RG955TT":ndt8kopd said:
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.
Oh really? What bands would those be? Seeing as I'm familiar with, have worked for/with and am very close with a lot of the rock bands around Chicago, I'd love for you to shine some light on who YOU consider is cheating in this city. It would be awesome if you named a band I'm in or was in so that I can spell out for you how wrong you are.
And while we're at it, what band are you in? Step up and deliver, son. You guys play to a click live? Do you consider that cheating? If so, do you use one in the studio? And if you don't, it's not a walk in the fucking park to play to a click live, it takes a while to get the entire band used to it.
I'm really, really curious who these bands are that don't play their parts or work out their harmonies in the studio then just step up on stage and mime it.
Anyway, with that line of thinking, hiring touring musicians to play accompanying parts is cheating, as well. Or does the fact that they are human make it not cheating? I've never attempted to play a violin while playing guitar and singing, but I have a feeling it'll be difficult to pull of, so I'll just stick to placing the less-important accompaniments on tracks and push em back in the mix.
I'm not saying that there aren't bands who rely on tracks, I could name a band who used to be pretty popular (though I won't) who was ENTIRELY tracked. Guitar, bass, vocals, drums, EVERYTHING. Yea, it's a crutch to SOME, but face it, the vast majority of bands have some sort of accompanying tracks.
There are other practical reasons to have the tracks there, depending on how you run them, besides just having the accompanying parts there. They're beneficial to drummers and singers who often have the worst/most ill-fitting monitor mixes imaginable. Cranking the tracks through the wedges or through IEM's give them one more thing to latch onto. And don't give me that "they wouldn't need it if they were better musicians," crap. The ugly truth of the matter is this: ANY help you can get while on the road to make sure you put on the best show possible every night is good help. There is a difference between "backing tracks" and having the whole damn thing tracked. My basic rule of thumb is this: no guitar, no vocals. Effects tails are fine, like reverb or delay washes, and choir parts can usually slip by, but I'd rather transpose those to another instrument. It's also cheaper than hiring backing musicians to play on 3 or 4 songs a night. Have you ever toured. RG955TT? Do you know how much it costs to do so? Trans, hospitality, lodging, perdiem, crew costs, etc, etc. An ipod is a FUCK LOAD cheaper than 3 extra musicians who are probably making a nice flat day rate.
And ya know what? The fans LOVE it. Ohhhh the sound of a crowd going nuts when they hear that rumbling intro to a song or set....There's not much like it...Hearing the crowd go insane before you've even hit a note. It's called showmanship.
As far as autotune, as a producer, I will say that the harsh truth of the industry is this: Album budgets are going away. No one can afford to be in a studio for 3 months to perfect a record (or over a year in some cases). On top of that, bands are pushed out the door whether they are ready or not, and the engineer and producer has very little say in the matter. At the end of the day, they were hired to get a job done, and they use every tool to their advantage to make sure that product sounds the best it can, because if it doesn't, they won't have much work in the future. Does it suck? Yea, it does. Do I use auto-tune? You're damn right I do, because I am paid to make sure that record sounds fantastic NO MATTER WHAT. Try naming a record that doesn't have some sort of pitch correction or where there wasn't some trickery to make sure the singer was spot on. You 80's guys...You ever remember hearing about the big ass bands that y'all admire so much slowing down the tape to nail a solo or so the singer could hit that high note in the chorus? Happened all the time...hell, some of those bands didn't even play on their own records. There was a whole industry built around studio musicians whose sole job was to come re-play records without the band knowing about it. That's cheating too, yea? Hmmmmm.
Sevendust was brought up for having tracks. You bet your ass they do, but they still deliver, they are all still PHENOMENAL musicians and can deliver the same show as a full electric set, or as a broken down, intimate acoustic set. Also, last time I was around them, they had a tech orchestrating (for lack of a better term) their backing tracks, as they have a tendency to be very organic with their live sets. So...what is it at that point?
Man With Gas and RockStarNick were pretty spot-on, if I may say so.
For anyone looking for a nice iPod-related system, check out the Numark iDec. Toured with a laptop, and I won't be doing that again. I love the flexibility, but an iDec is $200 new and an iPod can be had for cheap nearly everywhere you go...Rather more difficult to sort out a laptop if it fries an hour before the show.
Just some thoughts from a guy who has been around the block a few times.
Obviously not all Rush songs use them, but there are quite a few from certain areas of their catalog that does. 
