After watching some of Steven Wilsons live shows I'm wondering just what reference tracks they hear during silence and long improve sections...I'm sure some of you guys out there use similar techniques-my question is : what is heard right before transitions? Is it strictly a click type count in...or is there a spoken cue along with the count in...or?...i'm intrigued.
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What do you mean by "long silences" and "improv" sections?
In any band (well except some of those punk and "alternative" bands who pride themselves on sounding amateurish), you have one person who serves as a conductor, of cuing the rest of the band when there's a fermata in an arrangement, or for ending songs. Sometimes if you watch some bands, let's say it's the guitarist, he might raise the neck of the guitar up and bring it down, kind using it as a baton, to indicate exactly when the band is supposed to stop playing. Or it might be a dramatic nod of the head or if you're talking about a singer, it might be some kind of hand gesture.
If there's a literal silence in an arrangement, unless the pause is a pre-arranged number of beats (say just one or two), again, someone is charging of cuing the entire band back in so they all come back in on the same beat.
With improv sections (I assume that's what you meant by "improve"), there's a few different ways of ending a long solo. Maybe the soloist will play a given lick that tells the rest of the band that the solo is over and it's time to go back to the chorus or to end the song or whatever. Or again, there can be some kind of visual cue, either the soloist turns to the rest of the band or there's some other cue. I was watching a Deep Purple video where at the end of his solos, you'd notice Jon Lord lifting his hand and counting the beats with his fingers, like a TV floor director or something, to cue the next section of the song.
Or the leader might just given actual spoken cue. I saw a video of Stevie Wonder performing Living For The City on TV, and there's a point near the end of the song, where he and the band repeat one bit several times, and then he finally says "Go back to the vamp", in this case, go back to the verse riff, which also served as the song's coda.
So in other words, there's lots of ways musicians determine such things, and depends on whoever is in charge of making those decisions in such a band.
I always had the impression that click tracks are typically only used when there's lots of elaborate visual things, ie lighting, films, etc that are synced to the music, and therefore the band needs to play at exactly the same tempo each night, so that a lighting effect or an event in the film, etc occurs exactly with whichever downbeat it's supposed to happen on. Or if you're playign onto a tape. Watch old footage of The Who, and you'll notice that on songs like Baba O'Riley, Won't Get Fooled Again, Bell Boy, etc, you'll see Keith Moon (or Kenney Jones, if we're talking about the 79-82 era) wearing headphones on those songs, because they had to stay in sync with the tape. You'll notice every live version of Won't Get Fooled Again starts with three beats before the big power chord intro, which was sort of the count in to get the band to start at the same time as the tape.
In theory, Pink Floyd played to click tracks (and in some of the photos and live footage, you can see Nick Mason had a mirror amongst his drumkit, supposedly to help him time certain things so they occurred with the film), but I've seen bootleg footage where they're clearly not in sync with the film (say for instance, during Welcome The Machine, where there's a couple bits that are supposed to happen in sync with the music, I've seen about three or four different concerts where they most definitely don't even come close to being in sync...assuming the version of the Welcome To The Machine film that VH-1 Classic still occasionally airs as a video is how they intended it to work in concert).
I also remember reading that King Crimson used a click track in 84, which is why apparently every night of that tour, they played the exact same setlist, with the songs in the same running order. I'm not sure why that would have been, because certainly on the Live In Japan video, there doesn't seem to be much going on that would necessitate such actions, unless this was another one of Fripp's "discipline" things, "ie If we want the songs to sound right, we have to play them exactly at the right tempo" or whatever (for what it's worth, I think it was Beethoven, during whose life the metronome was invented, so he took writing precisely what tempo he wanted his music played at, which had never been done before in classical music).
In the 80s, I recall Tears For Fears and Chick Corea's Eletrik Band playing along to midi triggered sequencers.
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Pat Metheny Group also used sequencers and click tracks. I read where bassist Steve Rodby described it as being like having a guy in the band who has great time but doesn't listen very well.
This is actually a very interesting question if I understand it correctly. There are many different methods to playing with a live click. It comes down to the drummer and the skills that they have playing to a click. Most of the time it's a click through headphones. This is often a beep sound but some drummers prefer a rimshot type sound. A few even like to just see a light flashing.
When my band used one (we were a 3 piece at one point and sequenced the bass) the drummer had control through a mini disc player. He would start and stop it. Usually an 8 count - 4 for him and 4 of him clicking in the band.
We never, thankfully, had a trainwreck as he was a master at playing to a click.
I saw Porcupine Tree when they played in Vermont many years ago and they were using a DAT machine for the click track and other sounds. It broke down during the gig. Laptops are now the standard.
Its really much easier to NOT play live with a click. But it"s essential if you have intricate videos synced in the background to the music.
And apparently KC are using click track on the current tour.
