Running live backing tracks

Pinkycramps

Experienced
Well, my band is making a jump into some technology, or at least we are planning on it. We have reached a decision to go 100% IEM, and also that we are going to augment our on stage sound with some tracks. I am now in a 1 guitar band which has some real advantages for me, and a few drawbacks that are obvious. We have a great keys player, and we play a lot of keys/synth heavy music. We are going to run tracks of backup guitar, synth, synth bass, or percussion as required by song. This also means we have to play to a click, or at least our drummer does. We are a 5 piece band right now.

SO... who else does this? How do you do it? Do you just run the tracks on a MAC out to your board? Do you use a hardware sequencer? What software do you use or prefer? I'm sure there are many approaches to this, and I'd like to learn as much as I can before making the jump. But... I'm in shopping mode and need to get this project going.. so... help a dude out with your info. Thanks my Axe-brotha's!
 
I know a band that does a lot of samples and backing tracks. They use a Roland SPD.
The backing tracks, samples are created in a daw and exported as waves into the SPD.
The drummer creates a stereo file with a click panned to the right side, samples or backing track panned to the left side.
The drummer uses one earbud with the click, the left output on the SPD goes to DI box to the snake to FOH console. Much more reliable than a puter for live, you don't have to worry about a computer lag/crash or latency issues.
 
I know a band that does a lot of samples and backing tracks. They use a Roland SPD.
The backing tracks, samples are created in a daw and exported as waves into the SPD.
The drummer creates a stereo file with a click panned to the right side, samples or backing track panned to the left side.
The drummer uses one earbud with the click, the left output on the SPD goes to DI box to the snake to FOH console. Much more reliable than a puter for live, you don't have to worry about a computer lag/crash or latency issues.
We do something very similar to this at my church only we use an iPad. There is an app called BackTrax that works very well for this purpose and the iPad has been 100% stable over almost 2 years. I guess you could use an iPhone but screen size would be an issue for me. The drawback to this is that you are using pre-mixed tracks so you have no control over individual track level or eq. The ultimate way is to use a MacBook Pro (I feel more stable than a Windows machine) running Ableton Live into an interface and individual outs to the board. This allows each channel the same flexibility as if they were live tracks with all the flexibility that entails. There are videos on Youtube of how one or two churches do this. You can also set up Ableton so you can adjust arrangements on the fly.
 
When we used to run backing tracks, I just ran them off of the iPod. I had the music panned hard left, and the click panned hard right. I used an app called Play On Cue. Giebler Enterprises Play On Cue Application The main advantage to the app is that it automatically advances to the next track and the pauses. All I had to do was tap the screen to start the next song. We ran that way for about 2 years no problem. I'm far from being an expert on the subject though. I know there are some very cool things you can do if you run off of the computer. I'll let the others explain all of that.
 
We have been doing this for 3 years but I have the advantage of having drums on the backing track. I will put drums, keys, accents, bass on the backing track in stereo then 2 guitarist will play variations of acoustic, GR55, dual electric (myself using Fractal) and we have a live female vocalist. As well MIDI controls presets on 10 or 11 devices for us as well as our light show.

Since the meter is part of the song I've never messed with click tracks. We started with Logic but it really came together when we started rendering to 1 stereo track and using a program called Showbuddy.

In this song we have 1 GR55 Synth Guitar going to board with the guitar sound driving a Marshall Head direct to board. I'm playing an acoustic thru the Fractal. Totally silent stage using IEM only(except for acoustic sounds). On this one we use a simple shaker to keep us in time. You can get pretty creative.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dckWNkQHhI
 
We run everything from my Mac using Reaper. Automated patch changes, and a few MIDI backing tracks. At the moment we are drummer-less, so we are throwing those in for now too. When we DO have a drummer, we are a three piece, so I like to have a few strings, and keys to make things sound a bit bigger. Not too much, though, cause I don't like a flooded mix.
 
Oh, and we are currently using the output jack to a XLR Y cable, but we will soon be getting a USB computer audio I/O.
 
