The bands that have mastered using tracks on Sage,

do it in a way that you'll never actually know if they're using tracks.

So what are the types of sounds,

the types of things that they have in your tracks we're gonna talk about and

discuss exactly what those are today,

on today's episode of Behind the Space Bar.

Hey everyone, this is Will Welcome back behind the Space Bar.

If this is your first time, then welcome. So glad you are here.

This is the podcast for folks that are performing on stage with Ableton Live.

Today's episode is gonna be super short and sweet. Uh,

I have six things I wanna share with you that are examples of things you can use

tracks for examples of types of sounds you can have in your tracks, um, uh,

that are not tracks themselves.

And here's the reason why I wanna do this episode. Uh,

I've had probably two or three people in the past couple months comment on

particular intro videos of tracks that have said, um,

I hate when bands use tracks because it sounds manufactured and fake.

Or they've said something like, um, uh, you know, when bands use tracks, it's,

it's stuffy and it's commercialized and blah, blah, blah. And I thought, well,

those, those comments are interesting because I've seen bands that are, uh,

you know, more acoustic based, kind of folky based,

that use tracks that have different things in their tracks than bands that are

like electronic based. I've seen EDM acts that are very heavy on tracks,

and I've seen rock bands that are heavy on tracks,

and I've seen acoustic based bands that are heavy on tracks,

and all three of them sound different. So how can they sound commercialized?

And at the heart of what they're saying is, um,

they're sitting in an environment,

they're hearing a band use tracks in a way that's, that's, uh,

maybe not the best possible way. Now context is everything.

I've preached this many, many times before that. Again,

if you go to see a jazz trio and you suddenly hear a full size band,

full size orchestra plane, you're gonna go, something's not right here.

But if you walk into a small club with an artist with amazing vocals that has a

very electronic, uh, you know, kind of heavy influence EDM style music,

and you hear a lot of tracks, you're not gonna say, man, that show sucked.

You're gonna go, man, that artist was incredible. Uh, it's all about context,

right? We've talked about that many, many times before.

But something that rang true about those comments that those folks had left was,

again, just the idea that, um, what does tracks even mean? It's,

it's kind of like an existential question, but what are even tracks?

Like what are the things that are in tracks?

And it's all dependent on different situations and scenarios.

And it took me back to the idea that, uh, again,

we talked about a couple weeks ago, how do use tracks on stage without cheating,

without feeling like a fraud?

And a lot of times people hear tracks backing tracks,

and they think what's happening is everyone on stage is faking it,

and the sounds that they hear are coming from the, the tracks, right?

And that's simply not true in some scenarios, yes, but it's simply not true.

The, the artists you see on stage is likely singing, um,

the majority of the show, if not all of it, it's not tracked vocals.

Just because you saw that one clip of Ash Ashley Simpson on stage doesn't mean,

uh, on snl. Doesn't mean that every single pop act that you see is faking.

A lot of them are, but not every single one that you see is faking, uh,

singing on stage. So I got six things really quickly that I wanna share, uh,

as potential ideas of things you could put into tracks that are not tracks or

you wouldn't consider to be tracks, uh, that will allow you to, uh,

do the goal of what I think the goal of good production is.

Good production is not seen, it's felt good. Production is not noticed.

It's an emotion, it's a feeling. So you walk away from a show, um, not going,

ah, that that band used a lot of tracks in it.

You walk away from that show going, man, what a really cool moment. Like,

that band sounded incredible,

and it's because they used elements of tracks and different things to really

enhance their show. I will warn you up front,

this could be an even better tutorial if I had examples of each of these things,

but I wanted to get this content out as an encouragement.

And here's what I need from you. If you're watching on YouTube and you go, will,

this is, this is great. I love this idea. Can you give me examples,

audio examples of each of these? Or show us how to do this in Ableton. Uh,

if I get enough people commenting, which is like one or two,

if a couple of you comment and go, well, this is great,

show us how to do this in Ableton. Um,

then we'll do a follow up tutorial on this, right?

So instead of just a podcast episode, we'll dive deep into this.

So we've got six things. I wanna run through these really,

really quickly to share examples of things that are not tracks,

what we consider tracks that you could use and put into tracks to be successful.

Number one, this sounds like a cheat, but it really isn't.

Click and guide and you go, well, will,

don't You have to have click and guide to use tracks? Yes,

but you don't have to have tracks to use click and guide.

And what I mean by that is, if your band is playing with clicking guide,

you can then use time code,

you can use MIDI to control and change presets on your keyboards,

on your guitar puddles, on your amp modelers, amp simulators. Um,

you can send time code to your lighting console to control video to keep it

perfectly in sync. You can send mini notes to a teleprompter solution. Um,

you can do so many things that don't require the audience hearing anything.

