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Anyone doing double duty with keys/samples?

B

boxnife

Aug 5, 2008
44
0
#1
Is anyone out there doubling as the key's guy/samples guy? Our latest recording ended up with enough keys to justify me dragging a keyboard to shows. I hate doing it. Our drummer plays to a click with in-ears, so I was hoping there was a way for me to just trigger these parts with a foot pedal.

I considered just buying the Boss loop station, recording the key parts into it, and stomping on it and pray to god we stay with the click. Is there any other way? I'm not up on all the tech surrounding this stuff, but I know there are lots of bands doing it.

The catch here is NO LAPTOPS. I just won't do it. Too much trouble for so few parts. I'd say we need between 6-8 samples to do the whole album as recorded. Is there a piece of hardware designed for bands doing it this way?
 
#2
boxnife said:
Is anyone out there doubling as the key's guy/samples guy? Our latest recording ended up with enough keys to justify me dragging a keyboard to shows. I hate doing it. Our drummer plays to a click with in-ears, so I was hoping there was a way for me to just trigger these parts with a foot pedal.

I considered just buying the Boss loop station, recording the key parts into it, and stomping on it and pray to god we stay with the click. Is there any other way? I'm not up on all the tech surrounding this stuff, but I know there are lots of bands doing it.

The catch here is NO LAPTOPS. I just won't do it. Too much trouble for so few parts. I'd say we need between 6-8 samples to do the whole album as recorded. Is there a piece of hardware designed for bands doing it this way?
Click to expand...

Get an old akai s-2000 sampler and midi-foot-pedalboard (one octave should be enough?), or a small two octave midi keyboard.


Problem solved.

;)

D.Don
 
#3
D.Don said:
Get an old akai s-2000 sampler and midi-foot-pedalboard (one octave should be enough?), or a small two octave midi keyboard.


Problem solved.

;)

D.Don
Click to expand...

I really can't use a keyboard, because I need to be playing bass while most of these samples are going. Optimally, the drummer would be doing this with one of those roland things. But thats a pipe dream.

The akai mentioned above is a midi machine correct? Does this mean the samples will have to be those wierd sounding midi music files? Someone out there school me on all this. I'm not even going to pretend to have a clue.

For an example, have a listen to our song "Unholy Ghost" on our myspace page. Right before the outro you'll hear a little bit of keys. These are the kind of samples I need to do. Nothing too complicated.

Link Removed
 
#5
Is the dummer following just a click to play in tempo, or is he following sequenced tracks off a keyboard? If the latter, then just get a sampler and sequence the parts, or sequence the trigger points if you are planning of sampling whole phrases from the recording.

Triggering by hand will most likely result in the phrase not being in sync, especially playing live, bad monitor mix, etc.

Or how about either the singer or the guitar player getting off the guitar for those little passges and play them on the keyboard.
I don't think the bass player is ideally fro that duty, unless there is no bass on the passage.

Or, if you have a nice keyboard, you could do a split and program a piano/pad sound on the right, and a filling bass sound on the left, so you can fill in with bass.


BTW, your band is awesome, great production on that CD.
 
#6
lefty007 said:
Is the dummer following just a click to play in tempo, or is he following sequenced tracks off a keyboard? If the latter, then just get a sampler and sequence the parts, or sequence the trigger points if you are planning of sampling whole phrases from the recording.

Triggering by hand will most likely result in the phrase not being in sync, especially playing live, bad monitor mix, etc.

Or how about either the singer or the guitar player getting off the guitar for those little passges and play them on the keyboard.
I don't think the bass player is ideally fro that duty, unless there is no bass on the passage.

Or, if you have a nice keyboard, you could do a split and program a piano/pad sound on the right, and a filling bass sound on the left, so you can fill in with bass.


BTW, your band is awesome, great production on that CD.
Click to expand...

thanks!

The split thing is very interesting. That would solve it. What keyboards in the 500$ range will do this (split). Is there any way I can run Reason or Garritan Personal Orchestra on a keyboard without a laptop on stage. Are there any keyboards that will store this software and use it?
 
#8
The easiest way is with a CD with the synth track on one of the stereo sides, and the click track on the other. Send the click and some of the synth to the drummer's monitor, and straight synth to the board. Preferably, the drummer would be the one to trigger this, and all of the click tracks would have a bar or two of countdown

You can also use a MIDI controller like the Behringer FCB1010 to trigger samples from a sampler, but then you have to have the click-track in your monitor and you have to be spot-on with your timing.

If you decide to do it on the fly, like my dumba$$-self did a while ago, your best bet is to get two boards and use one for a bass sound and one for your synth sounds, or get REALLY good at left-hand tapping. I went for option two - it was interesting, to say the least.
 
#9
D.Don said:
Get an old akai s-2000 sampler and midi-foot-pedalboard (one octave should be enough?), or a small two octave midi keyboard.


Problem solved.

;)

D.Don
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. You find them on ebay for only a few hundred or so, usually with a zip drive or similar for storage. A bit of a learning curve for the sampler because it's old and has an itty bitty tiny screen on it. but once it's running it'll keep running. I had one in my rack (when I was playing keys) and it toured the length of Australia dozens of times and never, ever failed. I think they made them out of recycled Russian tanks.
 
#10
Ramsy said:
My thoughts exactly. You find them on ebay for only a few hundred or so, usually with a zip drive or similar for storage. A bit of a learning curve for the sampler because it's old and has an itty bitty tiny screen on it. but once it's running it'll keep running. I had one in my rack (when I was playing keys) and it toured the length of Australia dozens of times and never, ever failed. I think they made them out of recycled Russian tanks.
Click to expand...


Can I store .wav files of the synth parts on the zip drive and use the foot pedal to trigger the files? I read about the unit and the MB storage seems tiny, which made me think I couldn't use the actual recordings of the synth parts.

I still have all the sting/synth stuff from that album on my computer. If I could load those .wav files onto the machine and just trigger them it'd be ok, our drummer stays with the click.
 
#11
Quite seriously, I am thinking of modifying a smaller keyboard, to use for left hand keys, and to strap on stage for function band 80s cover material work. That way I can alternate between lefty bass, and left hand keyboard bass.
 
#12
What about this Roland unit?

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What piece of hardware does this connect to? Seriously guys, I am beyond ignorant of MIDI/Sample hardware. I think I could handle these footpedals, if I had a little rackmounted peice of hardware I could load the synth .wav files onto. Tap tempo would also be a plus, but not totally neccessary.
 
#13
The S2000 with full memory should sample just under 6 minutes in stereo. What's playing the click track for the drummer? If it's a sequencer of any kind you can just hook it up to a sampler and it can all play automatically for you. No need to trigger anything by hand (or foot pedal). There's quite a few hardware options (mostly older stuff) that can take the wear and tear of gigging and do what you're after.
 

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