When I make my backing tracks, I use my experience to try to anticipate what will work best for my typical audience. Try is the most important word. Sometimes I nail it, sometimes it's a learning experience.

Being that it's a business, it's more important to me to do it the way the bulk of the audience wants to hear it than how I might want to play it. If they are into the music, I'm having fun.

Sometimes that means making the track as close to the famous version of the song as I can. There is no shame in that, after all, I've played Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and The Beatles note-for-note in my lifetime. Some songs are so etched in the audience's mind, that changing them will result in a significant part of the audience disturbed.

Sometimes my backing tracks will have significant elements like a guitar figure or brass stabs like the original, but otherwise be more our interpretation than a note-for-note copy.

Other times I might drastically change the song, make a rock song Reggae, another Latin American, another Swing Jazz, or whatever.

There are many right ways to do this. I've played in cover bands that tried to do everything note-for-note and jazz bands that did nothing note-for-note like any recording.

Some musicians don't want to play songs like the record. Others strive to make it as close as they can. Either way is fine as long as what they are doing goes over with the audience they are targeting.

If the audience is enjoying what you are doing, you are doing the right thing. After all, music without a listener isn't complete.

I've been a live performer since I was in junior high school, and many decades later, I'm still learning what my audience wants to hear, and how they want it presented. As time changes, the tastes of my targeted audience changes, and it's my job to adapt. That is, if I want to gig and buy groceries next week.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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