How to Make a Backing Track from Any Song: Mute Your Own Part and Keep the Band
A backing track is the song with one part missing, the part you are going to play. For a singer that is the instrumental; for a guitarist it is the record with the guitar taken out; for a drummer it is the whole band with no drums. Until a few years ago each of those existed only if someone sold it. Now any song can become one in a few minutes, because a separation model splits the mix into stems and a backing track is just the mix with one fader down. This guide covers where backing tracks came from, the three ways to get one today, how to make your own from a file, and the one check that decides whether it will be any use on stage.
A short history of playing along
The idea is older than the technology. In 1950 Irv Kratka founded Music Minus One in New York and sold LPs of chamber music and jazz with one instrument left out, a printed part in the sleeve, and a count-off or a tapped tempo at the start so you knew when to come in. Jamey Aebersold's Volume 1, A New Approach to Jazz Improvisation, followed in 1967 with a rhythm section on the record and the soloist's chair empty; the series passed 130 volumes. Karaoke arrived from the other side in 1971, when Daisuke Inoue built the 8 Juke in Kobe for bar singers. By the nineties the commercial backing track was an industry of its own: Karaoke Version, Hal Leonard's play-along books with CDs, and later the game Rock Band (2007), whose multitrack masters were the first time most people heard famous records with one instrument alone.
What all of those had in common was coverage. You could play along only with the songs somebody had chosen to produce, usually a few thousand standards and hits, and never with the album track you actually wanted to learn.
Three ways to get one today
| Way | What you need | Coverage | Sound | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy a produced track | Nothing | Hits and standards, re-recorded by session players | Clean, but not the record | $2 to $4 per song, more for custom keys |
| Official stems or multitracks | The label to have released them | A few hundred songs, mostly game and remix releases | The record itself | Rare, often not for sale |
| Split the song yourself | The song file | Any song ever recorded | The record, with some residue in the muted part | Free, a few minutes of GPU time |
The third row is what changed. Deezer published Spleeter in November 2019, Meta's research group followed with Demucs the same year and the hybrid transformer version in 2022, and from then on splitting a stereo mix into drums, bass, vocals and the rest became something a browser could do. By 2024 the feature was inside Logic Pro 11, FL Studio and Serato. The difference between those and a dedicated free stem splitter is the number of stems: four in most DAWs, six here, with guitar and piano on their own faders, which is what makes a guitarist's or a pianist's backing track possible at all.
Making your own, step by step
- Pick a clean file. A lossless rip or a 320 kbps MP3 separates better than a video rip; a mono source, a live bootleg or a heavily compressed stream leaves more of your part in the other stems.
- Upload it to the stem separator. Separation takes a few minutes for a full song; the result is six channels on faders: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, other.
- Mute your own part. Guitarist: remove the guitar. Drummer: pull the drums down. Singer: drop the vocal, which is the instrumental maker in one move. Bassist: the bass stem, and listen for the kick drum, which sometimes shares the bottom octave.
- Listen to the whole song once before exporting. The places to check are the intro, any solo, and the quietest verse, because that is where residue of the muted part shows.
- Export a 24-bit WAV, or play along in the browser without exporting at all.
For a rehearsal or a practice session that is the finished job. For a stage it is not quite, and the reason is the first beat.
The count-in problem
A produced backing track starts with four clicks or a spoken count, the way Music Minus One records did in 1950, because the player has to know where beat one is before the band plays it. A backing track made from a record has no such thing: the song starts, and whoever is playing live is a beat late. The fix is a count-in in the file itself, timed to the song's own tempo, which is what our sibling tool CountIn does: it reads the beats from the recording, puts a count-in before the first downbeat, and can also move the key by up to 7 semitones for a singer, with the tempo left alone. Export the backing track here, then run it through CountIn before the gig. The two tools are built to be used in that order.
What to expect from the muted part
Separation is an estimate, and the muted part never vanishes completely. The table is for a typical modern studio mix; older mono records and live recordings leave more.
| Part you mute | What stays, usually | Where you hear it |
|---|---|---|
| Vocals | A little reverb tail, doubled harmonies at low level | Chorus endings, held notes |
| Drums | Hi-hat bleed in the guitar stem on dense mixes | Fast eighth-note sections |
| Bass | Low end of the kick drum | Intro, breakdowns |
| Guitar | Distorted rhythm parts shared with keys or synths | Big choruses |
| Piano | Pads and string parts in the same register | Ballads |
None of that matters at rehearsal volume. On stage through in-ears, a muted guitar that is 20 dB down instead of gone is still a backing track; a muted vocal with the reverb left in is still an instrumental. The one thing that does matter is step 4 above: listen before you export.
Frequently asked questions
What is a backing track?
A recording of a song with one or more parts left out, for a musician or singer to perform over. A backing track for a singer is the instrumental; for a guitarist it is the song minus the guitar.
How do I make a backing track from a song I already have?
Split it into stems, mute the stem you play, export the rest. The free stem splitter returns six stems on faders; muting the vocal stem is the instrumental maker, muting any other part gives the backing track for that instrument.
Is there a free backing track maker?
Yes. Separation here is free for two songs a day per person, no account, no watermark, full-length 24-bit WAV export.
Can I change the key or add a count-in to the backing track?
Not here. CountIn, our sibling tool, adds a count-in that ends on beat one and changes the key by up to 7 semitones without touching the tempo. Export the backing track from StemPlayer first, then use CountIn on the exported file.
Will the backing track sound like the original record?
Yes, because it is the original record with one part estimated out. A produced backing track from a vendor is a re-recording by session players and sounds like them.
Can I make a backing track for drums from a song with no drum stem?
Separation finds the drums in any stereo mix; there is no need for the label to have released a drum stem. Mute the drum channel and the rest of the band plays on.