Quote:

there are very few or no companies producing ass kicking professional backing tracks.



This is completely wrong, you just haven't looked in the right places.
I know there's tons of unbelievably good Karaoke tracks available because I've heard them. My sister does big Karaoke competitions where they have a full blown Vegas type set up with a 2000 watt PA and crowds in the 500-1000 range. All the singers have backing tracks that are done by live studio players, little or no midi at all. I'm talking about the classic Sinatra songs with the full orchestra that sound so awesome it sounds like the producers somehow got the original masters remixed without the vocal, they're that good. One guy did whatever that famous Ricky Martin tune is that didn't just sound like a cover band, it sounded like his band and another one did that Miami Sound Machine Conga whatever tune and same thing, the orchestration was perfect. There's a sax player here in LA named Andy Suzuki who's been working with David Benoit lately who made his living doing covers for Muzak for 10 years. He was a full time staff player for them and just made a regular salary like 40 grand a year or something. These guys have all the transcriptions of all the popular tunes note for note perfect and play them perfect too. If you talking pop covers, they're readily available.
Having said this, it's possible that these great cuts may not be available as minus one's if you don't need a vocal backing track but need a minus the piano or other instrument track so you can play along. Also, these karaoke tracks may only be for top 40 stuff, other material in different styles may not be available either so there could be some opportunity there, you'd have to research that.
I agree with Mac though, the big problem is getting the true sound of the original down cold. That's not as easy as some may think. Equipment is a big deal, not just the skill of a player. If you're doing a Deep Purple tune, you need a real B3 properly set up, not a software emulator and so on for lots of tunes that had a signature guitar sound or whatever. How many good blues players can really lay down some killer SRV stuff with his sound so a person might think, wow that sounds like SRV? That's not simply good talent, that's "headline a tribute band in Vegas" talent. Don't even talk about horn sections. You can get some pretty good local horn players together and they're not going to sound like Chicago no matter what but those Karaoke tracks do. One of the competitors did 25 or 6 to 4 and again like the other tracks I mentioned, it sounded so close to Chicago you would think they took the original masters and removed the vocal. It makes no sense but I almost think they did...nah

Bob

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