I suppose I should have made my point more clear.

Playing along with a backing sequence can certainly be done in many interesting ways, and, this of course, depends on the parts you leave out (or shut off) and the portion you play on your instrument.

What I find particularly hard to watch is someone singing over the entire full backing and only occasionally, if at all, playing the odd melody or brief solo...this is sometimes accompanied by walking away from the keyboard completely and just singing.

To me, that's just plain keyboard karaoke....nothing wrong with it per se, but someone billing themselves as a "keyboard player" is guilty of an exaggeration...to "play" does not mean pressing the "play" button on the sequencer and letting the instrument do 99.999% of the accompaniment.

Yes, I do fully understand about playing "your part" in the sequence, as if you were in a virtual band...perhaps some piano or organ chords, fills and leads, and that makes perfect sense.

I suppose it all hinges on just how much actual live participation (playing the keys) is being done by the performer that would lift it out of keyboard karaoke and into an area where someone actually provided a relatively major part of the accompaniment themselves.

Again, it's not the actual singing over a backing track sans any real playing that I find hard to take...I think some performers that do this are very good and do quite well at it.

It's when they say they are "playing" but it is clear they are not.

We all have our pet peeves, David...yours is the word "gig"...mine is "keyboard karaoke".

Ian