Tradfusion

[quote name='The Funk' post='574375' date='Aug 19 2009, 04:16 PM']You can get lead vocal-less backing tracks for most current chart hits. This female singer of yours could decide to just use backing tracks and take all the money herself.[/quote] Yeah thats quite possible

[quote name='Earbrass' post='574326' date='Aug 19 2009, 03:42 PM']But if you [b]can[/b] find a way to make them work for the 4 of you, you'll have made them your own, and that will be a lot more satisfying for you and your audience than just trying to sound as much as possible like an original track that, as Bilbo rightly says, was assembled in a 'lab'. (For an extreme example, listen to Ms Dynamite as played by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - it's all about having the musical vision and imagination to perceive what really is the heart of a song and how to bring that out using just the musical resources you have at your disposal - THAT's what makes a good musician) PS Could your guitarist use fx / guitar-synth technology etc to thicken up your sound a bit?[/quote] Thanks for the suggestion... yes he's using a Roland guitar synth of some kind on some of the tunes to replicate keyboard and brass sounds etc, but then the guitar is missing and it still sounds wrong, to my ears anyway... I play in other 4 piece bands where both vocalists play guitars as well, and thats fine, and we go down pretty well for what we are, but this girl we are working with now is just a singer, and a damn good one, and we are trying to keep it to an even 4-way split money wise and keep her happy by playing the material she likes and performs well...hence my original query about backing tracks....I never thought this thread would still be going 70 posts later, still no harm in stirring the nest now and again!!! ^_^

So the majority of you guys think backing tracks are complete sh**e! I have never really gone to hear a band using them to be honest so I suppose that would be a good idea... our little 4 piece is'nt bad as we are, so maybe it is a re-thinking of the set list and that, our vocalist is female and she keeps picking songs that suit her voice and that she fancies herself, alot of them are fairly contemporary ala Beyonce, Sugababes, Rihanna etc so thats where we sound pretty twee with just the 1 guitar, bass and drums. Stuff like Blondie, Pretenders, Fleetwood mac etc we can horse out and they sound fine... we were trying to include some of the recent hits because people keep asking for them. As for the extra musician, we are on a set fee for the pub gigs and if we bring someone else on board we have another cut in the already (IMO) paltry fee, we have other gigs like weddings etc where we can afford a keyboard player and its great, makes all the difference... Oh well, back to the drawing board..

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='573838' date='Aug 19 2009, 09:53 AM']My personal value base is to say if you haven't got a saxophone, you can't produce a saxophone part. The art of music making, for me, is about the creative use of what you have and the use of a certain instrumental line-up to create something special (my most astonishing experience as an audience member was watching a trio of saxophones, polytonal tambourine and hurdy-gurdy (Brackell Jazz Festival late 1990s)). I also find the 'make it like the record' mentality anathema. If you want the record, play the damn record. Live, everything sounds different, even when the original artists are performing. That's where the magic is. I also don't like solos played live that are the same as the record. I demand more of the people I watch than simple reproductions of recorded material. Besides, if the venues are too cheap to pay for an extra musician, why should the musicians that are there invest in kit to make the missing voice available for free? I can see it now: Nigel Kennedy playing the Royal Albert Hall with a backing tape of the London Philharmonic. Marvellous.[/quote] I think you are still missing my point Bilbo, we only have one fairly average guitar player with drums, bass and a vocalist who plays nothing...thats it... and we are a decent sounding band at that but we could be better if we had a fuller sound, and we cannot afford to pay another musician.... thats all I am saying, I am looking for advice and not a lecture on musical ethics...

