Monday, April 18, 2022

You Can Make Dave Hum Style Backing Tracks

I fell in love with Dave Hum's music the first time I heard him perform on YouTube in 2018! I literally cried when I heard the second part of The Ballad Of Jed Clampett, the way Dave plays eloquent triplets all up the neck. I had never heard a banjo played like that before, and he touched my heart musically that day. I said to myself in my heart: “That's it! That is exactly how I want to play the banjo!” It was Dave Hum that rekindled a burning passion in my soul to get back into my banjo playing. I had purchased a Gold Tone banjo 25 years earlier, when I lived in Chicago, but in the early 1990's there was no internet. Since I didn't have any musical mentors, I lost interest. But all that has changed today with the invention of the internet!

All of the following backing tracks are my humble attempt to recreate Dave Hum's awesome tracks. I simply imported Dave's backing tracks into MixCraft Pro 9 one at a time (to use it as a template to build my track upon). I first lay down a MIDI kick drum and tambourine, and then play my bass guitar along. At first my bass lines were not timed and articulated well, and so once I laid down the correct bass lines by studying and following Dave, and then turned off Dave's playing and went back to play along with just my kickdrum beats, so I could get the best timing for a good backing track. As you can tell, I still need to work on my bass technique. God willing, as I get better at my knowledge and skills, if I can improve these tracks, I will replace them with better versions. So if you like what you hear, make sure to download them, because they might be replaced if I think I have produced something better. Without further ado, enjoy! ...
Dave Hum was a seasoned journeyman musician, a jack of all crafts so-to-speak. He played banjo, guitar, mandolin, bongos and percussion, bass, double bass, harmonica and probably anything else he picked up! I am not professionally skilled, but I am good in general with stringed instruments. At age 55 I am learning more now than ever before, trying my best to recreate Dave Hum's inspirational backing tracks. I want to freely share all my progress with other banjo enthusiasts, and this blog is where to look for new stuff. I just uploaded Jay Buckey's Course #1 to freely share. I miss Jay, he is an inspiration like Dave.

I made all of the Dave Hum style backing tracks on my own. I started using a cheap $399 Hofner bass from China. I also went to Guitar Center locally and picked up a $299 Gretsch mini bass. I prefer the Gretsch bass for my backing tracks, because the Hofner has a string bass essence to it, which isn't what I want for Dave Hum's tracks. So I am using the Gretsch now. I used the Gretsch for Sailor's Hornpipe, Gaspe Reel and others. The different tone variation is subtle, but noticeable.

I am using $149 MixCraft Pro 9 software for the kickdrums, crash cymbal and tambourines. I just bought some different hand percussion instruments (shaker, tambourine, Christmas bells) from a local music store, to try and recreate some of Dave's immaculate backing tracks. I admittedly am not Dave Hum, nor am I trying to be. I simply humbly want to keep his music and spirit alive, and help freely provide his much sought after backing tracks (to the best of my limited abilities...lol). Hey, I'm having fun, which is the whole idea, right.

To be honest, I am not a great mandolin player. I can play it slow, but Dave Hum honed his skills over the years and could play authentically fast. I'm still working to increase my speed. So on The Merry Blacksmith, I recorded my mandolin at half speed, and then increased the tempo to double after I recorded it, to match Dave's playing. Hey, it works for making my backing track...lol. I thought that was pretty cool.

I encourage other banjo pickers to learn the mandolin too. If you listen to The Merry Blacksmith from HIS ALBUM, you can hear Dave Hum picking THE SAME notes on the banjo as the mandolin. I'll guarantee you that he likely learned those songs on the mandolin first. The reason I know is because NO ONE plays the banjo like Dave Hum, and that is because he often plays the banjo like a mandolin (i.e., single note stuff, using up/down picking)!!! Try it and you'll see what I mean.

