Does Rob do playback on Waiting For the End?

Discussion in 'On Stage' started by danielpsoad-09, Mar 8, 2011.

  1. #21
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2002
    Messages:
    41,884
    Likes Received:
    2,370



    I just don't see what the big deal is :/. None of the band members are "miming" their parts, and they're all still playing. I don't find backing tracks to be wrong, if the artist is still actually performing on top of the music. When an artist starts lipsynching/faking playing a guitar...that's different.
     
  2. #22
    Zane

    Zane WARRIOR PRINCESS LPA Team

    Joined:
    Apr 3, 2010
    Messages:
    4,021
    Likes Received:
    96



    Linkin Park is an amazing live band and they can recreate their songs live. However when it comes to songs from ATS, any other great bands that you may have listed can not recreate those synth sounds live either. It's very difficult and Linkin Park is forced to play backing tracks. With things such as synthesizers, live sounds severely different from recording like on songs such as Jornada Del Muerto or The Catalyst and such sounds sometimes just need to be replayed to get that same feel.
     
  3. #23
    Manu

    Manu Seeking tenderness with a dagger

    Joined:
    Aug 2, 2010
    Messages:
    959
    Likes Received:
    3



    This.

    Most gothic/symphonic metal bands use backing tracks for their orchestral arrangements and choir vocals, since you can't carry an orchestra on every show :lol: Two big examples of this are Within Temptation and Epica, and both sound KILLER live.
     
  4. #24
    travz21

    travz21 Muscle Museum LPA Super Member

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2010
    Messages:
    4,000
    Likes Received:
    5



    I bet some of you are surprised they don't play everything on their own. They've been doing this forever. Breaking The Habit, for instance, has a ton of playback tracks for the synths. Why does nobody care about that, but suddenly when LP does it with drums and backing vocals, and a whole bunch of other things, now they care? At least they are doing backtracks for the parts that matter. Doing this with the vocals and drums will add layering and fill the song much more nicely.

    What kind of reaction will fans have if LP starts doing a ton of digitally made drum beats like snare rushes? Rob obviously won't physically be able to play those live.

    I can understand why some people are angry that they aren't playing 100% of the sound we hear at live concerts. But we have Chester playing some monster drums and Brad on keyboard and megaphone. These guys obviously aren't just lazy live musicians who want to cakewalk on tour. It's just not possible to produce all of your sound sometimes.
     
  5. #25
    Benjamin

    Benjamin LPA team LPA Super VIP

    Joined:
    Jun 18, 2010
    Messages:
    6,398
    Likes Received:
    7



    End of discussion.
     
  6. #26
    El Muerto

    El Muerto LPA Super Member LPA Super Member

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2005
    Messages:
    5,922
    Likes Received:
    50



    Then they should mix it up a bit and make it work without playback. Who said the songs have to sound exactly the same as they do on the album. Take out a part you can't play live and add a part you can.
     
  7. #27
    Manu

    Manu Seeking tenderness with a dagger

    Joined:
    Aug 2, 2010
    Messages:
    959
    Likes Received:
    3



    So next time they play, I don't know, Somewhere I Belong, or Faint, or Lying From You, or Shadow Of The Day, they need to remove the intros?

    Because they're all backing tracks, you know. They're not "played", they're just triggered by Joe or Mike.
     
  8. #28
    El Muerto

    El Muerto LPA Super Member LPA Super Member

    Joined:
    Mar 16, 2005
    Messages:
    5,922
    Likes Received:
    50



    Wait, I thought Joe was actually playing those sounds in Faint and LFY on his keyboard.. So he just triggers them and hangs out?
     
  9. #29
    Dean

    Dean LPA Addict LPA Addict

    Joined:
    May 8, 2004
    Messages:
    18,858
    Likes Received:
    140



    I know they use samples and backing tracks, and that the sort of music they play pretty much necessitates them doing it. I just disagree that it's necessary for every artist to do it in order to sound good when they perform live.
     
  10. #30
    Benjamin

    Benjamin LPA team LPA Super VIP

    Joined:
    Jun 18, 2010
    Messages:
    6,398
    Likes Received:
    7



    To be honest, I see both sides of it. Either you want to hear what you're used to hearing on your ipod or something more raw that may sound a lot different.
     
  11. #31
    TimeSpree

    TimeSpree Banned

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2011
    Messages:
    92
    Likes Received:
    0



    It's not hard to recreate the sounds live at all, Joe should just use that laptop plugged in next to him and play more of the original synths through MIDI, Brad and Phoenix could even hook their guitars up via MIDI too, most of everything was probably made on VST's anyway, and besides why not give Joe more of a responsibility with the synths? That's the way it always used to be and it means less work for Mike and more room for experimentation.
     
  12. #32
    Death Slayer

    Death Slayer Julian

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2010
    Messages:
    1,422
    Likes Received:
    26



    They only got 12 hands and a song might have more then 12 sounds
    Joe should do more with his hands if applicable but elements like strings or eerie TC intro is hard to do it live

    As long as they aren't crossing their arms during stage I'm perfectly fine with that.
     
  13. #33
    Vriska

    Vriska Wiki Staff LPA VIP

    Joined:
    Apr 17, 2007
    Messages:
    1,777
    Likes Received:
    2



    If it were really that simple, then they would have tried that already.


    When you have 60-110 tracks on a single song, I am not surprised they have to do this. Linkin Park has always been an electronically based band... they have a DJ as a band member for Cthulu's sake. Any discussion involving music with heavy electronic elements will eventually boil down to realizing that electronic sounds are 'unnatural', and then realizing that anything other than acapella and banging literal sticks and stones is 'unnatural'. Which means that the founding assumption that backing tracks are necessarily wrong... is, well, wrong.

