Interesting, and fun, gig

I did a gig last Saturday night with a guy that uses Sonar X2 to sequence just about everything. Bass, drums, keyboards, and horns were all done using X2.
Most everything used Kontakt. He used Battery 3 for drums, various keyboards (piano and organs), and Session Horns for brass. For bass he used the Cakewalk Session Instruments Bass.
It was all controlled from a laptop running X2.
He also had a TC-Helicon unit he used for harmonies.
He used the lyric view to send the words and chords to the songs to a tablet mounted on my mic stand
He had a really good sound system and some killer monitors so it was all sounding great, like playing with an 8 or 9 piece band with a bunch of background singers.
Unfortunately I forgot to ask him what kind of interface he used to get everything from the laptop to his mixer (DOH!).
He said he would be calling me for some more gigs so I'll be sure and ask him then.
It was a very eye opening experience, I had never seen SONAR used in a live situation like that, it went without a hiccup.
I really enjoyed it.

robert_e_bone
Very cool - I used to do gigs for wedding reception pre-dinners and such, and I would do the same kind of thing - with me playing keys and also singing with all the backing sequence tracks.  It worked fabulously, and I would get $150 an hour for 2 hours, then make a bunch more playing with the rest of the band for the actual dinner/reception.  It would usually end up as a $500 night for me.
 
Ka-ching!  :)
 
Bob Bone
 

Cool Bob!
I have to admit that halfway through the night I started thinking "Well, I have SONAR, I have a laptop, I have a sound system, I have Kontakt......."
 
Hmmmmmmm.
 
The drummer never gets drunk, the keyboard player always shows up, the bass player doesn't have a crazy girlfriend......
 
Hmmmmmmm.

I have made tons of jam along tracks using downloadable midi files.  
 
Even if all you do is point the midi tracks to Sonar Studio instruments they sound really good and would work well and I assume pretty solidly without a hiccup in a live environment.  
 
JR
 

auto_da_fe
I have made tons of jam along tracks using downloadable midi files.  
 
Even if all you do is point the midi tracks to Sonar Studio instruments they sound really good and would work well and I assume pretty solidly without a hiccup in a live environment.  
 
JR
 

Yeah, that's one of the things that most impressed me, the whole thing worked so smoothly. I don't know why I was surprised, except I had never really thought of using SONAR in a live environment.
It kicked huge butt!

rscain

robert_e_bone
Very cool - I used to do gigs for wedding reception pre-dinners and such, and I would do the same kind of thing - with me playing keys and also singing with all the backing sequence tracks.  It worked fabulously, and I would get $150 an hour for 2 hours, then make a bunch more playing with the rest of the band for the actual dinner/reception.  It would usually end up as a $500 night for me.
 
Ka-ching!  :)
 
Bob Bone
 

Cool Bob!
I have to admit that halfway through the night I started thinking "Well, I have SONAR, I have a laptop, I have a sound system, I have Kontakt......."
 
Hmmmmmmm.
 
The drummer never gets drunk, the keyboard player always shows up, the bass player doesn't have a crazy girlfriend......
 
Hmmmmmmm.

 
Don't forget the most important thing you have going for you aside from the equipment 
You have a great voice , I've heard it in your song postings 
 
nice story btw...
 
Kenny

I've long been tempted to take along a laptop to a gig just to have Kontakt available, but my experiences with programmed sequences has not been nearly as enjoyable as yours.
 
I play in a two-man band as well - me on keys, my buddy on 12-string, he doing 90% of the lead vox and me doing BGVs with the same TC Helicon box. But the greatest thing about our setup is that nothing is rehearsed or planned. There's lots of jamming and impromptu medleys. Between us we've got nearly a hundred years of experience and thousands of songs in our heads, so taking requests is no problem as long as one of us knows at least one verse of the song. It's all loose and spontaneous and low-pressure. And fun.
 
To me, a sequenced show is like working on an assembly line in a factory, where you have to push a button to go to the bathroom.
 

bitflipper
I've long been tempted to take along a laptop to a gig just to have Kontakt available, but my experiences with programmed sequences has not been nearly as enjoyable as yours.
 