[quote name='BigRedX' post='573558' date='Aug 18 2009, 10:14 PM']Interesting site... Some observations: Not every track I looked at had a click track on it. Trying to add one later will be a nightmare. Also I couldn't see anywhere how the click track is mixed in with the rest of the instruments. What you want is just click panned into one channel and everything else panned to the other. Otherwise the audience will be able to hear the click and you really don't want that. There doesn't appear to be any way to change the tempo or key of the custom backing tracks. Tracks that fade on the record have been given "proper" endings. However you're stuck with someone else's version of how the song should finish. Not entirely convinced by all the sounds - synths in particular. There aren't that many tracks there in the first place.[/quote] All fair points... this is why I put up this thread, and the type of info I need to be aware of before we attempt this... so probably not gonna work without serious grief then? D

Thanks everyone, I know peoples opinions on this thorny subject differs drastically!! I know recording your own tracks is probably the best way to do it, but what about downloading from here: [url="http://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/"]http://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/[/url] .... what do you guys think of that idea? you can edit the tracks as you like and they are MP3 quality ... then set up all the click track, headphone amp mumbo jumbo etc and a decent MP3 player... its certainly not the same as having real musicians but when we are trying to scrape a living from low paying pub gigs and if this actually worked... I know one thing, if it sounds really bad and we feel like its too much of a bluff job then it will be canned tout suite! What else would we need to make this work ie cables, leads etc..many thanks.. Dave :blush:

I understand most people are dead against backing tracks, indeed I'm not too keen on the one man band thing with backing tracks myself, we may not ever go for this when we hear what it sounds like, it might be terrible...as for cheating, well all the musicians in the band will be playing their instruments as normal, so the only thing not being played live will be the keyboards in most songs or maybe some loops, bits of brass etc. I just dont think we have a full enough sound with one guitar player trying to cover all the parts and there are definate and noticable gaps in some tunes. The rockier stuff is obviously easier to get away with with the 3 instruments but not so the more involved fuller sounding tunes... A keyboard player is a luxury we cannot afford for alot of the small pub gigs we do, they just wont pay us... Is there someone out there who can tell me they have worked with this, where they got their MP3 or WAV tracks from, and how it is set up for a live gig? If the answer is a definate NOOOOO then so be it, but I am still curious.............

Hiya Frank, We sometimes have a keyboard player but smaller pubs wont pay the 5th person, so the money is the issue... we are probably playing in Strandhill that weekend so might get to meet up for a chat, we have a resident gig in The Strand on a sunday night... I'll send you my mobile number in a PM and you can text me if you are around... The backing track thing is our least favoured option but we'd like to at least try it out before dismissing it. Its how we can do it that I need to find out in the first place!! Dave [quote name='machinehead' post='573010' date='Aug 18 2009, 03:17 PM']My own opinion? Get a good keyboard player. He/ she can do brass, strings, sax etc and it keeps it real live music. Piano players are rarely that useful on the keyboard in my experience so don't fall for that one. Still, it does devide the money more and you might not want that. Frank. PS> Coming to Strandhill on 28 August for the weekend. Are you gigging?[/quote]

I think I may have broached this question about a year back, we are still noodling around the idea of filling out our 4 piece (guitar, bass, drums & vocalist) with some backing tracks to cover the sometimes large gaping holes when we attempt to play the more contemporary charty stuff in our set. We want to exclude/edit the tracks to remove bass, drums and lead guitar and basically leave on some rhythm guitar, keyboards and other fiddly bits just to fill out the sound, we have a good vocalist & BV's... I think midi files are almost a thing of the past and its all MP3 these days, any advice on this pleeeeease.... :wacko:

Thanks for that S.P, I'll get some of those to start with...Cheers

Re-opening this one, I get this dizzyness ALOT nowadays, it started years ago and was'nt too bad at first but now I need to use a stool to prop against for alost every gig. Crash symbols drive my ears crazy and I physically get a jolt if I'm too near a loud crash, some notes do it as well, mostly very loud guitar but some bass notes too. Its a real pain and I suspect some damage has been done to my ears already from 20+ years of loud bands and never wearing any ear plugs in case I might be laughed at... the ususal !! I've been to an ENT specialist and he said my ears seem to be in decent enough shape considering, but recommended protecting them from now on, so laughing aside I'm on the hunt for some good musicians ear plugs, any recommendations appreciated....