Bands using backing tracks (esp. keys) for live gigs on a laptop.........thoughts?

[kpl1228]

I'm curious as to the controversial (at least to some musicians and fans) use of backing tracks when playing live to bolster backing vocals, keys, horns, etc.

I hate the idea (though it's not really too different to running a live sequencer really).

I've said it to a couple of musicians recently (who do use them) and their defense was weak: "everyone does it now" and "the people listening and dancing don't care." To me these are horrible excuses that normally competent musicians use as a crutch, along with "we need it to sync with the video screens" to which I say then run a click track with no tracks IF you want to be that locked in.

I've seen too many '80's -themed local bar bands play British 80's synth pop hits without any keyboard player, yet with keyboards pouring out of the PA, to take it sitting down any longer, but I'm older etc etc etc.

Thoughts? Maybe I could be swayed on this. I'm thinking more of clubs and bar bands, not the big famous pop acts that all seem to be running them.

[GovernorSilver]

I do admit being disappointed when I go to check out a live act I hadn't seen before and it turns out to be a singer accompanied by backing tracks instead of a band.

 

OTOH, I sympathize with the plight of musos who need to play out for the money or whatever, and have to play to tracks because they couldn't get their band together in time for the gig, or not enough members of their regular band were able to make the gig.

 

I didn't get any rotten veggies thrown my way when I played an open mic night on electric violin with a Roland MC-101 providing my backing parts.  I dunno if programming the drum part, bass part, etc. myself had anything to do with my survival.  To me it was just a fun way to get to know the MC-707/MC-101.

[CEB]

Tracks are for pussies. 

[ProfD]

37 minutes ago, kpl1228 said:

I'm curious as to the controversial (at least to some musicians and fans) use of backing tracks when playing live to bolster backing vocals, keys, horns, etc.

As an old musician, I don't believe in the use of backing tracks in a live performance. 

 

Nor do I knowingly attend concerts or performances of artists and musicians who rely on backing tracks either. 

 

IMO, musicians should be able to fly without a net. No backing tracks playing parts that could employ another musician.

 

Also IMO, music should be arranged in such a way that it can be performed by the band configuration onstage whether it's a soloist, duo, trio or an ensemble.

 

MTV Unplugged was good for something. Of course, Jazz musicians have only been flying without a net for several decades now.😎

[JamPro]

I don't have any respect for "musicians" who require backing tracks to make music.

I have a little more sympathy for solo buskers who use backing tracks, because it is so logistically difficult to get a functioning band down on the subway platform to play for spare change.

 

At the 125th St. 4,5,6 subway station in NYC, there used to be a drummer, singing and drumming all by himself.  He had pretty good chops and a decent singing voice.  I never saw him use backing tracks.  Much respect.  I often felt inspired enough to wonder if I could manage to drag my Casio Privia down there and play with him.

[timwat]

I have a friend who refuses to eat in any restaurant that doesn't cook with real butter. It's the foundation of French cuisine, he says. I have principles and convictions, he says. I'm defending generations of dogged ideology, he says.

 

He scoffs and laughs at the ignorance (or lack of principles, I forget which one) of those who eat at those places that use margarine, or lard, or whatever they're doing to violate his convictions.

 

Others tell him the food tastes good there. Sometimes he has words with them, other times he just ignores them, and sometimes he talks about them behind their back.

 

Pick your battles, I suppose. As Groucho famously said, those are my principles. And if you don't like them, well, I have others.

 

[kpl1228]

22 minutes ago, timwat said:

As Groucho famously said, those are my principles. And if you don't like them, well, I have others.

 

Oh I'm stealing that.

[Docbop]

To me it's the same as bands that have additional musician off stage or behind the curtain.  I remember the first time I heard of it when I met the guy who played bass with one of the big folk acts, but the folk act was a trio with no bass.  He played behind the stage curtain with a microphone in his upright bass.  Then I worked the Yes tour back in the 70's we toured with their studio console and multiple tape deck to play string and other parts.  Yes was amazing doing that way before there was computers it was all guys punching play when the tape the parts were needed.   Then working in the rehearsal studio and seeing big bands come in with a handful of keyboard players, but see then live and maybe only one keyboardist on stage the rest off stage.    As far as I'm concerned that's no different than pre-recorded tracks.   Dam I know sound companies that pump audience clapping and etc into PA between songs.   

 

In the end a musician played the parts so a musician still played it.   It's all just a show these days computer controlled lights, audio,  background tracks, video.   Everyone on stage is just a puppet now.    Guess that's why I'm a Jazz fan still small groups playing live and responding to each other. 

