Playing live with the GNX4 drum machine

gtaus

We had to cover 3 hours of music this past weekend without a drummer. The GNX4 drum machine stood in for the night. It was OK, but not great, and will never replace a live drummer. We opted not to use any backing tracks as we like to jam during the songs and not be tied down to a backing track.

For what it's worth, I ran the GNX4 into a stereo PA and played both the guitar and drums through the 1/4\" outs. It always worked OK for practice. However, I think if we use the drum machine live again, I will use the SPLIT1 option, sending the guitar signal out via the 1/4\" line and the drums out the XLR line. Even though they both go into the same mixer, I will have more control on the mixer board for the individual channel volumes.

I discovered that without using the SPLIT1 option, if I turned up the volume to make the drums louder, my guitar volume also went up. Or if I turned down the volume for the drums, my guitar faded away too. Also, I was not crazy about bending over to adjust the drum level on the GNX4 for various songs. It would have been much easier on me to set a good level out of the GNX4 and adjust the volume on the mixer's slider controls. With the SPLIT1 option, I could have had the guitar and drums on separate channels running independently of each other.

Anyway, I learned how to put the GNX4 in recorder mode so we could start/stop the GNX4 drums with a simple step on the first button. So that worked OK. Still had to bend over for every song to change the tempo and/or drum track. Like I said, it went OK but we missed having a live drummer. We have used the GNX4 drum machine for practice alot, but never used it live. It was a learning experience and I thought I would share what we learned.

I would be interested to hear how other musicians are using their GNX4 in live settings. If you have some good advice or lessons learned on using the GNX4 live, please let us know. I don't care to learn everything the hard way. Best wishes.

guitar3456

wow! had that happen to us before..

best way is to get your (a) drummer and record the songs you play.
now you have drumming backing tracks you can place on CF cards

we recorded with endings, intros and the usual and there is no better way.

our drummer had to leave town and we had 3 shows sched he would miss.

he recorded his songs off of his E-drum kit and sent them to us. I just played them back the GNX4. awkward, but sounded really good.

on board drummer can get you buy in a pinch, but if you know in advance a drummer cannot make it, use the pattern styles of the drum machine and import those into songs. save the songs to the CF card and play from there.

you can always select a single default kit for the gnx drummer so there is less of a kit change on program changes.

thehootman

I would never consider the drum machine for live use. Only for practice.

iliace

Only with pre-planned MIDI tracks and heavy cues as to where and when, what and how.

shredd

I would use the drum machine for a live show, but only if it were the kind of pre-planned set list, with no \"jamm\" tunes - just stuff you play straight up.
Unless, of course, I thought chix dig drums... 8)

gtaus

Appreciate the feedback from you guys. Playing live with the GNX4 drum machine was a real challenge. I liked Guitar3456's suggestion of having the drummer record the drums track of the songs on CF for playback at the gig. That would probably be an improvement over canned backing tracks for a number of songs. Still would not work with our blues jam songs, but it would have worked on a number of other songs. We had a good drummer lined up for the gig, but he had to cancel the day before the show.

In a perfect world, we would not have played without a live drummer either. Unfortunately, the drummer canceled out the night before the gig and we had already committed by then - with or without him. We live in a area without many good drummers, and many local bands are playing without any drums. We have tried out a few drummers that could not keep a beat. There are some drummers that want to be in our band, but they just are not up to the skill level of live playing. A good drummer around here is very hard to find. Believe me, playing with a bad drummer is worse than playing with the GNX4 drum machine. At least the GNX4 drum machine keeps the beat and doesn't stop for mistakes.

Not to knock drummers down, but why aren't they (our local young drummers) practicing with metronomes or other drum machines to lock in their timing? We have seen drummers who are really interested in fancy fills, beats, drum rolls and not one of them can keep a basic beat. Mostly, they are young college aged kids who are practicing by themselves down in their basements to music \"in their head\". They don't even play along with a recording of a song. They can't keep a beat and completely lose the song coming back from one of their unneeded drum rolls. They only impress themselves and p&%% off the rest of us in the band. Maybe I am just getting too old, but when it comes to percussion, all I need is a steady beat. All that fancy stuff doesn't mean a thing to me if the drummer can't keep the heartbeat of the song.

