Backing tracks

[Gerry]

I'm a very novice sound person. I'm helping a small amatuer group.

I would like some backing tracks were one track is the melody, so I can play it through the stage monitors for the singers to follow, and the other track is the "full orchestra" to play through the FOH, for the audience.

Do such tracks exist? If so can you recommend a online source for such?

Cheers

Gerry

[timtheenchanteruk]

not found them online., but I have used some of the tracks found in instrument "playalong" books, there tend to have identical tracks, one with melody line, one without,

if you have a 4 track playback, you need both tracks to play simultaneously through SCS or similar, if you only have stereo, you can mix one track left, one right, and send the relevent one to the monitors/FOH.

 

can work quite effectivly, as long as the talent dont just want more and more monitors, otherwise the spill from these removes any benefit anyway.

[Bobbsy]

I don't know of any commercial source for such tracks but it IS a trick I've used with some success when doing original shows with a youth theatre group when working with original music (which meant I did the mixes anyway). In our case, the music was prepared using MIDI and VSTi sources so it was fairly easy to include a melody track (usually piano) in one part of the mix but not in the other. In my case I had the ability to playback more than 2 tracks so I could do a stereo mix for the audience and a simple mono for the stage monitors.

 

One thing to consider is that in the "normal" size of amateur venue some sound from the stage monitors will still make it to the audience so the stage mix still has to work okay with the FOH version.

 

Perhaps if you could find standard backing tracks for the songs you want, a talented member of the cast could record a keyboard version of the melody line for you in whatever multitrack software you have access to?

 

Bob

[Gerry]

..., a talented member of the cast could record a keyboard version of the melody line for you in whatever multitrack software you have access to?

 

Bob

If there was a talented member who was a keyboard player then I wouldn't have needed to ask the question. :)

Thanks for the reply. I'll have to look for some recordings that have a more distinct melody.

Any advice on a good online source for backing tracks?

 

Cheers

Gerry

[timtheenchanteruk]

ameritz, karaoke version.com (check the preview some are better than others) these dont seem too bad at the moment, my only complaint with any of the online sellers is the tracks are all MP3, although these 2 are nearly all 256kb/s, some are 192kb/s