Using backing tracks live

[KingPrawn]

Basically our keyboard player is going a bit sideways on us and we want to explore backing tracks. He’s still up for it but his life has become a little complicated. We’re not considering deps as is more about relationships for us. I don’t need to buy a Christmas card for a backing track.  What’s the best start up set up? 

[Muppet]

I load ours on to a Digitech JamMan and trigger them from the foot switches.  Can connect it to the PA In mono or stereo. Simple but it works. 

[ambient]

The hardest thing might be the drummer; what’s his timing like?

[KingPrawn]

He’s ok , I think he’ll need a click track though

[KingPrawn]

9 hours ago, Muppet said:

I load ours on to a Digitech JamMan and trigger them from the foot switches.  Can connect it to the PA In mono or stereo. Simple but it works. 

Where do you get your tracks from?

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, KingPrawn said:

Where do you get your tracks from?

Make them yourself.

Unless you are playing the songs EXACTLY like the version(s) you are covering in terms of arrangement, key and actual notes being played by the live instruments you are going to need to to change your backing to match.

I've spent about half my gigging life playing in bands that use sequenced or pre-recorded backing and although they were all originals bands, when I have done covers we programmed or recorded our own backing to suit our arrangement of the song. The one time I tried using a pre-programmed backing track I had to make so many alterations in order to get it to work within the context of the band I ended up redoing most of it from scratch.

[operative451]

We use a thing what we made: Not me in the vid, obvs! Also when i say 'we' , i mean the guy in the video not me..

Its probably overkill but we work in an IT company and do this sort of thing for fun...

If you have a laptop/netbook etc lying about you can get also Ableton lite free. Or any type of DJing software works well. 

 

[NancyJohnson]

I'll be following this.

As I'll attest, the current project contains an awful lot of extraeneous content, but we've yet to go out live; none of this has even been played outside of a recording studio as of yet.

We've looked at using a laptop or tablet and routing the content to front of house and a click to the drummer, but we really need to be on it like a car bonnet to make it work.

Rehearsals start next week.

[BigRedX]

Just because it's on the recording doesn't mean that it needs to be on the live version.

One of the bands I'm in currently uses backing tracks. It works because we've all been playing in bands that use them before and the set up is compact and doesn't require any at the gig assembly. We have a 3U flight case that holds the laptop, audio/MIDI interface, DI boxes all wired up to a front panel patch bay. We send two balanced XLR feeds to the PA and a click-track to the drummer's headphone amp. It takes less than 5 minutes to set up at a gig.

However, other than at really big gigs where we are playing through a massive PA system once the band kicks in most of the backing is lost in the overall mix. Apart from a couple of intros and one middle 8 that are all backing track, we can play all the songs perfectly well without it, and I doubt if anyone other than the the most hard-core fans would notice.

[NancyJohnson]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Just because it's on the recording doesn't mean that it needs to be on the live version.

However, other than at really big gigs where we are playing through a massive PA system once the band kicks in most of the backing is lost in the mix.

I doubt if anyone other than the the most hard-core fans would notice.

Addressing these three points;

1) I think we'd certainly prefer for the added non-musical elements to form part of the live side (when we do it live).

2) Blame your soundman.

3) Possibly.  I'd wager that a lot of the people watching are going to be new to the material, but if I'm playing My Life In A Dying Machine, almost certainly I want the sound of an iron lung's circulating pump supporting the rythym.

 

[Dad3353]

23 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

...but if I'm playing My Life In A Dying Machine, almost certainly I want the sound of an iron lung's circulating pump supporting the rythym.

Bring one with you as part of the backline..?

https://youtu.be/odKf7_sA5HQ

(Can't embed the video, but it may be inspiring to see how others do it..?  )

[Roger2611]

Yodaclub tried it last year, we used some extra keys and backing vocal tracks from our "studio" recordings run with a click track to the drummer and the music to  the PA, it wasn't a success, the drummer struggled to keep us nailed to the click track (usually down to the "light and shade" we like to build into the songs) and felt he was having to concentrate too much on the click track and far less on actually playing the songs, we knew the singer / guitarist likes to be a little fluid with arrangements, we do repeat the odd chorus and sometimes extend the endings.....we have always worked that way and tend to work off on stage cues, it works for us but we quickly decided the backing tracks added less than the hassle of them took away from our music.

[BigRedX]

@NancyJohnson The backing tracks getting lost in the mix isn't necessarily the PA engineer's fault. It can be difficult enough to mix a four piece band with complex arrangements without throwing in extra taped or sequenced backing for which there are no visual clues coming from on stage.

The only time I have been in a band that used backing tracks and were able in integrate them properly into the live mix, we had our own sound engineer who was essentially a fifth member of the band who would mix the sequenced parts and drum samples from our own mixing desk which was fed from separate multicore from the various synth and samplers on stage. However it made for a massively complex set up which took the the best part of an hour to rig at each gig. Not something I'd be massively keen to go back to unless my band was big enough to be selling out 500+ capacity venues.

