rob aylestone
Moderator
We've always played totally live, but one of the band members has been ill recently and he really struggles with his hands. It's not going to get better, and will certainly get worse. At the moment we have enough songs for 2 x 60 mins, and a few extra's just in case. What I have done is take the problematic songs and use some of his pre-illness tracks from recordings of the band playing live and put a click to the song, and then, as we use in-ears, we've got click, and his note perfect tracks for the show. We use personal mixers normally with our own PA. The rehearsals with the clicks show the system will work, and he can play bits he feels able, but the twiddly bits he doesn't have to worry about. He still sings, and while the switch to IEMs for him will be tough, the guitarist is happy with the switch and me and the drummer have been IEM for years.
The problem we MAY have though is when we do festivals in the summer. No real sound check, probably a line check and a fiddle during the first song by the Foh person - who might be our sound man, but sometimes the PA people are a possessive and hate guest engineers.
Clearly we can provide them with click left and track right, but relying on them to get the click to our ears and the track to the audience just worries me. Without us hearing the click, it will be a mess.
Does anyone do this, and how problematic has it been. We don't have time to take even our mixer and kit and hand them a left/right. it's the usual festival thing - pretty well everything preset so just a ten minute changeover, and then a quick line check and go.
The problem we MAY have though is when we do festivals in the summer. No real sound check, probably a line check and a fiddle during the first song by the Foh person - who might be our sound man, but sometimes the PA people are a possessive and hate guest engineers.
Clearly we can provide them with click left and track right, but relying on them to get the click to our ears and the track to the audience just worries me. Without us hearing the click, it will be a mess.
Does anyone do this, and how problematic has it been. We don't have time to take even our mixer and kit and hand them a left/right. it's the usual festival thing - pretty well everything preset so just a ten minute changeover, and then a quick line check and go.