Playing Pre-recorded sounds live?

[oniman7]

Just so you know what I'm talking about, I was listening to this song on YouTube: YouTube - playing my bands new song (Entrosolet) - Rei

At around 0:12 (and throughout the song) there's a cool glitchy sound in it. I noticed in one of the comments that he said he's pulled it off live, but that it was complicated starting the track at the right time and getting his drum to play to a click track.

This got me thinking. There are a lot of things we couldn't perform live but could create or record (piano/orchestra pieces, glitchy sounds like those above, maybe extra guitar sounds or something) and I was wondering how I could handle playing them live.

My latest solution was to record them to a JamMan or similar pedal and just cycle through the sounds, playing them when necessary. How else would TB recommend doing it? I'd like to have full control to turn the sound on or off at whatever point I needed, and easy access. Am I being stupid about this? I don't know much about it.

[behndy]

there's lots of ways. my band runs Ableton Live to host Native Instruments Kontakt for all the synth/keyboard tones my singer plays live. so we send out to FOH and a small mixer from a Motu 828 mk II. backing tracks to FOH, backing and a click to the drummer's mixer so he can control the volume of each.

hope that helps.

[erock0138]

Here's what our band does, have loops set on our laptop, go out of it straight to the pa. have 8 solid clicks before the start of each song. so our drummer lets it click 4 times, and then counts off the next four, start the song. It doesn't seem that hard honestly, people often don't put any extra clicks in the beginning, do 8 not 4. we make all of our loops in protools. Hope that helps!

[oniman7]

I'm sorry, can you clarify what Ableton live is, what FOH stands for, and what a Motu 828 is? lol. I'm really new at all of this.

[oniman7]

Originally Posted by erock0138

Here's what our band does, have loops set on our laptop, go out of it straight to the pa. have 8 solid clicks before the start of each song. so our drummer lets it click 4 times, and then counts off the next four, start the song. It doesn't seem that hard honestly, people often don't put any extra clicks in the beginning, do 8 not 4. we make all of our loops in protools. Hope that helps!

So are you saying you have the clicktrack on the same channel as the effects? Is the clicktrack playing through the PA the whole time, or does your drummer just have good time? lol

[erock0138]

well, i forgot to mention that we use in ear monitors. (oops) The click is set through a different channel, which is muted in the p.a., but we hear them in our ears (which are the aux inputs on our mixer) Our drummer uses a small mixer from the laptop, and then from that to the p.a.

[erock0138]

if the drummer had the right set up, it's very possible. we use loops for alot of our songs for different vocal effects, or piano, and it matches up perfect everytime, but everyone has to be in time, and the drummer has to be solid.

[oniman7]

How do you set the click to a different channel? Wouldn't the laptop output just run as one channel to the mixer?

[behndy]

Originally Posted by oniman7

I'm sorry, can you clarify what Ableton live is, what FOH stands for, and what a Motu 828 is? lol. I'm really new at all of this.

sorry. lulz. i spend too much time with geeks.

Ableton Live is a software sequencer. it's designed for live DJ stuff really, so it's very good at time stretching and sequencing different tempo things together. we use it to send out different combinations of the backing track and click to different devices. like a....

Motu 828 mk II is a 8 in/8 out (more if you go digital, we don't) audio interface. it plugs in firewire in the laptop, Ableton Live sees it, it lets us say THIS goes to FOH while THIS goes to Left Ear Of Drummer's Mixer and THIS goes to Right Ear Of Drummer's Mixer and THIS goes to the PA speakers we bring if FOH is not that good etc.

FOH = Front Of House. the signal you send to the sound person's board for them to run through their hopefully awesome PA setup.

hope that helps!

[erock0138]

Get an external metronome, set the b.p.m, the and then start the click, with the loop. So basically when you make the loop, set it to start 8 clicks after. So at the beginning of the song, the drummer will hit both the metronome, and to start the loop ( which is now a seperate channel in the p.a.) And they will start at the same time.

[oniman7]

Alright, I've got some things to talk to my band about. lol

How much do those devices cost, behndy?

[behndy]

there used to be an evaluation version of Ableton Live you could download for free. it just limited how many track and how many MIDI devices you could run at once.

i LOVE the 828 series. always been impressed by how rock solid they are. but they're not the cheapest. i think you can find 4 in/4 out (most websites might list them as 4x4), which might be plenty , for a few hundred dollars. the 828 stuff usually runs around $800 new, when i bought a backup for the one i dropped $8 hunny's on i found one on Craigslist for $400.

so, depends how much you need.

good luck!

[oniman7]

The alternative which is looking attractive to me is spending $200 on a Jam Man pedal which would go straight to PA. I'd record the tracks and set them up in the order I'd need them, then just hit the foot pedal to play the sound. That sounds simpler and cheaper to me. What do you think?

[behndy]

much simpler, much cheaper. the problem you're going to run into is it is HARD to stay on time with something hard looped to a tempo. we run a decent amount of glitchy and stuff we don't want to add another person to play on the backing track, so if we get off time it get horrible QUICK.

if you're talking about stabs or things that play once, that's maybe the best way to go.

[oniman7]

That's what I'm talking about. Things like "glitches" maybe a screech or a whir. I could see it being used for spoken word intros, or sound intros (think One by Metallica or Indesctructible by Disturbed).

There are times that I can see it being used to play an orchestral or piano piece, but if we're going to do that, it would either be as an intro, a whole song or after a break. In all of these cases, the recorded part would set the time.

[behndy]

yeah. for sure get a little looper. i only do simple stuff for fun with loopers, so i'm not up on them as much as i should be.

the JamMan is the one that takes a memory stick so you can save loops down right?

i think that's going to be a WAY easier, WAY smaller learning curve/worrying about stuff messing up/buying too much stuff path for what you're trying to do.

[oniman7]

Sounds good. I'm looking at the Boss one, but the Jam Man may work too for a little more.

[Killspringer]

+1 for ableton

check out one of the controllers that give you a feedback of what's going on on-screen with your clips. novation launchpad or akai apc40

[behndy]

those controllers ARE awesome. we use the launchpad 20 for playing out and i have a 40 on order for the house. the APC40 is nice too. but they don't really give you any feedback. there's no motorized controls or screens. it's just a well thought out control surface. you still need to be near the computer to SEE what's going on.

good stuff tho.

[steveksux]

Originally Posted by behndy

much simpler, much cheaper. the problem you're going to run into is it is HARD to stay on time with something hard looped to a tempo. we run a decent amount of glitchy and stuff we don't want to add another person to play on the backing track, so if we get off time it get horrible QUICK.

if you're talking about stabs or things that play once, that's maybe the best way to go.

Yup. You really have to work on playing with a click track to get used to it.

Lots of guys use click to the drums, and the band follows the drummer. That way if the drums get off the click, the click doesn't distract everyone else and cause a conflict.

The problem with that is, if you're playing tracks to the click, and the drummer gets off, you're in deep stuff there..

I'd rather have everyone have the click and the loops in the monitors. Everyone else has to be able to hear that stuff to recover if the drummer goes off the reservation.

Randy