Uh, you can have guide cues, slate tracks,

q tracks in your ears that remind you of verse coming up,

remind you of lyrics going into a particular situation.

Remind you have like stage direction notes to say, uh, you know, center stage,

stand over here, pyros coming up.

Don't step back too far or your butt will be on fire. Uh,

little things like that that are in your ears that the audience will never,

never hear. Now,

if you're listening to this and you've never used tracks on stage,

or you're just brand new to this, you may go, yeah, well,

but using a click is restrictive. We can't flow. We can't change tempo. Well,

yeah, you can, you just program that into the click and say,

this verse is gonna be a different tempo. That verse,

you can be as free and you can have as much flexibility.

Your timbo can flow just as much when you're playing with click As without it,

it's just when you're playing with click,

you're choosing and being intentional to flow as opposed to just flowing because

you can't play in time. Okay? So number one, clicking guide.

Only a lot of really cool stuff we can do with that.

And it has no sounds at whatsoever. Number two, enhance thematic moments.

What I mean by that is, um, you have moments of your show where, uh,

maybe the lights are gonna dim down and it's a, it's, it's a breakup song,

right?

And you want this really emotional part of the song where their life was in

despair and everything was awful until they met this person that they complete

them. Their, their life is whole now. But this really dark moment,

we want to enhance this thematic moment of the show.

So we can use clicking guide play along with that, not to it,

but with it so that we can track light so that tracks fade to center stage.

We can use a, uh, guide cue that tells the artist to stay in center stage. Um,

all the lights come down except for this one spotlight on the person to enhance

the fact that they're all alone in complete despair there.

But as that's happening then,

and I'm kind of cheating to get ahead to some of these other ones as that's

happening, we can use effects to, to kind of, uh, make that a really big moment,

right? We can use a symbol swell to swell down to that. Uh,

we can use white noise and chaos and chaos and then solely drop it to nothing to

where it sounds like science silence to enhance that thematic moment.

A a perfect example that, uh, I've used multiple times before,

but one that I thought of preparing this episode, um,

years and years ago would've been 2013, I believe.

I was in Florida on staff at a church there.

We did a big Christmas thing at the, uh,

whatever the hockey arena there is that the hockey team plays in Atlanta,

30,000 people every campus of our church was there. It was massive.

And we had a moment where we wanted, um, some drummers to come out and play, um,

I guess like marching tom drums, whatever it would be called.

It wasn't bass drums,

but they're kind of wearing it and we want them to do hits with the drums. Well,

we didn't mic the drummers up.

They were certainly playing and they were actually playing their part.

But what we did is we tracked some drums beforehand, uh, playing that part.

And then I actually went in with, uh, uh,

some sine waves and basically made some hits so that as they hit there was this

more emotional kind of impact happening. Um, you could say, well, will,

that's faking it. Okay, but were they playing on stage? Yes, they were.

Were there also things enhancing what they were doing? Well, yes, they were.

Okay, so you wouldn't walk away from that. I go,

I didn't like that part where they were using tracks.

You couldn't tell we were using tracks in that moment because what was happening

in the tracks,

the goal was to enhance this thematic moment of the song to enhance the

instruments that were on stage, right? Hopefully that makes sense to you.

Number three, sound effects. So again, this kind of ties into number two, but,

um, uh, you know, glass breaking, uh, a siren happening, uh, uh, you know,

I'm trying to think of examples of sound effects.

I think we've all know what sound effects are,

but if you're using and guide live, um, uh,

you don't even have to necessarily have click and guide to have sound effects.

You could have like a, a drum pad or something that has those programmed in,

but using sound effects will add this other emotional layer. Um,

that instead of standing on stage and breaking glass and micing it up and making

sure people don't get cut, just have that noise, that sound effect, um, uh,

in the tracks,

particularly if you're doing a lot of production with a lot of sound effects,

um, uh, in the studio,

you can literally just render those out and have those in the tracks, uh, uh,

when you perform live. Um, and it's again, gonna help create,

going back to number two, a really cool thematic moment.

One final thing I'll throw in here that I didn't plan on throwing in.

If the system that you're using live happens to be in stereo, um,

you can do some really cool things with sound effects to enhance thematic

moments by using panning, right?

You can get kind of chaotic by having it like ping pong back and forth,

or you could do a really cool kind of pan with like white noise or something

from the left to right field of the speakers, and maybe not everyone hears that,

but the people that are close enough to a speaker,

they'll hear something happening. And it's like a subtle cue to, um,

um, to start subconscious that like, oh, pay attention.

