#whencitiessleep

April 11, 2014

By: Mark Bradley

  For all bands, a live show means entertaining an audience and delivering their music in the best way possible. More and more, live backing tracks are used in rock and metal bands’ sets. The tracks may be keys, additional programming, bass drops, extra vocal harmonies, even lead or rhythm guitar parts that the bands’ gigging lineup cannot pull off live. Metalcore bands especially seem reliant on using backing tracks to pull off backing synths, bass drops, and other elements previously found solely in electronic music. Asking a room of 20 people will bring back the same two answers (yay or nay), but with 20 different reasons for those answers.

  Are backing tracks something to be shunned as a fallback or crutch, or do they add sonic depth to a bands’ sound that enhances their live show? Our friendly hometown heroes weigh in…

  YAY:

We think playing with backtracking is perfectly fine! If you knew the slightest bit about how we run ours, is that our drummer listens to a track, off of his iPod, which not only contains our programing (which we don’t have a synth player to play anymore) but it holds a key component to our set: the metronome to the song. The drummer is the heart of the band; he designates the speed of the songs. In order to play the song in its original tempo, we think that playing to a “click track” is a necessary component in our live set. It makes everything easier, we don’t have to worry about how we’re going to know when the next part starts. It also cuts out the drummers need for a drum monitor which is always a bonus for the sound engineer because it is one less thing he has to worry about adding to his mix.

– Mike Garrow, When Cities Sleep

This is always a great topic of discussion. Using backtracks is a really great asset. They fill out the depth of your music in live performances in several ways. Backtracking allows you to perform any sound imaginable live. They also allow you to perform your songs exactly the way they are in the recordings. When using backtracks with a metronome it allows everyone to be precisely on time. Even if you don’t want to use samples and sounds in your performances you should still play to a metronome to stay on time. All bands will benefit using backtracks even if it is just some 808s (bass drops). I mean who doesn’t like feeling loud bass drops live? Since my band is a four-piece, backtracking has helped fill the empty sound of not having a second guitarist in the band.

– Jacob Buttner, For the Broken

Personally we don’t mind bands who either decide to use them, or not use them.  In Burdened Hearts, we have layers under our tracks in our recordings and enjoy having all of those layers such as synths, piano, or orchestrals in the background to emulate the same fullness that we include within our recordings.  We would never backtrack any instruments that we already are playing live (guitar, bass, drums, vocals), but just instruments we do not have at our disposal.  Music is music, and we just personally enjoy giving exactly what we have playing when you listen to our EP.  To bands that do not decide to use them, its the same concept [of] having a completely raw sound instead of including everything that may be in a recording.  Personal preference is the real key behind what someone may think sounds best live. As long as both the band and the crowd are having fun, that’s really all that matters.

– Tyler Soden-Mazza, Burdened Hearts

  NAY:

  I personally think its okay to use a backing track while the band is walking on stage or something, but using them to enhance your live performance just doesn’t seem pure to me at all. I’m a firm believer that music is an art that should be raw and pure, meaning when you perform live, everything that is heard from the PA is an instrument being played by the musician on stage, not a laptop.

– Kevin Riner, Always to Never

When a band uses tracks live, I feel that it takes away from the raw performance. Similar to choreographed stage moves, I think it makes the whole set very robotic and non-organic. Yeah, it’s cool when bands have a little bit of synth or maybe an intro to a song, but when it crosses into the territory of leads, vocals, effects, etc. it takes away from the energy and raw power coming from the band. When we [Show Some Pride] play live, we try to be as real and relatable as humanly possible. That being said, I’m not saying that bands that use tracks live don’t play with emotions and don’t have great energy. What I am saying is simply this: people connect with the music more when it is coming straight from the hearts, hands, and voice of the musicians on stage. If a majority of the set is coming from a track on your iPod, how do you expect people to connect to that? Music comes from the heart, not a pre-recorded track that you play over.

– Billy Wisner, Show Some Pride

  I've seen a few places where when done right, backtracking parts makes a lot of sense and seems to really work out. The problem is, most bands have a tendency of relying on it too much. When I go to a show, I go to see that band play their music live onstage. I don't go to hear their album; I go to hear just the band without all the extra crap. One of the best parts about hearing a band live is the human element involved in the playing. Nothing is perfect live, and when the band backtracks half the guitar parts, all the backup vocals, and every extra synth part or glitch that they couldn't live without, a live show doesn't feel so alive anymore. It just sounds like a poorly mixed version of their record playing through speakers.

 – Nick Jones, Lying and Low 

What do YOU think? Let us know YAY, MEH, or NAY here and we’ll release the results on Facebook in a week!

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