Music tech- Live and In The Studio- Love it or Hate it?

[Tim Smith]

It seems some musicians just like to play music and to heck with the tech. I have a friend who tours a good bit and even he doesn't seem to have a very strong connection with music tech, even though he plays regularly to backing tracks. He plugs in, makes a few adjustments and plays (guitar). A very layed back gentle guy.

I think I must be somewhere in between. I mean, I like tech if I feel comfortable with it. If I don't it adds to uncertainty.  It seems to be different in a studio environment because then it's like my little sandbox to play endlessly with music tech. I don't mind that. It's more when I need to utilize it for playing live. If something doesn't work or goes wrong it could seriously shake up what I'm doing. I don't do it very often and maybe that's part of the problem. I don't have a system down that I feel ok with.

The last few days I have tried different hardware setups and checking my wireless setup to make sure I can be ok with it. That was when I found the 1/4" plug into my guitar wasn't always making contact. IF I pulled the plug out very slightly it works, so that's an issue I need to fix.

Backing tracks are another thing. I pulled out my old RC-300 looper that can hold 3 hours of .wav audio. It has rhythms but they are cheesy and no change ups. It's like a drummer stuck in one loop all the time. Then I realized I could dump tracks from my computer into it but I need a roland driver. I had almost forgotten the days when you needed to download a driver for everything. New OS recognizes a lot more than it once did. Apparently not this. The RC-300 has a lot of little details that need to be ironed out or you'll be playing a song repeated not wanting to and other similar stuff.  I have realized how much I dislike menus and submenus. If I knew exactly what I was doing it would be far easier.

Keyboards that once sounded pretty good now sound terrible compared to my software synths.

After two days messing with various keyboards and stuff, I guess I'm back to square one which is either a DAW for tracks or I'll just plug in and play acoustic. I don't have a comfortable feeling yet with backing tracks, even if I make them. I can't say exactly why.

It seems writing command strings into a midi controller is the easiest thing ever for some people. I mean it's hexidecimal, has 16 channels and values range from 1 to 128.  For me it would be a challenge to get all of the program changes exactly right times with the songs. I prefer straight up easy to use guitar effects and that's probably why I use the stuff I do. 

So really it's like I'm of two different mindsets depending on whether I am messing about in my studio or if I'm playing out. Some of that probably has to do with no worry if I make a mistake in the studio. Everything can be edited and changed or even deleted there. Playing live is, well, full of unpredictable things and the more gear I add to it, the more chance for problems there are. Could just be me not accustomed to that envronment as much.

[Tim Smith]

Probably the wrong area to post this.

[craigb]

17 minutes ago, Tim Smith said:

Probably the wrong area to post this.

This is the wrong area to post anything! ?

(But that hasn't stopped most of us! ?)

I think some of our forum bots (like Bapu) probably weren't programmed to respond on Leap Day. ?