"LIVE" BACKING TRACKS

[shyamwestwind]

My head was spinning, charlie ....lol
Gosh this thread touched upon quite a few subjects debated earlier, I think I'll be adding curry to the porridge, if I say anything I might have said before.
I've come back to Square One and will stay with my Midis, my Cakewalk, my Midi Mart, my Emerald Midi, my jazzcat and my JohnG., and at times my Red Bull !!!!!
S M I L E !

[oldsage]

i have used both midi and mp3 backings!! but you can always tell a midi by the guitar sounds!! whereas the mp3 has a more realistic sound,with a live instrument and better vocals!!.Dont forget when you go to a concert to hear a singer,where is the backing group??? 9 times out of ten there is n,t one.they use a pro mp3 backing track,with a guy sitting in the wings on a sound desk mixing for him as he sings!! so it,s all up to the individual !! if you have the members do it live!! if your by yourself ,use whatever means to get the best sound!! if you play guitar,use a midi file and delete the guitar part,so you can play it.it,s all swings and roundabouts !!!!!

[JazzCat]

Oh I'm not so sure about the bit on guitar sounds. If a file is sequenced well and the sound module is using exceptional sampled sounds it's darned hard to tell the dif.
For my recording class I did a tune completely with MIDI and used my Ketron SD2 for all the sounds. The teacher, who is no slouch, thought the acoustic guitar was recorded live. He 'bout flipped when I told him, "Nope". Now if HE, a professional player, professional live sound and recording sound engineer can be fooled, I certainly have a bit more faith in what MIDI can do.

My main problem with MP3 or true karaoke backings is that none of the recordings sound the same, they are recorded at different studios at different levels with different EQ, compression, effects units different brands, of guitars, mics, keyboards, etc, ect, ect. With the huge differences in that regard there is just no way you can sound 'live'.

With MIDI you can edit the files, ( or sequence them yourself) and reflect one universal and stable 'sound', if you know what I mean. Sure, it's one heck of a lot of work but well worth it in the long run.

Now naturally a guitar player is going to hear subtle things than a non guitar player won't hear, and a pianist will hear subtle things that a non pianist wouldn't notice.... for instance, the way strings will reverberate the harmonics of other strings. Often MIDI doesn't catch those tiny subtleties simply because of the way the sounds themselves have been sampled.
But, it takes one heck of a trained ear to hear it. If that wasn't so then movie production companies wouldn't be hiring one guy and his computer to create the full orchestrated scores for movies. They'd still be hiring full orchestras.

[oldsage]

I use midi,s and mp3,s.i have found that i can import a midi to my sound studio pro,or cakewalk4 and alter to my tastes,add extra tracks fill out the midi by doubling some tracks (gives it a more realistic feel).save it and then import to my mixcraft4.i can then use mixcraft,s built in sounds to alter all the midi sounds to wav rom sounds.the choir,s and strings and drums really come to life,as they sound completely different,fuller with an altogether realistic flavour to them.Also the guitar parts can be made more realistic.then save all as an mp3.or a wma or ogg vorbis ,or even back to a wav file. It,s a lot cheaper than buying the pro tracks,which if they dont have vocals,cant tell them apart !! hope this helps you. cheers Steve