Backing tracks for live performance bashing

[eljodon]

Hi, I went back and read some threads of some people bashing backing tracks for live performances. I just want to defend it. I respect people that are not into it. The band that I play with is just a fun band that we play perhaps 2 gigs a month and we practice twice a month. When me and my singer decided to form a band we wanted to sound just like the bands that we wanted to cover. Many of the cover bands we see don't sound even close to he originals. So we decided to use a Lap Top with Ableton Live to enhance the songs. We couldn't find a pro keyboard player that can play B3 solos like in Highway Star(the good ones want to play every weekend and we don't), since I'm also a keyboard player, I record the parts myself. We also wanted to do songs that nobody usually play because some of the vocals in songs like Fat Bottom girls, More Than A Feeling, etc requires tons of vocals, so my singer does most of them with me and the rhythm guitar player. It took us 30 min to do Fat Bottom girls. We also play songs like I'm the Walrus, Still of the Night (White Snake) and unless we hire a string section for every gig we could never perform that song. Playing with backing tracks is not as easy as people think. It takes a lot of preparation and the technical know how to make it work. All the members in the band are pro players and most of us have been playing for over 30 years.When we play live we get a huge response from the audience since the songs sound great live with the extra tracks and we get many complements that we sound just like the bands they love. If something goes wrong we just sing the parts, it won't sound as full, but me the singer and the rhythm guitar player , we can all sing them. We even played with Eddie Money at a gig and I did all the tracks we coudn't play like the keyboards, 2nd guitar parts, Fx,etc and he was impressed that we sounded just like he's recordings. So people that bash backing tracks should be open minded and see the positive side of it. We're not lip syncing or having other players playing our parts, is actually me and my singer doing all the extra stuff. Besides we do it for fun and we end up breaking even at some gigs but we're having a blast! Just my 2 cents.

 

[MississippiMetal]

Just depends on what the backing tracks are. I don't mind backing tracks of things like orchestra parts if that's what's on the album cut. Signature sound effects of certain tracks are cool too. For example, the prison-break siren on Rammstein's "Feuer Frei".

 

[RG955TT]

Sorry no offense but its still cheating in my book. Better what you are doing by recording the parts yourself, but it makes bands sounds much better than they really are and around here tons of em use it and I still hate it when I hear it. Some bands in Chicago use em a ton and the "band" is barely playing the song, a good 60% of it is bed tracks. I can play really well to a reconding too. You can rationalize why you use it all you want, your perogitive but your basically playing to prerecorded tracks and any way you slice that in my book it doesnt fly. My band plays it all and sings it all or we dont do the tunes.

 

[dstroud]

My band uses backing tracks - I just use an Ipod with tracks on 1 side click on the other. Drummer gets click, and tracks go to the sound system. Although the tracks are sparing (usually just a rhythm guitar track sometimes keys)I like it because I like being a 3 piece and being mostly instrumental it helps fill out the sound. I say whatever works

 

[MississippiMetal]

And along comes a professional. Thanks Darren.

I've never personally used them in a live setting, but I'm not completely opposed to the implementation of click tracks and some instrumental tracks.

 

[jcmlespaul]

Whatever works and have a blast? I will pay that cover every time!

 

[RG955TT]

But then is it live, or is it something else? Live performance is supposed to be just that, never used em in all the years I've been gigging. If you can perform all the parts as you say then why not just do that? Its fake and Kareoke band in my book. Key phrase in your OP is "live performance". It isnt really live performance if you play to prerecorded tracks now is it? Or just somewhat live? Or...? Where is the line on what is too much of it?

 

[MississippiMetal]

But then is it live, or is it something else? Live performance is supposed to be just that, never used em in all the years I've been gigging. If you can perform all the parts as you say then why not just do that? Its fake and Kareoke band in my book. Key phrase in your OP is "live performance". It isnt really live performance if you play to prerecorded tracks now is it? Or just somewhat live? Or...? Where is the line on what is too much of it?

Dude, seriously. Nobody cares about your "book" or the performing nobility of your weekend cover band. Situations arise where the use of backing tracks is desirable or even necessary. Doesn't automatically mean the musicians are any less skilled.