[ElmerJFudd]

I’m not a huge fan of backing tracks for live bands. Especially local venues as opposed to major acts in stadium and arena settings (most people are so far from the stage watching on a huge projection screen so what’s the difference?).  Expectations are high, the tour schedule is relentless.  Vocal health is a challenge for singers.

 

On the other hand we’ve all enjoyed the musicianship of decades of players that played and sang, and made music without click tracks and pre-recorded elements.  I appreciate this approach and enjoy it. 
 

However, I understand that it’s not easy to hold a large band together with horns, strings, vocalists.  And it can be just as hard, if not more so to find multi instrumentalists that  also sing (and have “the look” or whatever).  
 

Different acts and venues call for different lineups. And pay is always better when the group is smaller.   I often see solo piano, or solo guitar, sax or whatever with backing tracks to keep it interesting for themselves and casual listeners.  The night goes by quicker when it doubles as a practice session.  
 

Tracks can sound great (or not). They  can be obvious and in your face or subtle and supporting.  I prefer the latter.  Just a piano is fine as well.  I don’t think non-musicians care.  Whatever works for you is all that matters. 

[D. Gauss]

47 minutes ago, Docbop said:

To me it's the same as bands that have additional musician off stage or behind the curtain.  

 

Yeah I'm talking to you BONO/U2.  for decades they've had a protools guy under the stage.   Back in the 80's i got paid good money to load backing vocals off of original album 24 track tapes onto a certain 80's superstar band member's EMU Emulator sampler for the live tours.  He'd put all these pieces of masking tape indicating what lyric was what all over the keys.

[RABid]

Back in the late 80's I joined a band while going to community college. Two keyboardist, guitarist who sang, and a a female vocalist who could also cover keyboard parts. What we could not find is a good drummer and bass player. I started programming parts on a DOS PC, sequencing a Yamaha drum machine and two TX7's, one for bass and one for extra keyboard parts. After a few months of using a computer on stage to play the extra parts we recorded everything to Betamax tape and played along with tracks. We did not do it by choice, we did it so we could play.

[Doerfler]

 

2 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

 I don’t think non-musicians care.  

Exactly

[miden]

The same old tropes being trotted out here...forget the financial climate we are in, forget some musos DO need to gig to pay the bills, forget venues that refuse to pay more than $X and a whole lot of other reasons (NOT excuses) 

 

I'd like to see folks who call trax users - as long as said trax are ONLY for the purpose of adding some rhythm plus a bit more fill and interest and not covering parts the live muso can and should be doing - pussies, hold a crowd for 3-4 hours JUST playing an organ, or whatever (not talking about restaurant gigs here where that is pretty easy), but those where you have to get folks buzzing and dancing otherwise you do NOT get an invite back!

 

[bill5]

I think this is an "it depends" kind of thing. What's being done, how, what's the venue, the genre(s), etc. For ex. I would not want to go to a concert where a guy is just singing and has backing tracks. That's karoke. Hard pass. But if there's a band and it's mostly the band, but they have a backing track for say a tune that has strings in it to cover that...as others have pointed out, such things are hardly new or IMO a big deal. Or like I have been to wineries, which are usually just one guy on a guitar, have a modest backing track of drums or bass or keyboards. It was fairly subtle and it was still mostly "his performance." However, if he'd done that to add an entire orchestra, I suspect I would have been shaking my head and praying for it to be over soon. 

 

[linwood]

I'm doing tracks for an '80's pop star right now. Just finished one today and used the Hitmaker machine kits in Toontrack, a lot of M8x, touch of Jupiter X, and Mini Moog bass. I think they use Ableton in the house. 

[nursers]

2 hours ago, miden said:

The same old tropes being trotted out here...forget the financial climate we are in, forget some musos DO need to gig to pay the bills, forget venues that refuse to pay more than $X and a whole lot of other reasons (NOT excuses) 

 

I'd like to see folks who call trax users - as long as said trax are ONLY for the purpose of adding some rhythm plus a bit more fill and interest and not covering parts the live muso can and should be doing - pussies, hold a crowd for 3-4 hours JUST playing an organ, or whatever (not talking about restaurant gigs here where that is pretty easy), but those where you have to get folks buzzing and dancing otherwise you do NOT get an invite back!

 

Indeed - I was involved in a project last year, where if it had required no tracks, would have made it financially unviable. There were five musicians and TWO were keys players but we still needed tracks. 

[Mighty Motif Max]

Just ran into this recently - some songs really need more parts than a single keys guy can pull off live, and there isn't always another person to go around. In my case, we didn't do tracks, but you could tell something was missing. Specifically this is true for songs with multiple overdubbed parts - such as the pop tune Rather Be, where the signature piano riff in the chorus is in fact two two-handed piano parts overdubbed against each other. So it's either pick one or try to cop snippets of both, but never sounds quite right. I would have not minded having one of the two parts on tracks but we're a fully live group at my college, so that wasn't an option.