For those of you with good drummers, I hope you appreciate them. Best wishes to all.

Suspect Audio

It looks like Pro Tracks has a pretty simple drum editor. I was watching the tutorial the other night and it seemed to make sense. If you had time, you could just record your drum part to the memory card and go from there.

In the past when drummers have copped out at the last second, we have gone acoustic. Sometimes, that can be hard to do based on your gig.

iliace

\shredd\ wrote:

I would use the drum machine for a live show, but only if it were the kind of pre-planned set list, with no \"jamm\" tunes - just stuff you play straight up.
Unless, of course, I thought chix dig drums... 8)

That's why it worked in my setup - every jam was of pre-planned length. It takes a bit of practice to end at square X where the main song picks up, but works well enough for me.

guitar3456

for many songs you can simply get the midi files and edit them in PTP etc. remove other midi and select ch 10 only (drums). Now those midi songs can be saved to CF card as midi.. takes less space.

mp3's can also be arranged by exporting drum arrangements as mp3's to the CF card.

wildmann

I made a good livin' on the road with an old Roland CR1000,[ I believe was the model #]It was probably one of the !st midi types. The sound of the GNX4 is much better. If it only had a Clock-out I could sync up the GNX4 with the Roland, and combine beats etc. I think that recording the beats to a loop on the card would be the best/quickest way of using it LIVE.Easier to pull up without scrolling thru all of em 'each song. By the way, those road gigs were all 5/6 nighters. So, don't discount the drum machine as a professional performance device. And-- \"Otis,\" the drummer you keep in the Box, always shows up for the gig, don't drink, and doesn't get paid. We had a guitar/keyboard duo, that could \"stop time\". If your P.A. can handle the drum box at ROCK volume without blowin' crossover caps [ in the speakers].Of course, we used drummers when we settled in one area for a while. Hard to find one that can count all the way to four. Geezer Rock Rules--Wildmann

shredd

\wildmann\ wrote:

So, don't discount the drum machine as a professional performance device. And-- \"Otis,\" the drummer you keep in the Box, always shows up for the gig, don't drink, and doesn't get paid.

Dream come true.
I also like g's idea, whether it's mp3's or midi's or whatever...you've got good sounding drums to play to. Without your drummer complaing about all the stuff he has to haul around. :roll:

Not to dis drummers...but they're a lot harder to find a good one of than anything else!

wildmann

Oh, one other thing, the drum box don't lie!! Any fills/leads, stops, starts , 99% of the time are gonna be dead-on the down-beat when you come out of the riff/lick, whatever.Except, some of the latin beats [Santana type stuff]. So, look to your left, and then to your right, and if it ain't them, off the beat, and [99 out of 100,] it ain't the 'box', it's You thats hurtin'!! In Texas, we played anything from Bob Wills {western swing, ask your grandpa} to Deep Purple, and I don't mean tried to play either!! we nailed it. The Machine will train you to be dead on the beat. And it doesn't 'push' you. After a while, you can tell the drummer when he's off, or draggin'/rushin' ya.
Geezer Rock Rules!! The Wildmann

Outliner

Hi guys. I just bought the GNX4 and I want to use it live as a drum machine. I recorded some midi files with rhythms but even though when I play them looped in my PC there is no gap, in the GNX4 there is a gap when it goes from the start. So I cant use the 4 sec rhythms. Is there any option to enable, or should I record my files in a different way?

I use Steinberg Nuendo.

guitar3456

Is PRE ROLL active in SONG setup on the GNX4? How long is the gap?
If saved to the GNX4 CF midi folder, and as Type 0, the pattern or song should follow the scale of the hits coinciding with the original midi file.

You also may want to try using Pro Tracks with the GNX4 drum map. I've heard instances of files not matching assignments when the map is not applied. Especially where note velocity and note length are short on the original recorded midi.