My Band - 'The Skyline Band'

We aim to play the kind of music that's soulful, cool, danceable, mature, listenable.  You get the idea.  I play lead guitar and sing lead vocals, Laurie French is on congas, percussion and backing vocals and Jim Mercer provides rhythm guitar and backing vocals.  We have a separate site for the band here The Skyline Band, please come and visit.  

Equipment

After many years of trying to find a stable lineup with numerous bass and keyboard players passing through (see 'My Music Journey', left), I decided to improve the odds of arriving at a viable, stable band and form just a trio, but with bass, drums, keyboards, etc. provided by means of midi tracks.  This would make the whole project easier to get off the ground in terms of (i) fewer personnel leading to fewer disagreements over musical direction, (ii) total control over the arrangements and instrumentation on each songs, and (iii) easier co-ordination of rehearsals, gigs, etc.  Another major advantage is that we can now make full use of instrumentation such as brass and strings.

MIDI and synthesiser technology is now mature enough, and accessible in terms of cost, to enable bands to play live with backing tracks that are as credible as they are accurate and musical.  The days of cheesy backing tracks are gone, provided you invest in quality equipment to make the sounds.  We play all guitar parts live and use a Roland synthesiser to play pre-recorded MIDI tracks providing the parts for bass, drums, keyboards, strings and brass.

We prepare all the backing tracks ourselves using my home studio, sometimes buying and modifying commercially prepared tracks, and sometimes making our own from scratch with the help of software such as Band In A Box and Jammer Pro.  This process is important - and lengthy - not least because we want to be playing all our 'own' music at gigs, not someone else's.  It's also important because (i) arrangements need changing to suit live playing situations, e.g. by lengthening songs, and enabling space for live guitar solos, and (ii) the process brings the band members' ideas together increasing our feeling of fulfillment as well as ownership of the final products.  

The backing tracks all go through the PA system along with our vocals, except for the drum parts which are diverted instead to a drum machine using a dedicated amplifier.  This amplifier is at the back of the lineup in the place traditionally reserved for a live (or even semi-conscious..) drummer, giving us a sound source that sounds 'right'.  Live guitars are amplified in the usual way with two amps, L and R, in the 'backline'.  A very important component is a powered sub woofer which enables a completely realistic, powerful bass guitar sound.  Without this all the sounds (except guitars and drums) would be coming through two PA speaker cabinets and would just sound like amplified pre-recorded music instead of a live performance with sounds from slightly different sources.  Balancing of the various components was a bit tricky at first but we've now got it down to a fine art and the whole setup sounds pretty good now.

What are the disadvantages?  Well, the main one of course is that songs, and indeed sets, have to be completely pre-arranged, with no room for quick signals among band members of "take it round again, lads!".  As for audiences detecting how it's done, well, most are pretty savvy now when it comes to musical technology and many will have seen live bands using MIDI tracks, although they might not have been fully aware of it.  Any drawbacks however are far outweighed by the considerable advantages.

Here, for the terminally technologically curious, is a list of our live performance gear:

Song List