Hello Drummer… Using Live With A Full Band
Interestingly enough… especially after the last post (about using ableton as your drummer), our team is blessed to have a new drummer coming on to play every week. So the majority of my week has been figuring out how I will be able to implement a drummer with our current setup. So for example purposes… here is how we are gonna roll this week:
Myself playing electric and leading vocals, acoustic guitarist singing backup, keys player singing back up, bass player and the new drummer… and of course… ableton.
The set list:
1) All Over The World
2)Everlasting God
3)You Alone
4)Grace Will Be My Song
5) Nothing But The Blood
All of the songs except You Alone will be played with the full band. You Alone I’ll rock acoustic with the keys playing a string arrangement behind it. So the question is how we will use Ableton in the set…
We have a basic loop that the drummer controls throughout the song. Basically it plays through the entire song and is light enough in the FOH that the people can hear it when the band it light but once they kick in it it masks it. The drummer has it pumped in his monitors (IEM) to keep in time. Our keys player has a trigger finger run from the Macbook (with the drummer) and she can trigger scenes during a song. For example we have a killer loop playing through Nothing But The Blood that drives the verses. Just before we hit the Chorus the keys triggers the violin loop we have set up for the Chorus. The are single shots and dont actually loop and set up exactly the length of the Chorus/Bridge (this is so they simply stop after they run their course, if we double she re-triggers it). We have the lead in set at 1bar.
On Grace Will Be My Song I recreated a lot of what you hear on Steve Fee’s CD track that we will play along with. Right up the the end where the track ends and the drummer takes over and the band hits nice and big. So the end of the song is played without a click or rhythm track of any sorts.
So thats the plan. Should work like a charm.
Hope that is somewhat of a help.
Hey Greg,
I’d love to bum the Nothing But The Blood loops off ya! We’re going to work on that one next and maybe do it in a month or so. Can you post those? Pleeeez!
Troy