    Like Derek and some of the others have said, the key issue is whether they're miming or not. This isn't that.
     
  14. #34
    Astat

    Astat LPA Super Member LPA Super Member

    Joined:
    May 3, 2004
    Messages:
    4,130
    Likes Received:
    319



    Well fuck, looks like I opened up a big ol' can of worms on this one...

    By my count, Waiting For the End has as many as 6 different vocal parts going at once in certain spots. Chester, Mike, Phoenix, and Joe can't cover all of them themselves (plus Joe and Phoenix only sing during certain parts anyway).

    I REALLY don't think the intro of WFTE is a guitar. Sounds more like a step sequencer than anything else. Plus Brad plays piano for the first 3/4ths of the song and Mike's guitar is run through a bunch of effects for the parts that he's already playing (Mike's guitar is actually patched through a different effects loop just for that song, bypassing the MIDI switching system that's normally used for everything else), so neither of them would be able to play it on guitar anyway.

    I've seen numerous videos over the years that show Rob hitting his ride cymbal at certain points in songs where you can't hear it. I think he just does that to keep time during sections where he doesn't play anything. They probably shut his ride cymbal mic off for songs where he doesn't use it just to cut down on bleed-over from other parts of his kit, but he uses his hi-hat constantly, so using his ride as opposed to his hi-hat means you don't hear extra cymbal noise that isn't part of the song.

    The problem with Joe is that he does essentially 3 things live - scratching, sampling, and starting/stopping playback of certain loops/other pre-recorded samples. He's not a keyboard player, but a lot of the stuff that they use backing tracks for was recorded with keyboard instruments. That works out okay with simple stuff that can be chopped up into individual samples and played through an MPC (the piano parts in songs like In The End and Bleed it Out, for example), but with a lot of the really densely layered synth stuff on ATS, they pretty much have to play the entire part back as one long sample without chopping it up.

    Gross exaggeration much? If you took the band off the stage and just left the portions of songs that they use playback for, all you'd hear are beats, keyboards/synths/various samples, sporadic backing vocals on a few A Thousand Suns songs, and the intros to a few other tracks. The only songs you'd hear more or less in their entirety would be The Requiem and Fallout, and even those would be lacking Mike's additional vocals over the top of the pre-recorded ones.

    If Linkin Park couldn't use ANY playback whatsoever, they'd probably become a modern-day Beatles and work solely as a studio band. They've said numerous times that they consider themselves to be primarily a studio band, and they've never approached the recording of songs with any regard to how they'll manage to play them live. They record entire albums without ever playing the songs together as a band, it's only when they get to tour rehearsals that they worry about how to pull songs off live, and their typical approach is to do whatever is necessary to make the live version sound as close to the studio version as possible. If they need Brad to play 3 different instruments on one song, they'll do that. If they need to sample backing vocals because the album version of a song has 5 tracks of Mike harmonizing with himself underneath Chester's lead vocals and the other 4 guys can't sing worth crap, they'll do that too. If they were to become a band that approached their work with live performances in mind, they'd be a different band entirely.

    You can never do as much live as you can in the studio, so why should you limit your creativity in the studio just so a select few people will think your live performances have more "integrity?"
     
  15. #35
    TimeSpree

    TimeSpree Banned

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2011
    Messages:
    92
    Likes Received:
    0



    Mike plays the Catalyst intro on keyboard and always has.

    The problem for me is they just suck to watch live now (IMO), I won't be buying the DVD for this reason.

    Look, if songs like In The End, Numb, What I've Done, Faint, Bleed It Out, One Step Closer, Breaking The Habit and From The Inside are seen as better than your "80-100 track" songs (BULLSHIT) by the general public, then something got fucked up along the way.
    BTW if I can't pick up or get the effect of these "way background" parts then what is the point of having them in the songs? Linkin Park can't do subtlety. (IMO)
    If LP want to go on a crusade of not being able to play their own stuff and be like "Hey we are like The Beatles, Really!"
    then that is up to them, but at least make good songs while you are at it (IMO).
    A Thousand Suns was nothing more than a self-centred vanity art project. produced with the sole reason of attempting to put LP on a pedestal, not to make good music, which listeners with good taste "can't get"



    MY OPINION.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2011
  16. #36
    Dean

    Dean LPA Addict LPA Addict

    Joined:
    May 8, 2004
    Messages:
    18,858
    Likes Received:
    140



    Why is it that if someone says something you don't like you're all "hurr opinions durr subjectivity" but you're allowed to talk about how if people disagree with you they just have bad taste?

    Stop being so pretentious. :rolleyes:
     
  17. #37
    travz21

    travz21 Muscle Museum LPA Super Member

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2010
    Messages:
    4,000
    Likes Received:
    5




    That was one of the most trollish posts I've seen in awhile. And I even saw your original post that included just your first sentence. What provoked you to add all that extra ridiculousness?
     
  18. #38
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2002
    Messages:
    41,884
    Likes Received:
    2,370



    I concur with travz. Timespree, what was the point of that post? Sometimes I wonder if you're deliberately trying to be a troll, or if the above is really how you are.

    Didn't you know? He's a hipster.
     
  19. #39
    Death Slayer

    Death Slayer Julian

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2010
    Messages:
    1,422
    Likes Received:
    26



    I'm not talking about the 'church piano' chords...
    I'm talking about that atmospheric sound coming out before the piano,
    similar to the ones in New Divide, before the beats come into play.

    Can't say much to the rest that you've said, only thing to say is I feel sorry that you hate it so much, and I don't agree with you.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2011
  20. #40
    Super Sonic

    Super Sonic The Hedgehog LPA Super VIP

    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2010
    Messages:
    8,236
    Likes Received:
    131



    :lol:
     

Share This Page