 

I've seen several bands recently live that used tracks for keys when they had no keys player; I would certainly have preferred a live keyboardist, but then again, if you're basically playing mainstream modern heavily-produced hard rock/metal, there's not always a ton of interesting stuff for the keys player to do anyways. One band I saw did have a keyboardist but she was also the lead singer and preferred to sing out front for some tunes without the piano, so the keys parts were on tracks for those tunes. That works IMO.

 

What I really need are four hands and enough synths to play every part in these modern pop tunes live lol.

[UnderGroundGr]

My band is an electro rock duo. Me on synths and one vocalist and bass player. I play two sounds a time. Drums and all the other sounds of the songs are played from backing tracks...

[Baggypants]

Dealing with musicians is a hassle. They're so egotistical. I'd rather be playing along to Garageband and having fun than trying to get some numbskull diva guitarist to play what I want them to.

[elsongs]

12 hours ago, kpl1228 said:

I've seen too many '80's -themed local bar bands play British 80's synth pop hits without any keyboard player, yet with keyboards pouring out of the PA, to take it sitting down any longer, but I'm older etc etc etc.

Thoughts? Maybe I could be swayed on this. I'm thinking more of clubs and bar bands, not the big famous pop acts that all seem to be running them.

 

 

Yeah, I can forgive a band that's only using synths occasionally in their set (i.e. not enough songs to warrant a separate keyboard player) but I find the idea of doing synth-heavy '80s music or even contemporary synth-heavy pop songs with all keyboards on backing tracks to be atrocious, and even personally offensive. Like bruh, your '80s cover band (that plays the same 50 big hits of the 1980s that every other '80s cover band is playing) is doing A-ha's "Take On Me" and your guitar player is playing the minimal guitar part on the record (or doing an uncalled-for crunch guitar part, come on now - but the universally-recognizable synth lead melody of the song is coming out of thin air. Yeah, non-musicians might not care, but these same non-musicians likely don't think a synthesizer is a real musical instrument.

Every time I walk into an establishment that has that, I walk right out. F that S. 

[Baldwin Funster]

Not much different than using a drum machine. It's just that the shoe is now on your foot not the drummer. Where does does it end you might ask? Now every instrument can be sequenced and with AI the singer and composer can now be vitual too. And when robots rule the world the audience will virtual as well. 

[rogs]

I have a guitarist/ singer friend who played in a 4 piece - with keys - for years, but just does solo gigs these days.

He tells me that many venues simply won't pay for a band anymore...

 

He dislikes using a computer on stage, and uses a modified multi zoned 'looper' pedal to store his backing tracks.

He controls it with a simple 'one tap' on/off footswitch.  Works pretty well.

 

He has made the comment that when solo keys players use backing tracks on stage, some people seem to view that as 'cheating' - presumably having seen arranger style keyboards in amateur over the years?

 

When a guitarist uses backing tracks, people seem to accept it more - probably because they can see the guitar being played 'for real'?

 

In truth of course, most punters don't care one way or the other !

 

Even the bigger dinner dance/ weddings gigs seem to have changed.

Often now they will employ  a solo player - a guitarist or a pianist  - to play for dinner, or the early reception.

They then pack up and go home, and hand over to a 'DJ' for the after dinner  - or wedding 'evening do' - dance music...

 

Bit different from the 70s, when many hotels in resort towns here in the UK  would employ a resident 3 or 4 piece band all year round....

We even wore evening dress in those days!  

[D. Gauss]

if you can't get the song across with just a guitar & voice or piano & voice it's not really a "song" now is it?

 

 

[Markay]

I kinda had an issue with bands playing with tracks until I heard Van Halen live with keys on a track. Finally keys that were in time and in tune, who woulda thunk that could eva happen?

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

4 hours ago, elsongs said:

 

Yeah, I can forgive a band that's only using synths occasionally in their set (i.e. not enough songs to warrant a separate keyboard player) but I find the idea of doing synth-heavy '80s music or even contemporary synth-heavy pop songs with all keyboards on backing tracks to be atrocious, and even personally offensive. Like bruh, your '80s cover band (that plays the same 50 big hits of the 1980s that every other '80s cover band is playing) is doing A-ha's "Take On Me" and your guitar player is playing the minimal guitar part on the record (or doing an uncalled-for crunch guitar part, come on now - but the universally-recognizable synth lead melody of the song is coming out of thin air. Yeah, non-musicians might not care, but these same non-musicians likely don't think a synthesizer is a real musical instrument.
 

