Is Performing With A Backing Track Cheating? My Opinion...

In today's video whether using a backing track live is ripping off your fans?

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Live Show!
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[fuzzypoet]

I'm an old-school multi-instrumentalist and prefer live music without backing tracks. For me, it's all about the talent and chemistry between real people playing instruments on stage, creating sounds together and sharing that energy with the audience. That's the essence of music for me.

[taobud]

I am reminded of Led Zeppelin. The albums had many layered guitar parts as well as keyboards, bass, mandolin, and guitar played by John Paul Jones. When they played live and were considered then one of the very best live shows, they played live...with no backing tracks. The shows were rawer and more unpolished, but they were amazing examples of improvisation and live talent. No one was expecting to hear Jimmy Page layering backing tracks to sound like the albums.

[dougstull]

In the late seventies during a Jethro Tull show, I saw what I consider one of the coolest uses of a backing track. Prior to performing the song, "Songs From the Wood", which begins with a 4 part chorus singing the 1st verse a cappella with Ian Anderson, he came out on stage with the spot light on him and a small table holding a Teac reel to reel recorder. Ian smiled at the audience, held up one finger and pressed play on the recorder to begin the song with the rest of the band joining in at the 2nd verse. Instead of hiding the fact that he was using a backing track for all the voices he didn't have on stage, he made it part of the show.

[duaneforrand]

Supertramp crime of the century tour. 5 people on stage absolutely recreate the recording from start to finish. Most amazing live show I have ever seen

[andtothewestamerica]

Hearing bands play different versions of songs or making changes to suit the vibe is such a big part of the magic of live shows. Not to mention watching musicians having fun vs. just grinding out a performance.

[SaadMGhani]

As a musician from Bangladesh, because of our 'low tech' everything, I and my fellow musicians still play everything live. Guitarist can still play everything sounding like that of the records they did. We still have stage monitors that most of the times probably doesn't work properly. We just go with the flow, and play our gigs. The crowd enjoys and so do we. I believe we are blessed by low tech in this instance!☺️

[mandolinic]

Went to a party yesterday. The main entertainment was a duo of professional musicians with no backing tracks, no sequences, no special effects - just a basic PA with a bit of EQ and reverb. Nothing else. They were mesmerising.

[chiefchimp]

This is why Pearl Jam are so great live. You could argue that they're significantly better live than on their studio albums.

[jiml]

"All this machinery making modern music, can still be open hearted. Not so fully charted, its really just a question of your honesty, yeah your honesty."
- RIP Neil Peart.

[RockAndRollRockhound]

Greetings from Ontario, Canada. My band opened for a well known Canadian country duo a couple of years before the pandemic. They were a 5 piece band with approximately 32 extra backing tracks. Well, their little machine malfunctioned. 10 minutes of dead silence. They made heart signs and asked if anyone had a birthday, but they couldn’t continue until the whatever they were using was fixed. 5 guys on stage that couldn’t play a song without backing tracks. To me that’s embarrassing.

[leokimvideo]

I saw Twentyonepilots a few years ago. Here is a band with two members but had a huge full production sound when playing 'live'. Much of what I was hearing was pre recorded music done to an amazing light show, makes for a very non organic concert. When I did band pyro work in the 90's maybe the only artist who was playing a real show was Prince. Just about every big live show heavily relied on a tightly pre scripted lighting show that was synced with the music, of course the pyro cues could be in sync as well. In the end the pyro becomes a 'no fire' instruction if the 'show' was running the cues. I certainly witnessed Bon Jovi, Bobby Brown, Motley Crue and lots of others rely heavily on parts of the show that were pre recorded. As Rick says here this has been in the live music scene for a very long time, it's sad it's now becoming so heavily relied on to a point where a live show is basically a complete lip sync performance. And when thinking of this in the extreme look at Paul Stanley of Kiss. Pauls been caught out several times well away from a microphone yet he's singing very loudly in a song. I'm certainly not paying $500 to see this style of live show no matter how final the tour is. If they cant play live a band needs to retire when it can no longer sings it's own songs. Yep, playing with backing tracks is ripping off fans unless it's clearly disclosed in the ticket sales.

