PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Rick Beato weighs in on the use of backing tracks for live performances

My solution to extending a song if the dance floor is full is to immediately follow it with another song that they also like to dance to. It has to be the same tempo or a bit faster, and it has to be started immediately.

I use a computer to play the tracks (ThinkPads because they are reliable). I use Windows Media Player to play them, and Windows File Explorer to launch them. To be able to play the next one immediately (and I mean immediately) I do this:

1. Arrange File Explorer as a list in alphabetical order
2. Type a few letters on the keyboard to highlight the song I want to play
3. Hit enter and it plays in Media Player
4. During the song when I have a second, hit Alt+Tab on the computer to return the focus to File Explorer
5. Type a few letters to highlight the next song
6. As soon as the previous song is finished, hit enter and the next one plays immediately
7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 as necessary.

This is how DJs do it, and it works for me too.

As far as missing the input of other musicians, there is no way to fix that. I did the drum part, the bass part, the comp parts, and so on, so it's all my input. The up side of that is I keep learning and improving my skills on all the instruments I need to put in the song, and I improve my mixing skills too. Through the years I've gotten a lot better at this, and sometimes go back to re-do songs I recorded years ago.

On the up side of that, while the musicians (me) in my backing band never surprise me with a musical treat, they (me) never make mistakes either.

Do I want to go back to a bigger band? At this time in my career, definitely not. In our situation, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

FWIW, from my DJing days, I didn't worry too much about losing the dancers for a bit, so long as I was confident I could bring them back with another "sure fire" number.

Actually, at certain times like early on when the audience is still warming up, I used deliberately to give them a break with something a little too gentle, as by doing that I was better able to control the build up of excitement.

Of course that's easier for a DJ than for a musician, so the principle may not transfer so well.

One thing we obviously do very differently is that when I made a set list, that list was CAST IN BRONZE. I put a lot of thought into those lists to move the emotion of the crowd up and down, so I would not deviate from it. Part of that rigidity was based on equipment. If the next song is "Yo' Mama", which called for a specific keyboard setup that required a lot of changing, or the guitar player needing to go from Strat to Les Paul, or the front guy to pick up his sax, and I suddenly called an audible to "Yo' Daddy", then I have disturbed the flow of the set and caused dead air. I hate unplanned dead air. Our "break" came dead in the middle of the set, 7 songs down, 7 to go, so we could sip water or just breathe, and had bits of crowd patter prepared.. I often had a funny news clip I cut from the paper (yes, we still read paper newspapers then) or a stupid bumper sticker I could make a joke about... We also did a thing where I would announce "And tonight's lucky number is 4-2-7. 4-2-7. Who has that number?" The bit being that there was no number. And our regulars played along by starting to look around the room for who had the number. Or I'd say "One ONE chair in the room we have taped a business card. If you are sitting in that chair, you won a beer on the band!" Again the regulars played along, and everybody picked up their chairs. There was never a business card, and that was followed up with "Does it bother you people at all that I just manipulated you into looking at the underside of your chair?" One guy thought he was slick and brought up a card he had gotten from us in the past thinking he caught me in my own joke. I smiled and said "Ah. But it isn't SIGNED! Fraud! Fraud!" And bought him a beer anyway for creativity. Things like that. We had a following that was so big that on any given night we would see 50-75 familiar faces. One weekend a bunch of about 50 of them spent a small fortune and rented a bus (a city bus!) and had that bus bring them 90 miles from Cleveland to Erie for the 2 night weekend. Much beer flowed those nights since nobody had to drive home. Wild weekend defined. The bar set a record on Friday for money in the till, and broke that record Saturday.

We also probably played for different crowds than you likely see. With your recurring gigs you probably have a similar following where you know a large percentage of the people, and that's huge when you have that comfort zone of not walking in cold to 200 new faces. Those running gags like the lucky number don't usually play well in cold rooms.

Do you use your dual laptops in an alternating manner where the odd numbered songs in the set play on laptop left and the even numbered songs play from laptop right?

Yes, great advice. If the dance floor is warming up, the last thing you want is dead air. However, if the dance floor is exhausted, that's the next thing they want (with a friendly, encouraging sign-off, and hey, if the business card gag works, who am I to argue? ).

Regardless, Rick indicated correctly: No problem if backing tracks are used, - as long as they are good. That's the real deal here.

Its worth mentioning that dead air is a function of the software being used to present the backing tracks. There are many programs that let you queue songs up for the set, and they play one after the other with no interruption. Some of them even adjust the tempo of the next song and fade the previous song out as it fades the next song in, for a seamless segue. Just about any software used by DJs can do this. If your trax are mixed down to an audio file this is a great way to present them without dead air.

However, if you want to present your trax as sequences that contain embedded MIDI for the purpose of controlling your devices, you'll probably have to use a sequencing program to present the trax.