I often pray for Dave Hum's family in England: Mel (wife), River and Perri (daughters), thankful for the music that Dave gave the world to cherish. Their third daughter, Ashlea, went to Heaven in 2002 from Cystic Fibrosis. I regularly drive around with Dave's banjo music blasting in my car with the windows down, and people respond favorably all the time, loving what they hear. Dave Hum's music is happy music!!! The world needs a lot more of that.

Dave was a big fan of Pete Seeger (1919-2014), an original member of The Kingston Trio, who had the words written on his banjo: “This instrument surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” What a great truth! The banjo is indeed a happy instrument that soothes the savage beast. ...


Banjo Artist, Peter Seeger (1919-2014)

Pete Seeger invented the long banjo neck. To accommodate his baritone voice in the famous Kingston Trio group, he literally cut and put two banjo necks together to add a few inches of length to the neck, and in so doing made music history! Today, Deering and other banjos companies sell long neck banjos, which are still quite popular, tuned three half steps lower to E instead of standard G. Long neck players capo the third fret to play it as a standard G tuned banjo.

God willing I hope to make more MP3 backing tracks for many of Dave's songs, and I will gladly share them all for free with all of you. It is 320 kbps quality. I'll post them in this blog. Music makes the world a better place! I love sharing with others. I hope you like them. I also included a second track with Dave Hum playing the original song, so you can hear how I used his original song to pattern my backing tracks. 

In the song Whiskey Before Breakfast (with Dave Hum), the static in the recording is from the MP3 of Dave Hum. I don't know how that got in there.

Also, I am learning how to make backing tracks, so bear with me. I am studying Dave's backing tracks, they are the BEST! I bought an inexpensive Hofner bass from Guitar Center...


My New Hofner Bass (I love the flat-wound strings & hollow body)

I've read online that the Hofner bass (the same that Paul McCartney has used his entire career) has more of a string bass sound to it. It sure does! You can hear it in my backing tracks. I am not a professional bass player, so I really don't know if this is the best bass to use, but I'd say that it does have a nice bass tone. I love that the Hofner bass is hollow inside and super light. Mine came with flat-wound strings, which is highly recommend by the artists who play them.

Dave Hum used “Sonar software to make his backing tracks. Sonar was a digital audio workstation created by the former Boston, Massachusetts-based music production software company “Cakewalk.” It was acquired by Singaporean music company BandLab Technologies and renamed “Cakewalk by BandLab. Guess what my fine non-feathered banjo friends, CAKEWALK IS NOW FREE! Wow, how cool is that? Here is what it says on their website:
Cakewalk is 100% free. Cakewalk is the next generation of SONAR. Your SONAR projects are fully compatible with Cakewalk. Regular updates delivering significant stability, performance enhancements, and new features, plus compatibility with future Windows updates. SOURCE
I am not familiar with Cakewalk, but I downloaded it to try it, and I became frustrated trying to figure how to use it. So I uninstalled it from my computer. I'm sticking with MixCraft. I just wish the software came with more sounds. I used Mixcraft Pro 9 software to make all these backing tracks, which I really like and have used to record my music for several years now. The software is inexpensive compared to Ableton. MixCraft Pro is only $149 and worth every penny! I recently downloaded trial versions of Ableton and FL Studio, both of which are confusing for newbies like me, and frustrating to learn in my humble opinion. MixCraft is largely self-explanatory and makes sense how they laid everything out right in front of you to see. When I right-mouse-click on a track in MixCraft, I get a menu; but in FL (Fruity Loops) Studio, right-mouse-clicking deletes your track! I hate that! So I uninstalled FL Studio too.

I don't get anything for promoting MixCraft, I just love their software and want to help other musicians spend more time making music than reading owner's manuals. MixCraft allows you to easily insert MIDI or audio tracks to record. For the MIDI (or Virtual Instrument) track, MixCraft Pro comes with limited but useful free instruments. All I needed and used to make my tracks is a kickdrum, tambourine and a crash cymbal for one song. I am trying to follow exactly what Dave did. The percussion sounds I used already come with MixCraft, and there are plenty more (piano, bass, drum kits, synthesizer, brass, et cetera). Mind you, it's all MIDI. MixCraft does also come with real instrument audio loops, but I haven't found much use for them for making Dave Hum style backing tracks. You can also download VST plugins, which I am still learning how to use.


