anyone do gig with midi files?

[Yvon]

I just joined a band. We had our first practice last night. Guys are cool and pretty good. I haven't met the singer yet. She will be there next week.
The band is guitar, guitar, bass and a singer. Everyone do some backing vocals.

Anyway, We are playing with midi for the drums and other sounds we might need.
First time I play in a setup like this.
Anybody else do it?
How do you deal with that?
Any tips?
I seem to have a hard time to find the groove. All my life I listened to the drummer to find the groove, I listen to the drums and we groove together. But now it's different. I have to listen to the guitar player, I never did that!
I guess that musically it will help me in some way.
Tonight I plan to spend the evening work on the midi with garageband and try to make the midi sound better.

Let me know what you do if you have a similar setup!

[seanm]

I have but not too often. The next one to go after the drummer is usually the bass player

[IanStephenson]

You're now TOTALLY dependant on good monitoring. Make sure you can hear the midi over everything else because IT isn't going to stay in time with you.

Why are trying to follow the guitar rather than the electronic drums? The drums are now "perfect", so you need to be locked with them. Follow the guitar and all is lost...

[Munjibunga]

I hate it. I don't want to play along with a computer. When I go to see a band, I don't want to be looking for horns that aren't there. Why not just do karaoke?

[BassChuck]

Originally Posted by seanm

I have but not too often. The next one to go after the drummer is usually the bass player

Originally Posted by Munjibunga

I hate it. I don't want to play along with a computer. When I go to see a band, I don't want to be looking for horns that aren't there. Why not just do karaoke?

Excellent points. If the band doesn't have great impact (as Munji is suggesting) it may not book well and need to cut costs to get gigs..... and as seanm suggests, the cost may be lowered by replacing bass.

I've done hundreds of hours of MIDI programing for backing tracks. I've never performed live, but done lots in studio settings. Drums and Bass are the easiest to get a realisitic sound.

[short_steve277]

lol, first gig when me and my guitarist was nubs, we thought of playing with a midi drum track since we had no drummer at time but luckily we found one. ahahhhhahhhhahahahhahahaahh

lucky the plan didn't go ahead

[knarleybass]

we use an mp3 player, one side is click and the other is the backing track. We only use it for about ten songs in a night. In my humble opinion it's better than having a keyboard player up there playing string sounds over a Ramones song.
we pretty much only use it for Disco and Reggae songs, and one Marvin Gaye song.

[DWBass]

I was in a band that was midi sequence based and I hated it! Dude had the midi drums and real drums playing together and the real drummer just couldn't lock in. Sounded horrible! I was totally embarrased the one gig we did do. I quit soon after.