Fake Shredders

[bostjan]

You guys just need to stop going to so many fancy shows at nice venues and go to more local shows at dive bars if you want to see more bands actually playing everything instead of using backing tracks.

(The talk of keyboards reminds me of when I saw Baxaxaxa, and they brought a guy just to do a theremin solo at the end of their set. That was cool.)

Honestly, those are the only shows I've been to over the past 10-ish years, and those are the only shows where I've seen this sort of nonsense, other than maybe one festival that I played at where the main act did it as well.

Shitty local bands have been using backing tracks for at least 5 or 6 years now, to cover up the dact that they can't confidently play their songs live. The saddest part is that some of their prerecorded parts are full of mistakes, too.

It's so weird to me that music and particularly guitar seems to have a weird obsession with the idea of traditionalism in one sense or another. This niche group gets up in arms about any kind of quality of life changes that actually make live performances an infinitely better experience and want people to revert to basically jamming live without any shred of stability.

But they also want to mock and humiliate musicians who can't perform live or mess up in a live set, what's the deal? I get it that Metallica was fun back in the day when they would go out and tour and play their music 120% faster than the recording and it was great despite how imperfect those performances are. But yeah gonna file this one under the "you can't win" folder, Musicians in the metal genre weirdly want their favorite acts to play some kind of tight rope show with a million more factors that could go wrong. But I guarantee those same people would come online and thrash the bands for making mistakes live.

Even that legal crap people were talking about on the previous page, Musicians make less than ever and you want to take them to court over the logistics of the ratio of live instrumentation played and backtracked ones? What a shitty attitude to have.

Who said anything about court or brought up legal issues?!

 

[GraemeH]

Musicians shouldn't be allowed to use light shows live unless they can actually produce those effects with their own bodies live using bio-luminescence. Otherwise it's giving a misleading impression.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

I just remember ages ago Misha said something along the lines that if their macbook got stolen or the hard drive failed or whatever. then they wouldn't be able to play their set live.

I don't know how you can say that and not realize the problem.

These days we just watch bands play along to their own CD live. Same tempo, same samples, it's not even a live performance. It's so automated and clinical, people don't even click on their own effects or channel changes. It's really sad honestly, and may be one of the reasons I don't care to devote my time and energy to see bands live when it's just the exact show as every other night of the tour. Nothing special, no surprises, no human input.. just boring ass perfection which I already own as an mp3. So why see a live show? You can literally download a live show since its the same as the CD.

You don't need any of this, Dream Theater used samples, and played music much more complicated than any of these bands and they never used a click track when Portnoy was in the band. The difference is DT are musicians, not bedroom guitarist looking for every shortcut possible to get that internet cred. DT put in the time together.. that's such a lost concept. Everyone who plays

I just think it's fucking lazy, and offensive to the audience. But I know I'm a large minority, unfortunately.

Live music is pretty much dead as far as metal goes. Kinda ironic how similar it is to huge pop acts, where everything is backing tracks because perfection is the goal, not performance.

R.I.P.

While I sounded down on backing tracks in my post earlier, I totally understand that it's much easier to tour with that arrangement. Especially internationally, where less gear and less members can save a lot of expenses. And lugging less heavy gear around is certainly a plus.

That said, an engaging live performance is an engaging live performance with or without backing tracks. Nine Inch Nails and Tism (don't judge me on the latter ) are my personal gold standards of an amazing live band with backing tracks. Both bands are certainly not automated nor boring. I guess I'm just biased from being raised on large doses of Rush, where 3 guys juggling multiple parts sound like a full live band while enjoying themselves.

Also for the record, since Dimebag was mentioned in this thread; all his pedal switching sans wah were done by his tech. All the channel switches, the whammy parts on Becoming were outsourced so Dime can concentrate on tearing the stage apart.

 

[bostjan]

Musicians shouldn't be allowed to use light shows live unless they can actually produce those effects with their own bodies live using bio-luminescence. Otherwise it's giving a misleading impression.

While I sounded down on backing tracks in my post earlier, I totally understand that it's much easier to tour with that arrangement. Especially internationally, where less gear and less members can save a lot of expenses. And lugging less heavy gear around is certainly a plus.

That said, an engaging live performance is an engaging live performance with or without backing tracks. Nine Inch Nails and Tism (don't judge me on the latter ) are my personal gold standards of an amazing live band with backing tracks. Both bands are certainly not automated nor boring. I guess I'm just biased from being raised on large doses of Rush, where 3 guys juggling multiple parts sound like a full live band while enjoying themselves.

