Backing tracks/redux.

[NancyJohnson]

Interesting twist following the recent backing tracks thread.  Had a coffee yesterday with a guy I'd worked with remotely during the pandemic; he seems very keen on resurrecting our long-dead lockdown project.

 

Musically it was pretty straightforward, live guitars and bass, live vocals, drums were all drawn from live loop packs (Beta Monkey), loads of voice/keys/noise samples.  He's keen to try and take things out live, utilising everything that sits behind the musical elements.  Think of Public Service Broadcasting.

 

I'm not entirely certain how this can be achieved on a budget, so am looking for a bit of advice.  Could we strip all the guitars/bass from the original recordings and just route these through front of house and somehow give the drummer (or all of us) an in-ear mix so we know what we'd be playing along with?

 

Suppose a bare bones solution at this point.  Laptop running a DAW etc.

[BigRedX]

There's lots of different ways you can go about this and it all depends on three things:

 

1. Can your drummer play to a click?

 

2. Will you have your own sound engineer for all the gigs?

 

2. How important are the sounds on the backing? - i.e. if it failed could the rest of the band keep going and would it be massively noticeable to the typical audience member? 

[No lust in Jazz]

As in the other thread, we created backing tracks and a click in a DAW saved them as .WAV files and put them through a Roland SPD-SX. The feeling in the band was against running a laptop - plus the Roland offers a range of other percussion

 

The click goes to the drummer's headphones, who monitors the count-in, starts and stops the tracks, while the tracks routed through the PA. You can have a track telling the drummer such stuff as here comes the bridge etc.. but we dispensed with this early on.

 

The other side of, can the drummer play with a click? Is can / does the band listen to the drummer?  In my experience singers are the worst for speeding up and slowing down. 

 

When we started, it was painful, as there can be a dicking around elements such as getting levels to work, making the click audible etc. but work it does.

Edited November 21, 2023 by No lust in Jazz

[Elfrasho]

If you're fine with a mono backing track then you can literally use your phone. 

 

Backing tracks fully panned left, click track fully right on a single wav file. Send your drummer the click track to his ears and right to foh, via a splitter cable. No need for fancy gear or even a laptop

 

 

[NancyJohnson]

The drummer we have in mind should be fine with a click.

[BigRedX]

What you use depends on how "bullet-proof" you need the backing playback to be.

 

The problem with using a phone is that it's a phone and gets used for a load of other stuff. You'll need to remember to remember to put it into airplane mode when you use it play live as the last thing you want is for someone to call it. Also if it's a iPhone with a single socket to connect to the outside world you'll need a adapter so that it can be plugged into the mains as well being able to connect the audio to the PA. Personally I'm not a fan of consumer grade computer connectors like USB (in any of its varieties), Lightning or Ethernet as from experience they are simply not robust enough to withstand content gigging use. If you must use they types of cables/connectors, have a backup or two and as soon as the cable shows any sign of wear bin it and replace it.

 

You'll also need a DI box to connect to the PA and suitable cables to go from the playback device to the DI box. Don't rely on the PA having enough DI boxes. Buy a good one of your own to use - ideally passive so you don't have to worry about batteries, PSUs or the (non-)availability of phantom power. Don't use cable plug adaptors, they are crap for gigging use. Make up cables with the right connectors on each end to do the job (and have spares).

 

Both my bands use a laptop fitted into a flight case along with all the additional devices to connect to the outside world plus all the necessary PSUs. Everything apart from the two USB plugs and power connector that plug into the laptop is bolted, hot glued and cable-tied into place. All connections to the outside world are made with XLRs apart from backup jacks for the main audio output, the power in which is on a Powercon connectors and the foot switch which controls the laptop which has to be on USB. I have a gig tonight so I'll post photos with explanations of what everything does later today when I get it ready to load out.

[NancyJohnson]

Perhaps to give this context have a listen to the track below.  Ignore the vocals as the originals will be removed/redone.

 

I would imagine any vocals would be all done live, so realistically we'd be trying to reproduce this with bass, guitar, drums and three voices.

 

https://open.spotify.com/track/6EHEcJSm1OJrvlRgGG7Uvi?si=XEUoHOgUSeK_r1H4_5z4KA

[BigRedX]

Well I've listened to 4 tracks and from what I've heard IMO you would be better off without backing tracks and look someone to play keyboards and trigger samples in the manner of Jesus Jones or EMF (and maybe double on second guitar). I couldn't hear anything that is absolutely timing critical so as long as your drummer can keep to roughly the tempos of the recorded versions you'll be fine.

 

IME because the band can hear every nuance of the recording there is a temptation to include everything from the studio that can't be done by the live musicians on the backing track. Both of my bands are particularly prone to this to various degrees. As the person in charge of the backing playback, I have started turning down the volume of any stem of that I think is cluttering up the mix live by 1dB each time we practice. If I manage to turn the track completely off before anyone else in the band notices and asks for it to be louder, then AFAIAC it's unnecessary for the live version and can be removed.

 

I'm sure that there are loads of things on the recorded versions that are considered "essential", but if your are ruthless about which noises absolutely need to be included, it will make for a more dynamic sound when you play live.