# Pre-recorded tracks for live use.



## transtj (May 3, 2013)

So my band is having a really hard time finding a second guitarist with gear and certain experience thus making us find other ways to fill that empty spot!

I've seen some bands such as Volumes that uses pre-recorded tracks for effects and leads (most of the time rhythm guitar, or so I think).

My question is how do you make this work? Do you just use the track you made while recording with just the guitar and effects? you just connect it to the PA and play it? Or is there any other effective way to do this? I've read something about click tracks but I deduced it was to maintain the tempo or something related to that.

Any tips would be useful!


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## Quitty (May 3, 2013)

You could play to a click, but some would argue that it's counterproductive to the energy on stage. Personally, i think it depends on the style.

Say you measure 35 bars before the backing track kicks in - if you maintain tempo you can just play the file from the start - it'll have 35 bars of silence, then a backing section.

Other options include samples loaded onto keyboards (if you have one), drummer's electronic pads (if he has any) or anyone with a free hand and a good ear for timing.


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## Albionic (May 4, 2013)

a lot of bands record onto backing tracks. you will need a click. By far the most simple way to do it is to use an ipod into the pa with the track panned to one side and the click to the other.


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## CMNDandCTRL (May 10, 2013)

I use a method mentioned above using an ipod and a basic mixer. I make my backing tracks in cubase, click track panned left and all the backing tracks panned right, with a 2 bar count in on the click. I run my ipod into the aux in of the mixer, and then we the left out carrying the click track to our drummer's headphones, and then the right out carrying the backtracks back into my guitar rig. It's awesome cause it's not a lot to bring around and look after, not complicated at all, and there is little change it will all fuck up. 

Depending on what kind of backing tracks you use, you could either run the backing tracks into a powered PA speaker (this would be ideal if you have lots of synth and samples and bass drops and shit like that), or you could do what I do and have the back tracks coming out of my cab with my live guitar. Diego from volumes does this except I'm pretty sure he has an extra cab for the backtracked guitars since there is quite a few parts going simultaneously for one cab. 

The backtracks in my band are 90% guitars and they are on for less than half the song most of the time, so I don't feel the need to have to buy a separate cab for backing tracks. Using my pod x3 live, I use the dual amp feature to mix the back tracked guitars and my live guitar part into one signal to send to my power amp. First amp is set to the guitar input, and on each of my patches, the first amp settings vary for all my different tones, but the second amp is set to the same thing on all my patches, which is basically a blank signal with a bit of EQ. I have the second amp on all the patches set to the aux input, which I run the backing tracks into. All I had to do is make backing tracks for all the songs the same volume, and then figure out how much to mix in the second amp's volume to get my guitar and the backtracks to a good balance. 

The two awesome things about this setup is a) the tone of the backing track sounds the same as the tone of my live guitar. If I'm playing 4 bars of a riff, and then I want to have that 4 bars repeat while I play a second layer over it, I'll get the backing tracks to take over the first riff while I add the layer over top. If I were to run the backtracks through a PA, then when the riff started with me playing it, and switched over the to backtracks playing it, the tone would sound completely different since it's coming out of a different speaker, and it would sound disconnected. But since I'm running it through my cab, the backtracks have the exact same signal path as my live guitar, making them sound identical. And b) at shows it's really easy to setup since all I need to do is mic my cab as usual, and then I get the balance of backtracks to live guitar I want every time.

Another cool thing, is if I DID want to have a separate cab for backing tracks, I could do that by just panning each amp to left and right, and then sending the left to one cab and the right to the other cab, or if you had a stereo cab you could do the same except just allocating 2 speakers to live guitar and 2 speakers to backing tracks, or you could even do a 50% pan on each side sort of thing, so many possibilities. SO yeah what I'm trying to say, pod x3s are sick and this is a decent way to do the whole backing track shebang. Why did I go into so much detail? No clue, I just feel like talking about my gear on this thursday night at 3 in the morning. Maybe it's time to go to bed. Cheers bud


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