Also for the record, since Dimebag was mentioned in this thread; all his pedal switching sans wah were done by his tech. All the channel switches, the whammy parts on Becoming were outsourced so Dime can concentrate on tearing the stage apart.

I know a lot of this discussion is starting to take a turn for the absurd, but, if you are on stage as "guitar player," I would strongly prefer an audiovisual experience of you actually playing guitar. If your role in the band is as "light tech," then I expect you to have something to do with the lights. If your job it "pedal stomper," then you stomp pedals. If Lucas from RoS officially changed his role in the band to "bullshit reason provider," then I'd gladly go see their shows when they come to town.

 

[GraemeH]

Yeah I'm being absurd. But to me it comes down to reasonable expectations, and not trying to force every band to be the same.

When I go see The Aristrocrats, I'd be super surprised to hear stuff on backing track.
When I go to see Periphery I expect to see 16 guitarists on stage, to not be able to discern what most of them are doing, and still have half the sound coming from playback.
If I were to go see some alien sounding tech-death band that go for that ultra-fake aesthetic like RoS, I don't expect to hear three dudes jamming unchained and natural. I wouldn't go home cursing Lucas Mann's name over it.

All live performances should be free to be different. 100% raw live music isn't going away. We just have diversity.

 

[GunpointMetal]

It all started with whole "Nobody wants to pay a keyboardist anymore" thing. So many djent bands have synths and drops layered in. Children of Bodom and Dream Theater and other older school bands have the guy to play it. I guess I'm going back on my own opinion here. But I guess what I'm saying is, Make Keyboard Great Again!!! Support your local electronic musician FFS.

That's a great idea if you have all the time keys. I'd love to have a keys player that just popped up on stage for the 4-5 sections in a set where they're needed, but the guys who can do it for what a metal band can afford to pay will require someone to teach them the parts because they don't read music, and the ones that do read music, want more money just to rehearse than the average local metal band makes in a month (unless you're playing covers in a "Big four" tribute act).

 

[dr_game0ver]

It all started with whole "Nobody wants to pay a keyboardist anymore" thing. So many djent bands have synths and drops layered in. Children of Bodom and Dream Theater and other older school bands have the guy to play it. I guess I'm going back on my own opinion here. But I guess what I'm saying is, Make Keyboard Great Again!!! Support your local electronic musician FFS.

As a European, you can't even imagine how wrong that sound. Here, a keyboard is as essential as a drummer. I can't even begin to list you all of the bands where the keyboard player is the composer, manager, producer...

 

[Fred the Shred]

Yeah I'm being absurd. But to me it comes down to reasonable expectations, and not trying to force every band to be the same.

When I go see The Aristrocrats, I'd be super surprised to hear stuff on backing track.
When I go to see Periphery I expect to see 16 guitarists on stage, to not be able to discern what most of them are doing, and still have half the sound coming from playback.
If I were to go see some alien sounding tech-death band that go for that ultra-fake aesthetic like RoS, I don't expect to hear three dudes jamming unchained and natural. I wouldn't go home cursing Lucas Mann's name over it.

All live performances should be free to be different. 100% raw live music isn't going away. We just have diversity.

Where I disagree is that when the backing track replaces the dude playing the instrument you end up crossing the line as far as "live" and "concert" go. I have no issues with someone shoving some ridiculous or even humanly impossible part in a backing track. Miming to it is a different thing altogether, though - you are actually attempting (and often succeeding) to convince the audience that you ARE playing the part that way with that impossibly clean execution. I don't think this is as much about purists as it is about integrity, and selling tickets to a live performance of the band that is supposedly super technical only to have the super technical bit replaced by a machine and people miming to it doesn't really scream "integrity" to me, quite the opposite.

As for differences in live performance, from full-on raw performances to samples and BTs featuring a trillion orchestral parts and supplementary guitars and whatnot, again, nothing against that. If people are actually playing their parts, I'm good.

 

[NoodleFace]

Way behind, won't even attempt to stay current anymore. But I have to say, I did not know Lucas Mann could shred so hard. The band Rings of Saturn isn't for me, but I'd listen to that dude play guitar any day.

 

[GunpointMetal]

I just remember ages ago Misha said something along the lines that if their macbook got stolen or the hard drive failed or whatever. then they wouldn't be able to play their set live.

I don't know how you can say that and not realize the problem.

Because production values and what an audience expects change over time. It's not a problem, its the natural progression of live performance.

These days we just watch bands play along to their own CD live. Same tempo, same samples, it's not even a live performance. It's so automated and clinical, people don't even click on their own effects or channel changes. It's really sad honestly, and may be one of the reasons I don't care to devote my time and energy to see bands live when it's just the exact show as every other night of the tour. Nothing special, no surprises, no human input.. just boring ass perfection which I already own as an mp3. So why see a live show? You can literally download a live show since its the same as the CD.

