slovak75 - 8-26-2009 at 06:11 PM
Greetings all, I've been looking around for some sort of background music to play to. It can be a drone or even Darbuka beats. Is there a cd out
there or maybe a site where I can download something? I've been practicing to a metronome which gets a bit annoying after a while. Thanks!!
jazzchiss - 8-26-2009 at 11:41 PM
You can download some tampura mp3 here
But I find more stimulating to play with full CD ragas: specially Indian violin and sarod.
Sazi - 8-27-2009 at 12:30 AM
If you just want some different rhythms to practice along with, do a search of the forums for rhythm loops, (the search box is up in the top left
corner of this page) there are, or at least were, some available for download, thanks to one of our forum members - Alami. Alternatively you could
find some cd's by players in the same tuning you use and just play along, it's a great way to learn new pieces! 
Cheers S
fernandraynaud - 8-27-2009 at 04:19 AM
Why not get a basic DAW (digital audio workstation) program for your PC, and download some loops of percussion, and some misc harmonic stuff, drones,
etc? There are many sites that offer free loops, and REAPER is a full-blown DAW that's free for home evaluation. You can also import tracks into
REAPER to play along with, and you can record what you play with the mic in your laptop, or a $10 external mic. Nothing like listening to yourself to
improve your playing. ASIO4ALL is a free driver that makes ordinary soundcards (or built-in sound chips) work at low latency, i.e. without a long
delay between what's playing and what's recording. You can have a pretty amazing digital recording studio setup, that people a few years ago could
only dream of, for a few dollars for a mic and headphones. REAPER is quite a full-featured program, very similar to ProTools, but even if you only
learn to use 1% of its capabilities, and just use it to play along with CD tracks and record yourself, it's great. As I recall REAPER can pitch shift
like the professional programs. Do you have a CD track that was played in D and you want to play in C? No problem, just tell it to pitch-shift the
track.
On the image below, the upper track could be a CD track you imported, and one of the lower tracks could be what you played along with it. Then, hey,
you might get creative and add a few things
[file]10876[/file]