How much backing track is too much?

[diskwave]

Backing tracks, click tracks, some bloke behind the curtain pressing buttons. The live music scene has completely lost its way. I can name a good handful of three/fourpiece outfits back in the day who played all the chart hits and sounded amazing. Its all about musicianship and getting the general tone of a particular tune right.....You dont need to be in perfect time and you dont need every nuance of a recording to sound good. 

[TimR]

14 minutes ago, diskwave said:

Backing tracks, click tracks, some bloke behind the curtain pressing buttons. The live music scene has completely lost its way. I can name a good handful of three/fourpiece outfits back in the day who played all the chart hits and sounded amazing. Its all about musicianship and getting the general tone of a particular tune right.....You dont need to be in perfect time and you dont need every nuance of a recording to sound good. 

 

People are being fed music that has more production done to it to make it sound good than the quality of music it contains. 

[Leonard Smalls]

11 minutes ago, diskwave said:

The live music scene has completely lost its way

In my day etc!

Kids don't know what music is nowadays etc...

😁

Basically, if the audience enjoys it, that's what counts. Even more so if the band (or even solo performer!) enjoys it too.

It's largely irrelevant how the music is produced to most audience members - the only ones who really care are a few chin-stroking oldie musos at the back who are barely getting involved anyway, apart from to say "he's dropped a note" or " they could have done that better" or "bass player should be playing just root and fifth there, all that slapping sounds like someone falling down the stairs!"

 

[Terry M.]

30 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

 

all that slapping sounds like someone falling down the stairs!"

 

This has made my day,and I slap occasionally 😂 

[Beedster]

18 hours ago, Owen said:

For me, any is too much. I want to see musicians interacting. That is where it is at. But I am fully aware that what I want is not what everyone wants. 

 

And when it goes wrong, it is grim. We did West Side Story at work (FE college). The Perf Arts dept needed a band. I was young and foolish. How hard can it be? I downloaded it all on MIDI files, tabbed it out through Logic and off we went. WSS guitar, bass and drums. But I had a piano track on CD becaue the potential for disaster was too much. I was not THAT foolish. We had a silent pit and the guy running playback/monitor was stoned. On the CD the tune before the Act 1 finale segued into "Tonight". The stoned guy heard the number before Tonight slowing down and ending so hit stop.The actual track continued on the CD, Tonight starting at 2:36. There was no way he could cue that up. There was a pregnant pause and I started to sing accapela. The cast did the whole routine accapela, dance moves to the non existent orchestral hits and all. In retrospect it was comedy gold. The on stage energy levels went throught the roof. 

 

I went to see a show my daughter was in and a similar thing happened. It was disappointing because the vocalist in question - a pro - had up to that point given a very good impression that she was in fact singing live, and then following an especially good vocal section, and midway through some dialogue, the same vocal suddenly started up again, only for 2-3 seconds. I'm guessing most people in the audience didn't realise what had just happened, but it was a bit of a surprise for those of us who did  

[Beedster]

35 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

"bass player should be playing just root and fifth there, all that slapping sounds like someone falling down the stairs while wearing a suit of armour while carrying all of their saucepans, a glockenspiel, and a steel box of nails !"

 

Fixed

[BigRedX]

44 minutes ago, diskwave said:

Backing tracks, click tracks, some bloke behind the curtain pressing buttons. The live music scene has completely lost its way. I can name a good handful of three/fourpiece outfits back in the day who played all the chart hits and sounded amazing. Its all about musicianship and getting the general tone of a particular tune right.....You dont need to be in perfect time and you dont need every nuance of a recording to sound good. 

 

But music has moved on and you haven't.

 

Besides it's hardly new. I was working with bands using drum machines and backing tracks back in 1981. The Who used backing tapes in order to perform "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" in the 70s. I bet no-one other than the Musician's Union complained about that.

 

I would love to be able perform our songs without programmed backing but finding a drummer and synth player with the technical ability to do what we need is proving impossible. Also it would completely mess up the logistics of playing live. As I said in my original post we get the whole band plus all the instruments we need to play a gig into a single estate car. We can be set up and be ready to play in under 10 minutes from load in. We couldn't do any of those things with a drummer and second synth player.

