Need help on click track.

[guitarslave]

Hi people of the Soft World! I need your help here. And thanks in advance for all your help and advice.
Well I'm trying to play in a band consist of a bassist and a drummer. And I'm on guitars. We are trying to play along with midi backing track and the problem is that the drummer could not keep in time with the midi tracks. What is the most conservative way of letting the drummer listen to a click track without letting the click track being heard on the main speakers. How do I configure this? Presently the midis are played out on Sonar Cakewalk on my laptop and straight to the mixer. How to let the drummer listen to the click track alone? Really tricky this one, for me at least.

Well thanks everyone.

P.S. Please help.

 

[guitarslave]

Help me.

Hi people of the Soft World! I need your help here. And thanks in advance for all your help and advice.
Well I'm trying to play in a band consist of a bassist and a drummer. And I'm on guitars. We are trying to play along with midi backing track and the problem is that the drummer could not keep in time with the midi tracks. What is the most conservative way of letting the drummer listen to a click track without letting the click track being heard on the main speakers. How do I configure this? Presently the midis are played out on Sonar Cakewalk on my laptop and straight to the mixer. How to let the drummer listen to the click track alone? Really tricky this one, for me at least.

Well thanks everyone.

P.S. Please help.

 

[blueprintstudios]

1) program a "pre count" before the song starts. like "on 5" = *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick* *Come in*

2) put the laptop behind your drummer. when you guys are ready to play the song, he will start playing and watch out for the 5 count.

3) laptop earphone output > your drummer listen on earphones. probably gotta jack up the volume. cos when he starts playing the drums the music in the earphones will be drowned.

and there you go.

 

[turbochicken]

you guys wana play as band, along with the MIDI backing track i suppose?

if so, just out a pair of head/ear phones from your mixer to your drummer. if you isolate the track he will be able to hear it and follow much better.

if you want a click track you'd have to sync it with the MIDI which will need a playback device that does that but it's troublesome.

alternatively, you could set a click track and record it with the MIDI using your software, export as audio, load into an ipod or any playback device and inear to your drummer.

 

[soft]

guitarslave, what mixer are you using?

 

[guitarslave]

Thanks for the respond everyone.
I'm using a yamaha MG 8/2FX.
Turbochicken, I can't let the drummer just hear an isolated track b'cos my midi files doesn't have any beats. Eg just a pad sound holding for several bars. And also sometimes there just won't be any midi files at all (i.e. if its not necessary).
I'm still looking for solution though. Our friends in europe are using stereo files where one channel is the music whereas the other just the click. Never tried that way but a mono audio......

 

[guitarslave]

Thanks for the advice blueprintstudio. Really appreciate it. But I don't think it will work with our setup. For one thing the midi files will jump in and out within a song. So he (the drummer) will have to pay close attention to the midi. I really think he needs the click in the headphones. But I just don't know how to feed it to him. I don't want to go through having to set up a headphone mix like in the studios. To troublesome for live acts. Surely there are other bands engaging this kind of set up. Kindly share with us softies here.
Well thanks for reading.

3 Cheers.

 

[lethalmaus]

The only way to do this effectively is to have a soundcard with more than 2 outputs so that you can send the click into the mixer channel (with LR/monitor button off or fader down) send send prefader aux to drummers headphone mix.

If this is complicated for you send out music one side and click on the other. Since its just pad/ strings, to create stereo duplicate the signal to another fader and have different eq/ compression/ slight chorus (or pan efx on mixer). This is how Roland Yamaha and the like create pseudo stereo for their sound patches. Having said that...mono pads and strings in a live performance never killed anyone.