Having said that, RealBand lets you queue up a set list of SEQ files and play them automatically one after the other, or triggered by a foot switch. This lets you take advantage of MIDI control of devices as well as giving you the ability to create medleys etc

this is one of the best reasons for embedding MIDI directly into a sequence, then presenting your trax from a sequencing program. Depending on your gear, MIDI can totally initialize everything you need to use in a song.

for example, if the guitar player is using a HELIX pedal with a VARIAX guitar... the Variax guitar models are all programmable and the helix amp and effects models are also programmable. No more stopping to pick up a different guitar... its all a part of the sequence initialization.

This approach also allows all volume changes, effects changes etc to happen automatically so the occasional brain fart won't lead to a train wreck because you spaced out and forgot to step on a pedal.

Upshot to all of this is that every song initializes itself. You are then free to organize your songs on the fly, knowing that all the settings that in the past would have required you to stop and turn some knob or change a cable now happen automatically .. and you don't have to remember any of it! Your brain is free to focus on the music

For a solo performer playing electric instruments, it adds a lot of flexibility. But I can see where acoustic music doesn't derive anywhere near the same benefit.

That brings up another question, Pat. If you are only running audio, WHY run a sequencer when you can dump that to WAV and play WAV files without any kind of DAW type program adding a point of potential failure? If you incorporate MIDI controllers though, I get it. Can you share examples? I have never done that.

This comes from the perspective though of someone who loves to string songs together. We used to do Hold On I'm Comin', right into Knock On Wood, right into Midnight Hour. That was about 12 minutes of music without letting them sit down. And if I were to perform those songs again I would use Audition to chain them the same way. They are in A, D and E respectively, all related chords, and at the same tempo, in that perfect dance beat zone.

The 4 Tops medley... Can't Help Myself, Same Old Song, Baby I Need Your Lovin', Something About You. All chained together. 14-15 minute dance block. To do that with tracks I would just record each song and again use Audition to string them. We had one for the Temptations too. And Marvin Gaye.

Of course that has a down side in that I could never deviate from those blocks.

But on topic, yeah, playing tracks is cool if it does what you need.

One thing we did was used our drummer's Octapad to send MIDI messages to the light board so he could change light scenes from that pad. It was cool and all but really overkill. We did it for about 3 months and went back to having the front guy use a foot controller. That may be an example of what you send from a sequence? Like set aside a consistent track of every song for MIDI messages. My lack of MIDI knowledge shows in that I don't know what you can send via MIDI. Can you program a start message for a backing video through MIDI? That would be cool with those fun videos you make. The roller coaster video was hilarious.

EDIT: I made this post before I read your second post where you said what you use MIDI for.

Once you choose wav or mp3 files as your gigging track format the world of simplicity opens up to you.

No need to haul more than a tablet or a phone (or both for backup) to the gig for backing track source.
Fidelity is there in spades whether you go cable direct,digital out, even the much maligned (in this forum) bluetooth.

The various playback software(s) available provides all the setlist management you can ask for.
Many include features such as extending/truncating songs, looping, setting gaps between songs, eq, triggering events. etc. Even footpedals can be added so you can loop,skip or whatever till your hearts content.

IOS or Android, numerous low cost, highly effective track playback solutions are available to suit your needs.

This approach definitely improves the actual gigging part of the equation.
Check it out.

Mario,

I'd never heard of these guys until you posted the link on this thread. They have a lot of good stuff on YouTube. Thks for sharing.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNKwPx2glWs&list=RDaMu03WxjFu8&index=9

I never heard of them until a musician friend from Canada sent me a link. I have heard most of their stuff. Not only are they extremely talented multi-instrumentalist and singers they also are very creative.

The Canadian friend, Greg, used to perform with a passed forum member Ian Fraser. I did work with Ian and I worked on restoring some tracks that Ian and Greg did.

Ian was one of the nicest people ever. I remember being stunned when he passed, and if I recall correctly wasn't it from a slip and fall accident in his bathroom that ended up with a severe head injury? Do I remember that right? I think I have it right because that was a real reality slap because I live alone, and as smart as this dog is he can't use a cell phone to dial 911 if I have a similar incident.

Which brings up a topic. For those of us of a certain age, and in a solo living situation, there are apps that require you to check in at whatever time you specify. That app will email people you designate if you DON'T check in. The one I use is called Snug, and there are 3 people on record. One day I missed it because I was up and out at 8am and was in a building with horrible data service, and the program sent me a reminder at 9:05 (that I did not see because of the coverage), and when I still didn't check in those 3 people got emails. When I left the building at 9:20 I had 3 emails and 3 missed calls, one from each of them. The emails all gave me until 9:30am before they would call police to come and break my door down. Fortunately I responded to them immediately before they did that.

Yes Eddie you remembered correctly.

It would appear that the definition of click bait may have vastly different interpretations.
"Definition of clickbait
: something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink..."

Often hyperbolic, contentious, inflammatory, salacious or obviously wrong while possibly misleading or a misrepresentation.

It is the business model of most "YouTubers" or "content" makers.

