Ultimate setup for live backing tracks?

[Bishbashbosh]

Hi all,
I do a great deal of work as a drummer playing behind many different artists. Part of this role has always been to be in control of any backing tracks/sequences that a particular artist may require - whether for backing vocals, or a sequencer line lifted from an their album or whatever.
Till now I've used a combination of Akai MPC2000XL and a Minidisk player. I usually use the MPC just to get the tempo of the track, and also if there's a loop playing I'll run it from this. It's also a handy tool for backing up MIDI SysEx info, and for dumping MIDI sample dump info to my DDrums.

I use the Minidisk in mono with click on one side, and track on the other. This is perfect if the artist has a lot of BV's needed.....

HOWEVER, I'm getting pretty hacked off with Minidisk as a format. It jumps if you're not careful to acoustically isolate it from the drum monitors. It sounds pretty terrible, and the start-up time is pretty slow on most models. It also takes a long time to do a 'realtime' transfer from PT to Minidisk.

So what's a better solution? I carry my laptop with me on tour anyway, so perhaps running a DAW (either Logic or PT) is the answer..... but I'd need to keep an MPC with me also.... Often if an artist loses their place in the song, I'll punch out the backing track, and punch back in when they're in the right place. The MPC is great for this as it begins INSTANTLY, whereas there's always a buffering up time with a DAW.

Any thoughts on this? Anybody have any experience with a DAW's reliability for live?

Is the MPC4000 a possible?
If that would stream audio from the hard drive then that might be the best of all worlds!! Otherwise the memory is probably too small to cope with a 3hr gig.

Are there any other options I should check out?

Thanks

[gainreduction]

Ableton Live might be worth checking out for that purpose. Seems very flexible as you can "punch in" the next part of the song whenever you need to and so on.

I have never used it but just the other day I had a conversation with a drummer who had the same problem as you and he had been introduced to Ableton Live and seemed very excited about it.

[Bishbashbosh]

Thanks. I'd forgotten about Live.
Anyone else have any suggestions?
In many ways I love the solidity of a hardware box like the MPC. Is there anything out there that people are using?

[ddrumddude]

Just curious what you came up with for a solution.

I also play ddrums AND use a minidisc for backing tracks.

[nadumr]

ableton live is really great for this... you can create a project for a song and have a click track in it that you only send to yourself. you can separate all the samples you need to trigger and very easily assign a device or midi note to each of them. the thing that's great is all you have to do is hit the trigger sometime in the bar before you want the sample to begin and Live will automatically quantize the sample to come in on the downbeat (or whichever beat you prefer...you can edit the sample length right in live in order to give it some extra space on the front for instant). Also, if for whatever reason something goes haywire, you just hit the trigger again and it will kill that sample without killing the song - the click will still soldier on and as long as everyone is playing together, you can hit the next sample to come right in at the part you want it to. i learned this by watching a buddy of mine who sets this up for BIG touring acts - i couldnt believe how simple it was! One of the bands is a power trio and the drummer is opening the song files while bass player is setting off all the samples with a midi foot controller. Another band was using the keyboard player who had an octave on his key controller devoted to triggering - middle C for the pre-chorus sample, D for the chorus etc etc.