Originally Posted By: Notes Norton
...without sounding like a karaoke jockey.


I'm going to repeat this again with emphasis:

WITHOUT SOUNDING LIKE A KAROAKE JOCKEY!!

Whatever you do, keep the backing tracks basic. Bass and drums only and if you play guitar then SOME keys and if you play keys then SOME guitar. That's it. Forget horn lines unless you're Notes and can play your sax live on top of them. It takes a good live player to make prerecorded horn lines work. Horns are so obvious if there isn't one horn player on stage. People hear horns and they think the whole thing is karaoke. Same for a killer guitar solo and you're just sitting there strumming.

People want to see and hear YOU perform, not some guy playing along to a record.

Here's a quick story from years ago. A good friend who's since passed was a really good pianist and singer. He had a great collection of midi files he used for his act. About a week before New Years Eve he went into the hospital and asked me to cover for him. I already had copies of his midi files he had given me to mess around with. I brought a sax player and neither of us sing.

I cued up some of his midi's and hated trying to play along with them so much plus I just didn't like the vibe, I turned myself into a DJ and started talking some of the key lyrics and making jokes and comments to the crowd while the music was playing. I still solo'd over some of those tracks and so did the sax player. He is a very good MC and schmoozed the crowd very well when I was playing. Most there knew Eddie and knew we were covering for him so that helped too. I was a bit of a nervous wild man faking it and the saxman is a pretty smooth talker. For ballads he and I just played live, no tracks and that went over well too. Slow dancing doesn't need drums with the two of us playing.

Between that and me doing things like calling out someone's hot wife when I did the midi to Brick House and stuff like that, we pulled it off. I guarantee you though if all we did was play those tracks with no personality happening it would of bombed.

You need some ham in you and be able to step up and entertain. Then your backing tracks will work.

Bob

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