Hi ya all, I’m trying to get electronics to work with a live drummer. The obvious way to do it is send a cue click, but I was hoping someone of you could help chime in on ways to do this both with a DAW and dawless. Whether this be equipment needed or processes to make it work. Any help or quips welcome!
As you already seem to recognise - there’s a number of ways to do it… So it’s probably more useful to let us know what equipment / setup you already have that you want to use?
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Thanks for helping out! Well sadly for myself I’ve suffered with a bit of gear paralysis. My hope is to get a nice dawless setup together, sampler with enough power to play loops as well as work as my drum machine and an analogue bass synth, got my eyes on the Erica baseline and potentially the circuit rhythm of it can offer enough power. Currently I’ve just got a laptop. Sorry if I’m rambling but I’m quite keen to move away from the computer but it might also be my best choice so I’m open to the possibility. I’m also trying to make sure I can spend my money where I’ll get the most enjoyment.
I haven’t used either of those pieces, but I think the Circuit Rhythm will have a specific click track…
From there, it’s all about routing because you want to separate the click from all your other sounds – you’ll need to figure out if you can route that click track separately to the headphone outs, everything else going via the main outs - this would be the ideal. If this isn’t possible, often a workaround is to pan click hard left and everything else hard right, to give you separate outputs. The circuit does have a sync out too, but I’m unsure if that’ll send voltages or if it’ll send pulses… 
Once you’ve figured out where the click comes from and how, you’ll need to sort out mixing / monitoring. The drummer will need to be on in-ears ideally. You’ll want a mixer which has separate monitor sends so that you can have your front of house mix (what an audience hears) and at least one monitor or aux mix – from that output you send the click and whatever balance of other stuff the drummer wants to hear, and that’ll likely need to go into a bodypack (cheapest and simplest is Behringer PM1) which connects to their headphones. Alternatively, you can get more pricey bodypacks which allow you to directly connect monitor sends and also clicks, or stereo inputs etc.
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With laptop, click will be easy enough to setup, but again, you’ll need an interface / mixer connected (via USB in this case) that allows separate outputs so you can send the drummer his own mix of click etc.
Take off both your life vests. (I’ll see myself out now) 
Sending a click to the drummer would be the primitive method, and that may or may not please your drummer.
If you wanted to do something potentially less rigid, then you might consider following the drummer. This package is one high-profile example of how that could be done:
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Thanks for your contribution! This is really interesting and a little bizarre? I’m not an ableton user currently, is this created strictly for ableton and is it a plugin?
This is pretty intriguing!
You might search Youtube. There has to be videos on various drummers systems and workflows.
…well…pretty much all drummers hate to follow clicktracks…and by far, not all can actually do so in a creamy and proper way…while only a few don’t mind at all and groove along smoothly and tight anyways…
and it makes a huge difference, if it’s happening in a studio or on a live stage…
it’s challenging either way…
and depends on many factors…
adding to existing grooves further rhytmical content edges…?
or providing all the rhythm content…?
is first essential question…
to decide between parttime playbacks or naked click tracks…
no matter which, the drummer needs dedicated monitoring…loud and clear…
wedge or inear…
in best case, he/she get’s to count in…
therefor he/she should also get’s to start the whole sync chain…
if we’re talking no computer here, but providing all of this…
an octatrack might be worth a try…
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Agreed!
This is true for a lot of musicians no matter the instrument. Myself included. Learning to play with a click and have swagger is not easy.
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experience from a seasoned drummer who plays to clicks. More or less the only truly recallable way. It takes time and practice. Otherwise it wont work. Ableton now has that live sync feature and that’s fine. But if they deviate too much (and not in a musical way) it will still not sound good. The only solution is , to get a drummer with a very good sense of time and can play or learn to play with clicks. Everything else isn’t a true solution IMO.
Also , good in ears , both of you get them , not just the drummer. Best to do this with something really stable so a DAW with a very good computer+backup computer + Midi fail safe ring and if its DAWless something rock solid like an Octa. ( i can’t recommend DAWless for this scenario at all).
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What music genre you will play live ?
Well we love Nine inch nails so we’re trying to get some of that style really but can’t be certain of the end result! That’s part of why I’m also hoping for a decent sampler that can play longer loops, not enough people to play everything so hoping to sample my guitar as loops
I’ve been on both ends of this conundrum, drums and electronics. I really don’t enjoy playing to a click track.
I think anyone playing drums in a band should have a passable sense of rhythm at the very least. Humans aren’t well designed for external synchronization but electronic music gear is so I tend to lean that way. Just use tap tempo to sync up with the drummer and hit play on the one.
The crux here is the drummer having good monitoring, you can’t follow what you can’t hear. If the drummer does drift a little bit you can adjust with tap tempo throughout and time a quick start/ stop to re-synchronize if done at measure intervals that fit your patterns. I’ve found that to work for me anyway.
If the drummers timing is too far off for that, you might have bigger problems.
At the same time, I think that’s the only way. See old YMO live videos. They use arps with CV synths. Their drummer is a machine, but still has his own style.
Very very interesting, thanks for sharing!