jaykaydrums
Silver Member
a band ive recently joined use backing tracks for nearly all of their set, some extra guitar work and a lot of SFX. i had to re-work their click tracks and add vocal cues for song sections.
Does your band play with backing tracks? What's your opinion on them?
- Thread starter xopherhills
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Jeremy Bender
Platinum Member
I found this arena gig video interesting, half way it through they explain and display the tech. involved with backing tracks...
Living Dead Drummer
Platinum Member
Some bands I tour with do, some do not. However, none of them use tracks that replace anyone on stage.
Most of the time it's some addition backup vocals and the addition of rhythm guitar or keyboard. Many groups don't have the budget to hire additional musicians if there on stage contribution is going to be minimal. For example, one group I tour with have only 4 notes of keys in one song. It's on the record, we want that duplicated live, but it's not worth the expense of hiring/housing/feeding someone to come play 4 notes a night.
I've got a whole video on the topic on YT:
Most of the time it's some addition backup vocals and the addition of rhythm guitar or keyboard. Many groups don't have the budget to hire additional musicians if there on stage contribution is going to be minimal. For example, one group I tour with have only 4 notes of keys in one song. It's on the record, we want that duplicated live, but it's not worth the expense of hiring/housing/feeding someone to come play 4 notes a night.
I've got a whole video on the topic on YT:
Erberderber
Senior Member
Fascinating stuff. Just wondering if they really need to go to all that trouble for a Take That gig. Their fans don't come for the musicians. They could try for one night having everything on playback with everybody miming and see if anyone in the audience noticed that no-one was actually playing anything.
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Andy
Honorary Member
I recently experienced something that annoyed & surprised me in equal measure.
We played a reasonable size 1 day outdoor event. An ABBA tribute “band” played after our set. They had 2 x female vocal with BV mic’s on 3 other band members (drums, keys, 6 string - no bass). One lead vocal was live, the other mostly mime apart from audience interaction. All BV’s were miming to tracks too.
If that wasn’t bad enough: Bass 100% backing track. Keys & guitar = mostly backing with occasional extras from live instruments. Drums = almost entirely mimed to backing track with occasional percussion accents.
It wasn’t even well done. You could clearly hear timing differences / flamming between real & track drums, despite the drummer playing lightly (yet visually playing to a higher dynamic).
Here’s the kicker - they went down really well. Clearly, very few of the audience noticed, or likely even cared.
Although we played a strong set + received a good audience reaction + paid well, I left feeling pretty sad about the state of live music in some settings.
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