[jhn]

I’ve recently seen a number of live acts using backing tracks. In most cases, it was a solo guitarist doing vocals using a bass and percussion backing track. I saw a duo in which there was a female primary vocalist and a male guitarist also contributing vocals. They sounded like a full band and were using backing tracks containing bass, percussion, guitar, and keyboard. I began to wonder when does this actually become karaoke?

[TankTheTech]

There are a lot of exceptions to the “bands are locked into a click track” part of this discussion (as I’m sure Rick is aware, he just didn’t break it down.) The artist I was working for for years up until the pandemic had bridges and other parts of songs where the click/tracks/programming would stop, allowing for off the cuff solos, band intros, talking without the crowd, and whatever else. And when they wanted to kick back into the actual song, the drummer (or playback tech) would cue a count off for the band to hear, and the tracks/programming would start again in that next part. It can be done, but it has to be precise and most often requires a drummer with great timing.

[LeftSee]

As long as each person on stage plays their instruments live and the singer acutally sings I don't care if there are tracks to complete the sound. I rather enjoy a full sound than a romantic minimalistic appoach.

[stevencancel]

As a sound engineer for many top level bands, many of them use backing tracks in their live performance and I had to mix them in the monitor sends as well as front of house, most used digital tape as they were less likely to fail

[kristencollins]

I think Nine Inch Nails is a good example of this. There is SO much going on with their songs and if it’s programmed into synths or backing tracks, they still sound like a beautiful live band. You still feel like you are getting a raw, live performance, but you also know it is all planned out meticulously

[philking]

For me playing live creates the opportunity of things going constructively wrong, and the great satisfaction of reacting to it in a manner that makes the audience think you meant it. I once played a gig during which a song we'd played hundreds of times, "Already Gone by The Eagles, found us reach the chorus and all four of us stopped playing exactly together - we don't know why to this day, but instead of collapsing we just sang the chorus a capella with spontaneous harmonies, and came back in exactly together to finish the song conventionally. My best friend who watched us a lot wouldn't believe that we hadn't practiced the effect for weeks and weeks. You need to know and trust each other well to be able to do that of course, but for me, those are the moments you play for.

[djpuffinstuff]

I like watching a band have the flexibility of adding an extra chorus or stopping to interact with the audience and then picking it back up again or the natural interplay of musicians feeding off each other which sometimes includes subtle tempo changes. Many from my generation (I'm 56) complain that recordings are locked on a grid but the use of backing tracks for live performances essentially creates the same effect. Using backing tracks on a couple of tunes per show to fill in instruments or effects the audience expects is ok but if the whole show is programmed then it's really just expensive karaoke, except in many instances the vocal parts aren't live either.

[thegamergodcontrollord]

I played in a cover/wedding band for 12 years. ("The Promise". Binghamton, NY). We eventually used sequences on a handful of songs (Funkytown, Don't Get Fooled Again, Heart of Glass, Smooth (Santana), The Power of Love (Celine Dion) Comfortably Numb...) The sequences were played from my Ensoniq TS-10 keyboard. (I played keyboard and guitar in the band.) When I thought that we were trying to play a song that needed more than the four members of the band to be able to pull off, I persuaded the others to use the sequence. It worked very well for us. There was an "auxiliary" output on the keyboard that allowed me to send a click track and other clues to the drummer, who was wearing headphones. When a four piece band is trying to cover a song like "Smooth, " there's a lot of space that needs to be filled. There's a pronounced Latin piano part, an organ part, the horn section... and the whole time, I can't take my hands off the guitar to do any of the other parts. I don't we ever had any problems staying in sync. Most of the gig we were otherwise totally live. If a song required more parts than four people could do, we'd use the sequencer. Typically, in a four hour gig, we'd use it for maybe 6 songs.

[EdBeardsley]

I have been making backing track for 20 years. I make the full demo on my DAW and then remove the lead vocal and the lead guitar and go out and perform. To me, its more about the sound of the music than the performance. People applaud for my singing and guitar playing. The backing tracks make the song sound better. It is actually more difficult to play in this arrangement because if you make a mistake like not coming in at the right time, the backing tracks can not follow you like a full band might be able to.