[Beedster]

17 hours ago, Dood said:

such as The City Of Prague Philharmonic (and choir) were distilled in to recorded parts

I'm pretty sure you could get very close to the recorded version of those using live keys, good enough for a live audience anyway? 

[Terry M.]

19 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

Fixed

Not a fan of slap bass are you? 😂

[Beedster]

4 minutes ago, Terry M. said:

Not a fan of slap bass are you? 😂

 

I like it when it's well done (that's not me btw), my dog on the other hand....

 

 

[Terry M.]

20 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

I like it when it's well done (that's not me btw), my dog on the other hand....

 

 

That's hilarious. Anyway dogs as we all know have a wider hearing range than us humans so that will be the real reason. Those high pitched pops will be too much for some humans so imagine how a dog hears them 😂

[Franticsmurf]

I played with backing tracks as part of a duo (guitarist/singer and me on rhythm guitar) on the WMC circuit for years. I hated it. As a musician, it felt like cheating even though we weren't trying to hide that we were using the backing tracks. I eventually re-recorded all of them so that almost everything but the drums was me playing real instruments. I felt better but it left the problem of not easily being able to extend (or cut short) songs according to the audience. Eventually we introduced our acoustic spot which was just us with no backing. It was so much more satisfying. 

 

Of course for the most part the audiences new no different - or at least I thought so until I started playing with a band in the same venues and we used to get the occasional comment "nice to see a proper band and not a karaoke act" or similar. I enjoyed interacting with the other band members, playing impromptu medley/mash-ups, bass and drum solos while the guitarist changed a snapped string or extended outros because the whole place was up and dancing. And I know that audiences react more favourably to a band that is clearly enjoying itself on stage and I never enjoyed playing with backing tracks. 

 

Each to their own, I know. But for me I'd rather re-arrange the song to fit the band than have to use a machine.    

[TimR]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

But music has moved on and you haven't.

 

It's down to execution. I saw a band on Saturday night. The guitarist wasn't that great a guitarist and was also playing keys and triggering sequences and samples. He wasn't a great keys player either. It was originals.

 

The singer was getting visibly frustrated that the audience weren't engaging. But to be honest they should have lost all the fancy extra production and concentrated on a simpler guitar part. Whatever vision the band had in their heads wasn't coming across.

 

Plus the drummer had a massive kit and was playing all the drums all at the same time.

 

The whole thing was just a noise. It was originals. And again the traditional hook, and form of verse and chorus were absent. 

[TimR]

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

bass player should be playing just root and fifth there

 

I actually had someone tell me similar at the end of a gig once. "The bass line to XXX doesn't go like that." 

 

My reply: "Well it did tonight mate."

[BigRedX]

3 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

It's down to execution. I saw a band on Saturday night. The guitarist wasn't that great a guitarist and was also playing keys and triggering sequences and samples. He wasn't a great keys player either. It was originals.

 

The singer was getting visibly frustrated that the audience weren't engaging. But to be honest they should have lost all the fancy extra production and concentrated on a simpler guitar part. Whatever vision the band had in their heads wasn't coming across.

 

Plus the drummer had a massive kit and was playing all the drums all at the same time.

 

The whole thing was just a noise. It was originals. And again the traditional hook, and form of verse and chorus were absent. 

 

It sounds like me that they were too interested in being musicians and not concentrating enough on the songwriting or the performance.

 

IMO if you can't put on a performance there is no point in playing live irrespective of whether you use backing or not.

 

That's hardly new. Unfortunately bands have been doing that for at least the last 60 years.

[Beedster]

8 minutes ago, TimR said:

My reply: "Well it did tonight mate."

 

If I had a pound for every time.....

 

I left a band after the first gig having been dressed down by the lead guitarist who was furious that I had not stuck to the recorded bass-line on Take It Easy by the Eagles. Life's too short   

[Twigman]

In my opinion ANY backing track is too much.

We don't even use a click live.

[Dood]

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

I'm pretty sure you could get very close to the recorded version of those using live keys, good enough for a live audience anyway? 

 

Indeed, it is very true that when I started tracking bass for the album, the orchestral parts were all expertly written using top-tier virtual instruments. I even said to our orchestrator that they were so good, they need to be forward on the album. Danny laughed and quipped "they're all going, we're having a real Orchestra!" At that point of writing my parts I had no idea the size of the project and that it would include another 100 musicians ha ha!! 