 

You're probably right; if all they need the KB player for is the synth parts in "Jump" and "The Final Countdown", that guy may as well go look for a different band!  The audience probably won't notice if those are tracks but we do.

 

There's a local band I like that does all 80s synth-pop and new wave stuff but for whatever reason they have recently moved to putting all their KB parts on tracks.  They used to have a small KB on stage that the singer would use on certain songs ("Just Like Heaven", "Don't Change" by INXS, the strings part in "White Wedding", etc etc) but now those are on tracks.  I'm too polite to ask Why, but maybe I should?  Maybe I should ask to join.

 

We are doing "Just Like Heaven" and I play it on two boards.  But I don't sing or play guitar or anything else so I can devote all my gray matter to the KB. 

 

We play tomorrow night!  First time ever indoors at an actual bar.  Wish me luck!

[Stokely]

I hate it.  I'll never do it (though I've been sequencing since the late 80s and could easily do it technically) and no desire to hear it.  Even some dude on an acoustic, I'd rather hear his voice and guitar than a big production.  

There's a sliding scale of dislike for me though.  Little noodly parts like in Eminence Front that were never played by a human anyway?  Fine.  Other end of the scale, having damn backup vocals on track?  I'd be out the door the minute I heard it.   Maybe because our band works like hell at harmonies.

Hell I got into it with our singer over her vocal harmony pedal.  I said, that thing is clashing with our harmonies, either I stop singing or the robots do.   I don't dislike those pedals as much as tracks but it's close.

I have no illusions that I'm not the tiny minority though.  Fine, the war is over and the bums like me lost.  I can accept that.  I just don't go see much music because I can do karaoke at home if I want to hear it.   If I was out of my current band and every other one was doing tracks, I'd probably just bow out of live music.   I guess we all have our hills we are willing to die on--I have a friend who will not gig if he can't bring his marshall stack, and he can't to a lot of gigs so he doesn't gig   

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Like any other technology use for music, it all depends on style and application. I've tried to divorce myself from the biases I grew up with of what is "good" and "bad" to use while playing live. I've seen artists use onstage clicks and backing tracks in really creative ways, and I'm not just talking young pop performers -- Peter Gabriel's band could never be accused of phoning it in, and they still work with sequences and tracks on certain songs as textures to incorporate into the live playing. Sometimes you just want those layered "it's me multitracking" vocal effects at a big pop show, especially when the vocalists are doing choreography (and singing, not lip syncing) for three hours. Performers that have specific video and lighting production that syncs to the music often rely on at least a click track for cues. And all of us who have done studio sessions know that playing to a click track does not make a musician's job *easier* -- it's a skill in and of itself.

 

If it's up to me, I'd almost always hear a creative live arrangement by visible onstage players, even if it's different from what we hear on the record. I don't need to hear the string arrangement just like the album if the keyboard player picks up an accordion or a dials in a Mellotron patch to fill that space. I love a band that can go different places every single night. But hell, even Queen played a tape for the choir section of Bohemian Rhapsody onstage.

[DJkeys]

Here in Vegas, many of the bands use tracks for keys, vocals, etc.  I am an old-school entertainer, I would never play in a band that uses tracks.  You are locked into a specific arrangement and improvisation is virtually impossible.  You do what you can with the instruments you have and make the songs your own.  As long as the signature parts  are there, all is good. Something even more annoying to me is pop/rock bands who play with iPads or music stands.  Everything should be memorized, you cannot play to the audience if you are looking at a sheet for chords or lyrics.  Just my two cents-

 

-dj

[Stokely]

I'd also like to amend that as much as I dislike tracks--I don't really blame musicians for using them.   I can afford to sit my high horse because this isn't my primary job.   They have to keep up with the Joneses or at least there is a lot of pressure to do so.  My band still does fine, but it's hard to compete with perfect album-quality "live" music.  Audiences and venue managers are getting very used to it by now.  The duo our singer and guitarist are in can't play at a few joints because the manager wants tracks for that "full sound".

Edit: as far as ipads, keep in mind that these can be used for a lot of things other than just lyrics/chord charts.  I use mine for mix adjustments mainly, but have also dabbled with patch changing apps and for a while used B-3X from an ipad.   Now personally I find it difficult and counter-productive to have lyrics on an ipad (I tend to get lost in the song easily) so memorization is definitely the best for me.  I still keep a couple tunes on hand in my lyric app just to peek at before a song to get me on track   

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

6 minutes ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

....even Queen played a tape for the choir section of Bohemian Rhapsody onstage.

 

And didn't they also use a guy behind the curtain who played the piano when Freddie was away from the bench?  Imagine the pressure THAT guy must've felt!