Backing tracks rant

Ascendingthethrone

Ascendingthethrone

Ancient Mariner
I need to get this one off my chest. When did backing tracks just become an accepted part of live music? Maybe I am set in my ways, but how can you a show live if the band are essentially just playing along to a backing track? You want it to sound like the record? Hire some extra musicians to help with that. Can’t afford them? Don’t make your records so overproduced that you can’t replicate it in a live setting! Or just accept that you will sound different live.

I find it so disingenuous to call it a live show if you are playing along to backing tracks. Are fans that scared of something being a little different from the record that they can’t cope with a live performance without them? Or maybe it is the musicians fault. I am on the side of Janick when he said that live music should breathe. I fee everything is being so tightly controlled in the live setting.

I heckled an MC once at an event who thanked the band for ‘keeping music live’. I shouted ‘50% live!’ (The musicianship was dripping in extra strings, guitar and horn parts). Maybe I was being a dick, but I am so fed up with it. ‘Look at us we have musicians playing onstage. But we couldn’t afford more so we just sequenced them on Logic’. It’s nice to know that people are being replaced by MIDI.

I know I have ranted about click tracks in the past, but I am a little more forgiving of these (not completely though) especially in the studio.

Am I just behind with the times or do people agree with me?

For some context, I am a music teacher who had played shows for over 20 years and taught music in schools for 14 years.
 
I'm in the "depends" category. I think extra guitar parts is a big no-no, but supporting backing vocal tracks, and keys and stuff is often fine. I think Sebastian Bach should get cred for outright refusing any tracks. He could, honestly, benefit from some vocal layers as he's a bit hit and miss live nowadays in the vocal department (and especially pitch wise), but the fact that he sings his ass off and always does it live deserves credit.

See this first song as reference: The chorus would greatly benefit from layering some vocal backing tracks instead of the guitarists shouting only in the pre chorus leaving the chorus itself overly exposed, but, you know, the authenticity is refreshing in its own right.
 
I'm also on the side of "it depends".

Guitars, bass, drums and vocals should be live. If you feature any other instrument extensively there should be someone playing that instrument. If there's one section in a single song playing some exotic instrument it's totally fair to use a backing track for that. Same with any samples that are on the record (for example some kind of spoken word passage, which is what Maiden does with various intros like TNOTB or The Prisoner for example).

What I dislike is if the album has a wall of sound with hundreds of tracks and we hear all the missing tracks as backing tracks live. What's the point then? I like live versions to be different to the studio version, at least to some degree. If it's a 1:1 recreation that's just boring. I've also noticed that many bands that use a ton or backing tracks have the singer barely interacting with the audience, which is another pet peeve of mine. I want them to engage with the audience in some way (and I know that's a matter of taste), not sing the exact same lines as in the studio and never say anything beyond that.
 
Vaenyr said:
I'm also on the side of "it depends".

Guitars, bass, drums and vocals should be live. If you feature any other instrument extensively there should be someone playing that instrument. If there's one section in a single song playing some exotic instrument it's totally fair to use a backing track for that. Same with any samples that are on the record (for example some kind of spoken word passage, which is what Maiden does with various intros like TNOTB or The Prisoner for example).

What I dislike is if the album has a wall of sound with hundreds of tracks and we hear all the missing tracks as backing tracks live. What's the point then? I like live versions to be different to the studio version, at least to some degree. If it's a 1:1 recreation that's just boring. I've also noticed that many bands that use a ton or backing tracks have the singer barely interacting with the audience, which is another pet peeve of mine. I want them to engage with the audience in some way (and I know that's a matter of taste), not sing the exact same lines as in the studio and never say anything beyond that.
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I saw this band support Nightwish a couple of years ago and they stood around like statues until the backing track started. It was so weird. Artificial.
 
I have come to see it as a necessary evil.

In general, I don't like them. I like a live show to be a little more raw. That said, I completely understand piping in small orchestral/horn/choir/atmospheric layers. If you have an instrument featured on the whole song, though, it should be live.

The trend that makes me crazy is these bands that go out without bassists or drummers and just play to backing tracks. It's lame to watch and it sounds fake.
 
Only going to be used more and more when people are spending their lives on youtube going over actual live performances with fine tooth combs and then making sneering comments.
 
Ascendingthethrone said:
I saw this band support Nightwish a couple of years ago and they stood around like statues until the backing track started. It was so weird. Artificial.
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I think Nightwish is a good example of a band that’s kinda pushing it when they perform live but besides all the orchestration as a backing track the rest of the band is fired-up and properly performing. I also think that if it’s a good show it’s a good show, regardless of how much is really ‘live’, but it’s easy to notice when an artist is using this as a crutch rather than an additive.
 
I prefer no backing tracks in general, but I understand some bands need to use it, especially those that have lot of orchestrations.
 
A three piece band using piano and/or keyboard backing tracks triggered by the drummer and not by someone pushing a button backstage is fine with me.
 
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