OfficialMuffin

Ok heres what I figured out. In their performance at the BBC in 2008: [video=youtube;dyE3lbUpHW0] at about 12:50 you can see Chris tapping at the keyboard to test it and you can hear it make a sound. After watching them play viva la vida at glastonbury 2011 you can hear that same keyboard sound along with the sting sound from the original song. What I now know is that Jonny is playing along to a backing track on the keyboard and then later he stops playing along to play his guitar towards the end. when Chris goes off the play the keyboard he is just playing a few fills while he is not singing. When they played it in 2014 he used the piano for the same fills. But apart from that most of the string parts are backing track. It doesn't really bother me because there is often a little TV with a video of them playing the cellos violins etc near the keyboards when they play. Either way Coldplay have always been brilliant live so it doesn't bother me that they use backing tracks to make their songs sound as accurate to the recording as possible.