midi sequencer, CD, or laptop?

[grouse789]

Hey gang, i did a few searches, and became slightly more confused than before. My bands drummer recently moved back to brazil, and we are in the process of letting our keyboard player go(thats another story...). Anyway, we still have alot of gigs lined up, and are faced with the question of how do we pull this off live without a keyboard player, and possibly a drummer? I suggested a midi sampler trigger to trigger pre recorded parts, and so was voted to seek this info out. Not sure what the best way to do this is. Ive seen Rush do it, ive seen U2 do it with pedal triggered parts too. Can we play along to a CD with the drums on there, as well as any keyboard parts we want? or is that too low budget sounding? Ive seen alot on here about using a laptop to achieve this too, also ive seen posts about using a midi sequencer. IM BAFFLED to say the least. What brand sequencer do you recommend, what kind of program do you recomend with the lap top? Or should we just keep it simple, and play along the the backing tracks on CD? Thank you for any guidance!
Frank

[fretlessrock]

Huge question. You are talking about automating the rhythmic foundation of the group. You really have to start with:

who will program/perform the drum parts?
can the band play to canned parts?
who is going to trigger song/section changes?
what kind of recording expertise do you have access to?

and the list goes on.

Rush and U2 have virtually unlimited (relatively speaking) resurces and rehearsal time, and they are not replacing band members with sequences (OK, Larry Mullen, maybe).

You could do a lot of this with Ableton Live and a Behringer FCB1010, but that leaves out a huge amount of work required to actually generate the parts.

If you wanted to stick to predetermind arrangements you could record tracks of the bare drum/key parts, put them on a CD and just use a player to step from one to the next. I won't be going to that gig, but you could do it

Sorry for not having an easy answer. I don't think that there is one.

[grouse789]

Fretless, thanks, while obviously i do not have the resources $$$ as Rush or U2, lol. I would like to persue the sequencer style. Of course we will find another drummer eventually, and good keyboard/synth players are hard to find. so it would not be a permanent tool.
The guitardist and I both use Sonar 6 for recording and are pleased with the results. I know CD would be the easy way to go, but time will tell. And i shall check the units out that you mentioned. Thanks again.
Frank

[hunta]

If you want to program beats and play them back live for a show, also look into a drum pad like the MPD24, MPK49 (keyboard with pads, i have this), or PadKontrol, and a drum sampler like Battery or BFD. It's one of the "easier" ways to program drums. It isn't easy though lol

[locolobo85]

[quote=hunta;5219073]If you want to program beats and play them back live for a show, also look into a drum pad like the MPD24, MPK49 (keyboard with pads, i have this), or PadKontrol, and a drum sampler like Battery or BFD. It's one of the "easier" ways to program drums. It isn't easy though lol [/QUOTE]

It never is.....easy that is.

My 2cents.....forget the laptop. What if it decides to lock up midstream?

[karamusic]

I tend to agree, forget the laptop , they'll hang up the worst possible moment.

You could allso have a look at the Digitech Jamman, flexible and foot controlled

k

[MonetBass]

We've used keyboard workstations in live settings with good results. The plus there is that you can sequence the drums and the keyboard parts, and then if you add a keyboardist or drummer later, you can just mute those parts that you no longer need.

[seamonkey]

If your songs are fairly simple, you might want to check into Band in a Box www.pgmusic.com. It can do the drums, keyboards, strings, fairly easily. Put in the chords, pick a style, select the loop options and go.

If you eventually get more advanced you can export these arrangements to a sequencer.