Something's happening here. And again,

we can use those things to either make a big impact or take chaos and then drop

it to pure silence,

and it's gonna make that silence feel a lot bigger because it was big and it

went to softer. Hopefully that makes sense. Uh, number four, voiceovers.

This is something I see, um, a lot happen again,

again to kind of enhance that thematic moment. But, uh, you're,

you're doing a song about a particular subject. You're doing a song,

responding to, um, uh, something that happened in the news.

An artist wrote a song about something that they went through that's public,

that people know about. Um, maybe it's a response to people, you know,

talking trash about them.

And they can play clips of news shows where people said, oh, that will dog,

he's a real, you know, a-hole. I hate that guy. He's a real jerk.

And then I write some song about rising above the noise, right? Well,

a great way to enhance the thematic moment and the impact of that song is to

start with all those clips, right? If, if I was a real YouTuber,

I could do a compilation of all the negative comments on YouTube videos and then

do a video about how we shouldn't have negative comments or whatever.

But that video would have more impact by showing you that actually happened,

right? Uh,

so having voiceovers is a great way either in the beginning of a song or in the

middle of a song to, again, take something from just being a song to,

to being an experience, right? And I think that's why I love this technology.

I don't love this technology because you can stand on stage and play with a

click and play with tracks. Like who, who cares? Okay, Lottie fricking doc,

great. But I love this technology because it's way to enhance our storytelling,

and it's a way to, um, uh, drive our point home.

And every single one of you watching and listeners has a story that you want to

tell. You want to tell a story about yourself,

about something that's happened to you, to someone else. Um,

you wanna share these songs that you wrote, uh,

that you went into the studio and recorded and poured your soul into,

and you want to take those onto the stage to, to really tell that story, uh, in,

in, in a very, um, vulnerable, impactful, truthful way.

Tracks are what allow you to help you do that using voiceover sound effects.

And again, if we're using time code with this,

we can tie that into a video of actual clips of it that are perfectly in timed,

the hits happen at the right time. And again,

those are shows where people will walk away from and they're not gonna go,

I hate that that band uses tracks on stage.

They're gonna walk away maybe with tears in their eyes or, uh,

encouragement in their heart and, and go, man,

that was like a really impactful show,

and it's gonna have more impact with those extra elements than if it was just

music. Now, before I get to number four and number five, I wanna encourage you,

if, if you're just starting your journey of using tracks,

you wanna learn how to best use tracks on stage, uh, then how to,

from studio to stage.com/template,

two things you're gonna get when you go there. One,

you're gonna get my free track template, which is, I've gone through, I've, uh,

spent years and years trying to find the best possible to run tracks on stage

with Ableton Live. Uh,

and I've created a template that's gonna allow you to get, uh,

up and running as quickly as possible to do that. Um,

knowing how to run tracks in enable to live is a completely different process

than using able to live for live looping, which is different than recording,

which is different than producing music.

So even if you're an expert in able to live in those things,

you've gotta know how to use Live for running tracks,

and you're gonna learn how to do that in the best possible way by going to from

studio stage.com/template,

getting my free track template instead of doing the work to try to figure it out

yourself. Still, my ideas, still my process, and you can apply that,

but you're not left alone to figure it out on your own.

You'll also get access to a six day email course.

So I'll email you every single day showing you exactly how to use that template

with your content. So if you want to learn how to use tracks on Sage, again,

in a way that people don't notice, but the people walk away and go, wow,

that was an amazing, um, amazing, just kind of emotional moment.

I'm not sure exactly what I experienced there.

Then the best way to get started is from studio to stage.com/template. Okay?

Number five, um, uh, way that we can, uh, you know,

do things or tracks that aren't actually tracks is enhance instruments on stage.

Um,

the first thing that popped into my mind when I was preparing for this episode

was sub-base, right?

You've got a bass player and maybe in the first course everything drops down,

we wanna make a bigger impact on the course. Certainly the bass player could,

could just hit whole notes and hopefully they,

their base sustains enough that it's gonna have an impact.

They could certainly have a MOG on stage that they could play subbase with,

but if you can't afford the mog, you don't want to afford the extra input,

you don't want to haul that around,

or your bass player doesn't really play keys and that just happened in the

studio, then a great way to impact that is to have subbase again,

is a bass player faking, no, they're not faking,

they're playing those notes on stage.

They're just using something to help impact that. Uh,

the example I shared before of drummers on stage and when they hit,

there's pre-recorded drums, uh, to impact those, those moments,

there's maybe symbol swells to impact those moments. Um,

there's like a sub-base hit or drop, something like that. Um, um,

those are things that are gonna help impact moments and enhance instruments on

stage. I shared this in that episode, uh,

where we talked about not cheating with tracks on stage.

