Question About Using a Backing Track + a Click Live

[rbf738]

Let me preface this by saying that I'm completely new to the world of using a backing track live so any info is appreciated. My band wants to start gigging and we want to use a backing track to carry some of the extra instruments and vocals we can't reproduce ourselves on stage.

I use Ableton Live on my laptop and have the backing track mono panned hard left and the click track panned hard right. I'd like to be able to at least let the drummer have those in his ears while putting the backing track through the PA in stereo, simultaneously obviously.

But since it's all coming through my laptop, I don't know how to remove the click track from the PA.

We're testing this in our practice space through the PA and I just want to know how I can go about isolating the backing track + click and just get that in our ears while having the stereo backing track through the PA.

Again I'm out of my depth here so any info is appreciated in terms of what gear I need to get to make this work. Thank you for the replies in advance.

 

[pcrecord]

If you have the Click on one side and the music the other, just send the signal to two mono tracks on the mixer, one sent to the drummer's monitor only and the other to the rest of the band and the FOH.

What I did for years was using a midi track for the click to any synth module that does midi and send the audio output only to the drummer. It gave me the possibility to have a stereo mix for the FOH and the click only to myself.

 

[paulears]

If you can do the stereo track as above you have loads more options. You don't need to do stereo really, but twin track - so you can have some of the tracks on one mixer channel and the others on a separate fader - gives you mix options. With a project I'm currently sorting, I'm going to use a 4 channel audio device, and hadn't thought about using the midi output for the click - good idea!

 

[paulears]

I think I might be tempted to use a dedicated PC with a firewire link to my X32 - the tracks are all separate on the computer, and use the second layer to mix them live? Wouldn't cost much.

 

[pcrecord]

I think I might be tempted to use a dedicated PC with a firewire link to my X32 - the tracks are all separate on the computer, and use the second layer to mix them live? Wouldn't cost much.

This seems like a good solution unless you get shows with other mixers.

 

[paulears]

I didn't think this through - we do get a few shows where PA is supplied. Thanks for the kick.

 

[pcrecord]

I'm getting a bunch of sono jobs with different digital mixers these days, I'm kind of align with stage thinking.. he he