Getting to grips with using backing tracks and recording.... Nights

[neverfoundthetime]

I hope this is not too repetitious, if so just skip the thread!

I've spent the week at home on holiday (that means, there is no work as the kids I teach are off!) working on songs, getting comfortable being plugged in with my Godin and hammering away on riffs and rocking out (lucky the neighbour is away) through all hours. Monster fun!
And I may be progressing and actually learning. Working on Story in Your Eyes, Voices in The Sky, Nowhere Man, Angels (Robbie Williams), All Right (Toad the Wet Sprocket), The Air That I Breath and revisited Question and played along with Neil for the umteenth time and there is still one early chord change that foxes me! I am painfully slowly getting the speed up on the double strumming with a pick but I am progressing so that is great! I was wondering which bit of all the things I am working on I should video, just to connect to everyone again, and it chose itself as I started to obsess on Nights in White Satin which CCNess did a few weeks back and it was sooooo cool to sing this live with the girls.... but what when they are not around? So I found a fabulous backing track and used that to see if I'd be able to play along and sing along on a stage or at a party if ever the opportunity arouse without the girls being there. Just love using backing tracks! Still finding the right way to add the acoustic guitar without it over-droning or disappearing, hmmmm....

Soundcloud sited copyright when I tried to upload there, hope YT are kind to me...

[neverfoundthetime]

[Craig]

Great job Chris! This sounds really good. I'm sure the others will have great advice on recording over backing tracks as I can't help you there having never done it. However, I will say that you could sing any Moody Blues song on stage in public and sound great!

Craig

[wrsomers]

AWESOME Chris! The best male voice on TG! I loved every part of that including the change to color video at the end.

I'm so glad you enjoy backing tracks. I'm wondering if the one you used was Jamtracks. Yours sounded very similar. As far as blending your own guitar track, that's a matter of good mixing. Jamtracks lets you do that. It also lets you jam with other people live over the internet.

Any way, that was just great. I've listened to it several times. You are the Moody Blues king!

Bill

[neverfoundthetime]

Many thanks for listening in Craig and Bill. I certainly do love these Moodies songs and its been a blast being able to produce a sound that I can be happy with, very satisfying. ANd like you Bill, I have one eye on nailing down some video performances for my daughter to have forever.

Craig, its been long time we've been listening to each others tracks and many folks have been and gone in that time, thanks for the continued support.... when will you post again? No pressure .

Bill, I would have said best voice on TG was yours! And then there was John who used to team up with Daryl.... I was using a backing track from someone on YT: SwordofKahless68. It was flagged on SoundCloud as belonging to Mega Tracks Karaoke Band but the search I did lead to SwordofKahless68 on YT. So I asked permission but have not heard. I would be happy for any tips on places to get backing tracks, you did mention this somewhere but I'm not sure where...

[wrsomers]

Chris,
I don't know if it was you who I told about this, but I found an excellent backing track site:

http://jamkazam.com/

They have upwards of 4,000 backing tracks at a cost of $1.99 US each. The app and the first download are free. They allow you to mix your tracks anyway you want. Very cool. Give it a try.

Bill

[neverfoundthetime]

That's great Bill, I will look it up.

[daryl]

Great backing track! And your vocals were perfect. You voice is well suited for the Moodies. But your guitar was mostly lost (to my ears). Can you explain your process of recording your vocals and guitar and backing track?

[neverfoundthetime]

Thanks for tuning in Daryl. I took the level of the guitar recording back by about 66% as I don't think it should be dominant. When I play this live, as with CCNess, I'm hammering away on the guitar but with such a cool backing track....

So for this vid I recorded the vocal with backing track played through my roland amp (as I was practising this song live in the room anyway), then added guitar and mixed, then made the vid to fit the mix and muted the video.

[daryl]

I assume your amp has two channels. Correct? If so, are there also "line out" jacks for each channel? Ideally what you would like is to have both channels come out of your amp speaker for the "live audience", but also keep the 2 line-out channels/jacks separate so that you could take the 2 line-out cables and plug them into your audio interface of your computer and record the each channel into its separate track in your DAW (as you perform live). That way you can properly mix the tracks after the performance. And you could also add separate effects (if needed or desired) to either track. The problem is you have 3 tracks to deal with (guitar, vocals, and backing track). What to do, what to do?