Playing lyrics in monitors and not the house?

[readwritespin]

I am running into a weird problem. The director wants the lyrics of the song to play through the monitors on stage and the house to only play the music version.

I have 2 versions of the music, one with words , one without. They are played into the sound board directly.

I could set up two inputs and have one play through the monitors and the other the house, but there is no way to hit play on both of them at the exact time so that they match up.

How else can I do this? Any suggestions for me?

 

[Footer]

Wow. First, dumb. Second...

You need to two track it. Take both cd's/files, rip them in WAV. Load them them both into something like Audacity. Take both files and mix them down to be two mono files: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Mixing_stereo_tracks_to_mono_in_your_Project. Then, open up a new file, put the file with tracks in the left channel, put the file without tracks in the right channel. Export. Now, that makes the big assumption that these two tracks are the same length and sound the same. That should allow you to just send the left channel of your player to the wedges and your right channel to your FOH mix. Bit a work... but it can be done.

 

[Carl75]

I assume this means that none of the performers can remember the lyrics to the songs. Why not put a computer monitor or an Ipad on stage displaying the lyrics?

 

[AudJ]

I looked at it more like the performer had difficulty staying on pitch. Could be either I suppose.

 

[rickytowner]

If you load both tracks into Q Lab... using a sound card you can out put each track on two separate channels... set both tracks to fire on the same Cue and set your routing/patching accordingly on the desk. Hey presto you have on track in the house mix and another in the monitor mix... and that was you can still keep your mix in stereo

 

[Joshualangman]

Exactly. If the only problem you need to solve is firing two tracks at the exact same time, use a cueing software. The free version of QLab will do this easily.

 

[Bryce_J]

change the format to mono sound?

 

[TimmyP1955]

I expect that if pre-recorded vocals are run through the monitors, once the monitors are loud enough to be heard by the show's singers. the singers won't be able to hear themselves over the racket, and they may as a result suck. In addition, monitor spill into the house will muck up the sound, and may make the audience think that they are seeing a canned performance. The director needs to whip the cast into shape.