With my recent Prog/Pop/Synth-Metal Project CHAOS INSIDE we run a lot of preproduced synth tracks.

I use a Laptop with Studio One 2 Professional with a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, which also delievers three different Stereo InEar Mixes for my drummer (including click) my bassplayer and me (vocals, guitar) and a Stereo mix for the FOH-Mixer.

The dsp-powered mixing Engine works latency- free and all of the in- and outputs of the interface are balanced.
Until now the unit hasn't even one breakdown, it's rock-solid, the FOH-Desk can have each of our Signals balanced without disturbing our monitor mix......
 
We do this on a couple of tracks for things we can't do well onstage with the members we have. We do the Roland SPD as well with the hard panning of click and music. We are 100% IEM as well. One big difference for us is we use click on almost every song throughout the show. Some songs that have major tempo changes so the drummer either doesn't start the click until we are ready to slide into that part, or turns it off when we are getting into the parts that change. After a couple of years of doing it we've gotten really accustomed to having the click and I prefer playing with it, although there is a certain "freedom" on the few songs where we don't use it :)
 
A few years ago we had about 70 songs worked up and sequenced all bass thru a Roland keyboard. We used a click to start the songs (for the drummer) then the bass kinda kept everything glued together. I've had bad experiences with IEM's but also never tried some of the higher end solutions
 
Cool. Thanks dudes. Well, this weekend I dove in and bought a Macbook Pro (15" Retina, 512 G SSD drive, 16 G ram) and Ableton Live 9. I saw a ton of YouTubes (of mainly churches) using that setup. I have a ton of learning to do. I'm now really wondering about how to set this up from a hardware standpoint. A couple of questions I still have:

1. I want Ableton to change my patches for me most of the time, but I still want my MFC on the stage for improve/ad lib stuff, plus I will obviously need my expression pedals.
2. We have live keys/synth, and might need midi connections there too, either for patch changes, or for midi tracks to sequence keys for us.

So the interface and midi routing is next on my mind... how to do all that? I use FASLink for my MFC right now. I assume that won't be a factor or concern, but then can I just go midi over USB from the Mac to my AXE, or should I use a more involved interface unit out of the Mac to route midi through, and then daisy chain midi devices? ( I know this just came up in another thread in the AxeFX forum section... I'm still searching for the answer a bit)
 
We have been doing this for 3 years but I have the advantage of having drums on the backing track. I will put drums, keys, accents, bass on the backing track in stereo then 2 guitarist will play variations of acoustic, GR55, dual electric (myself using Fractal) and we have a live female vocalist. As well MIDI controls presets on 10 or 11 devices for us as well as our light show.

Since the meter is part of the song I've never messed with click tracks. We started with Logic but it really came together when we started rendering to 1 stereo track and using a program called Showbuddy.

In this song we have 1 GR55 Synth Guitar going to board with the guitar sound driving a Marshall Head direct to board. I'm playing an acoustic thru the Fractal. Totally silent stage using IEM only(except for acoustic sounds). On this one we use a simple shaker to keep us in time. You can get pretty creative.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dckWNkQHhI

Very nice!
 
Cool. Thanks dudes. Well, this weekend I dove in and bought a Macbook Pro (15" Retina, 512 G SSD drive, 16 G ram) and Ableton Live 9. I saw a ton of YouTubes (of mainly churches) using that setup. I have a ton of learning to do. I'm now really wondering about how to set this up from a hardware standpoint. A couple of questions I still have:

1. I want Ableton to change my patches for me most of the time, but I still want my MFC on the stage for improve/ad lib stuff, plus I will obviously need my expression pedals.
2. We have live keys/synth, and might need midi connections there too, either for patch changes, or for midi tracks to sequence keys for us.

So the interface and midi routing is next on my mind... how to do all that? I use FASLink for my MFC right now. I assume that won't be a factor or concern, but then can I just go midi over USB from the Mac to my AXE, or should I use a more involved interface unit out of the Mac to route midi through, and then daisy chain midi devices? ( I know this just came up in another thread in the AxeFX forum section... I'm still searching for the answer a bit)
I'd love to know about this too. How did you set it up?
 
