Creating Backing Tracks For Live Gigs

If you’ve decided to use backing tracks or a drum pedal to augment your solo or duo performances, this article address some tips on sourcing backing tracks and creating custom backing tracks. 

If you would like to purchase backing tracks, go with a website such as https://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/ It will cost very little to purchase a song, and it will give you the ability to create custom mixes as many times as you want. You could have one version that has drums and bass when you perform solo. You could have another version that is only drums if you play a duo gig with a bass player. The backing tracks are also customizable by changing the tempo and changing the key if you want to raise or lower the entire key of the song. Try and avoid simply muting the lead vocal on the backing track. You don’t necessarily need every single instrument. Remember the goal is to augment your live performance. You don’t want to have the backing track overtake your live vocals or other live instruments. If you prefer to mix in your favorite DAW, you can download the individual tracks/instruments by soloing them one at a time and then download each one. Then you can import them into your favorite DAW for mixing offline. This can be ideal for custom EQ changes and editing the song to your need. For instance, if you want to emphasize more low end on the bass and drums, you can do so in your favorite DAW. You can shorten or extend a song with some clever cut and paste DAW actions. And this is the opportunity to create a multitrack backing track for live use. The idea is that you can use a DAW with a USB audio interface and mix the backing track stems live by sending each discrete track or stem to the live mixer. This can help alleviate the flat sound of mixing live vocals and instruments with a mono or stereo backing track.

If you decide to go the MIDI drum pedal route there are a number of solutions out there for the hardware. One thing you can do with those that are MIDI based is prepare your drum tracks on a computer. MIDI files have been around for decades, so it is quite easy to find a free MIDI file for popular songs. There are free apps that allow you to open and edit MIDI files. Older Mac computers used to come with GarageBand for free. GarageBand can edit MIDI files so you can strip out all of the instruments leaving just the drum MIDI notes. With other utilities you can export the MIDI for use in your MIDI drum pedal. I’ve personally done this with about 100 songs spanning the 1950s through today. I personally use a pedal called Beat Buddy and the accompanying computer software allows the user to upload MIDI files to the pedal, edit the MIDI file, change the sound of the drum kit and create custom setlists so you can let the MIDI pedal double as your setlist on stage. The pedal will display the name of the song and the tempo before you hit the play button.  

There are $99 keyboards that have small drum pads built in. You can use one of these keyboards connected to a laptop via USB to tap in drum tracks via MIDI. Your performance doesn’t need to be perfect as all MIDI software can quantize to correct for timing mistakes. You can even step in different parts individually, so you don’t have to play all drum parts at once. Just remember to consolidate into one MIDI drum track before you export your MIDI for use in a drum pedal. I often play along to the studio recording of a song with drum trigger pads and GarageBand if I can’t find an existing MIDI file. This allows me to get as accurate as I can to the original song. Then I always have the option of changing the tempo up or down to comply with our own preferred tempo.

For the final tip, remember to back up your backing tracks. Like any other file, they can be corrupted and lost due to hardware failure. I keep a spare memory card in my gig bag that contains a duplicate of the setlist MIDI drum files. So, if the memory card in the MIDI drum pedal is forgotten, missing, damaged etc, the duo always has a backup ready to use. Have fun creating your backing tracks and check out our other article about using the tracks live on stage.

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