Gabe and I are both big believers in interaction. With 2 people, only one can truly interact with the sound of the other person, but the way we get around this is that the first scratch track, by either of us, is always assumed to be a dummy that will be redone later once there is something to play against. So the person making the scratch track does pretty much as you have described above. But the way we think about it, it won't sound real unless both people have a chance to play against the sound of another person. So in this case it went:
Gabe scratch (no video)-->Bass scratch reacting to piano scratch(no video)--> Gabe take 2 against the bass scratch track (video)-->Bass take 2 against piano take 2 (video). Once we had this done, I mixed the audio and sent it to Hyman (and Fuzzy), and he recorded against our final version.
The important thing for me - both when I do this myself with whoever and looking ahead to when my students will likely have to do this in the fall semester - is that everybody gets a chance to react to other humans playing music. Otherwise, it's just as you say: "kinda boring". But bring in round 2, and things get a lot more real!
@Ed Fuqua Apropos of nothing, consider this an open invitation to record a duo with me. It's always been a bummer to me that as much as you generously helped me out in my early days on the big bass, we never got to play together even though we did finally meet at the Blue Note back in the day. I think it would be a gas, and tick one more thing off my bucket list. No hurry, and no worry, but I'd be into it.
