A video for noobs on Live with a 'live' band

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 7:05 am

Hello all,

I filmed a workshop on creating click tracks for live bands at a sort of "school of rock" thing my church did. Has a lot of great info for noobs, and maybe DJ's who are trying to play with a 'live' band.

Hope it helps some of you!

http://www.filedropper.com/theclicktrackbible

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:20 pm

it's about 45 minutes long plus, so i thought people would prefer to download and watch on their own time whenever they want. I'll check it though, thanks!

*edit vimeo is down, they are not allowing new sign-ups. Shortly?

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:27 pm

currently uploading to google video. We'll see how that rolls.

Hidden Driveways · Post by **Hidden Driveways** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:59 pm

Nice job keeping it lively for the students.

I'm curious about your click track. Looks like you've got an audio track with a recording of a click - then you warp your song file to that. Did you first warp the click track to Live's metronome to be sure you're warping to the grid? Why do you prefer to do it this way as opposed to using Live's metronome?

Also, did you experiment with Live's tempo nudge feature and decide that tapping out tempo is a better recovery option when the musicians get out of sync with the computer? [note: If I was playing with a live band and a click track I think I'd rather just hit the stop button if a sync issue with harmonic material started to happen

no one wants that "oh shit I'm Ashlee Simpson" moment.]

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:16 pm

Live autowarps my click file even as i change the tempo. It's possible to replace the actual click sound within live to something you prefer, (which is sort of what i've done here) but I choose not to go that route. When i render my files, I WANT the metronome to be on that file. Not sure if you can pan the "preview" volume and include on your final render. A lot of times i deliver a final wav to some of my friends to use, so if the click isn't there it can be tough for them to sync up.

"stop" is generally the only true recovery option that i've found

All my drummers can play with a click fine. I've never had a drift issue, only arrangement issue's from the singer. I do believe nudge would be a smarter option. Never had to try it.

Another thing i didn't mention was the "Clip nudge forward" and backwards buttons. these are your arrangement savers.

thank you for your kind words! Google video is taking a long time, but it's on the way. I'll gladly answer any questions, too. Thanks.

bosonHavoc · Post by **bosonHavoc** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:22 pm

ya we had that issue at a show on sunday..
my singer/keyboardist lost here place and i usually cue of her vocal lines
but i also know the beats really well cause i played/programed them

so i tried to guide her back into place for the change.. we kind of pulled it off (as in only musicians and people that know our music would have really noticed)

so that got me to thinking
i'm going to try putting in a recovery sequence for her trigger if she gets lost while playing with a sequence.

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:38 pm

totally dude. It's very scary to be out there and not sure how to get back. Actually, to be the ONLY ONE who knows how to get back but you can't get the singer to figure it out. Yikes.

If you are using In-ears a tacitc i've succesfully implemented is recording my voice with the click saying, "chorus, 2, 3, 4..." as a lead in.

But i think clip nudge backwards by one bar is gonna do the trick. Land on that I chord for an extra measure and cue the vocal visually and away we go

Hidden Driveways · Post by **Hidden Driveways** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:03 pm

One little thing... if you do another presentation on this topic (and you should, I'm sure there are thousands of houses of worship that would dig this), you should inform the potential entry-level users about how inexpensive it is to get into Live. $120 gets you a brand new Oxygen 8 that comes with Live Lite. Live Lite will likely run just fine on the laptop or desktop that the person already owns. That and a $3 y-cable gets them up and running. Yeah, you couldn't do a huge backing track thing with Live Lite, but you can certainly do a basic set-up with it.

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 4:43 pm

The Click Track Bible is now up on Vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/1615961

Anybody who didn't want to commit to downloading can now enjoy.

Hidden Driveways, good call about Live Lite! That's a great starting point. I mentioned it in the video notes.

Hope you all dig it. Any questions can be on this thread, or through pm.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:27 pm

Coool...gonna check this out right after band practice. We are working on using the InTime beat tracking software with Live, so the tempo follows the drummer. It works pretty well once you get used to it. We're hoping to do some jam-band kind of stuff, with fluctuating tempo, but with the computer tracking.

motioneso · Post by **motioneso** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 4:30 pm

Is this meant to be a private video?

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:10 pm

Yes.

As in privately shared with the entire internet and everyone you know.

So.... no. I made it to cast the vision of Live in a real band context to a bunch of young musicians, and to help anyone I can get started in the process. Use it as you wish.

acroberts · Post by **acroberts** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:46 pm

Jekblad - the video on Vimeo is tagged as a private video - that would be behind motioneso's question.

drew

ps - I've got a couple p+w loops over at http://www.roberts411.net

Jekblad · Post by **Jekblad** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:59 pm

aw dude, that is so lame. I'm new to vimeo, that's my total bad.

I think i've fixed it now i think

http://www.vimeo.com/1615961

motioneso · Post by **motioneso** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 7:15 pm

Ah I'm sorry, I should have clarified what I meant by private. I was on a tablet in the middle of class so I couldn't really expand. Thanks for the video!