We last left our heroes with a sudden departure of Brian, the bassist, which left Fun DMC having to move me from keys to bass, but also leaving us needing a fast solution to missing a core component of our sound in less than two weeks.  The answer to that was Ableton-controlled backing tracks that Robert and I stayed up for multiple nights recording and building into a set.

While most bands would have seen this as a temporary solution until they found a replacement bass player or keyboardist, it seems like we never end up doing what most bands would do.  The problem was that while it was a LOT of up-front work to set up, we really liked the tracks.  As any band using a click will tell you – playing with one made us remarkably tight.  Because Talon was so used to playing to a click, to the point where he was able to do sudden tempo changes on the fly without dropping a fraction of a beat, we were able to do some neat medley and mashup stuff.  Another trick we picked up from Robert’s church was to utilize a live count in our click as well – essentially a pre-recorded voice that will cue the part of song coming up, for example “Intro – two – three – four” or “Chorus – two – three- four”, which made sure no one every missed a section of the song.

For those of you interested in what this sounds like, check it out:

While the recorded tracks weren’t necessarily the best of quality (given that I’m not much of a keyboardist) and we were working at a breakneck pace, they somehow sounded really good in the house.  We were getting a lot of compliments from people we respected in pulling it off and it freed us up to try more ambitious songs and develop our stage presence.

But if you need to know one thing about Fun DMC, it’s that we’re never content with just sitting still and cruising along.  It was time to see what we could really do with these tracks.

What About A Light Show?

Eventually we started using a third-party service to provide professionally recorded and studio-mixed backing tracks for all of our new songs and arrangements.  While it came at a financial investment, the tracks sounded incredible and made the process of preparing a new song go from hours to minutes.  The next step was that we wanted to build a legit light show, having been spoiled by playing a few shows under Nate Wilson’s lighting rig.  We weren’t able to afford to hire a lighting tech full-time, so we invested in a few more lights and began the process of learning how to build a light show directly in Ableton that could react to different points in the song based on where it was at in the tracks.  For example, at the intro, the lights would turn red, then at the chorus, be green and the movers would start spinning around.  You get the idea.  After days of research and a maddening amount of trial and error, we found a solution that worked.  Much to my wife’s chagrin, we took over my living room for a week, set up every light we owned, and built a rough but passable light show for most of our songs.  Par cans, uplighting, effects lights, movers, haze, led backdrops, lasers, our drum riser – if it had DMX, we programmed it in.  It was awesome and there were definitely early moments in our set that we would miss a lyric or a chord because we were giddy watching everything automatically go from scene to scene.  And hey look, no lighting operator:

What About Video Screens?

We were already doing stuff with the lighting and tracks that no one else in the area was doing, so what was the logical next step to take our production to the next level?  We kept talking about what we could do that would not only add additional value to the events we were booking, but also be something attention-getting.  We batted this around for awhile, but kept coming back to screens that were synced with the clicks.  After more research and trial and error, we figured out the automated triggering process between Ableton and a program called ProPresenter, and got to work.  This time we weren’t in as much of a rush, as we had to do the manual programming and timing work in the two programs and then cut videos to match beat for beat with our songs.  The initial plan was to just have the music videos match along with what we were singing, but that proved to be challenging since we’ve adjusted a lot of the bpm’s of our songs to mashup or medley together.  After some long days with Final Cut, we finally had most of them together.  We picked up some large flat screens, some specialty mounts, and two long HDMI cables and we were in business.  We’re continually finding new things we can do with the screens including showing wedding photos of newlyweds as they walk into the reception, put up commercials for our merchandise or our sponsors, countdowns, social media feeds, and other on-the-fly moments.

Huh. I’ve Suddenly Become Unnecessary.

I was never worried about programming myself out of a job.  Besides being the only person who knew how the lighting set up really worked, I was also the only one tall enough to be able to reach the top of the backdrop.  However, we always joked that I could easily be replaced by a Macbook, which was funny until I had to be.  Jumping forward about a year, we had landed on the lineup of Fun DMC that we have today.  The tracks were almost entirely moved off of the old recorded ones I made in my living room and we were close to 75% mashups and medleys at this point.  With the addition of Albert and Katey as well as the additional things we had built into the tech side of our production, we were evolving into more of a show than a band, which we were all very happy about.

Then my dad, who had been battling heart and kidney disease, took a turn for the worse.  We knew that a moment was coming sooner than later that I probably would not be available for a show, possibly with no notice.  At that point, bringing in a fill-in bass player wasn’t an option since we didn’t have a set timeline and had built ourselves a very complicated score to follow with these tracks.  We talked through a number of options, but with all of our songs being played to a click, the easiest solution, especially with my time being limited so that I could spend time with my family, was to record all of the bass parts and leave them dropped into Ableton.  I took an evening to record all of the bass parts and we set them up where the band would be able to turn them on with the press of a button.

A few weeks later, just five minutes after arriving to a wedding in Springfield, I got the call that my dad had passed. I left immediately, but the band didn’t have to cancel or find someone or even adjust any vocals (outside of the few lead parts that we planned for).  That night, if anyone noticed that Fun DMC didn’t have a bass player on stage, they were too busy dancing to care.  We ran the same set up at the following show in my absence and again – no one seemed to notice the difference past the edge of the stage.  I returned for the next show, relieved that we had a solution for emergency situations, and this past September I was able to take another few shows off for the birth of my son.  It even came in handy when Robert had to leave mid-show recently and I was able to move over to guitar on the fly (for better or worse) and let the computer handle the bass.

From a live perspective, this also gave me the opportunity to do some things I couldn’t do while tethered to the bass.  Problem with a light or video?  Robert can hit the button on his foot-controller and I can take care of business.  Hula hoop contest getting crazy?  I grab the camera and let the computer do it’s thing.  “House Party” dance steps with Albert?  Bass tracks.  We don’t overdo it, but it’s certainly let us add some cool moments into our show.

 

So there it is.  We not only play to click tracks, but we rely on them for our whole production and show around them.  With having gone to direct instrumentation recently, we’ve even started testing having the patches on our guitar and bass controlled by them.

But that introduces a few things to discuss: Have we sold out our musical integrity? Are we basically just a karaoke band at this point?  Does it matter?

We’re going to dig into that in part 3 and then wrap this up with part 4, which will give a more detailed look at the technical side of how we coordinate all of these moving parts.