Sample triggering with metronome/sequencer capabilities for stage work?

[Naigewron]

Hi!

We've got a specific need in my band. We have some songs that we play live to a prerecorded backing track (containing string sections, some percussion, etc). Now, this obviously means that I have to play to a click, which isn't a problem. However, the way we're doing it now is that we start the track, and I punch start my metronome in time with the track. This sort of works, but it has a few definite disadvantages:

- If I'm not accurate in my button punching, the click will not sync up to the backing track
- For this to work, we can't have me starting to play along with the track, since I need a few seconds to get the click started
- If the backing track doesn't have very distinct chord changes, a riff or some form of percussion, it's virtually impossible to find out when to start the metronome

What I want is to be able to start the sample from behind the drum kit (preferrably by hitting a pad, so that I don't need to fiddle around with buttons), and this will start the backing track and a correctly synced up click track, but only the backing track will be sent to the PA (the click is only for me). We've looked into the Roland SPD-S, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't directly offer the capability to send one track to the PA and another track to my little mixer (if I'm wrong, please correct me on this, because in so many other ways, the SPD-S is ideal). We could always pan the stracks left and right and send one channel to me and the other to the PA, but that's not exactly optimal.

So, can anyone offer some suggestions? I'm thinking we may simply need to trigger this stuff from a cumputer via MIDI, and then send the separate tracks to separate outputs, but I was hoping to avoid having to use a full-blown computer for this.

[diosdude]

I don't know the exact specs or capabilities of your sequencer but i'll give you some advice. If you are going to replace a human with a machine, in this case a sequencer, i would advise you to make that machine the overall timekeeper in your composition and then you should play to the tempo IT plays. In other words, you need to program some kind of percussion effects or an actual drum composition into your arrangement. It doesn't have to be drum set either, you can program in orchestral snare, latin percussion, tympani, triangle, glockenspiel, whatever. Point is, don't expect your machine to know what the humans are playing, all its going to do is start playing it's program when you command it to. Again, make IT the timekeeper. Make the composition the click track.

[Naigewron]

I don't know the exact specs or capabilities of your sequencer but i'll give you some advice. If you are going to replace a human with a machine, in this case a sequencer, i would advise you to make that machine the overall timekeeper in your composition and then you should play to the tempo IT plays. In other words, you need to program some kind of percussion effects or an actual drum composition into your arrangement. It doesn't have to be drum set either, you can program in orchestral snare, latin percussion, tympani, triangle, glockenspiel, whatever. Point is, don't expect your machine to know what the humans are playing, all its going to do is start playing it's program when you command it to. Again, make IT the timekeeper. Make the composition the click track.

The sequencer will be the timekeeper, that's a given, but we don't want to have to add timekeeping to it that the audience will hear, so the click track will be strictly for us. I am in no way expecting the machine to know what the humans are playing.

[Trip McNealy]

So, can anyone offer some suggestions? I'm thinking we may simply need to trigger this stuff from a cumputer via MIDI, and then send the separate tracks to separate outputs, but I was hoping to avoid having to use a full-blown computer for this.

Ah, you might have to.. it's not that hard.. my band leader uses his laptop for this purpose. It has ProTools LE loaded up with the backing tracks and click. He routes my click to one output just for me and i use headphones to hear it.

Works flawlessly.

[Naigewron]

Yeah, I was just hoping to avoid having to drag a laptop around to dirty stages, risking it falling down, getting wet or simply disappearing.