I play in a two-man band as well - me on keys, my buddy on 12-string, he doing 90% of the lead vox and me doing BGVs with the same TC Helicon box. But the greatest thing about our setup is that nothing is rehearsed or planned. There's lots of jamming and impromptu medleys. Between us we've got nearly a hundred years of experience and thousands of songs in our heads, so taking requests is no problem as long as one of us knows at least one verse of the song. It's all loose and spontaneous and low-pressure. And fun.
 
To me, a sequenced show is like working on an assembly line in a factory, where you have to push a button to go to the bathroom.
 

It's funny Bit, most of my gigging is done with an old bud of mine and we work the same way, if one of us knows a song, or sometimes even part of it, we let 'er rip. Only we haven't tried the sequencing thing yet, we usually use a drummer, if one is available. If not we just do a two piece thing. I usually play bass and he plays guitar, sometimes we switch.
But around here it's tough to make any decent money, and if we could work it out to use SONAR for our drums and maybe some keyboards, we wouldn't have to pay a drummer (and could avoid the previously mentioned hassles, heh)

30 years of using sequences here. I now mix them down to waves and use Win Amp for play back. Bass in right channel, the rest in the left. 
 
Question-- how much time did he take between songs? 

I agree that a keyboard player in particular can be pretty boring to watch when playing along with sequenced music, but for the gigs I was doing, I was not the focus - I was only background music for things like wedding receptions and such.  I was NOT about to sport a mini skirt, either.
 
I actually got lots of compliments for sounding so full, plus i also mixed it up, by playing acoustic or electric guitar on some tunes, and I also sang, in addition, I was doing a pretty wide range of music, from Beatles and Carpenters through Genesis, Gentle Giant, and Yes.  Any prog fans present at these functions invariably flipped out that someone at a wedding reception might be jamming on Jeff Beck,  Steely Dan, Genesis, or ELP.
 
I usually left myself fun parts to play, and because of the material selected, those parts generally sounded good and were of enough substance to where the whole thing didn't come off as cheesy.
 
Bob Bone
 
 

Absolutely - I LOVE playing guitar and getting paid, because us keyboard players don't get to do that enough.  :)
 
Mixing up who is playing what is a lot of fun, and keeps everyone more interested.
 
Bob Bone
 

sock monkey
30 years of using sequences here. I now mix them down to waves and use Win Amp for play back. Bass in right channel, the rest in the left. 
 
Question-- how much time did he take between songs? 

It wasn't long, maybe 20-30 seconds. He used the playlist and before every set he would drag the songs we were going to do to the top of the set list. It seemed to work seamlessly.

It's funny we are both bass players. Both with miles of stage time on bass. We really miss having a bass player, but no one 'round here knows how to play our type of stuff. We tried a few. 
One gig this summer we cheated and I made a backing track using the real bass tracks from our album we recorded. I panned the bass right and ran that to my Yorkville 200 Watt Bass amp from the Laptop. It sounded just like a live bass! Why shouldn't it? 
From the Left channel I ran a hi hat click track to the floor wedge only. We found all we really needed was the count in and then it was easy to follow the bass for timing. We couldn't really even hear the click track much. I used Win Amp for playback.
It was excellent to have the "real" Bass and it was a very serious listening crowd. Only a few observant people commented afterwards that they all of a sudden noticed there was bass and asked how we did it. They said it was excellent and did not seem phony at all. They never noticed me messing with anything because I control my laptop with a USB foot control. 
 
That's why I asked how quickly did he seem to be able to switch songs. I would use Sonar but seems it would be slow and involve not focusing on the crowd. 

Let's hear the train wreck stories, I'm sure everyone has had...playing with backing tracks.  Over the many, many times I've played with them, it happened only once, but it was a whopper.  We had drums and bass as .wav files.  After that incident, that particular song was immediately dropped. ;-D

Well, my all-time favorite was when I had to reboot the computer on a song that heavily featured a bunch pf backing keyboard tracks, after we already had started the song.
 
The singer's historic comment to the rest of the band: "Just keep playing - he'll catch up".
 
Never played that place again......
 
Not in that band anymore, either...
 
 
Bob Bone
 

Did you eve learn about the interface? I need to do a piano bar concept for a charity event where people will sing along like karaoke. They need to see the words and I would like the words to move in real time.

I want to be able to structure the song my way and not via a download purchase karaoke song.