Front-of-house testing

[Jaay]

Greetings all. i was readingposts on playing live, and a thought crossed my mind

Regardless of whether you play electrics or acoustics, it is generally regarded as a good idea to have someone else play your kit while you sit in the house to listen for problems. I, like many of us probably, am unlucky in the fact I have no one to do this for me, as I am the only one with drumming ability in many of the bands I have played with. I might have to take my E's with me for a gig soon, and I wanted to take this valuable advice with me. The question: if I recorded a simple phrase or just some licks into a small sampler(read that as my SP-202), and ran that through the PA while I sat in the house, would that give me the same results as someone playing my e-kit? Or would it not because the sound is coming from a different source? Thanks,

-Jaay

[Arriguy]

Why not play back a pre-recorded pattern from your module?

[Jaay]

I don't have a sequencer. My kit consists of a sampler, an SP-202, and a TD-5.

[Shep2112]

That sounds like a decent idea, but you need to make a new sample live at the gig each time you change something, and then play that back to check out the changes you made. ie, play a groove, listen to it, not enough kick drum in the mix. resample yourself playing with the kick louder, then play back the sample.. It's not a major deal I suppose, but more tedious than just 'record then play' on a brain that has a sequencer.. sound quality would be fine assuming it's 16 bit, 44.1kHz or better on the sampler. The nice thing about a sequencer is the realtime playback control though. Might be better off buying the cheapest/oldest standalone sequencer you can find and record into that. then you can adjust the td-5 in realtime while the sequencer does the playback for you. (can also balance your sp-202 level-wise during this step since you're not tying it up with playing back a new drum track).

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
-Eric