Beato doesn't rant? Have a look at his videos about YouTube Blockers or anything else that has a negative impact upon him.
When he's assessing the current streaming top ten he often goes into "mini" rants.
There's actually a play list of Rick's rants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKJjLwMUPJI&list=PLW0NGgv1qnfyK8S0RWhsFT8-U0di93oRo

Oh my goodness, I'd forgotten that. That was one of the systems I designed and produced decades back. When we devised it, we patented it (in the UK), but as ever someone found a way around the patent. (too easy, actually ... doh!). Before long there were several similar systems.

False alarm were always an issue. Hard to avoid, obviously. Our original system did save a lot of peoples lives and presumably the neo-clones also have. On a plus from my perspective, escaping from the patent probably means more people helped.

And more false alarms, of course ... sorry.

Obviously titling a video on You Tube is part of the marketing of the video. You do want people to click and watch as long as possible. Works for Beato as he has about 3.5 million subscribers.

Yes, his rants are some of his best videos. Mainly it is about copyright squashing videos, especially when the band or music he is highlighting is probably not getting any play pretty much anywhere and he is usually doing a video to explain why people should be listening to it. I think it just blows his mind that a band or their representatives, if they still own the copyright that is, has a video taken down because he played more than 5 seconds of a song.

I do like the videos when he has tracks and can isolate parts etc. Very informative and educational.

Since our audience is from middle-aged to elderly, 5 seconds between songs may be too much. Once they head to their chairs, it's hard to change their minds.

When we started, I used to do set lists, but I found I wasn't clairvoyant enough to predict what the audience would need and when they will need it.

So I call songs on the fly.

First I size up the audience. How are they dressed, what kind of shoes do they have on, what is their age group, this gives me a cue for the song to play first. And I pick something safe.

Next I watch them as the song is playing, and choose the next one to play.

I try to pace them, build them up to a faster number, and feed them more of the same until their faces look tired. Then I'll play a 'specialty number' (example if I see ballroom dancers - you can tell by their shoes - I'll play a cha-cha or rhumba), a non-dance song, or a slow song. Then start the process again.

How they react to songs determines what we play next. I want to give the audience the best possible experience that I can provide for them. If they have a great time, they will be back. So I try to give them what they need, when they need it even if they don't know that's what they need and when they need it.

There is an exception, in our hotel-by-the-beach gig, it's informal, and I still watch the audience, but the dancing is sporadic. Mostly they are eating and drinking. So I can play just about anything in our song list. I see what they are enjoying, and my experience with the regular crowd adds to it.

So there can be some dead air, as people come up to talk to us, and sometimes we talk over the mic to some of the customers, sometimes tell little stories, or a joke, and just play with the audience members. The regulars who have been following us for decades are more like extended family than fans.

They share their accomplishments and tragedies, we get a lot of hugs and handshakes on that gig, and it's a lot of fun.

We are on our 15th year of our mid-week afternoon party and it's become one of my most favorite gigs. Many of the people have been coming for all 15 years, so I guess it's working.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Nope, identical data is on both laptops, but one I use for playing the mp3 tracks, and the other for words or a head chart. With over 600 songs, every one isn't memorized.

I have two laptops for the department of redundancy department. I can do the gig with one, so if either one craps out, I can continue doing both tasks on the one survivor.

I've been using ThinkPad computers since 2002 and so far I've only had two instances where I had to finish the show on one computer.

BTW, you sound like you were fun on the gig. I might steal your biz card shtick one day.

Notes ♫

Once I hit ENTER in File Explorer, the song starts playing in Media Player.

While the song is playing, I hit Alt_Tab to get the focus back to Explorer. Often I can do this during the intro.

Then even late in the currently playing song I can cue up the next one with a couple of taps on the keyboard (the first few letters of the song name).

When the song ends, hit ENTER and the next one plays immediately, no dead ear.

I suppose this works best for a single or duo act. Mrs. Notes and I communicate well on stage during the song. I think a trio or more might complicate this.

Notes ♫

After all the post on how I do it, I need to add, there is more than one right way to make music, and run a gig. We found what works for us, and since we started our duo, except for the COVID interruption, we have never lacked for gigs.

OT: Some guy from local news came doing a piece on tourism, and we got in the newscast.

https://www.wptv.com/news/treasure-coast/dont-come-here-catchy-treasure-coast-tourism-campaign-tells-visitors

This was the start of our mid-week party. They eat first, then more come, the place fills up, and when we are done, most of them go home.

We did this at a competitor, but during COVID it got sold. The new owners didn't know what we can do, and only wanted a single guitar/singer for background music.

So we brought the party here. The first week they had one waitress on, and the bartender and kitchen help were delivering food and bussing tables. The next week they put 4 waitresses on. That's job security.

Our home away from home is here:


And looks like this:


To our east is a sand dune and the Atlantic Ocean. We play under the big, blue canvas and basically goof off and have fun playing music and playing with the audience for a few hours.

The backing track band is reliable (there, I'm still on topic), the Trade Winds keep us comfortable, the kitchen and full bar keeps the money flowing so they can pay us, and we work for a couple of hours moving, setting up, and tearing down our gear, and have a lot of fun in the middle.

Live is the perfect way to spend the time of day.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