And I said another great example is like a drummer on stage, uh, using a shaker,

using a tambourine, and maybe, you know, uh,

they're just playing shaker and you could use the overhead drum mics to,

to kind of mic that.

But maybe a better way for that to translate is to have it in the tracks.

And you could say, are they faking? Well, they're playing it on stage,

but it also just happens to be in the tracks to enhance it. Um,

you could also have a situation where if maybe you only have one guitar player

and they go to do a solo, maybe in that section, uh,

you have some pre tracked rhythm guitar to help fill out those moments. Now,

I would certainly say do not have the lead guitar part tracked and have the

rhythm guitar player just play rhythm guitar,

but you could certainly have rhythm guitar pre track. It's just in that moment,

it's tucked down in the mix.

The league guitar player is playing and the band is still gonna sound full and

complete even when they,

they pop up to play lead and they're no longer playing rhythm.

So using things in the tracks,

using the tracks to enhance instruments on stage definitely is not cheating,

and it just adds to that additional emotional impact, which is great.

Number six, final thing here. This is maybe the most obvious,

and this is the thing that, again, even within this,

you've gotta kind of balance the line of what you put into here,

but I said oxs sound.

So first thing I thought of obviously in this category is like pad stuff.

So if you've got, um, a drummer, a bassist, guitar player on stage,

and maybe one of them is the lead vocalist,

or maybe we have an additional person that's that's singing lead,

there's gonna be a lot of songs or there's probably some keys parts.

If there is a piano part, um, that's a very noticeable instrument.

Anyone that that, that, um, has ever, you know, has hearing of any sort,

has ever heard a song,

ever is gonna hear a piano part and know that's a piano part.

And so that's something that as soon as our ear hears that we're gonna visually

look for the cue to see someone playing piano. Now, again, this is up to you.

You could have just a keyboard on stage and the person can fake play the part.

They should probably actually play the part, the piano part. But a pad,

an ambient pad, for example, is something that when you hear,

unless you actually know music really well, you're not gonna know what that is.

You're just gonna know that's that sound that they use in records, right?

That's just, it's part of the song.

And so that's something you could certainly have in the tracks with like a trio

on stage. The, the basis is surely playing the guitar player,

surely playing the drummers, surely playing the lead.

Vocalist is surely singing, but you have the,

the pad kind of ambient pad thing happening.

They're just kind of fill out the sound to add some extra, um, elements, right?

Uh, I have bgv s listed here. Again,

this one you have to use tastefully and you have to use in just the right spots.

Um,

you can certainly overdo it to where there's like one person singing and then

you get into the chorus and suddenly there's like five part harmony happening,

five part harmony. I don't even know how that works,

but lots of parts happening right? Uh, at once. And you go,

there's just one person singing here. How is this, how is this the case? Like,

uh, that something is, is off here, but if you do it today,

so if you do it at just the right spot,

even if you have mics on stage for the rest of the,

the musicians and members in the band, and when it comes to bgv part,

they're next to their mic and they're singing,

but then maybe you also have bvs and you, you know,

tuck the live vocals down the live bgv there, um,

it can be done in a way that people that do not know will have no clue that

there's things in the tracks.

Most people that go to shows don't even know what tracks are, don't even,

can't even spell Ableton. Most of us that use Ableton can't even spell Ableton.

It's not a belt in it's able to, in just side note,

we should do a tutorial on how to spell Ableton. Um,

but actually that would be a fun tutorial. I'm gonna add that to the list. Uh,

but using those ox sounds and,

and done the right way at the the right times and thinking about using sounds

that people won't necessarily notice again, will add to that emotional impact,

will help, uh, drive homo thematic moment, uh, uh,

in the song will help enhance the instruments on stage.

And it's gonna make a real difference in telling your story live on stage.

So if you're looking to use tracks on stage,

that doesn't mean you have to sound commercialized.

It doesn't mean you have to sound manufactured.

It doesn't mean you have to fake it or sound like you're faking it on stage.

You can do it in a way that it's gonna help enhance your story,

it's gonna help drive your point home, um, and share your story with the world.

So I hope these tips were beneficial to you. Again,

if you want more tips like this, if you're watching YouTube, then hit subscribe,

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leave a rating review if you'd like. And most importantly at all,

no matter where you're watching is share this with someone that you think would

be impacted by it and would help them. Uh, thanks so much for watching.

Keep up the good work and we'll see you on the next one. Everybody. Take care.

Bye.