Tracking during live shows

Denalihighway

Was just about to post this when I saw the thread about Coldplay ...undeterred, i'll post anyway...

me and the band will be finished our album in the next couple of months. It'll be richly produced (but not overly so) and we're a 3-piece so we were intending recruiting members but have recently started investigating in getting some hardware for tracking some synth lines etc at shows.

Since it's quite techy and it would involve the producer providing the tracks from the mixes (I assume), I thought the Production forum might be a place to find out what a good route would be regarding getting this going?

Someone on the instruments forum recommended putting them on as WAVs on something like a Roland SPD-S, sounded good but I'm a newbie to this realm so would like to find out if there's any consensus or other options.
Thanks

PaulBrewer

It all come down to one element - How's the drummer with a click? He needs to be super tight and super consistent otherwise there's gonna be red faces!

This should be a thing any producer could sort for you.

progsound

Yea like Paul said this is very doable nowdays but will depend on your drummer being tight with the click track or you will be out of sync.

There are a couple of ways you can go about implementing it live i will tell how my band do it.

We are 3 in the band 2 guitars and vocals. Bass, drums and synths tracks are set up in cubase project as well as a midi track which controls our amps via a midi loop switcher and our effects units via midi so no tapdancing during a show the computer does it for us.

Now i have the outputs of my interface routed so that the FOH gets a stereo Mix minus the click then i have two seperate stero mixes going to two in ear monitoring systems so both myself and the other guitarist have our own custom in ear mixs that we control. I also have another template set up incase the FOH wants individual elements of the mix i will use the remaining 4 outs on my interface plus the 8 ouputs on my ADA 8000 in this case so the FOH has seperate elements such as kick snare ect (I learnt this the hard way when we showed up for a gig and the FOH refused to take a stereo out as he wouldent have any control)

In terms of hardware im running Cubase 4 on a laptop custom built for audio by ADK into saffire pro 26 + ADA 8000 (if required) out to FOH. There is also in the rack a signal splitter for the mics on the guitar cabs and the vocals for our own monitoring chain. And well lots of other stuff which probably is not relevent to the question asked.

Our way is pretty complicated actauly and is probably overkill if you have a drummer but just thought id share anyways.

jtsuited

this is probably the place to voice my concerns over this-

ok so if you have a click you're gonna need a)a very loud monitor mix for the drummer or b) headphones for the drummer with a click in it..

i've never done it live but surely using headphones drumming live is going to ruin your hearing?
I know when I used to track drums I'd have to take regular breaks because my ears would start to hurt. I can only imagine what it'd be like doing a gig for an hour and a half with headphones on while drumming.

Or I'm probably missing something here?

progsound

There is no problem if you are using quality in ear headphones as they typically acheive -26db sound isolation so your ears will be well protected unless some tool blasts the volume on your in ear mix then your in trouble. But if you have your monitor mix at a sensible level you will be fine.

unclebill98

Lesson one. Never use IEM's unless you 100% trust the man sending you the signal.

As everyone has sent already the drummer would need if **** together. Simple mp3 player on stage di'd into the FOH is the easiest way of doing things, with a mix sent to the drummer. If the drummer needs an added click then your going to have to use something a little more complex.

Denalihighway

interesting stuff, many ways to skin a cat obviously. Yeah our lad is good with a click, wouldnt need it on every tune hopefully so would be nice to keep some of the set click-free to keep it cool for him and keep some semblance of spontanaiety about the show for our own sanity and the audience.

The monitors would be an issue for sure too - it would be good if he didnt have have be totally cut off for the whole show but I guess thats something you have to live with.

The mp3 player route sounds great obviously if one could get away with it. No doubt whatever route we take it'll take some serious rehearsing with the gear to get it right and perhaps a few red-faced incidents live too.

Progsound, sounds great but I was lost before your 4th paragraph I should probably be ashamed enough not to admit that...

if6was9

The easiest way of going about it would probably be mp3 player with one side the tracks minus the click, the other with the click, send the side with the click to the drummer and the other to the Foh- they don't require stereo really.
If I were to do it I'd probably go along the same path as Progsound- interface and computer using the outs for flexibility and control