1. What's the difference between individual Trax and Medleys?
2. What is Editing Service / Custom Trax ?
3. Who are mp3backingtrax.com?
4. Are your Trax are for professionals only?
5. Why do some backing tracks I've heard have fade-outs at the end?
6. How are your Trax recorded?
7. Are the samples different to the Trax in the catalogue?
8. How can I use my Trax on-stage - mp3 players only hold an hour of music - right?
9. I just sing for fun….how can I use my Trax at home?
10. Do the Trax contain lyrics to the song?
11. Are there any backing harmonies (group vocals) on the Trax?
12. Are all Trax in the original keys?
13. Are your Trax exactly like the original recordings?
14. What is "Pay and Download"?
15. Do Medleys and Mini-Medleys contain full songs?
16. Do Trax contain real instruments like guitar, sax etc?
17. Can Trax be "edited" to remove instruments like guitar, sax etc?
18. The song I'm looking for isn't in your catalogue - can you produce it for me?
19. Do you offer discounts for large/bulk orders?

1 What's the difference between individual Trax and Medleys...?
Individual Trax are single songs on their own, while Medleys are a selection of 2 songs or more running one after the other with no pauses in between.

2 What is the Editing Service ... ?
Our Editing Service allows each song to be "tailored" to suit your exact needs. Changes you may consider could be things such as omitting instrument parts that you want to play "live" yourself (eg a guitarist might request that we omit the guitar part on the track so that he can play along), having certain instrument parts "panned" to one side (eg you may want to have the bass part coming through a separate channel), adding a click-track (so that a drummer can play along with the track), changing the key - in fact, most changes that you require can usually be done within the £5.99 Trax Editing price.

3 Who are mp3backingtrax.com... ?
MP3 Backing Trax.com are a team of musicians situated in Glasgow - Scotland who have been producing high quality instrumental backing tracks since 1986. We are currently embracing the new tidal wave of Entertainers who are now turning to the popular mp3 format. In the past, we have always supplied Trax to professional and semi-professional singers/musicians in CD and minidisc formats (we still do!), but the upsurge of karaoke has caused many amateur singers to try and break in to the professional cabaret scene, so they are now purchasing professional Trax from us. MP3 format allows customers to download Trax directly from our website, therefore saving time (especially when you have a gig that night)! All our Trax are optimised to sound bright and "punchy" and are just as ideal for home use as they are for live stage work.

4 Are your Trax for professionals only... ?
No, definitely not! It is true that our backing tracks are produced in a way that is aimed at the professional "Live" performer, but they will also suit those of you who just love to sing for fun...even hobby singers like to sound like the real pros!

5 Why do some backing tracks I've heard have fade-outs at the end... ?
Most backing tracks that you find try to copy the exact arrangement of the original recording. Unfortunately, many records have fade-outs at the end, so the backing track has a fade-out too. When Artistes perform 'live' though, they never fade-out a song - it is always given a proper ending (if you've been to a concert recently you'll have noticed this). All our Trax have been professionally arranged to have properly structured endings - there are NO fade-outs. Many of the cheaper karaoke/midifile tracks are notorious for having these annoying fade-outs!

6 How are your Trax recorded... ?
All our Trax are sequenced and recorded digitally by our team of top session musicians and all the sounds are 'sampled' to faithfully reproduce the sounds of original instruments (unlike some poor sounding GM midifile derived backing tracks that you'll find elsewhere on the internet). They are then very carefully encoded to mp3 and zipped to ensure that sound quality is maximized, while file size is minimized for easy downloading.

7 Are the samples different from the Trax in the catalogue... ?
No. They are exactly the same as the Trax in the catalogue - in fact, they are taken from the catalogue! They are, however, only 30 seconds in length (the maximum length legally allowed for samples) to enable you to hear the quality and arrangement of the track. If you like them, you can buy the full track and many others from our extensive catalogue. All our Trax are licensed in accordance with the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society so you can be assured that the original songwriters receive their rightful royalties.

8 How can I use my Trax on-stage, mp3 players only hold about 1 hour of music, right... ?
Wrong! There are now many mp3 players on the market which can play mp3's from a CD (and cost less than £50). Considering that you can put around 200 songs on one Disc alone, that's about 10 hours of music - maybe even your full repetoire! Even more exciting, are the new breed of mp3 players (some are smaller than a hard-back book and feature built-in hard-drives (some as much as 40 Gb) - work it out….they can hold around 12000 songs, all instantly playable and listable. No more changing minidiscs or floppys halfway through your performance! Also, many of our customers are using their lap-top computers which can play
mp3's from both CD and hard-drive.

9 I just sing for fun - how can I use my Trax at home... ?
Play them on your computer (and sing in to the microphone) or transfer them to your portable mp3 player for 'music on the move.' Why not hook up to your Hi-Fi - just imagine, singing along in the living room or 'jamming' along with your guitar in the bedroom!

10 Do you supply lyrics to the songs.. ?
We do not supply lyrics as they are protected by copyright and we would have to make an additional charge for this. Lyrics to most popular songs can be found for free by using a search engine such as www.google.com and typing in the words lyrics + song name.

11 Are there backing harmonies (group vocals) on the Trax?
All Trax are recorded WITHOUT backing harmonies. On selected Trax there will be vocal hits or vocoder samples (eg DJ Otzi "Hey baby" has the "uh" and the "ah" sampled and S Club 7's "don't stop moving" uses the distinctive synthesized vocoder sample. The reason why all backing harmonies are left out is because our customers, professional and amateur, have indicated to us that they do not want backing harmonies. Here's the reasons:

1 All of our professional customers agree that when an audience hears other voices such as backing vocals emitting from the stage, they think that the artiste is miming! It becomes very difficult to persuade the audience that the backing harmonies are recorded but that they themselves are singing live - they often just don't believe it! More seriously, we know of professional acts who have lost work because the audience (and the employer) thought they were "miming to tapes"

2 Many of our customers use our Trax as the musical backing for their albums in recording studios and for radio and television work. Even the very best backing vocalists voices won't always blend well with your voice. They prefer to add the backing harmonies themselves or choose particular backing singers who will blend well with their particular tonal range.

