Using Tracks or loops etc. to accompany you or your band?

[Gordo]

I'm just curious. Are any of you BH or SLM folks out there using pre-recorded tracks to accompany you or your band performances?
I'm thinking of supplementing certain song performances with sparse tracks  while we play our instruments .  Do you have suggestions as to where i'd find the better quality tracks? and what's been your experience with this idea? I'd really like to know. Thanks in advance for any comment or advice. 

G

[arlo]

Hopefully you'll get some more replies to this, but meanwhile I can at least tell you that people are definitely doing this.

[Ahiru]

using pre-recorded tracks to accompany you or your band performances?

Yes, and that's the main reason my duo recently adopted Bandhelper.  We both sing, I play guitar, my partner plays keys, and all else is a backing track as we do typical rock covers (playing out is just a life-long for-fun 'hobby' for us).

We first started doing this 'backing track' thing in the 80s when MIDI first appeared, using synths, drum machines, etc. all driven by a MIDI sequencer (at the time DOS-based Textures was our choice, actually dragging a full size IBM PC to gigs :-)  It's evolved through laptops, Cakewalk, etc. over the decades. Recently we've been again re-booting our setup to use Bandhelper, substituting its ability to play a single stereo pre-mixed audio backing track instead of our old multi-track MIDI sequences.  We also use BH automation to automagically change guitar fx patches during the song and scroll lyrics on the pair of iPads we use.

As for the backing tracks, I don't know of any good source but to produce them yourselves, perhaps starting with MIDI tracks you can buy commercially from a number of sources and working with them in your favorite DAW.  (The purchased MIDI tracks are well worth the time-saving versus full DIY!)  They always sound like crap 'out of the box', so I spend hours on each one to properly voice & mix the instruments (muting out the tracks for instruments we play live) and mastering for relative live play loudness.  We also sometimes record our own vocals to fatten harmonies.  We end up with something very tailor-made to our live sound and style, and a lot of fun to play with.  The key point: in addition to Bandhelper mastery, this requires a lot of dedicated time to master your DAW and 'produce' the backing tracks.  But, once each song is done, it is done 'forever'; that part of the band is never late to a gig, never needs to practice, and never misses a note!

If your backing tracks are really simple (drum machine & bass kind of thing), then there may be a simpler path to creating the backing tracks.  That said, we find it really fun to sweeten the duo's live sound with something close to the drums, bass, brass, strings, synths, etc. etc. that the audience might recall from their old favorites.

[RIC4001]

My band has been using backing tracks for about three years now. We're a bass + two acoustic guitar trio. We mainly use percussion tracks, but will often add in keys and other tracks when the song calls for it.

I use karaoke-version.com for the great majority of the tracks. Each instrument can be downloaded in separate mp3 files. I combine and edit these in Audacity. Depending on the number of tracks and whether or not our arrangement matches the original it can take several minutes to several hours for this process.

This has opened up so much more material that we can play now. Makes it much more enjoyable for us and the audience. There was a few month learning curve while we adapted to using backing tracks, but it's become second nature now. I had worried that if we lost our place it would be a train wreck. That has not been the case, and I can count on one hand the number of times we've gone out of sync with the track.

[rfesig]

We are doing this as well, it's amazing.
Click, Keys, Guitars, Vocals all from Karaoke version.

One of the features we use from BandHelper that's made a huge difference is outputting the 4 audio tracks to different channels on the mixer.