Adding backing tracks to Music in 2023

The latest YouTube lesson that needs a backing track

Years ago I had a Tascam cassette player 4 track portable recording studio.

This was great and I knew how to multitrack really easily, then I upgraded to a digital portable studio but found it much more awkward to use. 

Finally I upgraded again to Ableton which runs on my laptop and it does everything except the most basic thing a non DJ style musician needs which is quick multitracking. It will multitrack but there is the worst thing ever and a new problem that the old equipment did not have. It has latency, that means that when you play a note there is a slight delay and the tracks dont sync correctly. 

Now I say the software is at fault since the other old methods dont have this problem. Now begins the many many attempts to fix this! Update drivers to something called ASIO4ALL etc etc etc. This may take weeks to fix. Its not the laptop since it has SSD drives , but they do say it may need 8GB of RAM and on and on it goes to fix a problem that is basic to any recording studio. 

It is interesting to note that most people give up at this point. If you watch YouTube guitar lessons there are only a few providers that use high production values such as a DSLR camera, editing and a separate synced soundtrack. These are the ones who make a little money which as far as I can tell is £3000 per 1,000,000 views. 

I saw a promoted clip of some grifter holding up a fake cheque for $121,000 in the thumbnail and a "How to make it on YouTube" , he had 2,000,000 views total . Pathetic.

Of further interest is how provincial and territorial local jazz musicians are. In a attempt at promotion I have followed a lot of people on Twitter  All the composers follow back . Hardly any of the jazz musicians do. Don't they get the idea of advertising? 

YouTube to me is very interesting, but a lot of people just use it for a clip or two of their band. Also guitar teachers tend to promote a sale of a PDF of music or a Patreon site. To me , its probably better to just improve your production values and use the YouTube site itself.