Question about playing from a DAW with a live band?!

[willbennett]

Hey

1st thing - I know its properly cheeky to ask something like this as my first post but I promise I'll contribute now I'm registered!!

Ok this is the problem - I'm looking to start a sort of live electro/dubstep band with a mash up between live musicians and pre-made beats, but all of us being broke students we can't really invest in any new gear. Here was my plan....

Have a track playing from Cubase SX with everything intended for the audience panned one way and a click track the other, but this is the actual problem - I need to set up Cubase so the left side is coming out of one USB sound card and the right is coming from another.... I have a numark digital mixer and if i get this set up the drummer could mix in just the right amount of click/track using the cue channel.

Any help would be much appreciated!


and I know most people will probably think live dubstep is a terrible idea so sorry in advance....

[AnalGangstaHo]

Can't really answer your question mate but believe me, live dubstep is far from a terrible idea! Seen Jazzsteppa recently n they were mint. Check 'em out on Myspace/YouTube. Hell, even get in touch with 'em see if they can't give you some tips...

[egoless]

and I know most people will probably think live dubstep is a terrible idea so sorry in advance....

of course NOT! Live music is the way to go...

The best way is to go through a multichannel soundcard and send click track and whatever you want to the band members, and one stereo channel out to the crowd...

[willbennett]

Class, cheers for the responses! and that's cool about Jazzsteppa, heard the name about but had no idea they were a live band! might have to have a look into the tech side of what they do....

[gnome]

and I know most people will probably think live dubstep is a terrible idea so sorry in advance....

of course NOT! Live music is the way to go...

The best way is to go through a multichannel soundcard and send click track and whatever you want to the band members, and one stereo channel out to the crowd...

This might cost him some amount of money but

[egoless]

This might cost him some amount of money but

Well he can always use stereo out, but then he'll have mono output to the crowd...

but generally playing good live with or without a band requires some money

[theedman]

Me and a couple other heads wanna get into something like this an all, my ideas to basically grab a midi controller like this http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/product/8 ... om-49.html and use the sliders and knobs for controlling effect parameters, the pads for one shot samples and they keys to play live synth parts, wether it'll work or not remains to be seen, and i dunno if any of that helped, just an idea

[Sharmaji]

there are a million ways to skin this cat, and it's a battle i personally fight day in, day out... my setup changes from month-to-month, but the end goal is really to find something that gives you a good balance of control, serendipity, excitement, and insulates you from the inevitable meltdown.

and yes, multiple ins and outs on a converter are very necesarry.

some things to check for:

ableton

apc40

glitch mob & EOTO (not specifically dubstep but you definitely want to trainspot what they're doing)

[willbennett]

Thanks again, I'm thinking a bit of investment might be needed!

and great shout about the Glitch Mob, been into them for a while, saw them in Bristol a couple months ago at Run!!! absolutely sick, so much control of everything, as much as any acoustic musician could do imo. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar07/a ... /lemur.htm I think they use these.... would love one but I think the two grand price tag is holding me back!

[gnome]

Thanks again, I'm thinking a bit of investment might be needed!

and great shout about the Glitch Mob, been into them for a while, saw them in Bristol a couple months ago at Run!!! absolutely sick, so much control of everything, as much as any acoustic musician could do imo. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar07/a ... /lemur.htm I think they use these.... would love one but I think the two grand price tag is holding me back!

Don't bother. When the Ipad apps get going this thing will be mad obsolete

[subprime]

I have a related question for anyone checking this thread. Has anyone had experience or heard someone layering a live drummer with their tracks? In particular I'm referring to having the drummer playing in sync with the prerecorded synthetic drums. Do they blend well together when properly mic'd and mixed through a rig? Unfortunately I don't have access to drum mics to test. Any advice appreciated.

[rawali]

I'd say electronic drums layered on top of the real drum can sound quite dope... but if your drummer is slightly off... especially on the snare... it sucks

I have a band, we have a retarded setup... I use one computer with an eidirol ua-25, running all the electronics, i control the looping and shit with an apc, I output into computer 2 that manages ins and outs, (all mic inputs from drums, vocals, bass/specific monitoring outputs to everyone)... last show we did, we tried tried syncing both cards so that computer 2 would send the click... that did not work, the clock was far from stable... so I had to run the click off computer 2 and beatmatch it to the output from computer 1... we are going to build a midi to audio metronome soon enough though... from computer 2 I also take care of the mixdown with the faders of a trigger finger... I also use the trigger finger to for play, stop, record buttons

We chose to use two computers because what I do on computer on uses up a lot of CPU and we want the in outs to be at lowest possible latency...

...this is what it sounded like:

http://soundcloud.com/riskmtl

[Sharmaji]

I have a related question for anyone checking this thread. Has anyone had experience or heard someone layering a live drummer with their tracks? In particular I'm referring to having the drummer playing in sync with the prerecorded synthetic drums. Do they blend well together when properly mic'd and mixed through a rig? Unfortunately I don't have access to drum mics to test. Any advice appreciated.

it can absolutely work. it comes down to the drummer being able to hear everything (and being comfortable playing with prerecorded material), and whoever's balancing the sound getting it work together.

a bit from 2 years ago, with me on drumkit (on the right):



we had no click, just playing to a backing track on a CDJ. for the front-of-house mix, i know there was a ton of sidechaining going on, and a ton of gating on the drums. if you're playing in a small venue, it's not really something you can play around with.

also look into your drummer triggering samples off of the kick and snare-- again, i invoke EOTO as a group that's doing this really well right now.

[egoless]

a bit from 2 years ago, with me on drumkit (on the right):



we had no click, just playing to a backing track on a CDJ.

Nice man! You use in-ear monitoring for listening that backing track while playing?

[Sharmaji]

Nice man! You use in-ear monitoring for listening that backing track while playing?

oh yeah man-- in-ears are among my favorite things ever these days. great for any instrumentalist but especially with drums, you can work w/ the mix & monitor engineers to really dial in the right sound--feels like yr playing on a record.

[rowbatraft]

We are a live dubstep band from Melbourne, Australia called Men Imitating Machines.

This is how we do it.

2 band members, one playng MIDI bass (Roland V-bass) and the other MIDI drums.
2 laptops, both running Ableton (using mostly drumrack, Massive and FM8)
We dont have any pre-sequenced layouts, just do all the triggering on the fly (notes, loops and drum samples + vocoder






http://www.facebook.com/pages/Men-Imita ... 1834818323

Cheers,
Matty from Men Imitating Machines