Backing tracks are pre-recorded tracks played during "live" concerts. Sometimes they are the missing horns or keyboards from the recording or background voices. Sometimes they are the actual vocals or musical parts pre-recorded by the artist. The drummer has to play with a click track to sync them to the song, so they usually mean the live performance has computer perfect rhythm, and the song loses a lot of live spontaneity.

I hate them. All the time. I don't care if its George Strait, U2, or the bar band on the tiny stage at the back of the bar, I'd rather hear everything live, warts and all. I have sporify, so I can hear the perfect recorded version any time I want.

Curious what you think....

Here's a take from a guy in the business.



And a rebuttal

Philo B 93 said:

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I hate them. All the time. I don't care if its George Strait, U2, or the bar band on the tiny stage at the back of the bar, I'd rather hear everything live, warts and all. I have sporify, so I can hear the perfect recorded version any time I want.

Curious what you think....

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Agreed. Often, a different or stripped-down arrangement of a song live is better or more interesting than the recorded version. It's a shame more musicians aren't comfortable performing without half their show on a hard drive.

It reminds me of a hotel bar band I saw back in the '80s, consisting of a keyboard player and vocalist. The keyboard player had a ton of backing tracks on tapes in a case. Every time they started a song he would have to pull out the right tape and place it in a player. And of course, the tapes had drums and all sorts of backing instruments -- like sax solos, etc., -- and it was so incredibly fake.

I don't know why anyone goes to see any concert where there is a lot of choreography. You know they aren't singing at all. What's the point?

I saw Dan Fogelberg once in 1982. He was having real problems with his voice, and at one point, he announced that there were some songs on his set list he couldn't perform. So instead, he played an acoustic guitar rendition of "Eleanor Rigby" that really showcased his musicianship.

Not sure that would happen today. He'd just lip synch to the recording. But we would have missed out on a memorable moment.

When I saw Van Halen with Sammy Hagar they used a pre-recorded EVH keyboard track for Right Now. That kind of thing I am OK with. Using backing tracks to beef up vocals or cover up some other deficiencies is weak.

I feel it's not a black-and-white answer. For artists packing in and out on a nightly basis for a year straight and traveling across the country, they want to put on a show that's easily replicable night after night with minimal glitches and is easy to put together. If the singer has a sore throat, do you lose all the money for the next several nights from the canceled shows and suffer potential backlash? It's all about efficiency, putting butts in seats, and not losing them.

That said, I do agree you lose a major amount of spontaneity and magic when you package a hamburger helper product and serve it in this way. The artists don't get to cook.

Also, the main perpetrator is mainstream pop. It appeals to the masses, and therefore stands to gain more from musically-ignorant folks who just want to have a good time and don't care about spontaneity. They just want to hear their favorite song from the radio.

tl;dr: Money.

You know who put on a really good live show?

Milli Vanilli.

If I wanted the song exactly like it was on the album I would just listen to the album.

But then again I am a huge Grateful Dead fan so give me live with no backing 10/10.

Pink Floyd would play it all live except for some audio effects like in The Wall, but they did have to play very precisely to stay in sync with lighting effects. Allman brothers had some nice visuals but nothing synced so played a very jam band style live.

To this point, it's my understanding artists make most of their money on tours and recording companies make the most on sales of songs. For artists, potentially losing out on tour dates is a lot of money, along with a lot of disappointed fans. I can see why they take certain shortcuts.

With a lot of pop musicians, there's also a lot of choreography and dancing that goes into their shows. That makes it really difficult to do vocals well and kind of necessitates shortcuts to make a good production.

In this vein...

Between The Buried And Me Guitarist to Miss Upcoming Tour, Will Be Replaced by Backing Track

I saw The Who in Houston and vividly remember what Beato was referring to during Baba O'riley. What was interesting was that they made no effort to hide it.

There was a huge reel to reel player on the stage and during the long keyboard solo you could see it operating.

