Electro, gothic, noise, darkwave from the Side-Line
Ok here's a question.
I'm wondering how some bands play their backing tracks. I know most of us probably use a laptop onstage and play from it, but there are bands that have no laptop anywhere. Question is. What to use to play backing tracks... and if you play with a drummer, how to send a click sound to him :/
I use a MOTU Ultralite Mk3 for my backing tracks/everything.
I think a lot of bands who use drummers don't even bother with a click-track - they just leave the electronic drums in the backing tracks and the live drummer plays over the top. Otherwise, any multi-output soundcard would easily be able to assign a click-track to the headphone-out.
I only tried this once with my first (black metal) band though and it didn't work.. The drummer played too loud to hear anything in the headphones.. So I only know it works in theory - not practice :)
Looking forward to reading what others do for their backing tracks though.
so you're using a laptop then... ok.
for clicks & controlled collapse we're using a click track.
I have the track on 3/4 out and have it directed to my drummers headphones. he only has it in one ear, the other one he's listening to the drumfill speaker he has on other side with the rest of backing track.
works fine most of the times... still i'm not 100% sure I want to use a laptop onstage.
Yeah.. When I tried the above with a live drummer, I used a minidisk and just ran the backing tracks mono - so left was backing tracks, right was click-track. Ran into a mixer and the headphones went to the drummer. But, it didn't work..(this was years ago, mind).
You could always use a DVD player (5 channels), but that'd be less stable than a laptop.
dodd
offlineTACOS!
A friend of mine was telling me of a local band who uses a multi-track recorder such as the Tascam DP series for backing tracks.
moliere
offlineMember
I use a laptop with a multi-out interface to send a backing track w/ click to the drummer, a seperate stereo backing track to FOH and separate kick and snare (that are triggered from the live drums) out to FOH as well.
in another band, we use an iPod for our backing (no drummer).
a friends band uses DAT, with the backing track on one channel in mono (to FOH) and a click track for the drummer in the other channel fed to his headphones.
Alesis HD24 (XR)....24 Tracks, 24Bit 48KHz....fully ADAT compatible to route directly into any digital mixer via optical cabling....with a drummer we usually create a 20Track mixdown of the backing track (depending on the band and style) and use the 4 spare channels for Click, or also some hard to get tonal intervals for the singer which we directly inject on his/her inear system....
and you get it for around 700-800$....and can insert 2 normal IDE Harddisks...
We use Ableton Live running on a Macbook Pro for the backing with live layers triggered from a Korg MIDI pad.
I know Combichrist used a HD24 on the WTFIWWY tour which gives you a lot of flexibility with how you route things to wherever you need. Click track on a spare track to in ears or drum monitors is easy that way.
VNV were running the backing parts from a Macbook which also handled the video projection on the Judgement tour. Iirc using VLC media player (small, simple and stable) and I don't recall a single technical error on the whole tour.
Or any multi track/multi output piece of hardware.
the problem with most Portastudios is, that they can simultaneously record multiple tracks but only output 2 .... so for this special purpose it makes them not better than any MP3 player...only more expensive...
I always made bad experiences with laptops...they always failed me somehow....both..Macbooks and PCs....but this is my personal problem I think :-)...
For Grendel we use Logic 8 running through a basic external Soundcard for the backing tracks, no click track or anything is used(never really understood the need for them in the first place).
Eric Christian
offlineMember
I know back in the day I noticed FLA had a whole rack of Alesis ADAT's tucked off in one corner of the stage. I think NIN used them too. With my original gothic industrial band my buddy triggered sequences straight out of his workstation keyboard whilst I played live synth with my XP-50. We practiced the songs enough to where we didn't need a click. We fucked up now and then cause he had these quirky rests but oh well. With my current project I plan on using my DAW in my laptop with a backup duplicate laptop just in case with layered pads, arps and leads from the virus with my bandmate playing stand up electronic/acoustic percussion over that as well. We'll have loud keyboard amps behind us like in practice. We've yet to find a sit down acoustic drummer so I don't think a click track is needed. When we find a drummer I'm thinking a simple bus out of a 4/4 kick track from the DAW would work fine or whatever they want.
well if you play everything live...a Click is not needed because if someone slows down the rest of the instrumentalist can follow.....the problems start if you mix live performance with sequenced parts...a sequencer usually won't be able to slow down or fasten up a bit.....it plays straight at the tempo given...so Imho a click is really useful to keep the drummer (and with him most of the live part of a band) on tempo to have the playback set in at the right times :-)
@ Yade - Live 8 can speed up and slow down live without any problem. We do this quite a bit actually, sometimes the crowd is really amped and we'll push the BPM up a bit, even mid song. All the live layers/loops automatically sync to the new tempo and the time stretch algorithms are good enough now to be able to do that.
@Modulate: my friend does this by routing the drummers kick to the speed adjustment...he says it works fine but never have seen it live though....if everything runs synced to a machine I can easily imagine that this runs really cool...but if the beat-giving element is a person and live needs to sync to this...I think that you could hear this...but as I said....I never tried this :-)
Eric Christian
offlineMember
@YADE: "well if you play everything live...a Click is not needed because if someone slows down the rest of the instrumentalist can follow"
Play live... ha ha... good one. Thats just the thing... Most current industrial acts play to some type of digital backing tracks or sequence from a workstation keyboard... Most electronic stuff is just too complicated to actually play live. The closest thing I've seen to a completely live show would be either 16 Volt or Psyclon Nine. In both cases, there is a full band going and besides the intros you couldn't even hear the synth half the time. Every other live industrial show I've ever seen had some type of backing, heck KMFDM even has vocal tracks going. Truthfully, I think at this point Combichrist is good enough to where zmarr could just play all the synth live. That would be bad ass...
well if you play really live you need 2 things -> practise and a good soundengineer....i doubt that 16 Volt or Psyclon Nine have either of it....
I also do all playback except my vocals...it just makes things easier for me and cheaper for the promoter :-)...with Jesus and the Gurus we play around 80% live....I do my drums live but have them as monitor on my inear...so this substitutes my click somehow....
well I also think that patternbased electronic music is not made to be performed all live...I mean in a rock or metalcombo each musician plays the part he/she also does on the record...in electronic music one or 2 people usually create the tracks of 5-20 musicians which is simply impossible to play live....
and honestly tweaking around some drumloops or so with ableton is imho not playing live...but I think this is personal definition here..
you just said that 99% of powernoise bands aren;t playign LIVE!>? oh noes ;)!
Jairus Khan
offlineMember
My definition of 'live' for electronic/computer music is mostly that the set doesn't sound the same night after night. (See also: Coil.)
I could spend a month chopping up all of my sounds out of Ableton and loading them into aging, bulky hardware samplers and synths so that they're a lot more work to manipulate and don't require a laptop, but that's just theatre. I can do a hundred times more things to my tracks in Ableton than outside Ableton.
wormsoftheearth
offlineMember
"My definition of 'live' for electronic/computer music is mostly that the set doesn't sound the same night after night. "
this. i just want to hear something different than listening to the CD at my house
heretic909
offlineMember
I use an mp3 player, play some keyboard parts and growl into the mic. Nothing fancy. Even if promoters were willing to pay for the extra checked luggage, I still wouldn't bring a bunch of gear with me. Too much of it has broken from traveling over the years.
Although, I have edited all the songs we play live so it's not exactly like the cd, and then I tweak the songs or add to them every so often. Plus with Rexx's comedy routine in between songs, you have a whole different experience when hearing us play live.
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