 

[Enjolras56]

My band does pretty much exactly the same set-up as Darren's band does on several of our songs. (iPod with click to drummer and some additional parts including keys and BGV's)
More so our producer's call as he does a lot of elaborate arrangements of key, string, and vocal parts (which are great) and his philosophy is that the audience wants to hear it how it is on the CD or he wants to hear it as he envisioned it which can't always be achieved with a four-piece band.

My feelings on it? Mixed. I like being able to present our sometimes grandiose stuff live while still playing and singing our asses off. (and yes, I truly believe it takes being incredibly "in the pocket" to play well with a click). There's really no other way it could be done on our budget and the stages we play on. We all sing and sing well, but the extra stuff #1: helps "fill it out" more and #2 helps it sound more like our CD. If we played or sang poorly, there's no way those tracks would "help" us.

However, I love what 100% live brings. The spontaneity. The unpredictability. The raw power. I've always loved that Queen, despite their notoriously layered studio work, would play 100% live, just the four of them (although with a touring keyboardist on later tours.) Yes, the arrangements often sounded different from the record, but I personally liked that.
I love that the classic live records often breathed and varied in tempo and arrangement from the original recordings.

I can remember seeing Lenny Kravitz live years ago. I saw his guitarist's (Craig Ross's) mouth moving, but it was totally Lenny's voice/timbre I was hearing and Lenny was nowhere near a mic. When Lenny did sing, I'd hear Lenny singing BGV too, and yes, I felt somewhat cheated.
I've heard through the grapevine of one case of a nationally known current band where the guitarist looks like he's singing backup, but his mic isn't even on!
On a different but related subject, how about the use of AutoTune LIVE these days? I happen to really like The Killers, but bought a live album of theirs and it's pretty obvious they used it on Brandon's voice. Whenever I'd see Gwen Stefani perform live on TV before, she always had poor intonation. Last performance I saw of her, she was spot on. Every note. And I know it's not cuz she's been practicing!

 

[MississippiMetal]

Then there's the case of Zach Myers of Shinedown miming Brent's incredibly high-range backup vocal lines from the backing tracks for songs like "Bully" when performing live. I've heard Zach sing, and he neither sounds like Brent nor has his range, so that was a red flag.

 

[stratotone]

I don't like it, but part of the challenge for me and the Weekend Cover Bands that I'm in is to play songs live without backing tracks. We might have to arrange something differently, or a guitar may have to cover a keyboard part (or vice versa) but it's us for good or for bad.

All just my opinion, and there are challenges to playing with a backing track and not. My bands tend to be a little looser and we all watch each other onstage (and have been playing for decades each) so we are flexible as hell. We can add another solo section at the end of the song or another verse or whatever if people are having fun and you'd never know we didn't rehearse it that way. Playing to a backing could be dangerous if you weren't on your toes

 

[eljodon]

Sorry no offense but its still cheating in my book. Better what you are doing by recording the parts yourself, but it makes bands sounds much better than they really are and around here tons of em use it and I still hate it when I hear it. Some bands in Chicago use em a ton and the "band" is barely playing the song, a good 60% of it is bed tracks. I can play really well to a reconding too. You can rationalize why you use it all you want, your perogitive but your basically playing to prerecorded tracks and any way you slice that in my book it doesnt fly. My band plays it all and sings it all or we dont do the tunes.

So you're limiting what you can play live because you feel guilty?.It's all about pleasing the audience and giving them what they want. There's a difference between cheating and enhancing. The goal of my band was to play songs that nobody can because we didn't want to have 10 musicians on stage. Music is not a religion and I think not giving the audience what they want to hear because of pride seems a bit selfish. The audience don't care how is done. Besides our band uses the tracks on 13 out of 32 songs that we play.