How To Use 'MixCraft Pro'

When you open MixCraft for the first time, create a new song under “File.”

First, insert a new Audio Track on track one, and then import a Dave Hum MP3 song. To add the song, just right mouse click on the empty track and select "Add Sound File." Then choose your song.

Second, lay down your percussion beats. Go to track two, a MIDI track, and click on the piano symbol to the left of the word “mute.” When the window opens you can select which instrument group you want. Select the “Percussion - Drum Kit” to the left, and then in the right window I used “Dance.” In here you are selecting your group of instruments. Close the window.

Third, Go to the track that you want to make your drums (in this case the first track) and DOUBLE-CLICK with your mouse on the track area. This will install some tracks for you. I usually need to widen the window with my mouse, so I can expand the new track over a few bars. I like MixCraft because it is very user friendly. 

Fourth, double-click on the new track you just made, which will open the Piano Roll Window down at the bottom of your screen. In here you can select which instrument you want, from the main group you selected already. The list is to the left, and you can scroll down through them, and hear them as you scroll. In the piano or step mode (which ever you prefer), you can enter in where the beats will occur. Once you make a song or two, it will become very easy to make more songs, because then you'll know exactly what to do. I am not great at explaining things, so I recommend doing what I did to learn... search Google! There's lots of YouTube videos and helps to work with MixCraft.

Fifth, and MOST IMPOPRTANTLY, you need to match up your song's tempo with Dave Hum's backing track. It is easy to do. Here is a helpful website to find the tempo of your song. It is accurate, but not precise. For example: It correctly showed me that Dave's song, Whiskey Before Breakfast is 107 BPM, but it was a bit off, so I fine tuned it by looking at the beats. They lined up perfectly when I adjusted the Session Volume in MixCraft to 107.03 BPM. I knew the tempo originally was off, because my kick drum matched Dave's kick drum at the beginning of the backing track, but it was pa-thumping at the end when I listened to it (i.e., out of sequence beats). I looked at the beats in my drum tract, as I watched the sound wave form in Dave's song, comparing them as the song played. Your ear is your best tool. You'll know everything is done right when it sounds right! I am committed to making exact replicas of Dave Hum's backing tracts, to the best of my ability. God willing, as time goes on and I get better, I will redo these tracts and make them even better if I can.

You can download all of Dave's YouTube videos as MP3's with this free nifty website. I believe the standard quality on YouTube is 128 kbps, because when I tried to download Dave's songs as 320 kbps, it defaulted to 128 kbps (which is still CD quality, very nice). Use this helpful program to download Dave Hum's videos as MP4 videos. I have 235 of his songs that I downloaded.

Just watch you kick drum beats as Dave is playing, and keep adjusting your tempo until they match. Again, your ears are the best tool you have! I make sure that my kick drum track is right under Dave's song, so I can watch them closely as the beats move. You want your kick drum to match Dave's beats.

Sixth, to make things easier for you, go up to "View" and in the dropdown menu select "Snap" and then "1/64 note." This will also you to fine-tune your song. If you don't do this, you won't be able to adjust your tracks minutely for timing. I always do this in every song. This is stuff they don't teach you on the internet, not that I have found at least.

Also, you'll likely want to turn off your metronome, which by default is "on" when playing back tracks. The metronome controls are 2 squares to the left of your tempo box at the bottom of your top screen. As I do, use the internet if you have any questions about how to use MixCraft, it is very helpful. And of course, you are welcome to email me for help if you'd like. If you just hold your mouse cursor over any particular function within MixCraft, a small message will appear, to tell you what it does, which is very helpful.

