As we reported in early June, our bassist Hank has moved on to other walks of life. As much as we disliked seeing him go, we took it as an opportunity to dive into an area of live performance we have been talking about for a while now. This involved essentially reformulating our live show entirely, which also allowed us to organize and streamline our live setup.
Our former setup involved all parts and instruments being performed live. Of course, this is the ideal method, but it also is somewhat limiting; four people can only cover so much ground. Since most of the tracks from our debut record involve more layers than we had performers, we had to simplify them for live performance. This often meant cutting out entire parts, which is something we did with reluctance. Now, since we are minus a bassist, we decided to rely on pre-recorded backing tracks to cover the low end. That being the case, we also have the opportunity to include some of the other song elements that were previously excluded. This is very exciting as we can now play any song we desire to, including new ones.
Preparing the backing tracks, however, proved to be a laborious task. First, we had to decide what element each person would actually perform live. In theory, we wanted each person to always be doing something, whether that be playing guitar, keyboards, percussion, etc. To decide how we would go about this, we looked at each song and identified the key elements. Obviously, vocals take precedence. Lead riffs and percussion tended to be next in importance. Background elements, such as pads and bass, didn't seem as critical, nor would they be as interesting visually, so those were left for playback. At the end of this process, each person had one or two parts to play for each song.
Since we were also trying to streamline our setup, we really focused on limiting the amount of gear we would need for each show. To do so, we translated many of the keyboard parts into guitar parts. This way Kyle could focus more on vocals, with his only other responsibilities being guitar and cueing the backing tracks. I would play all of the necessary keyboard parts, as well as an electronic drum pad and backing vocals. After minimizing our gear as much as possible, it was time to actually create all of the backing tracks.
Recently, we have been working with Ableton Live, which is an amazing program and perfect for this type of live performance. However, a lot of the older songs were created with Logic or Pro Tools, so we had to open up each of those sessions and make bounces for each song before bringing them into Live. This process started by muting all of the parts that would be performed by us. Next, we looked at what kind of processing was applied to the master output, such as limiting and multi-band compression. Since most venues already apply a bit of compression and limiting, we were careful not to add even more, in hopes of retaining dynamic range. Therefore, we scrapped the limiter and only kept the multi-band compression if it was significantly changing the tone of the backing tracks. Once we had gone through this process for each song, we began creating instrument tracks.
All of the keyboard tracks were to be controlled via USB, so we had to find new patches in Live that would work for the Logic and Pro Tools songs. Some of these new patches even sound better than the originals! We also had to figure out an easy way to switch keyboard sounds from song to song. After racking his brain for days, Kyle found the solution: dummy clips. Dummy clips are basically audio or MIDI clips that don't actually play back any audio, but control and automate effects and settings within the track. Using dummy clips, the keyboard patches would automatically change as the each song begins. Taking this a step further, we also automated the vocal effects, i.e. reverb and delay, to match the desired sound for each song.
At that point, the only thing left for us to do was rehearse and make minor adjustments to levels and effects. Since we have backing tracks to stay in sync with, Brian and I are now playing to a click track. This took a bit of getting used to, but we got into the flow of it pretty quickly. Before we knew it, it was time to debut our new set.
We played our first show in almost three months on August 29th at the High Dive in Fremont. Despite a bit of confusion during setup, the show went very well. We brought an above-average amount of people for a Thursday, our fans enjoyed the new material, and we learned a lot about this new live format. The very next day, we honed in our setup and performance even further and played one of our best shows to date at the Hawthorne Theater in Portland, OR.
With our momentum building, we plan to play shows at a more consistent and frequent rate, while continuing to add songs to our set. Many of these will be new songs that we have been writing for our next album.
See you out there!