We didn't care. It was the '70s! It was The Who! We were all stoned....

I don't like them and would prefer the band modify the song to not need them.

If it is a larger band, then hire what you need to replicate the album. Otherwise, I feel like the band is just scamming the audience. How much would it cost them to hire another dude or two to make the sounds with instruments? For some of these bands who are making millions per year in touring, just half-assing it with a backing track and pocketing that extra couple hundred thousand seems cheap and the very definition of being a corporate shill (many of whom would claim it's about the "art" and not the money).

To give an example, I remember going to see Green Day during the American Idiot tour back in '04. I HATED the fact they used a backing track for the guitar delay for Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I hated they used a backing track for the octaves after the versus. It felt fake and contrived.

Now, they got rid of all that and just play it live on stage, though technically not exactly like how it sounds on the album because they removed the delayed guitar part and play the octaves with a live guitar, making it sound more organic. I MUCH prefer this performance to the ones back in 04-05, like from their Bullet in a Bible show:

Interesting subject. I think another one in the same vein is when recording music. How do yall feel about copying and pasting riffs/progressions in something like pro tools versus recording ever single note like you're recording on tape.

I'm a purist and believe in recording everything. Copying and pasting is bull**** and loses that organic feeling I love in so many of my favorite records.

tracks have their places in certain parts of a song live, that are brief in nature, say a random lick every so often that doesn't justify hiring a certain musician for a brief fill once a night, etc. However, what does piss me off is when they use tracks for a dedicated instrument for the entire night. Example: Hardy and Ernest. Two new popular mainstream country acts that dont carry a bass player in the band. Strictly use tracks. That is sad.

A good friend of mine is a pro musician who plays for a nashville signed artist. Was recently on tour with Ernest and he said at one of the shows the laptop playing the tracks for the bass was screwed up so they had to abandon their entire show one song in, and ernest basically had to just fumble is way on acoustic guitar for the entire show alone. Also said the tracks cover acoustic guitar too in his normal set, hence why ernest had to fumble through it alone when the laptop screwed up. Said it was brutal to watch.

DallasTeleAg said:

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If it is a larger band, then hire what you need to replicate the album. Otherwise, I feel like the band is just scamming the audience. How much would it cost them to hire another dude or two to make the sounds with instruments?

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Good point. Lots of bands used to have multi-instrumentalists join them on tour to fill out the sound and perform solos on sax or something.

On his "You Had to Be There" live album (before he was a "brand"), Jimmy Buffett referred to this as "the band and the taxi squad" because he had added extra musicians for the recording.

I saw Martina McBride once for a Christmas show and she was backed by a roughly 20-piece jazz/orchestra group. All of them were local; I guess her management recruited a different group for each stop of the tour.

Rick Beato talks a lot about the organic nature of music being lost thanks to quantization and digital drums. Our brains pick up small changes in tempo that we don't consciously realize. That gives it a pop/computer feel vs a human feel.

For a lot of parts that require backing tracks, a band could hire one talented multi-instrumentalist, which are a dime-a-dozen in Nashville. Their fee for a tour may be more than the computer musician who creates the backing tracks to be used in every gig, but I'd rather see a non-band member playing a horn part on the synthesizer than having the band sync up to a Macbook Pro.

That Dan Fogelberg story above is awesome. It would suck nowadays to pay $150 to see a band come out and say the singer is sick, so he's going to struggle through five songs and rest will be other band members and instrumentals. But at least that is honest and real.

Philo B 93 said:

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Rick Beato talks a lot about the organic nature of music being lost thanks to quantization and digital drums. Our brains pick up small changes in tempo that we don't consciously realize. That gives it a pop/computer feel vs a human feel.

For a lot of parts that require backing tracks, a band could hire one talented multi-instrumentalist, which are a dime-a-dozen in Nashville. Their fee for a tour may be more than the computer musician who creates the backing tracks to be used in every gig, but I'd rather see a non-band member playing a horn part on the synthesizer than having the band sync up to a Macbook Pro.