This illustrates a cyclical problem. I remember in the early 2000s a lot of people in the metal scene were saying stuff like "Who wants to go see five dudes in cargos and Cannibal Corpse t shirts stand around in the dark?" So bands tried to make their show more of a production, and now people are mad that metal artists are aiming for the same level of production of a pop group. I'd rather go see a band that looks like they rehearsed to put on a SHOW versus a band that can't be bothered to worry about their aesthetic, personally. Outside of crust punk and the sloppiest of grind core, a majority of fans want more out of a live show than a group of dudes who show up and play like they're in their own basement. Automating some aspects of the show means you CAN have synced, professionally looking lights and not have to worry about getting back to your side of the stage to turn on a delay or something and you can focus on audience interaction and rocking out. Time is an arrow that only moves in one direction. Things aren't going to back to the way they were because they weren't better, just different.

 

[GunpointMetal]

double post

 

[Cynicanal]

That's a great idea if you have all the time keys. I'd love to have a keys player that just popped up on stage for the 4-5 sections in a set where they're needed, but the guys who can do it for what a metal band can afford to pay will require someone to teach them the parts because they don't read music, and the ones that do read music, want more money just to rehearse than the average local metal band makes in a month (unless you're playing covers in a "Big four" tribute act).

People actually get paid for playing gigs now?

(Seriously, what happened to just finding a friend to help you out with the four or five parts? Surely you've got a friend that was forced to take piano lessons as a kid and remembers some of it; enlist them, and offer them a share of the drink tickets if you have to. You don't need to hire a pro for everything, this is fucking metal and you're playing shows for drunk people in dive bars.)

 

[GunpointMetal]

People actually get paid for playing gigs now?

(Seriously, what happened to just finding a friend to help you out with the four or five parts? Surely you've got a friend that was forced to take piano lessons as a kid and remembers some of it; enlist them, and offer them a share of the drink tickets if you have to. You don't need to hire a pro for everything, this is fucking metal and you're playing shows for drunk people in dive bars.)

Well that may be true 99% of the time, we try a little harder so maybe occasionaly we'll play real venues for actual music fans, and holy crap, by giving 2% more of a shit about our show and presentation, we can actually ask for a decent guarantee for most shows (not enough to make a living, but enough to not cost us money to perform every time). All my friends with that level of interest in music dropped out of the scene a long time ago, and again, I'm not holding anyone's hand through learning their parts because nobody has time for that shit. I turned down a really, really excellent guitar player for one of the my band's because he refuses to rehearse on his own. I don't care how well you can play, if you can't take some tabs, some tracks with click/scratch guitar (Which I personally go to your house and load into your daw and setup everything for you) and learn the songs outside of "practice" hours, nobody has time for that shit. Same with "keyboard players" that can't take a piece of sheet music and learn the melodies/pads. If I have to spend hours showing you everything, its gonna be easier and way less frustrating for me to just track it and play to a click live.

 

[Drew]

Because production values and what an audience expects change over time. It's not a problem, its the natural progression of live performance.

To that I'd counter, with djent bands increasingly choosing to identify as "prog" bands, and with musicianship having always been front and center of the progressive rock and progressive metal genres, there IS a reasonable expectation that a "prog" band should actually be able to play their own parts. Calling it a "production choice" is just a bait and switch.

And I realize we're talking about slighly different things here, Periphery flying in supporting backing tracks and overdubs, vs bands relying on piped-in audio because they don't have the chops to do the carefully constructed performances they did in a "studio" environment with the help of digital editing, but frankly I find a lot of that stuff kind of distracting live, too. I'll catch Steven Wilson on tour every time he comes through Boston, but I really wish he'd drop the pre-recorded vocal harmonies being piped over the loudspeakers along with the band. And when you get to bands like the HAARP Machine who are playing along to guitar studio performances to cover up some of the slop, then yeah, there's no excuse for that.

Possibly the minority here, but I've always enjoyed seeing how a band reinterprets a song live, when they can't rely on overdubs and have to play everything at once.

 

[GunpointMetal]

To that I'd counter, with djent bands increasingly choosing to identify as "prog" bands, and with musicianship having always been front and center of the progressive rock and progressive metal genres, there IS a reasonable expectation that a "prog" band should actually be able to play their own parts. Calling it a "production choice" is just a bait and switch.

