One Man Band Performance Advice Needed

[Ron Vermillion]

I'm a over 50 year old guitar player. I used to do a one man band years ago with one of the first electronic drum machines I ever saw. I enjoyed playing and singing but wanted the "beat" that the drum machine provided. I do a lot of blues and not an acoustic folk guitar type show.

Now I'm planning to do it again, and I'm practicing and working up a song list of things I would like to do.

Originally I purchased a Boss JamStation JS-5 backing machine and had great success with the 12 bar blues but found it extremely difficult to program with styles and chords for anything that wasn't already there. About the only usable patterns on it for me are the 12 Bar blues patterns.

So I got Band-In-A-Box and after only a short time found that the sound of the MIDI Synth determines the quality of the band sound, and I am back into programming MIDI signals and considering a major expense for a MIDI Synth. And I know nothing, nada, squirt about all that.

Now I locate this website and I'm thinking that getting HOSTER and purchasing CDG songs that I want to perform would be much easier than all the other stuff that I'm working with. I'm about 90% of the way convinced that this is the way I should go.

In general, I'm spending WAY too much time on the complexities of getting the background music programmed and organized, and not enought time working on the performance.

Are there any Hoster experts out there that are doing solo performances using hoster.

Does the hoster music just play out of your regular sound card without a bunch of MIDI boxes etc.

I have a little USB -> HiFi Attachment that lets me play my sounds out of the computer into a PA system that works great on everything except MIDI.

Any words of wisdom out there from solo performers?

Thanks

Ron