[SimonEdward]

Similar to a previous post - thank you Roger2611 :+)

I 'retired' from playing Live about 20-years ago, for various reasons. I've had anxiety since my early teens (music helps me cope), but I used to get quite cross when I felt I couldn't hear other band members clearly enough to give a good, no - great performance; due to poor monitoring, sound levels etc. 

I digress. Anyway, back in the summer I was invited by an old mate (a drummer) who asked me to help him out with a Live performance for his Degree assessment, in the back room of a pub in London (Sarf of the river), which had a small stage and a P.A. rig, a drum kit, guitar and Bass back line ~ with floor monitors.

He'd decided to use backing tracks - not a problem - and also recruited a vocalist to help out the set. Lots of other students were being assessed on the day, and there was a short (maximum 10 minutes) set up time. It was all rather rushed. We got through the set of 8 songs somehow, but - it was bl**dy awful. I couldn't hear a f*cking thing. The floor monitors were almost useless - the backing track was only coming through the p.a.. the drummer had a monitor for the click, but he struggled to keep us nailed.. not fantastic when the performance goes towards your final marks!

I'm not against clicks and backing tracks - I like them, but if you're going to do it, 1. Decent on stage monitoring is CRITICAL !!! - you've got to be able to hear, almost as if you are playing along to an LP at home. 2. DO NOT rely on the venue monitor guy to look after you. 3. Yes - send a feed to the house p.a. but bring your own monitors with independent level controls, get comfortable, and rehearse with your monitoring.

And good luck! :+) 

[Muppet]

16 hours ago, KingPrawn said:

Where do you get your tracks from?

We record them ourselves as it's  only certain elements we need. As far as a click goes, when we need one we put the click on the right channel and send to drummer, the left channel has the backing and goes to PA. 

[BigRedX]

10 hours ago, SimonEdward said:

I'm not against clicks and backing tracks - I like them, but if you're going to do it, 1. Decent on stage monitoring is CRITICAL !!! - you've got to be able to hear, almost as if you are playing along to an LP at home. 2. DO NOT rely on the venue monitor guy to look after you. 3. Yes - send a feed to the house p.a. but bring your own monitors with independent level controls, get comfortable, and rehearse with your monitoring.

I would completely disagree with this. While it is nice to be able to hear everything, IME unless the rhythmic element is solely on the backing, you really don't need to be able to hear it. Every band I've been in that has used both backing tracks and a drummer, the drummer plays to the click and the rest of the band play to the drummer. If there are sections with no drums but other live instruments the drummer provides a subtle click (sticks or hit hats) for the rest of the band to follow and keep in sync.

Of course making this work does require a drummer who can play to a click track. That's not as easy as you might think. While every other musician in a band is used to playing in time to the drums you'll find that because the drummer normally sets the pace of the band, they very often don't have the experience of having to keep in time and sync with something else. Also when the drummer is perfectly in time with the click it will tend to be inaudible because it is being masked by the sounds of the drums themselves.

[NancyJohnson]

11 hours ago, BigRedX said:

@NancyJohnson The backing tracks getting lost in the mix isn't necessarily the PA engineer's fault. It can be difficult enough to mix a four piece band with complex arrangements without throwing in extra taped or sequenced backing for which there are no visual clues coming from on stage.

The only time I have been in a band that used backing tracks and were able in integrate them properly into the live mix, we had our own sound engineer who was essentially a fifth member of the band who would mix the sequenced parts and drum samples from our own mixing desk which was fed from separate multicore from the various synth and samplers on stage. However it made for a massively complex set up which took the the best part of an hour to rig at each gig. Not something I'd be massively keen to go back to unless my band was big enough to be selling out 500+ capacity venues.

I've always felt the need to be well rehearsed to be able to pull off a decent set, even if it's only 30-40 minutes, but given what the new project is doing over the old one, we really need to be more than well rehearsed; we're simply not just chugging along and playing together, we're effectively going to be looking at the backing content as being a digital fifth man and we need a drummer who's disciplined to be able to keep with the click.  I do concur monitoring is essential, but as of yet, we haven't really investigated how we're going to do all this as we haven't gone outside the studio as of yet; right now we just need to bed in the musical elements in a live context.  It may be the case of bringing in a fifth man, someone tech-savvy and non-musical, to just fire off the sampled stuff.  I don't know.

I'm wholly aware at how bad things can go using backing tracks.  A couple of years back we played with a band who I can only describe in hindsight as having an horrific gig at the hands of the backing they were using.  They were a five piece and every song they did involved the drummer picking up an iPod Mini, dialling in the track they were doing, hitting play, dropping the iPod and then trying to do a four count to start the song.  They were definitely not on it.  Keyboard and backing vocals were coming in early/late and to add to this, they had a guitarist who insisted on switching guitars virtually every song (which I reckon this was more a look at me, look at my gear vanity exercise more than anything else) and on the last song he clearly picked up the wrong one which was tuned down a half step, so we had guitars out of tune and backing coming in at the wrong time too.

