mikee, a musician and producer from the UK. I gave up trying to figure out how many tracks he has put out – trust me, there’s a ton of them!
Each track is available to download for a small fee, or you can, of course, listen on YouTube for free.
Every video shows the chords used in the track and also gives suggestions on which scales you might like to use.
Jam’in
Jam’in Backing Tracks has already made an appearance in the Spotify list above, but I’ve included them again here in case YouTube is more your thing. Expect all of the tracks on Spotify to also be found here.
The advantage the YouTube channel has is that the videos show the chords being played in real-time, a very handy additional perk!
Check out the playlist tab for separate guitar, bass, and drumless songs.
Sebastien Zunino
Although his channel started out covering all things guitar, Sebastien Zunino has been almost exclusively pumping out quality backing tracks for the past 8 years. There are almost 2000 videos to get stuck into, covering pretty much every genre you could possibly need.
In his most recent videos, we can see him actually playing the backing track chords, accompanied by on-screen tablature.
All tracks are also available to download on his Bandcamp page for offline practice.
Dix Music Studio
Dix Music is a newer channel that I managed to find, having only started producing jam tracks in May 2021. The music quality is ultra-high, and they are currently pumping out a couple of new tracks every week.
They have a lot of different styles of music available, but tend to focus on jazz and funk.
I really liked that they occasionally put out backing tracks in the style of specific artists, for example, Eric Clapton, George Benson, and David Gilmour.
Dopez Tracks
Dopez Tracks is another big guitar jam track channel that has been putting out videos since 2015. As you can imagine, this means that he has a ton of tracks available.
In each video, we can see the backing track being played. On-screen you will also see the current chord progression, current chord, and also the tuning and tempo.
The channel focuses mainly on rock and metal tracks.
JamTrack Society
If blues and/or rock are your thing, then JamTrack Society is going to be an absolute treasure trove of quality songs for you to dive into.
There are over 500 videos to browse at the time of writing, from popular musical styles to artist-inspired backing tracks.
Each video is overlaid with the current chord progression and a choice of scales that you might like to use.
Sound Witch
The Sound Witch channel hasn’t posted a new video in several years now. However, there are still over 500 tracks available to choose from, encompassing a ton of different genres.
Check out the various playlists available, which have sorted the tracks depending on playstyle.
A standout feature of this channel is that there are jam tracks specifically for bassists and drummers, also available.
Artmant Studios
Artmant Studios is another huge jam track channel on YouTube, and regularly posts a couple of new videos per week. It also has plenty of tracks specifically for drummers and bassists to jam along to.
In the past year, the channel has pivoted to offering lessons, so I would suggest delving into the playlists tab to find all of the backing tracks.
Here, videos are split up by genre, instrument, artist-style tracks, and more!
Now YOU Shred
As you can probably deduce from the name, Now YOU Shred is aimed at guitar shredders and shred-wannabes! Although there are a ton of backing tracks in various genres available, these are interspersed with ‘shred tip’ videos to help with your improvisational skills.
There is plenty to chew on here if you are mainly into rock and blues-style music; otherwise, you might find it difficult to find many tracks that you like.
A great place to work on your shred guitar chops! Check out the channel’s playlists for a very well-organized view of the videos available.
Benjamin Harrison Music
Benjamin Harrison is an Australian musician, composer, and producer, and has been producing jam track videos on YouTube since way back in 2015. In total, he has over 400 very high-quality songs available.
Each track shows the chords being played in real-time, and you can also download the tracks on Ben’s website if you’d prefer.
In addition, the tracks can also be downloaded without bass, drums, or piano/keyboard.
In this last section of the guide, we’ll take a look at a few good website-based jam-along track sources.
A nice advantage here is that the songs are usually much better organized, so it is generally easier to find exactly what you need. In addition, we are also usually able to download each track as an mp3 so that you can practice offline.
Note that for some of these sites, you may need to pay for downloads, but all are free to listen to online.
TrueFire
TrueFire is well known for its online guitar lessons, so as you’d expect, they also have plenty of improvisation aids. Check out the page at the link below, which features over 200 free jamtracks.
In addition, you might like to look into a yearly subscription to the site, which will give you unlimited access to everything TrueFire offers. This includes jam tracks and lessons created by some of the world’s top players!
WikiLoops
WikiLoops is a little different from most of the other entries on this list due to the fact that it is actually a jam track search engine! The quality can be a little hit or miss, but with almost 200,000 tracks to choose from, you can’t really complain.
Search filters include genre, key, tempo, and meter, and you can also search by keyword.
You can also choose which instruments to include (or exclude) from the results – super handy!
BackingTrack Brasil
This website is in Portuguese, but it is still pretty easy to navigate if your browser doesn’t have a translator built in. Find the enormous jamming tracks section at the link below.
The tracks can be filtered by both genre and key, and you can even search by BPM.
In addition, the site also has a ton of backing tracks for well-known songs.
Click To Visit BackingTrack Brasil
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do You Practice With Jam Tracks?
In a nutshell…
- Find your jam track
- Determine the song’s key
- Figure out what chords are used in the tune
- Decide which scale will work with the track
- Play along!
That’s probably a little too simplistic for those of you who are just starting out.
So, here is an excellent video that explains in detail how to get the most from the tracks in this article.
Where Can I Find Backing Tracks For Guitar?
You can find guitar backing tracks and jam tracks all over the internet, but the most popular source is probably YouTube.
Simply type in the style of track you are after (and probably the key!), and you’ll most likely find hundreds of results.
Additional popular free sources include Spotify and other music streaming services.
Specialist sites also exist, but you will often have to pay for this content.
What Happened To GuitarBackingTrack.com?
GuitarBackingTrack.com was a popular jam track website for years, but was recently purchased and taken over by another company. Unfortunately, the website was subsequently taken offline, and there are no current plans to relaunch the service.
Good thing I gave you a ton of new alternatives in this article, eh?
Guitar Backing Track Sources Missing?
If you feel there’s a glaring omission from this list, please shoot me an email, and I will be glad to add it.
You can find my contact form linked in the footer below.
More Useful Resources
Why not head over to my Resources Section, where you’ll find even more handy guides and tools for guitarists.
