Live backing tracks & click help

[Ethmahoff]

So my band is gonna start to play shows here soon but we need to find the best way to run our backing tracks and have us all play to a click without breaking our bank. If anyone could suggest any ideas that would be fantastic.

Thanks

 

[concertjunkie]

So my band is gonna start to play shows here soon but we need to find the best way to run our backing tracks and have us all play to a click without breaking our bank. If anyone could suggest any ideas that would be fantastic.

Thanks

Do you have a laptop that you could use?

If so, you could grab a smaller SSD drive ($100>) and an interface (~$100ish) , you could have a click track and backing tracks running from it. If you are using an amp modeler with a midi IN (axe fx, pod hd 500x, etc) you can also program your patch changes from your DAW as well, so you don't have to even worry about changing to Clean/Lead/Rhythm channels, just play

 

[ke7mix]

Before my band got a Macbook with Logic we ran our backing tracks out of an old Ipod, Pan your Click tracks 100% Left or right, then pan the Backing tracks 100% the other direction. We split the left/right signal with a stereo LR TRS cable. The Backing tracks go DI into the house, and the clicks go into a tiny 40$ 2 channel alto mixer. Which lets our drummer adjust the volume of the clicks in his in ears monitors.

 

[eyeswide]

So my band is gonna start to play shows here soon but we need to find the best way to run our backing tracks and have us all play to a click without breaking our bank. If anyone could suggest any ideas that would be fantastic.

Thanks

The best way? A laptop and interface. The totally acceptable/functional way? As said before, an iPod with your click on one side and your back tracks on the other.

 

[Ethmahoff]

Thanks for the replies! With the ipod way could you have it to where four people had the click and not just the drummer?

 

[ZeroS1gnol]

to run our backing tracks and have us all play to a click without breaking our bank.

For this you are going to need wireless in ear systems, so prepare to actually break the bank if you want this...

If you're on a budget, settle for only having the drummer play to click and use the panned click/backing track method as others described with a small mixer.

 

[TheWarAgainstTime]

Quoting myself from a similar thread:

My old band used to practice and play live with backing tracks, and we had a pretty cheap and simple way of doing it.

We used:
-An iPod
-A 1/8" audio cable
-An adapter like this one: Hosa 3.5mm Female TRS to Dual 1/4in TS Stereo Breakout Y-Cable | GuitarCenter and another like this one: Live Wire QMFAFM / QMFAQMF 1/4"(F)-1/4"(F) Adapter | GuitarCenter
-A cheap mixer like this: MultiMix 8 USB FX 8 Channel Mixer with Effects / USB Audio Interface but nearly any cheap mixer with a headphone out will work.
-Good headphones for our drummer. Decent sound isolating headphones or cheaper in-ear monitors are good for this.
-A PA system. Our other guitarist had PA speakers and our bassist had a powered PA head for running backing tracks and bass guitar at practice. Live we used the house PA system.

When you make the backing tracks, put the track itself into both the left and right side of the mix and then a click track into only the left side. Find a blend of click and backing track that's comfortable for your drummer. Give the drummer a couple of bars of just click track so he can get a feel for the starting tempo of the song before counting you in.

Upload the whole track(s) into the iPod. Run the iPod into the splitter cable, then right/red side of it into the dual female adapter, then from there you can use a regular 1/4" cable to hook up the backing track to the FOH/PA system. The left/black side of the splitter cable will go into one of the Line inputs on the little mixer. From there, the drummer can control how loud the backing track/click he's getting are going to be in his headphones without affecting the track going to the FOH as well as keep the click/backing track panned to the center rather than just the left side of his headphones. If the headphone out on the mixer doesn't give enough volume for your drummer's taste/needs, you can also use a small headphone amp to compensate. Keep the volume on the iPod as high as you can without getting any clipping or harsh sounds.

My band had the backing/click tracks all on separate albums on the iPod, that way songs wouldn't bleed into each other. However, you also have the option to have your entire show on one track with time in between each song or have stuff playing between songs that lead into each song so you never have to go completely silent during your performance.

Only the drummer will be playing to a click with this method, but it's definitely cost effective

 

[ScurrilousNerd]

Quoting myself from a similar thread:



Only the drummer will be playing to a click with this method, but it's definitely cost effective

Hey man - I know this is a necro-bump at this point, but is there anyway to do this without a mixer? I have the cables you mentioned but when I plug in my drummer's headphones only sound comes out of the left headphone. Any ideas?

Thanks