I remember Howard Jones doing a tour in the mid 80's where he played along to sequencers and drum machines. He was the only live musician onstage, and he had a dancer, and that was it. I think he must have decided he didn't like doing that, because on his next tour, he had a rhythm section and back up singers onstage with him.Originally Posted by nosebone
There was also a story I heard once about a Depeche Mode gig where there was a powerful failure about three or four songs into the show. When the power came back on, they had to restart their set from the beginning, because the entire showed involved the band playing to a pre-recorded backing tape, and they couldn't just rewind back to the beginning of the song that was interrupted.
There's also the story of a Devo show in the early 80's, which was must have been done in a similar fashion. They were doing a live TV broadcast, and something calamity occurred during one of the songs that literally caused the band to stop playing in the middle of one of the songs. You hear Mark Mothersbaugh say something like "I'm sorry, we can't finish that song", but the backing tape (and the backdrop film) keeps going. It's the weirdest thing, there's like 2 or 3 minutes of just the backing tape (a very mundane sequencer part), then it abruptly ends and the next song starts, and everything goes fine from that point forward.
Or if you're playing along to a sequencer, I imagine. I recall reading that Geddy had a drum machine onstage for the Grace Under Pressure tour (and maybe some of the subsequent ones?), whose sole function was to send a click track to Neil's headphones for the songs where they were using the arpeggiators and sequencers.
I heard a few live versions of Opeth's "I Feel The Dark" and on the silent break before the deep dark mellotron attack the break in those versions were much longer. I wondered if they were tapping their feet, then someone gave the nod to go?
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In my band we had a song where I played a rhythmic synth patch. When practicing or performing I had a foot pedal where I could tap out the tempo of the band to keep it in sync. We preferred that over playing to a click track, it kept the feel more natural.
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I heard the Grateful Dead played to a click track on their 1993 tour.
There are recordings where tapers hacked into their in-ear monitor system from the final 90's tours, and reportedly there are click tracks audible on some of them. I have read that there were ongoing arguments between Weir and the drummers about tempo, so maybe that was one reason.
Click tacks becomes a necessity as more and more bands includes some of the album backing tracks in the live performance, such as backing vocals, strings, odd instruments and additional percussion. Obviously, most modern popular music relies on rock-steady (!!?) rhythms to recreate the sequenced mechanical feel of the album production.
However, IMHO most rock and prog suffer greatly from overuse of such "too-steady" tempo. A lot of the feel of a song and the arrangements come from minute-to-drastic tempo changes. If you study drum fills, for example, you will find that the drummer often rush the tempo to lead the upcoming chorus, and consciously drag the feel to lead a softer section, even if the tempo in the different sections are the same. Furthermore if you listen to especially classic prog, you can hear quite significant tempo changes between the different song sections, or even between repeating sections (i.e. the chorus) at different places in the song. Supper's Ready and Siberian Khatru being quite obvious examples.
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My enthusiasm for live Rush diminished somewhat when I learned that Peart plays to a click track. It's understandable given the excellent video that is a part of their show, but I still don't like it. It doesn't diminish the skill needed to perform the music, but it does take away from a more natural feel that they might otherwise have. I still enjoy their shows, but...
May have to do with the "backing vocals" (that are presumably not sung by Alex or Neil) too.
According to the Snakes & Arrows concert tech doc, Rush don't use click tracks. So at least not in 2007.
What's wrong with using click tracks? It's what professionals do! We're all human. The worst - most unprofessional thing, speaking from a guy who works in a recording studio, is when an artist says "I don't need the click!"
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The best live albums I know are made whithout clicks. The speed may sail a bit up & down, but who cares - if its living music !
Example: The Who - Live at Leeds.
Ableton Live software has revolutionized the act of augmenting your live set with pre-recorded sounds. It's quite astounding what you can do with a laptop these days, as far as interacting with and sculpting these pre-recorded tracks. The musician can basically remix or edit his or her suite of backing tracks live, in real time.
You can also control the lights and do all kinds of stuff. I see this less as "they've stolen gigs from real musicians!" (remember- not everyone took to the mighty Melotron like we did) than I see it as "These kids now have tools their grandparents don't understand, with which to make art their parents won't like." Appropriately powerful, in that case.
BTW- Has anyone confirmed KC using a click recently? Or 1984, for that matter?
I believe it was mentioned in the commentary on one of the downloadable shows from DGM. Somethign to the effect they played the exact same setlist every night because they were using a click track.
Mike Portnoy, when he was in Dream Theater (and probably still, for all I know) had what he called a "secret cowbell" - a little electronic drum pad who's signal wasn't sent to the PA but could be heard by his bandmates, which was used to cue the opening of songs and when to play again after the break in a song.
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Don't know for certain about Pink Floyd, but there's several IEM recordings from the Roger Waters "The Wall" tour where you can hear every last count-in, click and cue. Not a recording I would listen to all the time, but I find it to be a fascinating behind-the-scenes look.
Air Supply plays to a click as well.
Cardiacs.
Dream Theater now play to a click track but for me, it's made their live performance a bit sterile....it's just too tight.
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