HOW TO MAKE A BACKING TRACK FROM ANY SONG. the real band, minus you

A backing track is a song with one part missing: yours. A guitarist plays over a track with no guitar, a singer over one with no vocals, a drummer over one with the drums taken out. You play the missing part, and the band around you is the record you learned the song from.

For practice it beats playing alone by a long way. You hear whether your part sits with the drums, whether your chord changes land with the bass, and whether your tone fits the mix. Playing along with the full record helps too, but your part is hidden under the original player, so it is hard to hear your own mistakes. Take that part out and every note you play is on show.

For years the only ways to get one were to buy a re-recorded version, find a karaoke file, or record the other parts yourself. Re-recordings are often close but rarely the real thing, and they only exist for popular songs. Splitting the song yourself gives you a backing track from the original recording, for almost anything you can play.

Stem splitting does the heavy lifting. A stem is one group of instruments pulled out of the finished mix: the vocals, the drums, the bass and so on. Once a song is in stems, a backing track is just a mix with your stem turned off.

In the screenshot the demo song Coming Home is split into its six stems, and the guitar is muted. Its waveform goes dark and its M button lights up, while the vocals, drums, bass, piano and other parts play on. That is a guitar backing track, ready to play over.

The Chord Lens Backing Track Maker splits a song into six stems: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano and other. Each has its own mute, solo and fader, so you can take out one part, several parts, or just turn one down. Five presets set the common mixes in one press: All stems, Vocals only, Instrumental, Karaoke and Rhythm only.

Guitarists and keyboard players usually mute their own stem and leave the rest. If you play rhythm guitar in a band, try Rhythm only as well: just the drums and bass, so you are the whole harmony and have to hold the song up yourself.

Bass players mute the bass and listen hard to the kick drum. A bass line that locks with the kick is most of the job, and with the original bass gone you’ll hear straight away when you drift.

Drummers mute the drums and play to the band. This is harder than it sounds, because the drums usually set the time. It is great practice for keeping a steady tempo without a click.

Singers mute the vocals, or press Instrumental, which takes the lead vocal out. For a karaoke mix, the Karaoke preset also takes out Other, where backing vocals usually land; our guide on making a karaoke version of a song covers it.

A backing track is most useful once you know roughly what to play. Before you mute your part, solo it and listen. Loop a few bars, slow them down, and work the part out. Our guide to slowing down a song without changing the pitch has the full routine.

Then mute it and play the same loop with the band. Keep the speed down at first. Speed and pitch are separate, so slowing the song keeps the band in the key you play in. Raise the speed a few BPM at a time until you’re at the record’s tempo, then play the whole section, then the whole song.

Follow the chart while you play. The chords light up on the beat, and where the song has lyrics the words run underneath, so you always know where you are. If you lose your place, the section you’re in is shown by name.

Want a click as well? The Studio’s metronome has its own row in the mixer and clicks on the song’s own beat, so it slows down with the song. Turn it up while you’re learning and down once the groove feels natural.

Splitting is very good, but it isn’t magic. Parts that share the same space in the mix can bleed into each other: two guitars playing the same chords, a piano under a pad, a backing vocal sitting on top of a synth. When you mute your part and still hear a ghost of it, it has usually landed in a neighbouring stem.

The fix is to pull the neighbour down too. A second guitar or a keyboard part often sits in Other, so try muting or lowering it. If you play piano and the guitar stem still has some chords in it, lower the guitar a little. A backing track doesn’t need every other part at full volume to be useful.

The recording matters as well. Clear studio versions split more cleanly than live takes, which have every instrument bleeding into every microphone. Heavily distorted guitars and dense mixes are hard for any splitter. If a split sounds rough, try a different upload of the same song.

On Free the stems play inside Chord Lens. On Premium you can download the stems, or your mix of them, as MP3 from the Studio, and Pro adds WAV. Downloads are for your own personal study and practice, not to share, sell or publish. The song still belongs to the people who made it.

Splitting runs in your browser on your own machine, so it needs a computer. On a phone you still get the chords, which is handy for a quick look at a chart before a rehearsal.

To keep a part you’re working on close at hand, save the loop. Free keeps 3 saved loops per song, so the bars you’re drilling are one press away next time you open the song.