You will have a MIDI instrument track in Ableton (I have used Logic then Showbuddy but most DAW have this capability). You will trigger a PC (program change) message where you want instruments to change patches. Each instrument will have it's own channel. One MIDI cable will handle 16 channels. Whatever you are using for an audio card will most likely have MIDI out. Your computer fires the MIDI signal which begins the chain, that is usually hooked to your audio card via USB or Firewire. You go MIDI out to your first device. From that device you use the Thru or Out to go to 2nd device and continue the chain until all instruments you want auto patch selection are covered.

It's awesome. In less than a second we would set patches on 2 Roland GR55's, an Eventide, Kurzweil Rumor, Fractal, Marshall Head, VoiceLive 2 as well as run the lights. When a lead comes up I don't step on any buttons anymore it just switches. Opens a new world of accuracy and versatility.
 
You will have a MIDI instrument track in Ableton (I have used Logic then Showbuddy but most DAW have this capability). You will trigger a PC (program change) message where you want instruments to change patches. Each instrument will have it's own channel. One MIDI cable will handle 16 channels. Whatever you are using for an audio card will most likely have MIDI out. Your computer fires the MIDI signal which begins the chain, that is usually hooked to your audio card via USB or Firewire. You go MIDI out to your first device. From that device you use the Thru or Out to go to 2nd device and continue the chain until all instruments you want auto patch selection are covered.

It's awesome. In less than a second we would set patches on 2 Roland GR55's, an Eventide, Kurzweil Rumor, Fractal, Marshall Head, VoiceLive 2 as well as run the lights. When a lead comes up I don't step on any buttons anymore it just switches. Opens a new world of accuracy and versatility.
Thanks for that. Very useful! I was also wondering about connecting the Axe's Midi In and ethernet ports simultaneously, so that I can also use the MFC-101. Apparently this is possible, though I've yet to try it.
 
...I have used Logic then Showbuddy...
Showbuddy looks interesting, though the MIDI event editor seems a little cumbersome compared to (say) the Logic event editor. How is it in use? Stable, etc? Thanks.
 
Now this gets me all excited. Up to the point where I have to set midi points on each track, for each midi device I want to automate.

I'm not getting any younger & my patience for this type of mundane task seems to have faded! lmao ;)

Would still like to link my logic pro X to axe FX to lighting (one day i'll get it & sort it all out)

\m/
 
Showbuddy looks interesting, though the MIDI event editor seems a little cumbersome compared to (say) the Logic event editor. How is it in use? Stable, etc? Thanks.

Couldn't pay me enough to use Logic Event Editor again for MIDI Program Changes. Showbuddy actually winds up making Logic the cumbersome and less accurate one. That's coming from a Logic slut. I love Logic. But SB is so intuitive in the way it handles MIDI. Such a plus to be able to drag a MIDI event while looking at the expanded waveform you're about to drop it on. You can align your MIDI events to beats, transients, starts, stops far easier. As well your Program Changes (Patches) wind up literally being presets whereas you basically drag and drop a PC or CC that you have created right to the location on the track you want. Then fine tune it while you play. If your lead effect switches a bit early or late it's so much more visible to adjust than the event editor or the little symbol that shows up on the MIDI instrument track in Logic.

Stability: In use yes... very stable. After upgrading to Yosemite the program gives a crash message when you actually get through with it and shut down but it's a non-issue since you just quit. Something in Mavericks broke a key USB factor that SB had to do a workaround. But it has never let us down.

Thanks for that. Very useful! I was also wondering about connecting the Axe's Midi In and ethernet ports simultaneously, so that I can also use the MFC-101. Apparently this is possible, though I've yet to try it.

Can't answer that but I don't think you would have a problem. I have controlled MIDI devices from 2 sources simultaneously before. As in automatically while still having manual input.
 
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