If you do decide to go with MixCraft, I will be glad to send you the original MixCraft files, so you can manipulate them and adjust the backing tracks to your preference. Some people may like the kick drum at a lower volume. You can individually adjust the kick drum, tambourine or other percussion on a single track by simply clicking on the track, which will open the Piano Roll Window below. In here you can right mouse click on any particular note that you've already entered, and select "note velocity." This will allow you to set the volume of that particular note. You will need to do this for each note if you desire to change it's volume. To change it's time, simply select "note length." I love MixCraft!

For my bass, I first about 30 minutes jamming along with Dave Hum, on whatever particular song I want to record. Then when I feel ready, I recorded my audio tract into MixCraft. I usually step record the parts. I am not a great bass player. You can even copy and paste bass parts to save time if you want, but I didn't do that.

You will need a computer interface with a male XLR input. I bought a Focusrite interface from Amazon.com (I bought this package). These are high quality computer interfaces, not cheap garbage.

I knew that the Rumble Studio 40 (which has a digital screen) comes with a USB output, but the Rumble 40 doesn't (which costs $240). The local music store didn't carry the Rumble Studio 40 (which costs $400). But I needed a bass amp so I bought the 40 watt Rumble anyway. In hindsight, I wouldn't recommend the Rumble Studio 40 anyway, because if you read the reviews online, many buyers have had problems with the amp's digital electronics.

I don't recommend the 25 watt Rumble amp for a couple reasons:
  1. I used to have a Fender Rumble 25 bass amp and it lacks volume.
  2. The Rumble 25 doesn't come with an overdrive, but the Rumble 40 does, which you'll want for playing live if you ever need it, or want to crank it up at home.
  3. Best of all, the Rumble 40 DOES have a female XLR output (for any standard microphone cable). The XLR output also has a Ground Life switch to reduce static. You CAN use this output for recording. Yes, the cheaper Rumble 40 for $240 DOES have an output to record! Just plug a male microphone cable into the back of the amp, and then plug the other female end into your Focusrite (or whatever). Of course, you could always mike your amp, which is what Dave Hum did, but I prefer to go direct. Perhaps some other time I'll try miking the amp, to see if it improves the sound of my bass. I just need to purchase a mike. But to be honest, I am really happy so far with the quality sound of the bass going direct. So why make things harder than they need to be? I just want to play THE BANJO!!!
So if you want to make your own backing tracks like I am doing, you will need:
  1. A bass guitar (cheap is fine, today's inexpensive basses sound MUCH better than the ones decades ago). My Hofner only cost me $399 from Guitar Center. It sounds great. I DID have to tighten the the truss rod a bit, because the strings were a bit farther away from the neck than I wanted. Remember: The truss rod counters the strings pulling on the neck. So if you look at it that way, you'll understand which way to tighten the rod to get what you want. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosie! That is, turning the truss rod clockwise will bring the strings closer to the instrument's neck. AND ALSO, if you buy a Hofner, make sure to take a Philip's screwdriver and tighten the little side screws on each of the two pickups, which will bring the pickups closer to the strings, significantly increasing your volume. But any bass will do. I don't like Jazz basses, they have a funk sound. A P-bass or PJ bass would be my choice.
  2. You'll need a computer. You'll need a way to record your bass guitar into your computer. I am simply using one of my USB ports to record. That is all you need on your computer. My laptop has FOUR processors, which is why I bought it. I used to have a laptop with only TWO processors, and I had to wait all the time for things to process. I have an Intel Core 7 chip. I purchased a gaming computer, not to play games, but because I knew it would handle anything else if it could play video games. So if you ever buy a computer, love yourself and buy something with FOUR processors, or something comparable. Read online for comparisons and reviews. You'll be glad that you did.
  3. You'll need an interface to connect your bass (or any electric instrument) to your computer. I am running out of my Rumble 40's XLR jack in the back, and into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Generation interface (that's their fancy words). Truthfully, any cheap interface would do. I bought a Lexicon Alpha several years ago for $40, which seems to work just fine. This time I went with the Focusrite because of the hype right now...lol. It's the best everyone is saying! I downloaded the drivers for it from Focusrite's website.
  4. You'll need software to make your backing tracks. I love MixCraft Pro and that is all I use. Once you get setup, you can also record an acoustic guitar, or mandolin, et cetera, if you want it. But the thing that I love about Dave Hum's backing tracks, which is really hard to find anywhere else, is that he keeps it SIMPLE (just percussion and bass). His tracks have a driving energy to them, because of the way Dave made them. I hope to get good at making backing tracks. Right now I am just getting started. As Dave always said: “So many songs, so little time!” Also, MixCraft allows you to mixdown whatever you make to WAVE or MP3 files (and some other audio formats). And once you buy MixCraft, you have lifetime support for your product. When newer versions are released, you get deep discounts to upgrade. I just upgraded from version 6 Pro, to 9 Pro, for only $39.
Of course, you'll need a guitar cord. The XLR cable came with my Focusrite, because I purchased the package from Amazon. I don't use a pick when I play bass, just my thumb and fingers. Do get some FAST-FRET in a can, which protects your strings and makes playing easier. Your fingers slide better. Make sure to get a shoulder strap for your bass, so you can focus on playing with your hands, rather than trying to hold the bass up too. That's about it. If anyone has any questions, you're welcome to email me at the address in the top right corner.