[police squad]

Playing with backing tracks is great fun.

I'm doing it again with a very tech savvy keys player. It's 80s stuff. We buy the tracks and can edit out some keys parts, the guitar, anything we like really.

It instils discipline to your playing. It's also very surprising for your own time keeping. It's amazing how easy it is to get out of time if there is an intro part without a click.

For Instance, Don't Go by Yazoo. Starts after 4 count in clicks, then it's a keyboard part on its own. The keys player is classically trained and also teaches and it challenges him slightly.

We drink lots of beer and the crowd dances all night. I'd love to turn it into a band one day.

[operative451]

We don't have a drummer. Sorted.. . also the setlist thingy in the video up there ^ has a screen that shows the song we're on, does an on-screen count in and also shows the chords we're supposed to be playing.

We're thinking of making it into an app and selling it, just saying... Because our stuff is mostly originals, we use FL Studio to make all the stuff we can't play, and everything we play live is stuff we've recorded already so we can use the same tracks.  The setlist thingy can also play back midi files so in theory we could connect it to a (music) keyboard and have 'live' keys. But we don't...

[BigRedX]

@police squad Don't do parts without any timing reference. Get your drummer to subtly click through the intro part to keep everything in time. It doesn't need to be a full quarter note click, half or even just a beat at the beginning of each bar will suffice. We used to do a song with an 8 bar unaccompanied guitar intro followed by another 8 bars of very minimalist drums. A simple click on the first beat of each bar turned out to be sufficient to keep the guitar part in time.

@NancyJohnson Despite the horrific amounts of equipment involved in the band I described - 2 large rack flight cases for the synths and samplers, 1 small rack case for the electronic drum module and drummer's headphone monitoring system, a large flight case for the mixer and associated effects units, plus the multicore and a large flight case full of cable snakes the connect everything up, there were certain advantages to running a live backing in that we could also do real-time automated control of the live instrument and vocal effects as well as those for the sequenced sounds. No having pedal boards cluttering up the stage or worrying about being in the right place at the right time to hit the correct pedal to change sounds made for a much more interesting and energetic live performance.

For the current band I play with the backing runs continuously with a couple of programmed stops where the singer knows he's going to want to talk to the audience and I start it going again on his nod. Gaps between songs are kept to a minimum - ones with atmospheric intros pretty much run into the end of the track before. It's all done in Apple Logic using track markers and meta-events, which allows me to stop between songs if necessary, skip tracks with a simple keyboard command, and have all the "unused" songs added to end of the official set as possible encores.

The next refinement will be to use the Helix to control all that so I don't even have to look at the laptop on stage.

[KingPrawn]

1 hour ago, police squad said:

Playing with backing tracks is great fun.

I'm doing it again with a very tech savvy keys player. It's 80s stuff. We buy the tracks and can edit out some keys parts, the guitar, anything we like really.

It instils discipline to your playing. It's also very surprising for your own time keeping. It's amazing how easy it is to get out of time if there is an intro part without a click.

For Instance, Don't Go by Yazoo. Starts after 4 count in clicks, then it's a keyboard part on its own. The keys player is classically trained and also teaches and it challenges him slightly.

We drink lots of beer and the crowd dances all night. I'd love to turn it into a band one day.

Where do you buy your tracks and what’s your set up ?

[BigRedX]

3 minutes ago, KingPrawn said:

Where do you buy your tracks and what’s your set up ?

Having had another read of your OP, If the backing tracks are to replace your current keyboard player, why don't you get him to make them?

[police squad]

40 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Having had another read of your OP, If the backing tracks are to replace your current keyboard player, why don't you get him to make them?

No, we are a duo. I sing and play guitar, he does the keys along with the backing tracks.

We use them so we can quickly change our set.

www.karaoke-version.co.uk

and we put them on an ipad with Stage Trax. You can add lyrics, chords and time code it, so that the lyrics light up when you have to sing. (you have to set it up but once done, it's great)

[police squad]

1 hour ago, KingPrawn said:

Where do you buy your tracks and what’s your set up ?

www.karaoke-version.co.uk

and we put them on an ipad with Stage Trax. You can add lyrics, chords and time code it, so that the lyrics light up when you have to sing. (you have to set it up but once done, it's great)

[BigRedX]

27 minutes ago, police squad said:

No, we are a duo. I sing and play guitar, he does the keys along with the backing tracks.

We use them so we can quickly change our set.

www.karaoke-version.co.uk

and we put them on an ipad with Stage Trax. You can add lyrics, chords and time code it, so that the lyrics light up when you have to sing. (you have to set it up but once done, it's great)

I was replying to the OP