And I realize we're talking about slighly different things here, Periphery flying in supporting backing tracks and overdubs, vs bands relying on piped-in audio because they don't have the chops to do the carefully constructed performances they did in a "studio" environment with the help of digital editing, but frankly I find a lot of that stuff kind of distracting live, too. I'll catch Steven Wilson on tour every time he comes through Boston, but I really wish he'd drop the pre-recorded vocal harmonies being piped over the loudspeakers along with the band. And when you get to bands like the HAARP Machine who are playing along to guitar studio performances to cover up some of the slop, then yeah, there's no excuse for that.

Possibly the minority here, but I've always enjoyed seeing how a band reinterprets a song live, when they can't rely on overdubs and have to play everything at once.

I do agree that covering up what your playing by tracking it, or miming along to tracks is not fun to watch, I don't think MOST bands are doing that. IME playing lots of shows with lots of degrees of metal bands, most of them are using it for orchestral/backing elements, but I've definitely seen a few that have an "always on" rhythm guitar even when the guitarist onstage is playing the same riff, or the "we're too big for this venue we booked so we're not bring our amps in and just having the drummer play along to album audio" guys, but they're definitely the minority. For me, I often write around something stupid like a synth pad I got while dicking around on the computer, or a melody from some other instrument that I'd rather accompany with guitar than play that part on guitar, so while I could probably orchestrate that stuff to a 3pc band, it wouldn't sound the same, and would be disappointing for me to perform because it would be what I consider an unnecessary compromise because the technology is available to facilitate using all those layers and presenting the "finished" idea to an audience. I'm personally not a fan of "harmony guitars" on tracks (especially when its shreddy stuff) or the 36 layers of vocals some guys like to use, but if I see a band with no keyboard player and I hear keyboards, I don't feel like there's any deception going on, or a band without a bassist and hearing bass. Given whats available now there's no reason to wait around to find the right guy if you wanna play shows, there's no reason to compromise your live sound because someone quit the band.

 

[Lord Voldemort]

It just comes down to people's preferences, clearly.

Some people really want a genuine experience, and they expect the musicians to actually play their parts as organically as possible in an exposed way. Obviously those people are going to hate the idea that artists are manipulating their performances with backing tracks or any sort of crutch because to them it's not really 'live', it's more like 'in person but prerecorded'.

Other people don't give a fuck about that and just want to see a show. I think what we're seeing now is a lot of people going, 'oh shit we didn't even know that was happening', and a polarizing and vocal split between the two different mindsets as they get educated on the process.

Also, just a random anecdote, my wife and I recently saw Tesseract and were just amazed at how incredible they sounded. It was literally like the albums but live. In retrospect...well, Dan had backing layers and harmonies out of thin air, the drums had layers of obvious compression and reverb, the whole thing was clearly altered quite a bit and we hadn't even noticed until this all came up. My wife was annoyed because she thought they were perhaps the best live band ever, but...they weren't. The lack of genuinity really bothered her, and I get that.

Great fucking show though.

 

[Jonathan20022]

"A better live experience" Recorded tracks and miming along is not rock, at all. Rock music performed in front of an audience is meant to be performed live, not mimed to. Otherwise, why pay a crew a bunch of money each show to load in/out heavy equipment just so you can pretend to play music Top of the Pops style? Hell, why tour at all at that point.

Is that why a lot of crowds sound and act so bored these days compared to 20-30 years ago? I'm just curious.

This is just an obnoxious take, and I'd love to see what acts you've taken the effort of seeing live at this point to validate that crowds in general are sleeping through concerts in the last 2 - 3 decades. Because that is completely and utterly false

If you were referring to my earlier comment, I'm not sure if you were, but to clarify I said I wonder if there's legal implications to it, not sue or take anyone to court. I don't see that mentioned anywhere by anybody. If anything, it's wording that acts that do use this should be aware of so they don't ge sued by someone for misrepresentation. Wording in advertising a product is important. By purposely lying they would be setting themselves up for potential problems and considering there's thousands of people, one person is bound to take some type of action at some point it would seem. I would not take any action personally speaking.

Who said anything about court or brought up legal issues?!

Legal action is the next move on that ladder, if you're asking someone to make sure they carefully word the product they're selling you're pretty much setting the premise that they'll get sued. Maybe not by you, but you're implying that some disgruntled asshole is going to leave a performance and attempt to suck whatever money a musician has in their possession because of backing tracks.

It's my perspective, but in the US everyone is pretty trigger finger ready to sue anyone over anything.

