That's about where I am when it comes to tracks. Studio is studio. Live is live.
I'm a dinosaur.
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Does your band use tracks? (Poll)
- Thread starter BassAndReeds
- Start date
That's about where I am when it comes to tracks. Studio is studio. Live is live.
I'm a dinosaur.
I think backing tracks, harmonizers and other such tricks are blurring what is live music and what is essentially a karaoke act. A sound effect? no problem. Some weird synth thing that's on a popular song that is impossible to recreate live? I'll give a pass. but when have continuously an entire instrument on sequencer (know a local band that uses a click track with bass - no bassist at all), or multi-layered harmony tracks that you can buy on the internet to cover up for the fact that you simply don't have the talent to pull off a song, or key parts of a song, I draw the line. You're either creating the music and harmonies entirely yourself, or you're not.
Unfortunately, you're seeing the future -- and essentially the death of live music as we know it now. It will get to the point where any group of hacks with fancy tools will be able to sound like pros. It's kiling music.
Some here talk about pro bands doing it as if that was a justification for Joe Schmoe Cover Band in a Bar using tracks. I see a difference between BIG TIME bands that would have a near-impossible time recreating their hit songs in big stadiums vs. a cover band who are using backing tracks to cover instruments they don't have or harmony abilities they lack.
One is sort of understandable -- the fans expect it. The other is just cheating.
Unfortunately, you're seeing the future -- and essentially the death of live music as we know it now. It will get to the point where any group of hacks with fancy tools will be able to sound like pros. It's kiling music.
Some here talk about pro bands doing it as if that was a justification for Joe Schmoe Cover Band in a Bar using tracks. I see a difference between BIG TIME bands that would have a near-impossible time recreating their hit songs in big stadiums vs. a cover band who are using backing tracks to cover instruments they don't have or harmony abilities they lack.
One is sort of understandable -- the fans expect it. The other is just cheating.
Are you seriously expecting an answer?
In the case of a human on stage, the human can do unplanned things. That's part of the fun of playing and listening to live music, when the piano player decides on the spur of the moment to drop a quote from something else into that little open space. Or the intro that he's played the same way a thousand times, he suddenly decides to mix it up and do something different with it.
The recording will sound exactly the same from now till kingdom come. The recording will never try something new or different and make an "interesting failure", nor will it ever try something new or different and make an "interesting success". When one tune stops, the recording will never spontaneously decide to launch into another tune, bringing the rest of the band along, and surprising and delighting the musicians and the audience.
I guess I'm just an old hippie jazzer, but I believe the job of the band is not to reproduce what the audience can get for themselves off a recording, nor is it to be letter-perfect and never-varying. If I wanted to play exactly the same things exactly the same way forever and ever amen, I'd take a gig playing last chair second violin in an orchestra.
I don't know if this has been mentioned (this thread is long) but what about a guy who performs his own backing tracks live and builds a song? Is that OK to purists?
Nope. prerecorded is prerecorded. It's at least half a hoax. it blurs the lines between live music and karoake
There is a gulf of circumstances between the two extremes you describe. With respect, producing quality tracks from the ground up requires a level of musicianship way beyond that of the average bass player. Justification for the effort going in comes from the quality of the final results, not from what others might say or do...
Well I think that depends on who creates the arrangements, writes the scores and produces the track. Every note that comes off our tracks was put there by me, so AFAIC, there is no cheating. As much as I would love to, I can't accomodate a string section, horn section or tuned percussion in the band. If it's a bad track we all suffer, so just stringing together pre-recorded loops and hoping for the best is not an option, but then neither are tunes like Mustang Sally or Sweet Home Alabama...
sorry. no many how many hairs you try to split, I find that adding in a whole instrument or harmonies into live music in a bar is a bit of hoax, no matter who created them in advance. If you can't pull it off live, you either are a mediocre band or you need to instead do music that you actually do create live
I hope you don't use a bass synth effect, or that the guitar players in your band never experiment with reverb or chorus.
Pedals and sound shaping is hardly the same as using prerecorded tracks of instruments or harmonies that your band isn't either talented enough to pull off or too lazy. Pedals are not tracks
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
nobody is stopping you. I don't think I suggested otherwise. Did I say that you should stop playing?
