QE3 Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 My wife's about to hit the road in support of her solo CD. In the past she has had a band behind her, but this time she used many different guest musicians in the studio. Some of them have agreed to play out live for a period of time to support the release but it won't amount to a full band. Besides there are alot of persussive loops (no live drums) on the material which can't be duplicated by a drummer and also a lot of VSTi tracks that a keyboardist can't necessarily duplicate on the road. What options do I have for playback of backing tracks behind a couple of live guitarists and a keyboard player? I know I could go with an 8-track digital tape machine like a DA38/78 or an 8-track digital recorder/mixer with hard drive or even a laptop DAW. Any suggestions or experiences shared would be greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gtoledo3 Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 I know plenty of people use the Roland V-Studios for what you are talking about. You can control the stop start with a footswitch too. They're pretty damn roadworthy. I'm sure any number of the other porta studios of this kind could work out. Destiny's Child used to use a couple 1880's, now they use four 2480's. Want mix/tracking feedback? Checkout "The Fade"- www.grand-designs.cc/mmforum/index.php The soon-to-be home of the "12 Bar-Blues Project" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boosh Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 Our band uses a lot of backing on CD,.....very easy,... the drummer has a remote and starts our stops our 200$ CD player.We a new backing CD for every gig and check the whole cd. That way every CD only gets used twice. Fan, nu pissar jag taggtråd igen. Jag skulle inte satt på räpan. http://www.bushcollectors.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 For stand alone units I'd go with a multitrack TAPE machine (digital, of course) instead of a hard disk one. They are more road-worthy than HDs but need maintenance. You can even record a click track for the drummer and make a decent live mix in an 8 tracks machine such as an ADAT Personally I use a MAC Laptop because I use live Softsynths and have never failed. Músico, Productor, Ingeniero, Tecnólogo Senior Product Manager, América Latina y Caribe - PreSonus at Fender Musical Instruments Company Instagram: guslozada Facebook: Lozada - Música y Tecnología www.guslozada.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gtoledo3 Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 Well, the ADAT and DAT machines will get out of alignment, the heads will wear, and the tape wil slowly degrade throughout your tour, and will eventually glitch up. Also, with the digital portastudio route, you can actually automate parameters. Remember, Milli Vanilli was using a digital tape when they had their famous incident. Want mix/tracking feedback? Checkout "The Fade"- www.grand-designs.cc/mmforum/index.php The soon-to-be home of the "12 Bar-Blues Project" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laurie Z. Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 I can't always take my band with me on the road, so for those gigs, I use the Yamaha QY-700 hardware sequencer, an expensive beast but extremely useful. Keyboardist Ronnie Foster turned me onto this unit, and it's pretty darn cool. My only complaint so far is that I did have a floppy fail on me in the middle of a show. Fortunately, I had the tunes backed up (of course!), and I just made some polite banter while I switched disks. I've also used a CD player with my backing tracks, but I prefer the flexibility with the sequencer. I've seen 'em on Ebay, and there's smaller models, but this is the top of their line and seems to be the most highly regarded. I save my Digi Performer tracks to MIDIfiles and do some instrument and track arranging before it's ready to go. Wish it had a hard drive, though... :) lz www.lauriez.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BP3 Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 I'd go for a small format HD system with at least 8 outs. Access times make tapes difficult unless you wish to stick to a predetermined set list. I prefer to have random access so that we can call songs on the spot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super 8 Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 Get a laptop and an outboard harddrive. Just remember whatever you go with, you better have a backup close by. I REALLY can't recommend tape -and certainly not digital tape. Lets reduce the amount of mechanical devices involved. Those are the things that wear out. CD's too! If that CD player gets bumped -it's gonna look bad. Once you've loaded a song from hard drive to RAM, you should have no problems -make sure you have an uninterruptible power supply too! We don't want spikes or brown-outs! Super 8 Hear my stuff here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QE3 Posted April 3, 2003 Author Share Posted April 3, 2003 Thanks for all the input Guys, Anyone else?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G. Ratte Posted April 4, 2003 Share Posted April 4, 2003 I've run sound at a lot of hiphop shows with the all the music coming off CDRs, mixed with live vocals. The biggest problem was the big bass hits making the CD player skip, until you can isolate it somehow. Even having a guy hold the damn thing in his lap for the duration. Whatever it takes. The absolute cheapest and easiest way would be to use an MP3 player, an iPod or something. You could save the audio on it uncompressed if you're so inclined. They load the audio off the drive and then play it from RAM, so no skipping problems. Or a Minidisc, pretty much the same. A more complex and flexible setup like people mentioned, would be a laptop DAW or portable Roland thing where you can mute different tracks as needed, have a click, etc. If you wanna change tempos and screw with arrangements as you go, you could run the show from Ableton Live or ACID. And if you wanna get really fancy, you could use that to drive a lighting rig or add in some projected video stuff that's synced to audio and whatnot. G. Ratte' http://www.cultdeadcow.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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