Virtual Bluegrass Band
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/d.k.marshall/index.html

Here’s one that my good friend (and excellent banjo player) Steve Hall told me about. It is Virtual Bluegrass Band. If you read the information on this site, it appears to be only for banjo pickers, but it can be useful for learning or practice on other instruments also. The home page of this site will tell you how to download many bluegrass tunes (click on the “List of Tunes” at the top to see the tunes. Then, if you have Band In A Box (BIAB) you can download the tunes to play them. But here’s the best part: The home page of Virtual Bluegrass Band tells you how to get a free MIDI player at vanbasco web site if you don’t have or want to pay for BIAB. Once you have a MIDI player (BIAB or the free vanbasco player) and have downloaded the MIDI files bluegrass tunes, you can play along with them and adjust the speed to match your progress in learning or practicing the tune. As Steve pointed out, it is much more pleasant than trying to play along with a metronome and still provides the solid beat to make sure you develop the proper timing and not let you learn a song in ragged fragments with bad timing. Give it a try. I did and the price is right..

Bill Downs
Links Manager