Performing Live, pre-recorded music but live drums?

DaleRobinson

New member
Hi, I've been making music at home and have recently managed to bring together a group of people to play my songs live, however I'm really not sure how to go about synchronising everything in a live environment. For example, all the samples are going to be pre-recorded therefore the tempo of the songs must remain the same as the tempo in my DAW, else it will just fall apart. With a live drummer, especially, how can I go about making this work? I've been watching videos of other bands and either they are superhuman with timing or they have some kind of in-ear metronome.

This is probably a really simple thing for you guys to answer but I've honestly never known how bands do it so it would be a nice little nugget of information! If the answer is complex, however, please explain in the most dumbed down way possible

Cheers!
 
Your drummer has to be good at playing along with a metronome, Dale, so he or she should be practicing that as much as possible. Your drummer will synch his or her playing to a "click track," and the rest of the group will synch to the drums, thus keeping the live and pre-recorded elements unified. There are devices (and I'm sure nowadays, software) that will let you set it up so the drummer follows the recording, or the recording follows/fluctuates with the drummer, but it is all done through MIDI. If you send one side of a stereo signal with the click to the drummmer's monitor, and the other side (pre-recorded music tracks) to the mains, and run the PA output in mono, the audience will hear only the music and not the click.

Have your drummer start practicing with a click track asap, and read up on setting up a MIDI
click track. One trick to make it easier to play with is to double the tempo.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=programming+and+playing+with+a+midi+clicktrack

GJ
 
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