Tips On Using Backing Tracks Live

For many purest musicians, using a drum machine or backing tracks live is not a consideration. I always felt this way until it became very apparent that venues have not raised their payment prices in decades, and it becomes harder and harder to profit when you have to pay a full band. Plus, getting all band members involved with gigs when you have opportunities to play solo just don’t always make good business sense.

For the last few years I have performed as a duo using a drum pedal I have custom programmed. Using drum tracks or full backing tracks can be rewarding for both the musicians and the audience if done correctly.

For most singers and musicians that perform live, they want to actually play live. So, the use of a drum machine or any backing tracks will augment instruments that you cannot have live. Lip-synching or miming to a track is not considered a live performance and is not a topic that will be covered here.

If you’re a solo artist consider a basic backing track that keeps a beat and maybe has a minimal amount of instrumentation. If done right the backing track will help augment rather than overtake your performance. For example, don’t create a backing track or use a backing track that features elaborate instrumentation that leaves you standing on stage doing nothing. Have a good mix of songs you can perform solo with one and also have backing tracks for when you want to keep a good upbeat tempo so the audience can potentially dance. A decent sounding drum track from a midi drum pedal can really make a difference too. If you plan to use backing tracks as a solo performer keep the mix in mind. The backing track is meant to augment, so don’t push the level of the track louder than your live performance. You can increase the low-end EQ on a drum and bass backing track and that will help with a full sound without having to push the backing track level too loud.

Be very sparing when you add effects. You don’t want to have lush reverb and dense delay on your live performance as it won’t blend well with every backing track. Adjust your effects to sit in the mix with the backing track. 

Backing tracks often have a click count-in so you know when to start. Most live performances don’t need to be in stereo so you can custom mix your backing track to have the click hard panned to one channel (L) and not present in the other channel (R). When you patch your monitor, you can put the channel with the click in your monitor and the audience will not hear a loud click if you feed the main speakers the opposite channel.

Let’s address choices of playback for your backing tracks. Some guitar pedals in the Boss GR and GT line have USB interfaces that allow you to have backing tracks playable from the guitar pedal. While this might sound like a good compact way of setting up, it can also be more of an issue when you want to custom mix the backing track with your live performance. One of the most reliable playback methods is to use a smart phone or tablet. When using either one, make sure to have the proper splitter cables that allow you to charge the phone or tablet while you are using it to play audio. Set the volume between 80 or 90% on your playback device. This should give you the best signal strength and overcome any noise floor issues with the audio circuits in the playback device. Setting playback volume any higher will result in poor sound quality and distortion. To avoid interference and noise, use a high-quality 5V USB charging block. It is always tempting to use discount USB 5V charging blocks found online or at discount stores. But every single one I have ever bought has caused interference with audio. It’s worth spending a few extra dollars to get a quality charging block and a quality cable for charging. You’re likely to put your smart phone or tablet into a clamp or holder on your mic stand. Do your best to route those charging and audio cables away from each other so they don’t touch. Interference can creep into the audio cable from the charge cable. If you experience noise, try plugging the charging block into a different power outlet from the sound system. And, if your smart phone or tablet is not needing to connect to Wi-Fi or the cell network, shut it off (airplane mode). This will essentially turn your device into an isolated audio playback device. Cell phone towers and Wi-Fi can also cause audio interference.

If you are using an app such as Ultimate Guitar’s TABS for song transcriptions and chord charts, you may want to run that on a separate smart phone or tablet from your backing tracks. It might be cumbersome, but it is really important to keep wireless networks from interfering with your audio.

If you decide to use a small laptop to play your backing tracks, you would follow the same rules of isolating the laptop from the network and keeping the power and audio cables separated from each other. The advantage of using a laptop is that you can use a USB audio interface which would give you balanced left and right outputs. If done properly this would give you a superior signal quality. The trade-off is having to deal with the extra equipment on stage.

Using a laptop or smart phone or tablet might tempt you to connect them wirelessly using Bluetooth. The best advice is to test this for latency. Not all Bluetooth devices use low latency. So, you might experience some slight delay in the playback of your backing tracks. If you are connecting your playback via Bluetooth direct to a powered speaker such as Carvin’s QX15A, you should be fine to play along with the backing track.

QX15A 1000W Active 15-Inch Main/Monitor With DSP

One last tip, you may want to introduce backing tracks into your set a little at a time. Get the feel for playing along with a backing track in rehearsal and introduce a few backing tracks into your gigs before diving in with both feet. The next article will explore different methods on creating backing tracks for live performances.

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