Click tracks.

[saulhudson]

I've not longed joined a new band and the singer is knocking up click tracks for the drummer as some of the songs have keyboards in them?

I have no experience around these but all she seems to be doing basically is finding a Midi file online, and panning the 'click' to one side of the spectrum so that only the drummer can hear it, (either through phones, or at practice through a monitor next to him.) and the other sounds, (usually keyboard) come out through the P.A.

It seems a bit crude to me and I was wondering if there's another way, or is this indeed correct?

I also wondered if this could be used to add other guitar parts effectively to fatten out the sound instead of one guitar?

Apologies if this is all basic stuff but I have no experience of working with these kind of tracks, and to be honest some sound a bit cheesy, (Soundwise) and using a track such as this seems to defeat the idea of a band really, although at times the ketboard parts do sound pretty good in context.

If anyone has any click tracks, or knows of any good sites where I could hear and get some I'd be very gratefull.

[Danny1969]

A click track is the only way I know of for a live band to stay in time with a pre recorded track or midi file. The way she is doing it is the simplest crudest way but fine if the PA is running in mono ... ie click panned one side from stereo backing track and all other parts panned the other side and sent to the PA. The problem is you don't have a lot of control balancing more than one keyboard \ brass \ extra part as they are all stemmed together.

A more elaborate way is to use a playback device that has multiple outs ... then the click goes out on ouput 1 to the drummer, piano out on ouput 2, brass out on output 3 etc. In this manner you have as much control as you would if the keys and brass were being played by real people in terms of getting the mix right ... esp if you have someone mixing FOH for you. The FOH guy will normally cue up the next track once he gets a signal from the drummer indicating that he is ready for the intro click of the next song.

There are quite a few devices that have multiple outs, Boss, Korg, Yam mulitrackers, laptop with audio interface, Alesis ADAT etc.
Having a device with midi clock would be good as virtually all lights nowdays are DMX based, so if you sync the backing track via midi to a DMX controller the lights will be perfectly in time with the music. Not just in terms of flashing in time like sound to light but the speed of the scanners, the sequence and the blackout at the end of the song.. DMX light shows are one of the reasons big bands like U2 use a click, some things wouldn't be possible otherwise.
There are loads of quality midi files on the net but how good they sound depends on the quality of the keyboard or sound module you play them through ... so through a computer soundcard they might sound cheap and cheesy but through something like a Korg Triton they might sound awesome. For live you only want to use the minimal amount of keys or brass to complement the song. Too much and it will sound like Karaoke

One easy way to get some totally realistic files would be to get hold of the leaked Rock Band stems on the net. That way you wouldn't have a midi file of the keyboard part from a Killers song for example but the actual part from the record. All the songs have drums, keys, guitars, bass and vox on separate tracks so all you would need to do is mute the stuff you don't need like vocals, bass and drums etc

[Grunfeld.]

Originally Posted by saulhudson

...to be honest some [of these tracks] sound a bit cheesy, (Soundwise) and using a track such as this seems to defeat the idea of a band really, although at times the ketboard parts do sound pretty good in context.

The cheesy sound might be because your singer is using a cheapo sound card to produce the keyboard sounds. An easy way to improve this would be, for example (if it was an organ), to use the MIDI file to trigger a quality soft synth like NI's B4. Also, if the MIDI file sounds basically OK but crap in places don't forget that you can re-write the crap bits! It's extra work but not much and it makes the difference.

We've used click tracks in the way you have described and it works fine. The biggest problem we've had with it is that only our original drummer can play to a click track. The other drummers have been crap at it. They are not bad at drums but totally useless at playing to a click.

[saulhudson]

Thanx for your replies guys, yeah I'm not sure what soundcard she has or indeed her set up, (I think I heard her say she used Cakewalk on the PC) one crucial thing I did forget to mention is she records them to Mini Disc!

As far as the drummer we looked specifically for a guy that could drum to a click if needed so there's no issues with that.

[saulhudson]

Originally Posted by Danny1969

One easy way to get some totally realistic files would be to get hold of the leaked Rock Band stems on the net. That way you wouldn't have a midi file of the keyboard part from a Killers song for example but the actual part from the record. All the songs have drums, keys, guitars, bass and vox on separate tracks so all you would need to do is mute the stuff you don't need like vocals, bass and drums etc

Hmmm they sound cool, where would i even look for these?

[stringsthings]

Originally Posted by saulhudson

I've not longed joined a new band and the singer is knocking up click tracks for the drummer as some of the songs have keyboards in them?

I have no experience around these but all she seems to be doing basically is finding a Midi file online, and panning the 'click' to one side of the spectrum so that only the drummer can hear it, (either through phones, or at practice through a monitor next to him.) and the other sounds, (usually keyboard) come out through the P.A.

It seems a bit crude to me and I was wondering if there's another way, or is this indeed correct?

I also wondered if this could be used to add other guitar parts effectively to fatten out the sound instead of one guitar?

Apologies if this is all basic stuff but I have no experience of working with these kind of tracks, and to be honest some sound a bit cheesy, (Soundwise) and using a track such as this seems to defeat the idea of a band really, although at times the ketboard parts do sound pretty good in context.

If anyone has any click tracks, or knows of any good sites where I could hear and get some I'd be very gratefull.

are you referring to using clicks live? or for recording?

[jim_branning]

well if the keyboard-parts/click playback live is from minidisk then you have no choice but to do it the way she does it

if you used a laptop that'd offer different options