I’ve got no problems playing in time with a metronome as hearing wise, it’s fairly obvious where the beat restarts, so i know when i go in and out of time.
But when it comes to playing along to a backing track, theres no metronome clicking noise to listen out for, so i haven’t got a leg to stand on.

Basically i am crap at playing in time along to backing tracks.

So this year my teachers goal is to improve my timing with backing tracks, and a lot of time will be spent focusing on this area.

Here’s what i learn’t so far

i’m practicing “On Green Dolphin Street” in Alto D major – First Jazz songs by Hal Leonard, which has a backing track.
There is a track on youtube which is similar, but may be in a different key, but in terms of timing it sounds similar.

So my teacher has got me doing the following.
1) listen to the backing track many times over and over and when doing that,

a) try and identify where the 1 is in every bar (it’s in 4/4 time ie 1 2 3 4), and say the word one. At this stage don’t worry if you can’t do that.

b) listen to the base player (my teacher reckons theres about 10 common base playing patterns) that can help with staying in time.

c) Now listen to the track and say the following words along to the base player.
Bars 1 to 8 (medium latin) if you listen to the base player, you can count “one” “three” in every bar.
Bars 9 to 16 (Swing) if you listen to the base player you can count “one” “two” “three” “four” in every bar.
Bars 17 to 24 (latin) if you listen to the base player, you can count “one” “three” in every bar.
Bars 25 to 32 (Swing) if you listen to the base player you can count “one” “two” “three” “four” in every bar.

d) now listen to the chord changes, its either one chord per bar or two different chords per bar, but either way, the chord changes fit in with the counting in part c above.
So while counting as above, listen to the chord changing in time

e) Now get the sax out, and just play the root notes of every chord, for the length of two beats or four beats depending on whether there is two chords in a bar or just one chord in a bar.
I found this helpful, as i now get the feel for being in time with the base player ( “one three” or “one two three four”) and also i now begin to notice the chord changes which fall in time.
I’ve now got perception of following the beat in the track, so i could ignore counting altogether and just hum (“ding ding” or “ding ding ding ding”) in time with the track.

f) Now when i play the sax melody i’m now more in time with the base player and i can also feel the chord changes matching with the sax keys.

This is only the 2nd week, so got lots more to learn. Again, with out a teacher is so difficult (Skype lessons – with JF if you haven’t got one)