set up for home performance

[alasdairm]

hey everyone,

i played electric guitar in college (30 years ago!) and i recently bought a new guitar to try to relearn.

a small group of friends and i have been talking about getting together to practise and play - we're planning a backyard open mic when the weather gets better here.

what's a simple setup that would allow two of us - one electric guitar and one acoustic - to play against a prerecorded drum backing track? the drum track can play from a phone or my macbook pro.

i have a small practise amp and assume we'd need, say, some kind of simple mixer and a small pa-like amp?

as you can tell, i'm not really sure what we're looking. i did a search but my search terms are so vague i got a lot of unrelated result.

any help much appreciated.

[john]

You say open mic, but don’t mention a requirement for vocals… so just before I launch into suggestions, is there a need for vocals? More than one mic?

[Bridget Murphy]

On 2/3/2024 at 6:56 AM, alasdairm said:

hey everyone,

i played electric guitar in college (30 years ago!) and i recently bought a new guitar to try to relearn.

a small group of friends and i have been talking about getting together to practise and play - we're planning a backyard open mic when the weather gets better here.

what's a simple setup that would allow two of us - one electric guitar and one acoustic - to play against a prerecorded drum backing track? the drum track can play from a phone or my macbook pro.

i have a small practise amp and assume we'd need, say, some kind of simple mixer and a small pa-like amp?

as you can tell, i'm not really sure what we're looking. i did a search but my search terms are so vague i got a lot of unrelated result.

any help much appreciated.

Playing alongside your friends can be a refreshing way to re learn guitar.

[Mahesh]

On 2/3/2024 at 4:26 AM, alasdairm said:

i have a small practise amp and assume we'd need, say, some kind of simple mixer and a small pa-like amp?

 

The acoustic guitar can do a decent job without being connected if it's a small closed space. If not, it may need some amplification too. I think a PA-like amp as you mentioned being rented would do good. If you have a money crunch, you may do without renting a mixer. But in this case, you'd need some sort of an audio interface connected to your computer that would do the job. 

For example : Instruments will connect to the input of the sound interface ---> sound interface will be connected through USB into your macbook pro ---> The output of the sound interface can go to your PA. 

[alasdairm]

thanks all. much appreciated.

 

On 2/9/2024 at 11:07 AM, john said:

You say open mic, but don’t mention a requirement for vocals… so just before I launch into suggestions, is there a need for vocals? More than one mic?

 

given the space, we'll probably be fine without amplified vocals but i'm still interested to hear what you think.

 

alasdair