I know a lot of this discussion is starting to take a turn for the absurd, but, if you are on stage as "guitar player," I would strongly prefer an audiovisual experience of you actually playing guitar. If your role in the band is as "light tech," then I expect you to have something to do with the lights. If your job it "pedal stomper," then you stomp pedals. If Lucas from RoS officially changed his role in the band to "bullshit reason provider," then I'd gladly go see their shows when they come to town.

Dude everyone keeps talking about this shit, but anyone want to actually show some examples of a real performer fully miming to their music with zero output from the instrument they're holding? I know that RoS Lucas Mann video is long as shit, but he shows Front of House audio of him and his 2nd guitarist playing and that 3rd audio track performing an additional harmony. You guys keep talking like he was unplugged and that this is a regular occurrence, but Lucas proved that his guitar was plugged in and audio was coming out. You can call foul play, and discuss the potential for a discrepancy all you want, but this wide spread "live miming" ala Lip Syncing for pop artists just isn't happening.

Like Veil of Maya for example, Mark Okubo mastered the looper pedal and performed his live shows playing essentially two guitar parts himself whenever there was overlap and he could backtrack a melody or rhythm section. This was still imperfect and prone to errors, but most were forgiving because of how difficult it is to do that. It's not stepping on a chorus pedal instead of a flanger because you feel like it, he was recording two guitar parts LIVE and nailed the timing almost every time.

I'm not even an RoS fan here, people are using his potential miming before he explained himself to scapegoat the fact that modern metal has moved towards people standing on stage with a million backtracks and their volumes turned to 0. Completely false, and if it does happen and you find any example of it I will argue tooth and nail that it's in the minority.

 

[Jacksonluvr636]

This so much. I wonder if the same people are willing to shell out 3-5 times the cash for a ticket to see bands with the appropriate number of musicians on stage to have everything played live.

Sorry, not trying to call YOU out in particular but this is basically the same argument everyone has that I have seen, for those who say backing tracks are OK.

Is it safe to say these past few pages came along about the RoS fiasco? In their case it is weak and in my opinion sad that they use them and I completely disagree with them doing so.

Hey don't get me wrong, they can do what they want. They are the pros and not me. Obviously Lucas Mann can shred his ass off and is an amazing player BUT I look at all the facts here.

They do not have horns, orchestra, missing band members and to my knowledge they don't use keys on their recording. This entire thing (and this is directly from Lucas) is because they do extra harmonies in the studio right? Well I am not buying it, sorry.

Correct me if I am wrong but I would imaging that these extra harmonies are every so often right? Not throughout 100% of their songs. I would probably be shocked if it was even 20%. With that said are they using these backing tracks ONLY during those parts? High doubt it. So what does that mean? That they are using pre recorded to perfection guitar tracks on the rhythm too. The parts that do not have harmonies. I am sorry but that is crap.

Also in the video I recall a part where Lucas said, look all you can hear is the pre recorded track. Well why is that? Does that mean their sound engineer purposely mixes the pre recorded to perfection guitar tracks louder then the others? Why would that be?

Ever heard a perfect CD and then solo a guitar track to hear how it sounds perfect in the mix but not so great on its own performance wise? Adding layers will certainly cover up sloppiness, especially if those layers are louder in the mix.

Finally, let's look at what the ex band members said previously? They basically confirmed the dude is lazy, doesn't learn the parts, etc. etc.

I am sorry I am not buying the RoS Schpeel. To each their own but to me they are just using tight tracks to make themselves sound better and tighter than they would on their own. Hey I get it, it is pretty complex music and high difficulty but for me, if I can't play a riff I write, I practice over and over until I get it (Just like lucas did in the video) but if I fuck up live I won't care. It happens. I guess that is the stress you have to deal with when it is your career? Everything has to be perfect at all costs? IDK to each their own but not my style.

 

[Sogradde]

[...]

You're literally making a scenario up in your head to have something to argue against.
I have yet to meet a single band that uses backing tracks so they can chill out on stage and not to add something to their live performance that cannot otherwise be added in an economically feasable matter - and I have watched/played with loads of bands.

 

[Jacksonluvr636]

You're literally making a scenario up in your head to have something to argue against.
I have yet to meet a single band that uses backing tracks so they can chill out on stage and not to add something to their live performance that cannot otherwise be added in an economically feasable matter - and I have watched/played with loads of bands.

To each their own. A lot of my post was direct quotes from Lucas Mann. I have no idea why they do it but im not buying his reasoning. Entire set with pre recorded guitars for the occasional third harmony? Not to mention said tracks higher in the mix than real guitars? Surrrrre Dave.

Did I miss the part in the video where they attested to only using the tracks for the harmonies? Pretty sure they do it over entire songs even parts without harmony but maybe im wrong.