PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Rick Beato weighs in on the use of backing tracks for live performances

Is Performing With A Backing Track Cheating?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZXUPuiC9Eo

It's an interesting question. If the band makes a statement that they are delivering a 'live show', and they aren't providing a 'live show', then a little bit of deceit is involved. But on the other hand, if they are just providing a show without making any statement about the backing being live, then as Rick mentions: 'as long as they do it well'.

In my duo, The Sophisticats, we use backing tracks http://www.s-cats.com

I make the backing tracks myself, either from scratch using the Master Tracks Pro, or with a little help from Band-in-a-Box.

Is it cheating? Perhaps, but at least they are my tracks and not purchased karaoke tracks.

Are the necessary? Yes, because almost every other duo in the area uses tracks, and we need to sound as good or better than our competition.

Would I rather play with a 'all live' larger band? Yes.

Do I want to make less money as the pay per-musician gets smaller the bigger the band is around here? No.

Do I want to put up with the 'other musicians' who don't practice at home, don't want to rehearse, show up late, take long breaks, or are too busy chasing a skirt to take the gig seriously? No.

So it's backing tracks for me, which means for every new song I learn and sequence the drum part, bass part, and all the comp parts, saving the most fun parts for Mrs. Notes and me to play live on top of the tracks.

It's nothing new. When we gigged on cruise ships in the late 1980s, the orchestra on the main stage used backing tracks for the production show and played along with the tracks.

Right or wrong, it's just what is done now. Survival goes to those who can adapt, and we adapted to backing tracks early. That was in 1985, and until COVID, we were never out of work. Now post-COVID quarantine days, we are gigging 18 or so one-nighters (mostly in the daytime) per month.

When a musician is gigging, life is good.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Obvously the ability to use backing tracks depends a lot on the style of music you're playing and your venue. If you're playing bluegrass, (which is a VERY small group of fans), and you used backing tracks then your reputation would be shot in a matter of weeks.

If you told the listeners up front that you were using backing tracks then that would work in an extremely small setting. Let's say 6-8 listeners.

When people come out to hear bluegrass, folk or Americana they rightfully expect that all of the instruments and vocals they hear are live.

Music isn't about music anymore. It's about money. Most bands where I am are a trio with a singer, and nobody else sings but the front person. They have mics for appearances, but they don't sing. The music is very empty. They stay small because bringing in a keyboard player or second guitarist would cost each of the 4 of them $20 to pay the 5th person. Personally I would pay that 20 bucks to sound better. But music in general is dead here and competition for what gigs there are is intense. I know of several bands who play for $200 a night and are happy to make that 50 bucks. They stink, but they get work because they are cheap.

To topic, the bands who DO make money all use tracks. And I hate it. Keyboard players are sitting at home while they play their CDs and "play band". The only acts I will go see anymore are bands that are all original and don't use tracks. If I want to hear backing tracks I can stay home and listen to ALL the original tracks online.

I used tracks only for songwriter nights the few times I went to them, but largely because my songs don't stand up well to being played solo. But in a band situation, the bands I last played in were 10 pieces. Everybody lives in a different reality. I don't care about money so I don't care if I ever play again, and unless it's a song writer showcase night (for which I would use a "TV track"), I won't.

I remember being called a cheater/fake musician, when I revealed on the old Cakewalk site that I was using BB tracks in my songs.


That was then rebuffed by others who said unless you used TAPE, you weren't a real recording enthusiast, which then led to unless you used acoustic instruments exclusively you weren't true to the music, and then if you didn't make your own instrument and so on and so on...... and then someone brought up DJ's..... and it escalated from there rapidly.


I say, use the technology and go with it. There's skill required in everything.

+1, I agree.
But, I feel for the "small" artists that are near starving and where each dollar counts a lot to them. If they need tracks then they need them. We are afterall, in hard economic times.

The big name acts like AeroSmith however should be able to afford to bring out live players even if for only a song or two. Incidentally, I saw them in the early 70s in a High School auditorium when they were basically a no name garage band. They did have Dream On and very limited radio play, but no ProTool backing tracks obviously. Tickets were around $2.00

I have NO problem with using new technology!

I DO have a problem with fooling people into thinking they're watching a "live" show when they're actually watching something that falls far short of "live".

