Playing With Myself

[WithThisSword]

Okay, here's a question for all of you out there. Recently, I've been playing with the idea of doing a solo project for small bars/coffee shops. I'm planning on playing alone, with backing tracks coming through a laptop. I've got about a billion questions, but mostly, how many of you have experience with it, and do you like it, and also what's the best way to go for drums and bass sounds? I'm gonna pick up a Boss loop pedal soon. I've already got the line6 DL4, but I really like that for the delays, so I haven't used it much for looping. But let me know if theres anything I'm really missing, or if I should just stick with the band I'm in for now.

[aliensporebomb]

I had a gig where me and a keyboard player used tracks I'd recorded on the DAW saved as AIFF files to an iPod and that went into the mixer.

It worked WAY better than I anticipated. He also had a laptop with sequencer for some other tracks and together we sounded like a full band, quite fun.

For looping I'm using an EH Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai for a couple of reasons: one, it's 30 seconds of looping, two; it's stereo and three; it's 24-bit recording quality.

That being said there are a lot of different ways you can go. In reality, the ipod was supposed to be the "backup" if the laptop hard drive went
down but having both allowed us to play a wider range of material.

[WithThisSword]

Is the Memory Man pretty easy to use?

[aliensporebomb]

Oh yes, I'd say so. Easy enough to use on a dark stage. It's quite a nice pedal and looping is just part of what you can do with it.

I ended one of my shows last summer by reversing the loop I'd been playing
and slowed it until it stopped. That got some applause....

[WithThisSword]

What kind of PA setup are you using, and how big are the shows you're playing?

[BoredGuitarist7]

Misleading title...

[Nik]

I did some gigs as a duo with another guitar player a few years ago. We played a bunch of Metal covers and originals with backing tracks on a Yamaha QY100. The backing sequences were mostly drums, with a few bits of keyboard and bass that I could not manage to fill on guitar. I played keyboard intros and occasional solos on MIDIguitar, and mostly did the rhythem parts doubled with a MIDIguitar bass sound on the bottom two strings. The other guy did all the leads and fancy stuff.

It worked pretty well. Worst aspects of using the QY100 was the tiny display and the fact that I could only get about three songs worth into its memory at a time. And it took a couple of minutes to reload its internal memory from SD card.

As for loopers - I didn't use one back then.

[Frets99]

Sometimes, I invite myself to my gigs.

[ggm1960]

There's all kinds of ways to create and use backing tracks. My system is somewhat elaborate and we're a three piece band (guitar/keys, bass, drums).

I'm using Digital Performer 6 on a MacBook Pro. DP is especially well suited to live performance because all the song sequences can be contained within one project file. Also the Commands window allows me to switch between sequences by sending patch changes from one of my synths (I typically spin the jog wheel to change songs). Additionally there is a footswitch attached to the midi interface to start sequences or stop them if we fall out of sync.

I've spent an incredible amount of time creating all the tracks myself. I have audio (guitar, vocal harmony and soft synth bounced) tracks and midi (keys/synth, and control) tracks.

The project files run from an external Glyph PortaGig 320GB FW800 hard drive. There's a Hercules firewire 400 interface for audio output and a MOTU Midi Timepiece AV-USB for distributing midi to external devices.

In my current setup midi instrument data is sent to external synths (Korg TR88, Roland Fantom XR and Roland XP30) while midi control data is sent to a Digitech GSP1101 guitar processor, Antares AVP-1 vocal processor, Lexicon MX200 vocal effects processor and the lighting controller. Control data generally consists of patch change messages that occur at the beginning and during songs.

As complex as this system may appear to be it really works well and is a lot more than just backing tracks, vocal effects come and go as needed and there's no pedal 'tap dancing' at times when I'm playing guitar because patches are switched automatically. Also the lighting is sequenced with it's own track.

It takes a while to hook it all up but I've made custom snake cables and everything is clearly labeled to make the process straightforward and methodical.

[WithThisSword]

Wow, that sounds like a pretty good setup. I've still got quite a ways to go before I'm ready to do that I think, but I'm starting to get an idea of how to do it. Thanks for the help.

[cincy_cosmo]

Sometimes, I invite myself to my gigs.
I do that too, but I hate it when I don't show. :cry:

[slickster]

Hey there. I'm a newbie to the site (and to the use of my qy100.)

Maybe someone can help me. I'm trying to figure out how to outboard the QY100's pattern percussion component only, without programming from scratch. i.e. I'd like to use QY100 solely for percusion accompaniment to live instruments (i.e as a drum machine) but don't want to have to manually enter each drum/cymbal/cow bell etc. Any ideas?

[Lefty's Ghost]

Don't use a drill when playing with yourself, no matter how fun it sounds!

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/274/rwq4.jpg

[FamousGuy]

^ lol i knew it

[coolstorybro]

inb4 stop masturbating :facepalm:

[aliensporebomb]

Gack!