3 Some of our customers are semi-professional and use our Trax in talent/singing competitions. The judges in most competitions do not allow backing harmonies to be present - the singer must be judged on their own voice alone.

4 Most backing tracks which have backing vocals are usually Karaoke tracks. Karaoke is intended for amateur singers (the backing vocals are usually quite loud in these tracks in order to help the amateur singer keep in key and help "boost" what is usually a less than average voice (some karaoke tracks we've heard have backing vocals so loud that they drown out the singer - perhaps this is what was intended)! Professionals who use karaoke tracks run the risk of sounding less than professional. We know of one female entertainer who was told by a club "You're a good singer, that's a nice sparkly dress you're wearing, but your act is just karaoke without the telly." They didn't book her again!

12 Are all Trax in the original keys?
Some are, some are not. If the track is in the original key (orig key) will appear alongside the track. If it is in any other key, (male key) or (female key) will appear alongside the track to give a guide to whom the key will be most appropriate for. If we don't have the song in the particular key you're looking for, you can have it edited (Trax Editing) and we'll put it into any key you wish.

13 Are your Trax exactly like the original recordings?
No, we do not produce note for note copies of original songs (nor would we want to)! Our company produce backing tracks for professional singers and arrange the songs to sound and "work" best when used in a "live/on-stage" environment" (we prefer to leave the job of trying to make note for note copies of the original music to the cheaper karaoke companies who cater to the amateur singers market). We produce arrangements "based on..." and "in the style of..." the original songs which, in other words, means our arrangements are specially produced to be used to best effect by professional entertainers in "live/on-stage"
situations. Here's why:

When you buy a record/CD/cassette of a well known artiste, that recording has been specially arranged and mixed to sound best on a home HiFi system - our Trax, on the other hand, are specially mixed and arranged to sound best through a large PA system, so will always differ in some ways to the original. This is perfectly standard practice for all professional backing tracks, as even the original artistes themselves will perform different arrangements of their songs when they are performing "live" in concert. This makes sense, because the exact equipment or musicians who played on the original recordings (often years before) are rarely available for the concerts, and anyway, the original recordings were not arranged for performing live or interacting with a live audience. Don't worry though, because even with these differences in arrangements, when an artiste (Madonna or Michael Jackson for example) performs live on-stage, their songs are still instantly recognisable, and so too are our Trax.

If for any reason you need an exact carbon copy of the original arrangement (although we can't think why you would want this - very few professional performers want karaoke style tracks!), you can order the song as a Special Arrangement and our arrangers will give you a quote for producingit in this way.

14. What is "Pay and Download"?
Pay and Download is a system we introduced in 2002 which lets you add Trax to your shopping cart, pay for them at the checkout, and then download them the same day (in mp3 format). If you're in a hurry for Trax, this is, without doubt, the quickest way to get them!

15. Do Medleys contain full songs?
No. We take the most important sections of each song (usually the verse and chorus) and arrange them together into a Medley. This helps cut out much of the unnecessary "incidental" parts which most songs contain, and let's you (and your audience) concentrate on the popular and catchy "hook" lines instead. The finished Medley is punchier, catchier and flows much better than just individual songs simply "glued" together. Most Medleys contain around 2 minutes of each song but every arrangement differs depending on what our arrangers decide works best. You can rest assured that any Medleys you purchase will be guaranteed crowd-pleasers and floor-fillers!

16. Do Trax contain real instruments like guitar, sax etc?
No, all the instruments used on our backing tracks are 'samples' of real instruments. This process helps ensure that key changes etc can be quickly and efficiently produced and costs to the customer kept to a minimum, yet still maintains the sound and feel of real instruments.

17. Can Trax be "edited" to remove instruments like guitar, sax etc?
We can edit Trax in our catalogue for you in a variety of ways to suit individual requirements. For example, if you see a track in our catalogue but it's not in the right key for you, we can record it in to the key of your choice. Similarly, if you are a guitarist, you may need the guitar parts to be removed so that you can play "live" along with the track (this is also useful if you are learning to play an instrument). Other changes we can make are the inclusion of "click tracks" (for drummers), instrument panning (to allow you to put selected instruments through different channels of your PA), tempo increases/decreases and intro count-ins (for musicians who intend to play "live" on top of their Trax). Our Trax Editing section gives more info and prices: http://www.mp3backingtrax.co.uk/customtrax.htm

18. The song I'm looking for isn't in your catalogue - can you produce it for me?
YES! If we don't have a particular track or medley in stock, we can produce it specially for you. More information on this service can be found in the Special Arrangements section: http://www.mp3backingtrax.co.uk/specialarrangements.htm

19. Do you offer discounts for large/bulk orders?
We prefer to keep the price of our tracks as low as possible rather than give bulk discounts. The backing track companies who appear to offer bulk discounts have actually inflated the prices of their individula backing tracks purposely, to make the customer think they are getting a "discount" if they buy in bulk! We reckon that doing this would is very unfair to regular customers who already have many of the tracks in our catalogue and now only need to buy the one or two new songs we produce each week... they'd be paying inflated prices for their one or two songs. We'd rather just be honest about the whole thing and keep our prices to an absolute minimum rather than trying to "lure" cutomers in with some dubious discount scheme. The price you see in the catalogue is the price you'll pay - there are no hidden extras. It's quick, clean and honest!