That Dan Fogelberg story above is awesome. It would suck nowadays to pay $150 to see a band come out and say the singer is sick, so he's going to struggle through five songs and rest will be other band members and instrumentals. But at least that is honest and real.

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I agree that it is better to see a real human playing instead of tracks, but what many don't understand is just how tight money wise many performs and there band are. Yes, the bigger established artists can afford to pay guys and have a decent sized band, but even guys who are signed to a major label have a limited budget. Artists can pay their band more, higher more muscians, etc but its coming out of their own pocket and a lot don't, or cant afford to do that.

As in example their is a certain artist signed to Big Machine records out of Nashville. Major record label, his guys in his band are making $150 a gig and it's one of the bigger bands currently touring out of Nashville. That is why backing tracks are becoming popular as well. Less people to pay.

"choreography and dancing"

powerbelly said:

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If I wanted the song exactly like it was on the album I would just listen to the album.

But then again I am a huge Grateful Dead fan so give me live with no backing 10/10.

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I'm a big Bob Schneider fan and probably have seen him twenty or so times. And the reason his shows were always so great is that yeah you might hear some songs off his new album you hadn't heard live before but the show genre itself was always heavily influenced by whatever style he seemed to be into a lot the time.

I've heard him play the same songs live in any or all of the following arrangements: ska, rock, funk, red dirt,
acoustic.

That's what makes his shows so fantastic and worth seeing again and again.

Edit: Because I forgot zydeco as well.

Philo B 93 said:

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That Dan Fogelberg story above is awesome. It would suck nowadays to pay $150 to see a band come out and say the singer is sick, so he's going to struggle through five songs and rest will be other band members and instrumentals. But at least that is honest and real.

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You can hear him play "Eleanor Rigby" from that concert at the 34:20 mark of this video. There's no visuals and the sound isn't perfect but you get a sense of how he improvised. The remainder of the show was performed as usual, I think, although you can tell he is struggling vocally at times.



He may have done one or two other instrumentals that aren't on this recording. My memory is a bit fuzzy.

AustinCountyAg said:

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Yes, the bigger established artists can afford to pay guys and have a decent sized band, but even guys who are signed to a major label have a limited budget. Artists can pay their band more, higher more muscians, etc but its coming out of their own pocket and a lot don't, or cant afford to do that.

As in example their is a certain artist signed to Big Machine records out of Nashville. Major record label, his guys in his band are making $150 a gig and it's one of the bigger bands currently touring out of Nashville. That is why backing tracks are becoming popular as well. Less people to pay.

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This is why I did qualify my statement to be mainly focused on the bigger acts. However, I also believe the art of music isn't simply in recording and mixing an album, which is in itself a specific work of art, but also in the performance. If you are going to perform a piece of art, I expect to see it performed.

If you have to rely on that for a single song, it can be forgiven, but if you have to rely on it for an entire set, you should just re-compose the song to work with what you have. I actually see it as a lack of creativity to be able to adjust to what you have available for a live gig.

maroon barchetta said:

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And a rebuttal

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How is that second video a rebuttal to the first? He agrees with everything Beato says. That 2nd video was an absolute waste of time to watch if you've watched the first video.

Full disclosure: I didn't watch all of the 2nd video

maroon barchetta said:

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Full disclosure: I didn't watch all of the 2nd video

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Haha, the whole time I was watching it, I wondered if you'd even watched it yourself. The stupid graphic on the youtube link looks like he went to battle with Rick Beato over his opinion. Totally misleading.

youtube title shots are the ****ing worst.

In the past I have seen posters on this forum complain about how some bands suck because the live version of the band does not sound the same as the studio version. Now we want the flaws of the live version…

tk for tu juan said:

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In the past I have seen posters on this forum complain about how some bands suck because the live version of the band does not sound the same as the studio version. Now we want the flaws of the live version…

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What?

