Miming bar bands?

Clarky

been thinking about this...

if I was paid a nice large wad to mime... I reckon I would.. cos I'm a total guitar slag..

Emp_Fab

Nitefly

I spent many years working in a duo with a singer, me playing guitar to backing tracks.  We always had the guitar parts removed from the mix on the ones we bought, although we also made a fair few of our own.  

Given a choice of no gigs at all, or gigs with backing tracks, we went with the backing tracks.  Most of the places we played couldn't have accommodated (or afforded) a full band line-up with drums etc.

johnnyurq

Nothing wrong with using backings whether MIDI, WAVs or similar for a duo/trio or solo act. It gets people not in a fill band out playing and pays OK which never hurts.

Miming prerecorded parts not so good though and have seen that in pubs/clubs. The punters either never knew or cared as long as they were playing dancy and pop/rock faves.

My last band started of as a trio (2 gutars and a singer) using MIDIs triggering samples for drums, bass and some keys to taste per song and a Roland JV-1010 for bread and butter tones.

All guitars and Vox live with no mimed parts.

After a few years of this we built up a big set and added a drummer and bass player to go fully live with no backings.

As I say a good way to get out get gigging gaining a rep and may even lead to a full band if you wanted.

Another plus was earning cash to GAS and improve the PA etc, so always improving things along the way.