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