The Open-D Tuning Guitar Spot

I've had two kicks at the cat performing (guitar and vocals) along to backing tracks. First was about 10 years ago now, with a sequencer and drum machine (actually a Roland DR-5, which gave me a whole rhythm section - bass, drums, keys). It was a little canned sounding, but the tracks weren't atrocious, and I had the luxury of being able to arrange the songs the way I specifically wanted - length, endings, key changes. I played solo this way for about three years, to unhostile audiences, before I totally go sick of it, started (unintentionally) missing gigs and generally got bummed out.

I formed a band instead.

More recently, with the advent of ubiquitous MP3s of all types online (including backing tracks), I decided to get a laptop and try out the solo thing that way. In short order, I found over 500 tunes I could do, got some cheap editting software, and hit the stage about two years ago. While my song base was vastly expanded (I never had more than about 120 with the sequencer), and again never a complaint from an audience (God, they can be gentle and forgiving), I eventually felt the limitations of canned arrangements, unfriendly keys, less than perfect sound quality (from freebie track downloads), etc. Currently I'm on the fence with the whole concept.

In between these times of solo performance, of course, I led two bands and played sideman in innumerable more. While machines are nice slaves, and don't talk back, unfortunately they also don't talk at all, so "interaction" with your "band" is non-existent, unless dealing with computer glitches counts.

At the end of the day, I love to play guitar and sing for an audience (all in open-D tuning), with band or without. I've even had a try at 100% acoustic, which is a different thing altother, not unlike playing and singing with no clothes on. I'm not quite down with that yet, but who knows...