 

[eljodon]

My band uses backing tracks - I just use an Ipod with tracks on 1 side click on the other. Drummer gets click, and tracks go to the sound system. Although the tracks are sparing (usually just a rhythm guitar track sometimes keys)I like it because I like being a 3 piece and being mostly instrumental it helps fill out the sound. I say whatever works

We use a Lap Top because we want to have the flexibility to be able to blend some parts like when we do Boston More than a feeling which has a bunch harmony guitar parts.We also mix in stereo so that's why we don't use the ipod.We sing all the parts an blend the extra vocals. Most of our tracks are vocals. But we do a Muse song that has a ton of keyboards, so the rhythm player plays the main keyboard parts and the Lap Top those the rest.All the guitars are live but sometimes I add a harmony like on Highway Star.If I was in a original band, I wouldn't use the tracks.I think that if people that think is cheating are playing for themselves and not to please the people that come to hear good music after a hard day at work.

 

[eljodon]

Sorry no offense but its still cheating in my book. Better what you are doing by recording the parts yourself, but it makes bands sounds much better than they really are and around here tons of em use it and I still hate it when I hear it. Some bands in Chicago use em a ton and the "band" is barely playing the song, a good 60% of it is bed tracks. I can play really well to a reconding too. You can rationalize why you use it all you want, your perogitive but your basically playing to prerecorded tracks and any way you slice that in my book it doesnt fly. My band plays it all and sings it all or we dont do the tunes.

Cheating is the band not playing at all and the backing tracks are doing all the work. I just don't want to be limited of what songs my band can play.We play it all and sing it all, but the tracks are enhancing the singing, that's a big difference. .Can your band pull off Def Leppard?(I don't know what type of band you play in, so I'm using this as an example) It's cool when you see their faces when we play I'm the Walrus or Styx "Blue Collar man" Maybe I'm to old and I have no pride! LOL!

 

[Cirrus]

We have a song which has a load of clips of politician's speeches made into a collage and without that the song would lose some of its meaning, so we put them on a sampler and play to a click. The backing track also has a distorted organ sound I made by putting a keyboard through my pedalboard, something that wouldn't be practical live but does serve the song, so that goes on too.

I've got no problem with that at all. It means the four of us can play the song the way I intended it to sound when I wrote it. So far, I've not seen anyone in the audience react to it badly. We play our arses off in that tune and the backing track doesn't take away from that.

 

[Heritage Softail]

And before backing tracks, there was the guy singing or playing behind the curtain. I seem to remember this topic coming up on That Metal Show. The guy singing behind the curtain for Ozzy.

And then studio guys playing guitar parts for the band, and it sounding different live. Aerosmith Train Kept A Rollin sounds like Joe's best lead ever, almost out of his style or ability range.... Hmmm. Now we know it wasn't him.

A looper is close to a backing track. So I am guessing those are also bad?

When I go see a band play, I expect the music to be good and they as artists make the call to track in keys or whatever.. I don't get it twisted over the full album sound or stripped down live sound.

Click tracks are good. I remember the old days playing the obligatory slow dance song. Wonderful Tonight. The drummer kept getting slower and slower till it seemed like a funeral dirge. I hate that song still. A click track would have been awesome....

 

[Man With Gas]

Some bands use them due to costs, stage space, consistency and reliability as a lot of keys players are rare and whores to many bands for the right price. (I have many stories)

Joe public only knows what they hear on the radio or American idol. When a cover band doesn't
sound just like the original some bar owners and Joe public think less of them.

If backings are for keys and some over the top percussion only I'm perfectly okay with it.
ESPECIALLY if they recorded the tracks themselves!

Come to think of it don't Van Halen and Rush along with many other famous bands use backing tracks for
keys live?

 

[Badronald]

Been playing live for over 30 years. Have never used backing tracks. Never will.
Don't care what other bands do. Not bashing anyone who does.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm a Depeche Mode fan and they've been using a live drummer for quite some time now.
Personally, I'd much rather listen to the album backing track than live drums, which is not what their sound is about. I say if you can play it and make it sound good, do it, and if not, use that backing track. Weirdest stuff is rappers rapping over their own voice, which sounds horrendous (no need for that "rap always sounds horrendous" comment )

 

[amiller]

I remember going to a Queen concert when they were at the top of their game. When they did the full multi vocal choir part in Bohemian Rhapsody they used backing tracks. They actually walked off stage to make the point that these were backing tracks. When the choir part finished they came back on stage and continued on with the song. If it's what you need to do the get your vision of the song across than...go for it....Queen did.