Thank you everyone for your feedback. I don't even remotely think it is easy to do this kind of job with even the best and most expensive equipment available. You have to know what you are doing, and be good, no, perfect at it.

So it's not always easy to get started in this business. I believe being in the background of a combo, responsible for rythm and some backing harmonies, would be a safe start. I will watch and learn and gain experience.

@Greg:
I'm not confident in my singing, so I wouldn't develop to an OMB either. I agree, the singing voice is very important, and a singer who's not "locked up" behind a keyboard can have much more contact to the audience. Show personality. Do you channel her voice through the keyboard for "vocal harmony" or things like that?

@Tony:
I think you can always "mark" the bar after one that is likely to be skipped in a midi, and if the situation arises, just jump to that mark. Doesn't work "on the fly", though.

As for using midi, I think it all depends on the situation. The size of the band, the music style, the audience, whether it's just "wallpaper" music, etc. But thanks for all your input.

@Scott:
That's the approach I plan to take, knocking out bass and guitar (since that's what they play) just filling in and maybe a little solo line once in a while. I like your input on psrtutorials, thank you very much for sharing.

Markus

When playing with more than just one extra guy, I tend to just use the drums from the arranger, play LH bass, and just let everybody do what they normally do in a real band. If they can't lock to the drums, it's usually because I'm not loud enough in their monitors, but that seldom happens (I try to make the drums as loud as a real drummer onstage, so they don't have to adjust too much!)

If I have a bass player, so much the better. I really like to just use the arranger drums if I can. SO much better than a drum machine, interactive, and I love how 'live' my G70's V-Drum kits sound, they really CAN give you the sense of a real drummer onstage.

Don't let the machines take over your playing. Play as much as you possibly can, and only let the machine do the basics. The more you can change up from night to night, the less bored you and your audience get.

In more established combos, SMFs of just bass and drums can give you a lot of freedom, with markers for repeating sections, and finally free up your left hand for the bender, or other parts. I guess I'm just not a big fan of playing chords with the LH and letting the machine do it all for you.........

Another thing I found using SMFs or even the on-board rhythms with other live musicians, is that the drums and/or bass tracks have to be considerably louder than what they would normally be ... I've had to cut back on some of the accomp instruments, and sometimes even the lead voice I'm playing with my right hand to balance it out ...
t.

Hey Markus.

We both sing (lead or backing) through the mixing desk and simply try to "back each other up" and harmonise as much as we can.

My wife is one of those people who can harmonise straight away with anything and frequently changes her parts mid song (even mid line) to give the impression it's more than one person backing - this is tough of course and we don't sound like twenty people, but you'd be surprised how, with a little ingenuity, you can give the general impression of more than 2 voices at times.

So to answer your question we don't go through the keyboard harmoniser for 2 reasons.

1. I still use my Roland VA-7 (will update soon!) and it doesn't have a realtime vocal eefects harmoniser unit.

2. Even if I DID have a keyboard with it I wouldn't use it because we enjoy the "challenge" of trying to sound more than we are, and, quite frankly, the ones I've heard sound REALLY AWFUL and "synthy" still.

Incidentally we play 95% of our stuff using SMF's either programmed by myself or at least heavily tweaked, edited etc because the audiences these days I've found want the "just like the record" sound, (I mean we do the Black Eyed Peas for example!)

As I've said elsewhere, I think there's quite an art to playing with SMFs to reproduce the sound of the artist you're portraying.

We're singers first, I should point out, and instrumentalists second (my wife plays Elecric Guitar) and it seems that many people on this board are perhaps the opposite of this.

When I use the arranger, it's mainly for Old Time Dancing (Pride of Erins, Gypsy Taps, Quick Steps, Barn Dances etc etc)and that's fun and, frankly, a lot easier than having to keep to the SMF arrangement.

In a funny way, I find using the arranger the "easy way out" in regards to the fact that you can play what you want when you want.

Both ways are good!