Live acts

underworld ...

aaah :P

they do everything in multitrack .. but underworld is not a good example :P their music is entirely loop based :P they have all their loops playing on multi-track and with mixers they make the structure :P

St Germain, saw them live .. i've no idea what he did behind the screens though. didn't quite remember any improvisations though .. but it's been a while too

[I]

St Germain, saw them live .. i've no idea what he did behind the screens though. didn't quite remember any improvisations though .. but it's been a while too

multi-track , for sure. and he knows very well how boring he is himself so he pushes all the attention to the real musicians :)

I mean 'boring' as a person of course ...

But sometimes the beat stops and the musicians play on for a while (for instance a lot of percussian starts) and later the beats starts again. Of this is multitrack it's quit possible the whole rhythm is off because the musicians could have changed the tempo slightly...

How does he solve that? a trigger?

good musicians ;)

Musicians more than likely have a metronome fed via headphones, or so do I guess.

Originally posted by : mik

Musicians more than likely have a metronome fed via headphones, or so do I guess.

most probably it's the easiest way

anyways, u don't start doing big concerts before rehearsing a bit :) everything is timed anyway ..

Originally posted by : Stein

But sometimes the beat stops and the musicians play on for a while (for instance a lot of percussian starts) and later the beats starts again. Of this is multitrack it's quit possible the whole rhythm is off because the musicians could have changed the tempo slightly...

How does he solve that? a trigger?

Actually the beat doesn't stop, it's just muted while the sequencer / multitracker keeps running.

One of the channels / tracks contains the "click track" and is only audible through the musicians monitors/headphones.

I hope this answers your question.

Originally posted by : Ro5

Originally posted by : Stein

But sometimes the beat stops and the musicians play on for a while (for instance a lot of percussian starts) and later the beats starts again. Of this is multitrack it's quit possible the whole rhythm is off because the musicians could have changed the tempo slightly...

How does he solve that? a trigger?

Actually the beat doesn't stop, it's just muted while the sequencer / multitracker keeps running.

One of the channels / tracks contains the "click track" and is only audible through the musicians monitors/headphones.

I hope this answers your question.

I was thinking it was something like that...

but I'm sure now.

thanks!!

Originally posted by : Stein

But sometimes the beat stops and the musicians play on for a while (for instance a lot of percussian starts) and later the beats starts again. Of this is multitrack it's quit possible the whole rhythm is off because the musicians could have changed the tempo slightly...

How does he solve that? a trigger?

most live + multitrack performances have a clicktrack running (check for little in-ear monitors with the musicians) e.g. U2 uses shaker pattern sequenced in cubase. In the shaker loop certain changes indicate certain points in the song ... (I got this info out of Keyboard mag, where they interview the 'stageproducer')

As a professional stagemanager/ soundengineer I have worked with the biggest bands in any style from all over the world in the past 10 years. What I can say about bands like,Orb, Leftfield,Moby, Underworld,Prodigy, Chemical whom I have worked with is that they have all very different approches and technical setups. Some are almost pure playback ( I will not mention any names...) others make combinations of digital 16-track machines, samplers, computers and synths. Very often they only play main synth or sample-parts while the rest of the music is played back by digital tape (DAT,ADAT,DA88) or Harddisk streaming.(VS880,DR8, S5000) If you own a machine like for example the Akai S5000 with sufficient memory ( 256 Meg = 128 minutes of sampling time ), you are able to layer loops under different keys on your keyboard and in the same time you can "stream" 8 stereo tracks audio from a fast SCSI-harddisk. So when you hit for example the C1 key u get a basic dance-loop in 135 bpm. C#1 key could have for example the same loop, layerd with a bassloop in the same tempo. The D1 key could then be a new layer with the same loops and an extra hihat wavloop.Or combined with a programmed sequens where as the hihat is just a sample. And so on and on...there are a lot of possible combinations. Sampling and HDR-streaming is mostly the secret behind such a performances. Of course, all is well programmed and prepared in advance... And there is also a good reason why playback tapes are used. I have seen situations where all those nice hightech hardware started to behave strange because of temperature-changes(mostly during winter or open-air events...) Then u pray god your backup (playback) DAT-tape will still work...