Using Garageband for live performances

Question

I would love to hear from anyone who uses GB for live performances. I'm especially interested in how you store and play your music; ie direct from your computer drive, on flash card or thumb drive etc. I'm a one man show with guitar, flute, and keyboard. I'm really new at this and any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

Hey Gillermo... I might have to eat my words. I had a good think about this last night and I have come up with a plan. Just shooting from the hip and so might need some refinement, but here goes...
The problem as I saw it with Garageband was two fold...
1. how to lay out several songs or groups of pre recorded tracks and tracks with effects on them for my vocal and guitar and
2. lack of an easy to use controller of some sort that worked with GB to minimize mouse use, speed up transfer/choosing between songs and organize my set layout with a structure of some sort.
As a result of mucking around with my Korg NanoKontrol and using the plugin for GarageBand, I can now envision a logical system for using GB for Live performance as a one person show.
The NanoK has the ability to control 8 tracks at a time. You have use of Volume, Pan, Mute, Solo as well as the transport buttons when using scene number 1 on the NK. It has the ability to scroll through groups of 8 tracks at a time with dedicated buttons on fader bank 9.
As a simple example, lets take 4 tracks 1. a track dedicated to vocal with some effects on it to taste 2. a track dedicated to guitar with some effects to taste 3. prerecorded bass track (file bounced down to mp3 or similar) and 4. a drum/percussion track set up like track 3.
Now what you have is the use of 4 tracks for your performance ( there are a few other options though). Now if you load tracks 5-6 with the bass and drums of another song and 7-8 with the tracks of yet another song you now have 3 songs you can play/sing from the first fader bank set. These are all visible on the laptop screen.
Now thinking in groups of 8 tracks, the 2nd set of 8 tracks (tracks 9-16) is set up in a similar way with tracks 9-10 duplicates of 1-2 (vox & guitar) and 3 sets of bass and drums (or what ever). You would name each set of bass and drum tracks with the name of the song so you could always find out where you are. You could also apply instrument icons for easier identification.
So starting with fader bank 1 and tracks 1-4 un muted, you would have muted all the other tracks in the entire set ( before you started your show obviously). Hit play, sing your song... hit stop. Hit rewind, mute tracks 3-4, un mute tracks 5-6, hit play when ready and away you go with song No.2. Repeat for song 3. Once you have completed these 3 songs and made sure all of the tracks are muted via the Nano, press the button that moves the controls to the next set of 8 tracks or 3 songs.
Now in terms of performance there would be some trial and error needed to find out how big the project file could be before there were computer performance issues. I read somewhere there was an upper limit of approx 240 tracks in GB. In reality you would be thinking in terms of how many songs there are in your sets. So in this scenario if you had 15 songs in each set you would only need 40 tracks or 5 sets of 8 fader banks.
To minimize performance issues with projects getting on the large side, in between your sets you could close the project with set one in it and open the project file with set 2 in it.
A couple of other layout options would be to use an entire bank of faders for each song. You could have between 5-8 tracks usable per song. You could have a combination of audio, .wav/mp3, electric guitar and software instrument tracks. Simply go through the mute/unmute process as you scroll through your songs.
You could also lock/unlock the odd track for another level of performance optimization, but you would have to use the mouse pad for this as it can't be done via the NK.
The pro's for this type of system are
1. Complete control of mixing vol & pan for the venue you are in
2. Very simple control at your finger tips, 2 or more faders at a time, limited mouse use
3. A logical frame work to create your sets.
4. You can stay in GarageBand, no need for another software program.
5. Very cheap investment.
The Con's would all revolve around your computer spec's.
1. Max out your RAM.
2. Be selective with effects
3. System HD speed.
Note, I am assuming my vox and guitar are going through and audio interface with outs to an amp or PA of some sort.
I am going to have to try this out. I really DO NOT LIKE Ableton Live. It is heavy on CPU and gets really deep very quickly. If this works then I will have an Live Serial# for sale.