Bob, I think there is quite a large group of bluesgrass fans. Newgrass, where newer songs are played by blue grass musicians, is gaining fans around here. Check out Walk of the Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMu03WxjFu8

I agree that bluegrass, folk, and Americana should not use backing tracks but I would add all bands should not use them except for the single, duo, and trio musicians. As Eddie pointed out money is a big issue for bands. I would much rather hear a small group of musicians with backing tracks than Karaoke!

If they are near starving, it is time for them to accept that they aren't good enough to make it in the extremely competitive world of music where most people in that category usually can't play, sing or write and get a job. (My friends all tell me I'm a good singer! Well, hang onto those friends.)

I see music like I see sports. One one team wins the World Series, the Stanley Cup or the Lombardi Trophy. The rest of the pack is tied for loser. I know too many wannabe types who think they are somebodies because they are BMOC in the town of 14,000 where they were born, still live (and still go to their high school's football games though they have been out of school for 50 years), and only perform where they know the crowd will be all their 65 year old friends who wouldn't dare tell them they suck. But like the old saying goes, "Will it play in Peoria?" Take your show 500 miles from home where nobody knows you and see how you do. If you play to a "lowest common denominator" crowd you can feel like a star at the level of The Beatles. Take your music to ONE showcase and see how you do. I did one of those at a bar in Santa Monica at a place called "At My Place" decades ago and I though I wowed them. There were reps there from 9 labels. Only 2 even spoke to me. The better of those two comments were "Your sound is very midwest mainstream and we already have a Johnny Cougar." I just thanked him for his input while my mind said "You just heard 6 guys from Cleveland Ohio play 5 songs written by a guy from Cleveland Ohio. We sound like where we came from."

From that day forward I realized that riding the tour bus or flying my private plane to my show at The Enormodome was not in my future and that I just didn't have "it". I resigned myself to schlepping my own gear, setting up, tearing down, driving my old car home and doing it again tomorrow was going to be my life, which is was until 1994 when I got a big boy job. And to go back out now and play with 3 people with 6 people on backing tracks... nope. If I want horns, I know horn players. If I need more singing I would only recruit players who can sing (which nobody does anymore because of tracks). I have watched solo and duo acts with tracks where even the solos were on the tracks. I would actually be embarrassed to do that.

Recently I tried to recruit to bud a band to do music of The Cure. I let that ad run 2 weeks, I was sad at what was replying, and I just gave up. I don't want to be like those athletes that hang on when they don't have game anymore, and I haven't had musical game in quite a while.

Now, to argue with myself (and why I made this a separate reply), I can't help but think about double standards among the listeners.

One guy I know, and I'll call him Bob, asked me about some local band and what I thought about them. His opinion was that they sound good but they cheat by using backing tracks. He went on and on about organ tracks where there was no keyboardist and horn section parts when there is no horn section.

And here's where it gets stupid.

This guy is a huge Rush fan. In the SAME conversation, he spoke of seeing Rush and how cool it was that Geddy Lee was triggering MIDI sequences with foot switches. I said "Bob, how is that different from that other band using backing tracks? You can't love it when Rush does it and hate it when anybody else does it. You either wear a black hat or you wear a white hat. You don't get to change hats mid discussion."

If your crowd doesn't care that you are playing tracks (no matter where the tracks came from) you just keep playing with tracks.

So let me toss a curve ball in here. IF you are on the "no tracks" side, at what point do we draw that line? I once played a song that had a persistent 16th note part played on a low G. I used a synthesizer that allowed me to play one key and have the oscillator keep retriggering that note as 16th notes. In a sense, I was cheating, in that I should have been able to play those 16th notes, on time with no fatigue factor, for a 16 bar intro and every 16 bar chorus if I was REALLY playing. I see that "cheating" as nothing more than using keyboard tools that are available to me and in fact bought a specific piece of equipment that allowed me to play that part that way.

So it comes down to "tool" or "crutch". When tracks cover a player's weakness, they are a crutch.

Great clip Mario and a perfect example of live vs. back up tracks.

It also boils down to how many people play music for money and how many people play just for the joy of making music!

Nobody in the bluegrass, folk or Americana styles have any illusions about about making money from their music. They just play it because they love it.

