Playing live to a click.

Guitargodgt

Guitargodgt

New member
Worked fantastic except the computer glitched real bad for some reason at one point (it was running the guitar as well, the guitar glitched out too but it wasn't that long of a glitch). haha

Will be doing it again though. I never had to worry about being off time with the guitar.
 
Blues_N_Cues said:
when you say "glitched" were you running asio? what were the buffer settings & latency?
processor speed & RAM?
Click to expand...

I'm sure there is a better way of running it. The laptop I was using is just the internet machine at my house and I was using reaper. I'm not a reaper guru. I was running a toneport UX2.

The crazy thing was I was using bounced down stereo tracks. Click in the right, dry guitar in the left and it STILL glitched. lol

My plan in the future is to not even bother with a DAW at all and just run the tracks with some sort of media player.

I'm pretty DURP with windows at this point so I have no idea how to squeeze any more power out of this thing.
 
is it a band setting?
If it's solo I'm not seeing why you'd need a click unless your time is just freakishly bad. A little bit of fluctuation in a solo setting wouldn't really matter.

Wait ....... are you using a looper? I could see a click being useful for that.
In a band setting we used to send the drummer a click so we could have prerecorded MIDI events come in at the right spots.

ahhhh .... I see in your last post you're using tracks ...... what do you have? ... I'm curious ..... I do the solo thing primarily these days.
 
We didn't have a guitar player, I posted about this a while ago. We ran a live reamp situation where the guitars were played via the computer.

The gig was really ghetto so even if we had a guitarist hearing him would have been an issue (no monitors, only vocals were fed to the house), with this setup I was always on time except (like I said) when the computer went DURR. haha

It was kind of nice, no pressure really.

In the future I'm thinking the other side will be fed to the house for strings and crap that we don't want to find a player for (they are very minimal so a keyboard player would be bored most of the time).
 
I've worked in a few bands that had certain parts sequenced so I had to play with a click. While I am comfortable playing with a click and have done so in the studio for many years - I found that playing live, I needed so much click in the phones that it really damaged my hearing in my left ear (the ear that took the feed).

The worst crash and burn using a click happend back in the mid 70's (mind you that was before MIDI and sequencers, etc.) The band supplemented harmonies and some horn parts useing a cassette tape that was hidden inside a dummy keyboard. The concept worked very well and rarely did people even realize some parts were fake.

However, one night at the start of a song called "Disco Infernal" which starts with a long, dynamic horn intro - the guitar player was so loud, I could not hear the click or even hear the horns (I had no monitor). I had to follow the guitar player (hoping he could hear the horns) - well he was rushing so bad that the whole song feel apart. We had to actually stop the song, re-wind the tape and try again.

This was in a very crowded club with a couple hundred people and at least 50 dancers on the dance floor looking very confused. After that - word got out that we were "fake" (again this was before sequencing was the norm) and it really hurt our bookings - the band folded shortly thereafter.
 
Xdrummer said:
I've worked in a few bands that had certain parts sequenced so I had to play with a click. While I am comfortable playing with a click and have done so in the studio for many years - I found that playing live, I needed so much click in the phones that it really damaged my hearing in my left ear (the ear that took the feed).

The worst crash and burn using a click happend back in the mid 70's (mind you that was before MIDI and sequencers, etc.) The band supplemented harmonies and some horn parts useing a cassette tape that was hidden inside a dummy keyboard. The concept worked very well and rarely did people even realize some parts were fake.

However, one night at the start of a song called "Disco Infernal" which starts with a long, dynamic horn intro - the guitar player was so loud, I could not hear the click or even hear the horns (I had no monitor). I had to follow the guitar player (hoping he could hear the horns) - well he was rushing so bad that the whole song feel apart. We had to actually stop the song, re-wind the tape and try again.

This was in a very crowded club with a couple hundred people and at least 50 dancers on the dance floor looking very confused. After that - word got out that we were "fake" (again this was before sequencing was the norm) and it really hurt our bookings - the band folded shortly thereafter.
Click to expand...
Wow! You got Millie Vanillie'd in the 70's! You guys were ahead of your time.:D
 
I have a mini disc player in my stage rack and keep all of our 'sequenced' songs on mini discs... I feed the right side (keyboards, horns, etc) to a half-normalled patchbay which routes a signal to my headphone amp and another to FOH. The left side (click only) just routes to my headphones... I can mix my own headphone levels of band, sequences, vox and click... Works like a charm! :)
 
I think that when playing live to a click, it's OK if you're playing a cover, or a ballad, something that will get ruined if you play slower or faster. But when you play live with a band, usually you should go with the flow and the adrenaline, you don't have to be trapped by a click...
 
grimtraveller said:
Do you not think he has a point about playing live, though ? In the sense that live is looser and more open to unplanned changes of pace.
Click to expand...

I honestly think it depends on the genre. I saw God Forbid live and they most definitely played to a click. Saw In Flames a different time and it was the same deal (understandably as they use a ton of synths live). Another heavy prog type band I recorded played live to a click (broke up), and the band in the video above called Divinity (also heavy) plays live to a click.

I'm playing heavy crap live so I'm opting to go for the same route.

I don't view a click track as a trap what so ever for the stuff I'm playing. I've actually gotten to the point where I'm almost uncomfortable without one. Tempo changes are already programmed in and everything goes along fine.

I don't share the viewpoint that a click is either a trap or restricting at all.
 
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