With my friends' amateur band we played mostly covers, Rush, Pink Floyd, Marillion, some Yes, some Queen etc etc. I played mostly guitar (although for some songs I did bass or keyboards too).For practicing alone I would have always liked to have a multi-track version of the songs which I could upload to a DAW so I could switch off the guitar track(s) (or whatever instrument I would play) and play along with the other instruments. I mean from the original songs, for one thing we did not have the equipment to create a multi-track recording of our own renditions, but even if we did it would not be the same as playing along the actual other instruments on the original song.
As far as I know no such versions of original Prog (or any other) music are available for the normal consumer.
As a workaround I got quite a few of the songs we were playing in MIDI transcriptions, some I found on the internet, some I created myself from scratch, and some a combination of both (for some songs we did not play a 100% exact replica but we introduced some variations such as an extended solo, or we did a medley or whatever, so I took MIDI files found in the Net and modified them to match our own rendition). So with these MIDI files in a DAW any of the band members could switch off his instrument and practice along with all the other instruments.
Yet, while such MIDI files are basically OK for practicing, they are far from the real thing. I would love to have a multi-track version of, say for example, PF's actual Comfortably Numb which I could upload to my DAW, switch off the guitar tracks and play along with the actual Waters, Wright and Mason's music and the vocals. That would be amazing and I feel that it could help me get to play my own part better.
Playing on top of the actual record, I actually don't like, you always have the actual Gilmour's guitar sounding there so it does not allow you to play your own thing comfortably (let alone that it's not possible for songs were we introduced variations).
Does anybody know if split-track versions of original music are marketed anywhere? If not, why don't they? It could be an extra market for the bands, oriented to musicians who want to play and practice along with their music heroes. Releasing such split-track music could provide additional revenue to the bands and it would also be a great didactic material.
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