I just find it something less than live music and not worthy of respect. sorry. you have your opinion and I have mine, let's leave it at that, shall we? I just wouldn't stoop to these tactics just to play somewhere nor will I support local bands or musicians that resort to this stuff. I have, on the contrary, tremendous respect for bands that pull off entire songs, complicated ones, without pretending to have instruments they aren't playing or singing harmonies that they are not. for example, local band here plays Bohemian Rhapsody. The entire thing including the multi-layered harmonic vocal interlude. No gimmicks. No trickery. no tracks. They just nail it. It's impressive compared to a band that's running a piano track on "Don't Stop Believing" because they lack a keyboard player. It's hokie. It's borderline karaoke. it's a slippery slope to going from a live band to a schmoe in the corner of a bar strumming on a guitar and singing into a microphone to essentially karaoke tracks. It's cringe-worthy
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Well, you know, if you have three musicians and you want to do a tune whose "famous recording" was done with six main musicians and a host of uncredited studio guys some of whom came in to play three bars, you could choose to come up with a new way to perform that tune.
Do you really think that anyone cares when the Oscar Peterson Trio performs a Broadway standard, that they don't hear the fifty person chorus that was on the "Original Broadway Cast Soundtrack" album?
I just really don't understand the importance some people place on trying to reproduce, on a twenty foot wide dive-bar stage, the sounds that [name brand rock band] spent a year in the studio and half a million bucks to put on record, recording every.single.measure.fifteen.times with a couple dozen overdubs and eighteen different remixes.
One last example. Anyone ever hear Lake Street Dive do "I want you back"? Somehow, they were able to perform this song without the full set of backing singers and orchestra that the Jackson Five used! Imagine that! Maybe it's because they are musicians!
Do you really think that anyone cares when the Oscar Peterson Trio performs a Broadway standard, that they don't hear the fifty person chorus that was on the "Original Broadway Cast Soundtrack" album?
I just really don't understand the importance some people place on trying to reproduce, on a twenty foot wide dive-bar stage, the sounds that [name brand rock band] spent a year in the studio and half a million bucks to put on record, recording every.single.measure.fifteen.times with a couple dozen overdubs and eighteen different remixes.
One last example. Anyone ever hear Lake Street Dive do "I want you back"? Somehow, they were able to perform this song without the full set of backing singers and orchestra that the Jackson Five used! Imagine that! Maybe it's because they are musicians!
which is irrelevant to this thread.
cover bands don't write and produce the songs that they cover
How much do you work and/or get paid in music?
I assume not much. So as a bit of an education, there is an expectation in the cover band scene to play like the recording. At least, 90%. Audiences only accept a small bit of change before you don't get hired back.
The market is driving playing with tracks. Some musicians like to eat.
But your comment also begs the question, if there's fifteen overdubs from your favorite musicians, how is playing to tracks any different?
To the concept that playing to tracks is cheating. Well, I guess a recording session shouldn't be allowed to overdub or edit tracks.
ummm...difference between recording and live music? the difference between being a famous band, playing big places where people are paying big money to see you and a cover band playing covers in a bar??
kind of important distinctions, don't you think?
kind of important distinctions, don't you think?
No, it's wholly relevant. Where does it specify in the title/OP (or anywhere else for that matter) about cover bands?
I've been using tracks to various degrees since the mid 80's, and in fact once upon a time I used to use 1/2" reel-to-reel tape machines on stage where I or others in the band played and produced everything. I moved on to MIDI driven by SMPTE from striped tape and MIDI sequencers. It was all very unreliable outside of a studio environment, so a different type of excitement from 'will the drummer turn up sober?' or 'will the singer call a double ending?'. Most of that time was with original material. Now for my covers band I am happy that my experience enables us to carry a set list that otherwise would not be possible without dragging a small orchestra around.
I accept that you don't like it and I appreciate why, on the face of it, you won't recognise the efforts that go into making a decent track, but I do object to the inference that it is in all cases a lazy-arsed substitute for musicianship.
Actually, if I pay big money to see a major act, I expect to see a very good live band and maybe even a pit orchestra.
