GP as a backing track player

Hi, I would like to use GP4 to play backing tracks ,and be able to mute certain tracks .I play guitar and bass so some tacks i need to mute bass some i need to mute solo guitar etc… I tried loading the tracks into the audio player with separate gain balance controls on the front rack but after about 10 songs GP took about 10 mins to load and would freeze at 93% every time .I would need to reboot computer .Bit of a headache as I’ve just bought this for this purpose .Has anyone any ideas how I can tackle this problem a different way .I have a helix lt with 127 songs each has about 8 stems which need to be routed out .I really like the midi switching on GP4 so I don’t wont to give up before i even start with this any help most appreciated .

It’s not clear to me from your description exactly what you’re trying to do.

I assume you have different backing tracks for each song?

Are these tracks stored on your PC or on the Helix?

Are these loops, or are they entire songs that you just want to play start to finish once for the song they’re in?

When you say you want to adjust gain and balance for different stems, do you mean that in Song One for example you’ll have separate tracks for bass, drums, effects, keys, etc. and that you want to be able to separately control their volumes and balances? Are they all going to play in sync, like all started at the same time, or will you be triggering them manually at different points in the song?

What format are they stored in and what size are the files on average?

And what kind of computer are you using?

Hi
thanks for the reply , Each song has about 8 stems drum track bass guitar vocals fx etc all mp3 .they all start together when i hit play .they are stored on my pc . the helix is just a guitar effects processor so as i play along i trigger different sounds chorus verse solo etc .As the song starts i would like to be able to mute certain tracks .For example if im playing one song i might want to play the bass part so i mute that track .or i might want to play the rhythm guitar so i mute that part leaving me free to jam along .I would like seperate volume control for each track . each stem is roughly 8 8 MB .

comp specs are Device name DESKTOP-6ECU7BR
Processor Intel(R) Core™ i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
Device ID 0C17E38A-567D-4C54-B245-60252B552B8D
Product ID 00330-80000-00000-AA316
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

|Edition|Windows 10 Pro|

hope that makes more sense

I forgot to mention there are about 10 stems per track so roughly 100MB per track

Sure you can use GP4 to play backing tracks!!

You have some ready made examples in:

This is one is a good start - just load your mp3 file in the Audio File Player :slight_smile:

Hi Keyman thanks for the reply , The problem im having is I loaded about 10 tracks into setlist with audio file player associated with each track .This set up seemed to crash GP4 on start up also took about 10 mins loading before crashing . I dont need any effects or vsts as helix handles that .Im guessing its back to trusty reaper .

One more clarifying question - I assume from what you’re describing this is a “jamming in my house” thing and not “I’m going to do this live on stage” thing. Not that you couldn’t do it either way, but I think “jamming in the house” is a little more forgiving of having to push a couple more buttons and a lot more tolerant of “oops, I forgot to turn off the bass track that I was planning on playing.”

Given the way the audio file player works, I think you’ll have to do this with each of the songs you want to do as a different rackspace. That’s because the pointer to the tracks you load into the audio player are stored with the rackspace and I don’t think there’s a way to change those through the setlist.

So let’s say your first Rackspace is “Stairway to Heaven” and your different stems are guitar 1, guitar 2, drums, recorders, and bass. You load each of those into one of the tracks of the audio file player. From there I’d probably route each track to a separate channel on a 16 channel mixer and connect widgets to that for volume and mute. If you need more than 8 stems you’ll need a second instance of the audio player and more channels on the mixer.

If you want to play bass you can mute the bass track, etc.

Your 16 gb memory isn’t going to handle a whole lot of those at 100mb each, so you’ll have to turn on “Predictive Loading” under Options->General, first option in the middle section.

What that’s going to do is only load a couple at a time. If you plan on jumping around, you’ll end up having to wait while the audio file player loads the tracks when you switch to a rackspace it hasn’t pre-loaded.

I assume when you do this in Reaper each song is a separate project, so you have to wait while each song loads in that case also.

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Thanks Vindes ,Yes this is just practicing at home ,jamming with friends set up .I`ll give the predictive loading a shot . The set up you mentioned is how I had it set so Im on the right rack there . with reaper I have it set up in one project , each track is then a sub project .Click on a track it opens up the sub project you can make changes then save that reflects on to main project .its a good work flow . Anyway thanks for taking the time to help most appreciated .if the predictive loading works ill let you know . Cheers mate

Just tried that predictive loading IT WORKED HOORAY your a demon :grinning: .I turned off the scan plugins at start up as well , loaded up in about 30 seconds .Once again I thank you for your help .

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Just to chime in here and say that, while predictive loading will work, we are working on a better player suited to be a more lightweight backing track player. As always - we can’t promise when will we have this or even if it will make it into the production build, but we’re definitely working on it.

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