Don't start the "I will never play for nothing" brigade up again Bob, the same ole stuff will come up!

That obviously should have read "I will never PLAY for nothing".

Obviously your memory is much better than mine!

I don't have a frickin' clue what you're talkin' about! LOL

The Broadway Musicians' Union fought the battle of musicians versus backing tracks for decades. You can say the battle began in 1942 when all US union musicians went on strike from +++ 1942 to 1944 +++.

A new contract was mediated in +++ 2011 +++ that set new limits to the minimum number of musicians that must be used during performances.

Most everything you do to make a living is about money.

At one time, I wanted to be a jazz musician. Had a gig in a band with a guy who taught Jazz at the University of Miami, and famous heavyweight jazz players who would come and sit in when they were around.

I worked one day a week and needed a day job to support myself.

So I switched to pop music, and never looked back.

Which is the worst sell-out? Playing jazz one day a week but working 40 hours per week at something that isn't music at all? Or playing pop music?

BTW, I enjoy playing pop music.

So if you want to do music and nothing but music for a living, it has to be about the money. Someone has to pay the rent.

I make my living doing music and nothing but music. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have taken the two short-lived day jobs I've had in my life when I was trying to figure out if being normal was better than being a musician. (I don't need no stinkin' wage slave job.)

So to me, music is a business AND a pleasure.

As the business, pat of it is that I have to be as good or preferably better than our competition. For us it means backing tracks.

But most of the competition uses karaoke tracks. Those tracks are mixed for recording, not live performance, must be done close to record key, and are record length.

If I make my own tracks, I can mix it for live performance, using MIDI I can transpose it to the best key for singing, I can make them a little longer for the dancers, I can speed them up a couple of beats per minute to add pep, and I can leave room for the solo hog (that would be me), and so on.

In the early days I bought some MIDI tracks, and was dissatisfied with the product. It took a lot of work to get them as good as I wanted them to be, so I decided to make them myself.

I never looked back. It takes more time to do them myself, but they turn out better, and if I'm lucky, I'll play each song hundreds or thousands of times. If they are not as good as I can make them, it would bug me hundreds or thousands of times, so I put in the time.

Time moves on.

There was a time when Saxophones weren't considered 'real instruments'. Same for Electric Guitars. In the early days of Western Music, a tritone was considered the "Devil's Interval" and diminished, and dominant 7th chords were taboo.

Time marches on, changes happen, and one can embrace the changes or go with the flow, or resist the change. It's a choice.

I choose to go with the flow, but I suppose some day in the future, something might happen that I'll resist, and I'll go the way of the other dinosaurs.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Interesting Notes. At one time I wanted to be a jazz musician and had a jazz trio consisting of a B3, drums, and me on guitar. We didn't get much work either so I went into the wedding band business and had more gigs than we could play as a weekend warrior.

So yes I sold out but laughed all the way to the bank.

I say more power to you man. If backing tracks work for you, you got nothing to apologize for.

I wanted to play the music that I liked. Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels, Outlaws, and yep....essentially good fun music but not very popular in the clubs and venues unless you were actually in one of those bands. It was all about filling dance floors and keeping the bar tenders and waitresses slinging drinks and the cash register ringing.

Several really good bands that I was playing in didn't have a grasp on that bigger picture. Yeah, we were really good, really tight and had a nice light and sound system but no one could really dance.... so.... we didn't tend to get re-booked in the clubs. Military clubs were our existence and that didn't pay the light bill.

I was asked to set in and jam with a "country band" and while I didn't particularly enjoy country at the time.... we're talking Charlie Pride, Merle, George, Wynette..... I agreed because I didn't have anything to do that weekend and it sounded like it might be a fun distraction. Long story short.... that band had it together in the sense of knowing the bigger picture and while they were not as technically adept, musically speaking, they had a full schedule and the gigs paid well. They asked me if I was interested in the job of lead guitar and I said yes. The other guitarist and lead singer skipped town a few weeks later and we managed to pull off the show that night with 3 pieces. The money got instantly better and since we did a good job, we decided to remain as a 3 piece band for the rest of our existence.

Yes, it is about the money.

While I was there for the money, I also gained a richer appreciation and a love for the music we were playing and had a great time.