M Ted - it depends on who's programmed said backing - there are a lot more than one or two of us out there who do our own and tailor them to our own sound - of course, cut and paste sequencing is just as boring as three chord strums on "real" instruments, but somehow the 3 chord strummers always feel superior because they're doing it live, no matter how predictably. There's some absolutely awful live accompaniment out there - thinner than the rice paper on a particularly cheap macaroon!

You say that when you really play a real instrument repetition makes you better - so if you really play a real instrument with a synthesizer to back you (cause you'd rather not play keyboards when you're a far better guitarist/saxist/bassist/trumpeter/vocalist - oh, sorry, Pavarotti/Callas/Ms Tabor: have to exclude you because evidently singers aren't real musicians!) don't you still improve on said "real" instrument that you "really" play? By the way, I play 6 "real" instruments live as well as being a trained singer, so you can hardly say I'm copping out of rehearsal time. What if you want to improvise and are stuck bashing out a fairly repetitious rhythm - something tells me your real skills would deteriorate? And if you work really hard on programming, don't your skills as a composer (done properly, it is the same principle as writing for an orchestra of "real" instruments) get better with repetition too? Just wondering ....

I still can't honestly work out why people have such an obsession with what constitutes "real" instruments - after all, we're not writing these letters with quills or even manual typewriters - surely whatever gets the message across most effectively is ideal.