Who has posted bands suck because they don't sound exactly like the studio version, and then came back to post they want flaws?

This is one of those TexAgs proclamations that posters like to make just for the hell of it.

I also don't think anyone here has said they "want the flaws". What some of us have said is we prefer them to alter the song to work in a live setting as opposed to using backing tracks. Also, what do you define as a "flaw"?

I don't know anyone who "wants" to hear a pitchy singer or a band who can't stay on time. Now, if the band slightly changes tempo throughout a song, that can accentuate the emotional change throughout a song which can be great, live.

agreed. I specifically remember people complaining about Third Eye Blind...although I'm not sure if that was more about them not sounding the same, or not sounding good.

I think any band/artist using their lighting and other live show effects as an excuse should go check out a Muse show.
Whether you like their music or not, their live show is insane and they play it all live...and often the live version is better than the studio.

tk for tu juan said:

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In the past I have seen posters on this forum complain about how some bands suck because the live version of the band does not sound the same as the studio version. Now we want the flaws of the live version…

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If I want to hear the cd then I'll just play it at home or in my car.
If I am choosing to see someone play live, i want to see them perform live.
I would go see Blink-182 knowing that they cant really play or sing very well live, but they more than make up for it with their stage presence and energy. You can think a band doesnt play as well live, and still enjoy their show.

Its not even a strictly rock vs rap/hip hop thing, there are of rap artists performing live. I do feel like the more pop someones music is, the more likely they are to not actually play live.

Maybe I should have used this emoticon for tongue-in-cheek or whimsical exaggeration. Just remember how people talked about bands in the early '00s. Wasn't some super serious comment

AustinCountyAg said:

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Philo B 93 said:

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Rick Beato talks a lot about the organic nature of music being lost thanks to quantization and digital drums. Our brains pick up small changes in tempo that we don't consciously realize. That gives it a pop/computer feel vs a human feel.

For a lot of parts that require backing tracks, a band could hire one talented multi-instrumentalist, which are a dime-a-dozen in Nashville. Their fee for a tour may be more than the computer musician who creates the backing tracks to be used in every gig, but I'd rather see a non-band member playing a horn part on the synthesizer than having the band sync up to a Macbook Pro.

That Dan Fogelberg story above is awesome. It would suck nowadays to pay $150 to see a band come out and say the singer is sick, so he's going to struggle through five songs and rest will be other band members and instrumentals. But at least that is honest and real.

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As in example their is a certain artist signed to Big Machine records out of Nashville. Major record label, his guys in his band are making $150 a gig and it's one of the bigger bands currently touring out of Nashville. That is why backing tracks are becoming popular as well. Less people to pay.

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If it's a big name then I would think he's selling at least 1,000 tickets per gig at $50 each plus merch. Paying 5 or 6 guys $150 is less than 1% of his per show revenue. Seems reasonable. He must have never gotten over his karaoke hero days if he still likes playing to a recording.

This thread did remind me of when I stopped following DCI when amplification and prerecorded material started to creep into drum corps. It was off-putting and didn't seem to fit with what we were previously familiar with in drum and bugle corps. When the Bluecoats did their Beatles show in 2019, I started to get back into DCI. The use of amplification and prerecorded material had matured enough to blend into the overall show and actually add to it. Going back and listening to some of the years I missed, it really caught on when the Bluecoats did some pitch bending as part of the finale.

So flame away at listening/following to DCI, but hearing it live can be one of the best loud/good sounding experiences out there

powerbelly said:

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If I wanted the song exactly like it was on the album I would just listen to the album.

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Go watch a band like Alice in Chains or Opeth; they are incredibly close to album perfection.

It's not backing tracks, it's because they record to tape what they can do live.

So while I agree that backing tracks can be kind of lame, I don't agree with your first sentence. There are acts who stay true to the song while performing live.