Also, I have ALL of Jay Buckey's 11 banjo courses, including backing tracks. I'll gladly send them via “WeTransfer to you (as long as WeTransfer is still free) if you email me for them, so I'll have your email to send them. The files are 1.5 GB in size. I am sad that Jay suddenly vanished off the internet, and his awesome website. I only regret that I didn't get all his dobro, bass, mandolin and fiddle courses when they were available. I think Jay passed away. I emailed him, but he didn't reply. Jay always replied. So I think he is up in Heaven now. I sure appreciate all the backing tracks that he made, which are awesome!

I just want to encourage and help other banjo enthusiasts, like me. I'll never sell anything, it is all free! I have an old neck injury. I developed Stenosis and Radiculopathy over time, which causes me tremendous pain, nerve burning, neck pain and both arms feeling inflated with air. But I thank God I can still pick the banjo! Amen. So be patient with me. If I make any new backing tracks, I will upload them to this blog. I'm going to make a “Dave Hum Style Backing Tracks column on my main webpage, and list new tracks there too.

There is a very helpful effect that comes with MixCraft called “iZotope Mastering Essentials,” which allows you to adjust the overall sound of your final mix, or each individual instrument. In MixCraft you can apply effects to one track, or to all tracks at the same time. I always add the iZotope effect when I am done, which brightens the entire track.

I also add an “Acoustica Compressor,” which lowers any high spikes, and boosts any lows. There are a few dozen helpful effects (delays, reverb, chorus, phaser, distortion, et cetera) that you can add.

In 2016, I bought the whole bundle of Band-In-A-Box from PG Music. About every 5 years I like to upgrade to get the whole bundle, to save money, rather than upgrade each year. So today I upgraded for $299 to get their whole bundle (including all the Real Tracks and Real Drums). If I hadn't been a former customer, it would have cost me $899. I am going to do my best to also recreate Dave's Backing tracks with Band-In-A-Box. They have some great folk stuff now to work with. I found a great style for Mason's Apron (an Irish jig). Plus, I can record my bass into BB to combine BB with my own real recordings. So God willing I'll see what I can do. Whatever backing tracks I can make, I will freely share in this blog with everyone as MP3's.

Also, I am open to helpful suggestions from other musicians, if you have any advice to improve my backing tracks. I am always learning and improving my musical knowledge and skills, which is fun to meet the challenge. So many songs, so little time! I am a member of the Banjo Hangout. Just look for: David J. Stewart. My former user name was BanjoFret12, but when I put my name in there I think it superseded my original nickname, which is fine. Dave Hum also used his real name. So you can contact me either through my blog's e-mail or banjo hangout.

God bless you friends and keep making happy music for the people in your life with the banjo!

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5 String Banjo Instruction [1967] - Earl Scruggs

5 String Banjo Instruction Album [1967] - Earl Scruggs