How To Level Up Your Live Shows

Joey shows you how to deliver show-ready backing tracks for live productions. What mix elements do you use in your backing tracks? Let us know in the comments!

0:00 Introduction
0:25 Setup
3:19 Mixing
3:49 Stereo Mix
5:20 Stem Mix
5:58 Mono Mix
7:33 Songs vs Set
8:34 Closing thoughts

Song used is "Chemicals" by Conquer Divide

Tags:home recording,audio production,mixing tutorials
#homerecording #audioproduction #mixingtutorials

[FrMichaelSEC]

Well done video. It's just been "me and my guitar" for over 40 years of playing and I'm just making the jump into backing tracks and loopers. There is a LOT that I don't understand, but you took the mystery out of the process. Please post more!!! Thanks!

[ZeekBurse]

Super informative!! Thanks for sharing this!!!

[dylanlamarre]

This is awesome. I've always had the idea of just baking everything into a stereo track but I worried that it might not be "professional". I'm glad to hear that it's one of the legitimate options that you listed here.

[kevinschott]

Joey,

Thank you so much for this video man, you have know idea how valuable this was to me I learned so much from this short video. Thank you brother!

[ColtonVanceMusic]

We run our tracks and lights with ableton and light works - it really helps us out live!

[baxteradkins]

This was a really cool video idea and of course executed fantastically. I think doing a video on monitor mixes and monitor rigs for the stage and studio would be super dope!

[SkreamerOfficial]

Great video. Another note is.. If you're making a mono left click track and a mono right front of house backing track, use a laptop and daw to do this. Simply rendering down a stereo file and playing it out of your phone or Ipod/MP3 player will bleed some of the click into your backing track. Crosstalk is a real issue if it's done via these alternate methods.

[jonathanotrujillo]

there are 4 members in our band, guitar, bass, drums, lead vocal, I decided to include backtracks because there are no good piano players in my city. I use keyboard, synths, shakers, backing vocals, hits, basically everything that sound logical. we use a simple Y cable and run the consolidated tracks (never up to -12db ) with neural mix pro, it allows us to change the pitch and tempo on the fly if needed. and it's really good to have backing tracks with cues, because we hardly ever rehearse so, the cues are basically our live music director. I have some videos of my two bands in my channel.

[mandubien]

I’ve recently changed me setup for running backing tracks.
As the drummer and producer & mixer, I handle everything from start to finish.
I used to use Logic to run the tracks, but looking for the right song in the giant project made me waste too much time between each song.
I purchased MainStage and it’s so easy now: one song = one patch. Click and track are both loaded and ready to start.
All songs are set up in one click.
Since I can add any plugin to any track or bus, I’ll add a limiter at the end of the chain to keep a constant volume.
Thank you for the tip Joey!

[davidmiseveth]

I just want to say thank you for this video. As a live sound engineer you would be surprised how many bands don't do these basic things!

[BrandonHayesMusic]

My band uses synths and orchestral backing tracks so we have to have backing tracks. And now with our bassist leaving we have the bass tracks in there as well. Seeing this made us decide to upgrade the interface so we can have multi outputs for the FOH guy. Thanks a lot!

[HolgerGirlich]

We use a Cymatic LP16 (but want to switch to a PC/Mac runing Abelton Live). We are running stereo backing Tracks, Click and a mono Pilot Song (some of use just choose to only hear the own instrument and the pilot song in their IE (We are using a IEM Rack and Line 6 Helix Devices for 2 Guitars and the Bass. We are playing 2 x Guitars, Bass, Mono Synth 1 x Lead Vocals and Drums live. The St.Backingtracks contain Choir, additional Keyboard Parts and some FX Sounds and Intro & Outros. Thats a lot and not easy to mix it to a steady level. The Songs have very different dynamics. As we only use IE´s it is really important to find the right balance for the backingtracks. We are still not there to call it perfect. So Your Video helps us a bit and gives us possibilities to overthink what we did ;-)

[jangrube]

Thanks for that Video. We are getting ready to set up a Mono-Backing Track. On The Left wie have, Click, count ins & count outs, on the right all the samples & Backing tracks we need for each song. After our record-production I will change it to a Set-BackingTrack-Project. We have our InEar Rack and love it. Your video gave me the chills, to do it in a good way, but i am still worried about our Debut-Gig, that everythink can works well together. In a Few Month we will replace our live-player and have more Outputs avaiable for Stereo Rhythm Gits, Stereo Lead Gits, Stereo Samples & Mono Vox-Backing-Tracks. Keep it going!

[dougleydorite]

Just play the album and pretend you’re playing. My band does this all the time and we’re told we sound just like the recording

[virgilmaralit]

Love your teaching and delivery man thank you so much ❤

[samnarjinary]

Soon will I be using the backing tracks. Thanks for the tips.

[Optimoe]

Very valuable information and thoughts! It has answered a lot of my questions

[Aaronius_Maximus]

Immensely helpful! You're the best Joey thanks for sharing your knowledge!

[monkeykingk]

So awesome, we’ll be working on these

[janetrushworth]

It seems that now backing tracks have been accepted I was a pro keyboard player for over 40 years 40 years ago I was accused of cheating cos I used a boss chourus on my fender rhodes if you don’t keep up with the times and tech you will be left behind