 

TL/DR Yes, I guess a couple of keyboard players could cover most of the parts, maybe! 

[diskwave]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

But music has moved on and you haven't

So I suppose you think a string quartet playing Bach are stuck in the past? 

 

The whole problem today is the "internet" has told young people you must do this and that to achieve musical greatness. When in reality nothings changed.  Without learning your instrument properly and understanding how music works your basically going knowhere. So yes "back in the day"  as long as you were a good musician, you could strap a guitar/keyboard on and go out and really entertain people. .. and I mean all people from all corners of society.

 

Ive got a couple set lists from the mid 80's and the stuff we were doing as a four piece proves my point. Pop chart stuff... bit of funky jazz, soul classics., and we doing hotels/clubs and the like and filling dance floors night after night. 

 

At the end of the day the tight combo that can play anything using minimal equipment appears to be a lost art......Pity, but than as you said... like Bach. Maybe people like me are stuck in the past, and thats fine by me. Im just happy knowing a heck of a lot of people had a great time dancing to the grooves we were laying down. 

 

 

[Dood]

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

I'm pretty sure you could get very close to the recorded version of those using live keys, good enough for a live audience anyway? 

 

I re-read your reply and I think you make an interesting point. Considering the majority of audiences (no offence meant to them) couldn't tell, nor care about the differences between electric bass or double-bass, I wonder how many non-musicians (who make up a large proportion of the audience) even care about backing tracks? Or, counter to that, are musicians caring too much about wanting to reproduce their precious (which it is) material live and instead should just go out as a bare bones performance? 

 

 

[TimR]

2 minutes ago, Dood said:

go out as a bare bones performance? 

 

Audiences are easily pleased. If they can tap their feet, or jump up and down they're happy.

 

Bonus points for a chorus they can sing along to the second time it's played if they don't know it already. 

[Huge Hands]

About 25 years ago I used to sound for cabaret shows at a well known holiday camp.   The venue had a house band (keys, bass, gtr, drums) but a lot of the big shows would be tracked to allow for sound effects, extra instrumentation etc, but mainly chorus backing vox which avoided the need for 10 cast members with variable reverb taps (headset mics) running around the stage and trying to sing while gasping for air when dancing.  I remember a latin show we did where I was told by the director to keep the mics always on for reaction "whooping",  In rehearsal I suddenly heard a load of crashing and banging.  I looked up and realised a cast member had decided to stand and pose with her arm on the percussionist's (MD pretending to be a percussionist) shoulder. Mics off - backing track up!  They usually whooped loud enough that you could hear them through one of the principle cast's mics anyway.

 

One of the best ones I remember was a Sinatra show where they toured 3 top brass musicians to add to the house band to look the part and also play solos.   The rest of the "big band sound" would be tracked.  It used to work really well, especially as the size and sound of the band (tracked) would grow as the story of his career progressed.

 

I also remember playing in a crew only band one year for a staff end or year party where the bass player pulled out due to fear with a week to go (I was the drummer).  The guitarist quickly knocked up about 5 songs with bass on track so the gig could still go ahead.

 

So in summary, I can't really knock backing tracks....

Edited Monday at 11:23 by Huge Hands

[Dood]

36 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

Audiences are easily pleased. If they can tap their feet, or jump up and down they're happy.

 

Bonus points for a chorus they can sing along to the second time it's played if they don't know it already. 

 

Judging by the demands for the same song night after night, I'd say they'd be more than happy with just a window to lick and a balloon.

[Leonard Smalls]

I remember going to see Kraftwerk at the Liverpool Empire back in 1981ish...

Just before "Robots" started the lights went down, gradually came back up with band beeping and tapping away happily.

Towards the end of the song the band walked on and the Robots were carried off. Nobody noticed!

And despite this, and the almost complete lack of movement on stage it was one of the best gigs I ever went to!

[SteveXFR]

3 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

 

😁

all that slapping sounds like someone falling down the stairs!"

 

 

Youtuber slapping in particular, the sort where you just hear the clatter of strings on frets sounds like a filing cabinet falling down a fire escape