mr dave

a lot of it will depend on what you want to accomplish as a one man band. are you looking to try to emulate the classic image of the one man band with a bass drum slung across his back, a trumpet in one hand, a flute in the other, with bells, whistles and shakers attached to every open piece of clothing? or are you going for more of a wedding singer deal where the backing track is recorded onto a keyboard first and you just play the keys and croon over your backing track? or do you just want to record your own tracks at home to distribute them online with no plans of public performances?

unless you're making electronic music the biggest problem with using a machine as a backing band is that it WILL sound like a machine. it will be unforgiving on issues of timing and tone. a bum note or missed cue will REALLY stand out, it's not like you have a human drummer who can't stretch or shrink a roll to keep the music flowing when it's just 1s and 0s on a hard drive.

if you know how to play piano then a programmable keyboard will likely be your best bet. probably something by yamaha. korg, or roland. most decent programmable synths will offer some basic drums and percussion sounds along with tons of different guitar and bass tones. the drums might sound decent but they're still a long ways off from getting the stringed instruments to sound right. it'll sound passable but still obviously synthetic.

a multitrack recorder would be perfect if you were only interested in recording all the pieces yourself but i don't think it would really work for playing a show.

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